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domestic architectural arrangements—The introduction of the Spanish style into the Southwest, a style that had already superseded Old-World models through its Mexican transmutation—The influence of Wren and his contemporaries on the churches and mansions along the Eastern Seaboard—The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.