NOTES ON BOOKS
The best introductions to the historic setting of our architecture and civilization are the local guide-books and histories. See, for example, Stokes’s excellent and exhaustive Iconography of Manhattan, and the Memorial History of Boston, edited by Justin Winsor. Both are profusely illustrated. In the wave of civic enthusiasm that swept over the country in the ’nineties, many local descriptions and histories were written. For the most part, they are loose, rambling, credulous, and devoid of sociological insight: but occasionally there is a nugget in the matrix. Powell’s Historic Towns series covers broad ground. As regional histories, Weeden’s Economic and Social History of New England, and Mr. Samuel Eliot Morison’s Maritime History of Massachusetts, stand in a class by themselves: in them we have the beginnings of what W. H. Riehl called a “natural history” of the human community.
Ever since colonial architecture was reappreciated after the Civil War, a large amount of material has appeared on the early architecture of the colonies. Before 1900 the greater part of this was uncritical. Isham and Brown’s work on the early architecture of Connecticut and Rhode Island made a new departure, which Messrs. Cousins and Riley’s studies of the architecture of Salem and Philadelphia have carried on. Mr. Fiske Kimball’s compendious study of the Domestic Architecture of the Colonies and the Early Republic brings together a large amount of authenticated data. Articles and illustrations dealing with particular aspects of our pre-industrial architecture, or with particular regions—like the Lebanon Valley in Pennsylvania—are scattered through the architectural periodicals. Beyond the early republican period, our architectural histories come to an end. Works like John Bullock’s The American Cottage Builder, New York: 1854, occur in almost every old library and are full of interesting data. To fill the gap in later years we must have recourse to a comprehensive German treatise, Das AmerikanischeHaus, by F. R. Vogel, Berlin: 1910. This may be supplemented by Homes in City and Country, by Russell Sturgis, J. W. Root and others, New York: 1893.
Where formal description leaves off, the biographies of our principal architects enter. The following books traverse in order the entire period from the Revolution to the present generation.
Samuel McIntire: His Life and Work. F. Cousins and P. M. Riley, Boston: 1916.
The Life and Letters of Charles Bulfinch. Ellen Susan Bulfinch, New York: 1896.
The Journal of Latrobe. Benjamin Henry Latrobe, New York: 1905.
Henry Hobson Richardson. Mrs. Schuyler Van Rensselaer, Boston: 1888.
Charles Follen McKim. A. H. Granger, Boston: 1913.
Daniel H. Burnham. Charles Moore, New York: 1921.
The Autobiography of an Idea. Louis H. Sullivan, New York: 1924.
Portfolios of work by contemporary architects are so numerous that to single out any would be invidious. The files of the Architectural Record, the American Architect, House and Garden, and Arts and Decorations—to mention only the more available periodicals—should be consulted particularly for illustrations.
As an introduction to architecture in general the formal textbooks are occasionally useful. Let me commend particularly, however, Viollet-le-Duc’s The Habitations of Man in all Ages. The archæology and ethnology of this work are, it goes without saying, outmoded: but for all that it has a permanent interest, and it is high time that someone took up Viollet-le-Duc’s theme and redeveloped it in the light of contemporary research. While I am restoring a classic, let me add another: Ruskin’s The Seven Lamps of Architecture. Ruskin is disregardednowadays, as he was in his own generation, by people who have not yet caught up with him. His insight and unflinching intelligence are both needed, however, and it is no longer necessary to warn the student against his quirks and solecisms. Ruskin wrote the apology for modernism in art when he said: “There would be hope if we could change palsy for puerility,” and he anticipated modern decoration when he said: “I believe the only manner of rich ornament that is open to us is geometrical color mosaic, and that much might result from strenuously taking up that mode of design.” For that matter, Ruskin even predicted the architectural use of steel frames. The Seven Lamps of Architecture closes on a prophetic word which means far more to us today than to Ruskin’s contemporaries. “I could smile,” he said, “when I hear the hopeful exultation of many, at the new reach of worldly science and vigor of worldly effort; as if we were again at the beginning of new days. There is thunder on the horizon, as well as dawn.” We who have seen the lightning strike may well reread these words....
As for modern books on architecture and esthetics, let me recommend a handful. Among them note W. R. Lethaby’s Form in Civilization. In sharpcontrast to Professor Lethaby is Geoffrey Scott’s The Architecture of Humanism, Boston: 1914. I do not accept Mr. Scott’s main position; but there is something to be said for it, and he says it well. Both points of view are embraced in the distinction Mr. Claude Bragdon makes between the Organic and the Arranged, in one of Six Lectures on Architecture. From a limited field, Rhys Carpenter’s Esthetic Basis of Greek Art reaches conclusions which illuminate almost every province of esthetics. There is an able exposition of the absolutist, mechanical point of view in Vers Une Architecture, by the architect whose pen-name is “Le Corbusier-Saugnier.” In Speculations, Mr. T. E. Hulme presents an interesting philosophic apology for mechanism.
For the civic and sociological background of this study, consult Professor Patrick Geddes’s Cities in Evolution, London: 1915, likewise his Principles of Sociology in Relation to Economics. The latter can be obtained through Le Play House, 65 Belgrave Road, London, S. W. 1. The chapter on Westminster,by Mr. Victor Branford, in Our Social Inheritance, London: 1919, is a unique introduction to the direct study of social institutions and their architectural forms. The other volumes in The Making of the Future series, edited by Messrs. Geddes and Branford, should also have an important place on the student’s shelf.
Light on our more immediate problems will be found in the files of the Journal of the American Institute of Architects. Note particularly Mr. F. L. Ackermann’s article on Craftsmen—Machines—Speed—Credit, June, 1923, and Mr. Benton Mackaye’s article on the proposed Appalachian Trail. See, also, the Power number of the Survey Graphic. The report of the Committee on Community Planning of the American Institute of Architects (1924) should be read in connection with the last chapter: it treats in detail the difficulties that the architect confronts under our present economic and social order. See, likewise, Mr. Ebenezer Howard’s classic Garden Cities of Tomorrow.
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