Any parent or teacher can tell you that most public buildings have fabulous acoustics.

In fact, the more important the work you’re supposed to accomplish in a professional building, the better you’ll probably be able to hear that busload of third graders trying to outshout each other in the hallways while their hapless instructors endeavor to impart a civics lesson.

This was not something I always knew. Back in the day, I was one of those parents who was mortified when my little people would exclaim, in their best outdoor voices, about the anatomical details of buxom, braless statues captured, seemingly, in mid flight from their marble pedestals.