Mosque Issue

Mayor Bradley is right in his reaction to the City Council’s rejection of domes and minarets for a proposed mosque in Granada Hills as “an affront to religious freedom.” What Bradley fails to mention is that it is also an affront to architectural freedom.

Historically, Angelenos have been blessed with the most bizarre and free-wheeling of architecture: the Chinese Theater, Clifton’s Cafeteria, the facade of which was a tropical waterfall, the Egyptian Theater in the image of a Pharaoh’s tomb, and the Firestone Tire Co. building that paid structural homage to the ancient Assyrians.

These buildings and others like them were a delight to visit and part of our architectural heritage.

If such structural adventures as the new Disney building facade with its seven dwarfs are right, what makes domes and minarets wrong, regardless of religious intent?

ED KYSAR

Reseda