MARK GLADWIN is right to decry unreasonable hatred of 60s buildings in York (Letters, December 5).
However, the two examples he celebrates, Hilary House and Stonebow House, combine to destroy one of York’s finest streets, St Saviourgate.
As succinctly put In Pevsner’s Buildings of England, “at one end is the disastrous Stonebow House and at the other the characterless Hilary House”. Hilary House is out of scale with the street and far too bland for such an important position.
Stonebow House hardly acknowledges St Saviourgate at all and presents a brutal and ugly backside to it.
The side to Stonebow is no better and shows its contempt for the pedestrian most obviously adjacent to the bus stops where the main offering is a leaking soil pipe surrounded by crude concrete.
The office block on top may be no worse than many others, but to the man or woman in the street that is completely irrelevant.
Nick Derbyshire, South Esplanade, York.
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