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Think about it. The building is now designated to undergo transformation into a train station, but the inscription, presumably, will remain as an ineffaceable relic of the building's original purpose, the engraved reminder of a time when buildings were intended for the longest possible posterity. Blankness, then, was not an option. A wonderfully ironic example of an inscription placed on a building conversion is the one on the 1950 Union of American Hebrew Congregations at 838 Fifth Avenue: Love Thy Neighbor As Thyself, still there for all to follow when the building becomes a co-op. Will the co-op board adopt these words as its motto? An inscription more intimate in scale but possibly more farreaching in meaning is the one above the vestibule fireplace of Princeton University's Procter Hall: While I ponder, the fire will burn. More intimate still, though not at first sight, was the Greek inscription from First Corinthians I had above my own fireplace in Manhattan, rendered by painter Wouter Dolk in gold Perpetua, which translates, It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. I borrowed this thought from a funeral bier designed by Pugin which I saw at the Victoria & Albert's vast 1993 exhibition about the architect. For brevity, I like Tolle Lege, ("Take up and Read"), a quotation from The Confessions of St. Augustine above a portal of St. HYLAND