EVEN the most majestic cities are pockmarked with horrors. The knowledge that every shade of architectural experience, from sublime to excruciating, can exist in such compressed space is part of a city’s seductive pull. Yet there are a handful of buildings in New York that fail to contribute even on these grounds. For them the best solution might be the wrecking ball.

Not a day goes by, I would guess, that a Parisian strolling through the Luxembourg Gardens doesn’t glance up at the lifeless silhouette of the Montparnasse Tower and wish it away. The endlessly repeated joke is that the tower offers the best views in the city because it is the only place from which you cannot see it.

Many New Yorkers feel the same way about the MetLife Building (formerly the Pan Am Building), whose dull gray concrete facade punctuates the southern end of Park Avenue like an anvil, blotting out a once-glorious view of Grand Central Terminal. In my own neighborhood near Union Square I’ll occasionally catch people shaking their heads as they pass by a bizarre confection decorated with a vulgar pattern of gold rings on 14th Street.

So here’s what I propose. True, the city is close to broke. But even with Wall Street types contemplating the end and construction of new luxury towers grinding to a halt, why give in to despair? Instead of crying over what can’t be built, why not refocus our energies on knocking down the structures that not only fail to bring us joy, but actually bring us down?