Scully's early advocacy was critical to the emergence of both Louis I. Kahn and Robert Venturi as important 20th-century architects. Scully was a fierce critic of the 1963 destruction of New York's original Pennsylvania Station, memorably writing of it that, "One entered the city like a god. One scuttles in now like a rat." Scully was involved in the preservation of Olana, Frederic Church's home in upstate New York, publishing an article on its significance and endangerment in the May 1965 issue of "Progressive Architecture".