American Architecture 1607-1976

This panoramic survey of American architecture will serve a variety of readers interested in American architectural, cultural, and social history as a source of information and insight on the development of the man-made landscape in the United States. The book-illustrated with nearly 300 halftones and over 50 line drawings-provides a long perspective on the social and environmental factors that shaped American building and delineates both the assimilation of European influences (from Lord Baltimore's London-imported row houses to the work of Mies van der Rohe) and the growth of native innovations (from the climate-adapted houses of New England to the close-to-the-land prairie houses of Frank Lloyd Wright). Marcus Whiffen wrote the first eight chapters of the book, covering the period from the Jamestown settlement of 1607 to the year 1860; Frederick Koeper then carries the history from the Civil War period to the present in the final eight chapters. Some highlights: A comparison of early Southern and New England domestic architectural arrangements-The introduction of the Spanish style into the Southwest, a style that had already superseded Old-World models through its Mexican transmutation-The influence of Wren and his contemporaries on the churches and mansions along the Eastern Seaboard-The seminal work of Peter Harrison-The vogue of Palladianism-The eclectic architectural practice of Thomas Jefferson-The buildings of Bulfinch in Boston and elsewhere-The contributions of such immigrants as Charles L'Enfant, Benjamin Henry Latrobe, and William Thornton to the nation's new capital and Capitol-The Greek revival and the Gothic, Romanesque, and Picturesque reactions to it-The appearance of the Second Empire in New York-High Victorian architecture as a reflection of Ruskinian high-mindedness-The emergence of H. H. Richardson and Richard Morris Hunt-The rise of the skyscraper-The Beaux-Arts period and the return to classical discipline and order-Frank Lloyd Wright and "the elimination of the box"-Art Deco and Streamline Moderne-The impact of European modernism from the 1930s-Reactions against the International Style: Expressionism and Neo-Expressionism, the Neo-Formalism (also known as Neo-neo-Classicism), Brutalism-The new emphasis on geometry in the 1970s as seen in recent Chicago skyscrapers and the work of I. M. Pei and Louis Kahn-Signposts of future possibilities.