Lincoln Center, too, draws his barbs. "I find it very pretentious. Rather boring, really. It's a set of imitations of classical themes. The buildings are an unfortunate compromise because the builders were afraid to build something really modern, or to design something that really looked like a classical building. ... There's a feeling that they sort of want to be modern and sort of want to be classical and end up being a very unsatisfying compromise." A New Jersey native who developed a passion for architecture in his earliest years, Paul Goldberger attended Yale University and then worked as a general reporter for another newspaper. Several years later he became an editorial assistant for the _Times_. In 1973 there came an opening for an architectural writer, and because the _Times_ knew of his background, Goldberger was given the first shot at the job. "It was fabulous," he recalls, because it was what I always wanted to do. And it was very much a matter of luck -- of being at the right place at the right time." His articles appear most often in the daily _Times_; Louise Huxtable remains the chief architectural writer for the Sunday paper. Why would a sophisticated Timesman choose the West Side over the East? "There are many more wonderful buildings on the West Side," says Goldberger. Unfortunately not many of the buildings on the West Side have been kept up as well as the East Side. ... In terms of apartment house architecture, Central Park West is probably the best street in New York. It has all the grandeur and beauty and monumentality of Fifth Avenue and it also has the relaxed atmosphere." There's not one West Side," he continues. "There's at least 10. Around here is one neighborhood. Riverside Drive is another. Up by Columbia is another. ... One of the reasons I like my own neighborhood is because though it is very much West Side, it's handy to the East Side and midtown. I walk through the park all the time." Any chance that Manhattan's skyscrapers will eventually weigh down the island? "No," replies the critic emphatically. "First, the island is very, very solid rock and nothing could cause it to sink. The other factor, especially today, is that buildings are not all that heavy, because they're being built with lighter materials and more modern engineering methods. So a huge new building like the Citicorp, which is 900 feet high, is not any heavier than a building 500 feet high built 30 years ago. And since we don't have earthquakes, this is probably the safest environment in the world to build a skyscraper."