Ada Louise Huxtable

Huxtable became the first full-time architecture critic at an American newspaper when The New York Times appointed her in 1963, and in 1970 she won the first Pulitzer Prize for criticism. She wrote for people walking past buildings, not architects: her columns explained why the demolition of the old Pennsylvania Station mattered, how a plaza works or fails at street level, and what developers' choices did to a neighbourhood. The collections Will They Ever Finish Bruckner Boulevard? and Kicked a Building Lately? are as sharp and funny as their titles.