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| - I'm an architecture moron. I have no knowledge about it and can't appreciate it when I see it, unless you count my pointing at a building while saying, "That's pretty!" as "appreciation".
A few months ago I attended a seminar at the Biltmore. About an hour into it, I leaned over to a friend sitting next to me and whispered that the conference room we were in was "really cool". Not sure why, not sure how, but somehow my diminished-capacity brain for architecture detected something, I guess, extraordinarily "pretty". Some time later, and I swear this is true and I'm not making it up, another equally diminished-capacity friend (we're all lawyers, 'nuff said) sitting on my other side leaned over to tell me, "Hey, this room is pretty amazing isn't it?" He hadn't heard me say anything to my other friend. The room was so amazing that even two architecture morons' dog-like instincts for pretty buildings were setting off alarm bells in their thick skulls, completely independent of each other.
Only after we finished the seminar did we learn that the conference room was, of course, designed by the late, great Frank Lloyd Wright circa 1929. I am unable to explain the intangible details of why it was so incredible, other than to say that while sitting inside it, everything felt perfectly balanced, perfectly in tune, and perfectly pretty.
I've been to the Biltmore on other occasions, to meet friends at the bar for a drink, and to have tea with guests who were staying there. So I've experienced as much of it as one can without ever actually spending a full night there. It is fabulous. And very pretty.
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