Architecture and Urban History

Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (1812–1852) was one of the most influential architects and designers of the nineteenth century, a man whose ideas and design principles were adopted and developed by followers as diverse as William Morris and Frank Lloyd Wright. As an architect, Pugin created cathedrals, churches, colleges, convents, and a wide range of domestic buildings whose form and structure changed the nature of architecture in his era. As a designer, he was responsible for the Gothic Revival, the most popular decorative form in Britain and around the world, and he was the creator of stunning furniture and woodwork; silver, metalwork, and jewelry; pottery and tiles; textiles and wallpapers; and books. This important book, written by eminent scholars, presents a comprehensive picture of Pugin, his achievements, and his times.

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Perhaps no other great modern architect has been linked to a native country as closely as Alvar Aalto (1898–1976). Critics have argued that the essence of Finland flows, as if naturally, into his quasi-organic forms, ranging from such buildings as the Baker House in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to iconic 20th-century designs, including his Savoy vase and bent-plywood stacking stools.

What did Aalto himself say about the importance of nationalism and geography in his work and in architecture generally? With an unprecedented focus on the architect’s own writings, library, and critical reception, Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen proposes a dramatically different interpretation of Aalto’s oeuvre, revealing it as a deeply thoughtful response to his intellectual and cultural milieu—especially to Finland’s dynamic political circumstances following independence from Russia in 1917.

Pelkonen also considers the geographic and geopolitical narratives found in his writings. These include ideas about national style and national cultural revival, and about how architecture can foster cosmopolitanism, internationalism, and regionalism. Expanding the canonical reading of Aalto, this work promises to influence future inquiries on Aalto for generations to come.

"This novel interpretation sheds a clear light on Aalto's relationship with Finland's society and culture, not merely by better defining the architect's often overlooked 'context,' but by recreating the intellectual milieus in which he developed. Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen introduces a very fresh discussion of Aalto's writings and designs in the framework of Finland's modern history."—Jean-Louis Cohen, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University

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The sleek lines and gleaming facades of the architecture of the late 1940s and 1950s reflect a culture fascinated by the promise of the Jet Age. Buildings like Eero Saarinen's TWA Terminal at JFK Airport and Philip Johnson's Four Seasons Restaurant retain a thrilling allure, seeming to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary. In this work, distinguished architectural historian Alice Friedman draws on a vast range of sources to argue that the aesthetics of mid-century modern architecture reflect an increasing fascination with "glamour," a term widely used in those years to characterize objects, people, and experiences as luxurious, expressive, and even magical.

Featuring assessments of architectural examples ranging from Mies van der Rohe's monolithic Seagram Building to Elvis Presley's sprawling Graceland estate, as well as vintage photographs, advertisements, and posters, this book argues that new audiences and client groups with tastes rooted in popular entertainment made their presence felt in the cultural marketplace during the postwar period. The author suggests that American and European architecture and design increasingly reflected the values of a burgeoning consumer society, including a fundamental confidence in the power of material objects to transform the identity and status of those who owned them.

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This remarkable book is one of a two-volume set that examines the impact of Rome on American artists and writers from the earliest days of the new republic. William L. Vance presents examples of American painting, sculpture, and writings of many different kinds (novels, poetry, travel books, letters, cultural commentary, journalism) that have been inspired by American encounters with Roman places and people over two centuries.

Volume I focuses on the influence of classical Rome, showing how the Forum and the Colosseum inspired American thoughts of ideal republics and powerful empires, how the Campagna was an ambiguous image of Arcadia or wasteland in the aftermath of empire, and how the Pantheon and the galleries of antique sculpture presented a pagan challenge to American ideas of divinity, beauty, and sexuality.

America's Rome: Volume II—Catholic and Contemporary Rome is also available on the A&AePortal.

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In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, burgeoning American cities like New Orleans and Philadelphia seemed increasingly chaotic. Noise, odors, and a feverish level of activity on the streets threatened to overwhelm the senses. Growing populations placed new demands on every aspect of the urban landscape—streets, parks, schools, asylums, cemeteries, markets, waterfronts, and more. In this unique exploration of the early history of urban architecture and design, leading architectural historian Dell Upton reveals the fascinating confluence of sociological, cultural, and psychological factors that shaped American cities in the antebellum years.

Through contemporary travel accounts, diaries, and correspondence, as well as maps, architectural drawings, paintings, and prints—many previously unpublished—Upton investigates not only how buildings were designed, streets were laid out, and urban space was put to use, but also why. He offers original insights into the way cities were imagined, and an extensive selection of illustrations recreates the various features of the urban landscape in the nineteenth century.

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*Many of the black-and-white images in the original print edition have been replaced by color images in this ePortal version."

Through Creole houses and merchant stores to sugar fields and boiling houses, Jamaica played a leading role in the formation of both the early modern Atlantic world and the British Empire. Architecture and Empire in Jamaica offers the first scholarly analysis of Jamaican architecture in the long 18th century, spanning roughly from the Port Royal earthquake of 1692 to Emancipation in 1838. In this richly illustrated study, which includes hundreds of the author’s own photographs and drawings, Louis P. Nelson examines surviving buildings and archival records to write a social history of architecture.

Nelson begins with an overview of the architecture of the West African slave trade then moves to chapters framed around types of buildings and landscapes, including the Jamaican plantation landscape and fortified houses to the architecture of free blacks. He concludes with a consideration of Jamaican architecture in Britain. By connecting the architecture of the Caribbean first to West Africa and then to Britain, Nelson traces the flow of capital and makes explicit the material, economic, and political networks around the Atlantic. 

First published in 1965 and now available in a revised edition, The Architecture of the Roman Empire has been hailed as a comprehensive and penetrating account of the rise of Roman Imperial architecture, an architecture whose great vaulted spaces and monumental exteriors defined such terms as “palace” and “Pantheon” for all time.

William L. MacDonald documents the genesis of this new architecture by describing, analyzing, and evaluating four key monuments erected in Rome between A.D. 60 and 130: the palaces of Nero and Domitian, the first true palaces of Europe; Trajan’s Markets (besides his Forum), a superb example of Rome’s highly original social architecture; and the mighty Pantheon. Planned and constructed for the paramount city of the Empire, these building radically altered the history of design and construction. The essentially urban architecture they defined soon appeared in hundreds of prosperous cities and towns, evoking an imagery of Rome throughout its dominions and later carrying many Roman concepts of design into Mediterranean and European architecture.

The emphasis throughout is upon the direct testimony of the buildings as they stand today, and the text is augmented by many plans, reconstructions, and photographs. For the revised edition MacDonald has updated the bibliography and added a new chapter in which he reviews recent studies and continues to probe questions of style and significance that he raised earlier. This book stands as one of lasting value to architectural historians, archaeologists, and the classicists as well as to students of ancient history and culture.

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The author of a classic work on the architecture of imperial Rome here broadens his focus to present an original study of urban architecture in Roman market towns, port cities, veterans’ colonies, and major metropolitan centers throughout the empire.

“Simply the best book on Roman urbanism [that] I know. . . . A formidable breakthrough. It brings to life the genius of Roman urbanism and reveals its continuing relevance for present urban planning and architecture.”—Leon Krier, Architects Journal

“In this very fine book—the successor to his Introductory Study—William L. MacDonald lays before the reader the physical evidence of what a Roman city was like for its inhabitants. . . . The illustrations in An Urban Appraisal, this second volume of The Architecture of the Roman Empire, are superbly chosen, illuminating the text as well as being interesting in themselves. . . . It is a joy to find a book so attractively designed, worthy of both its author and his subject.”—Martin Henig, The Times Literary Supplement

Winner of the 1986 Alice Davis Hitchcock Award of the Society of Architectural Historians for the most distinguished work of scholarship in architectural history.

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Yale University Press/Pelican History of Art

This important book examines the development of the principal styles of ancient American architecture, sculpture, and painting until the end of the Aztec and Inca empires in the sixteenth century. Written by esteemed scholar George Kubler, the volume aims to explain works of art as such, rather than dwelling upon those ideas about civilization that art is often made to illustrate in books of a more archaeological character. The Art and Architecture of Ancient America is arranged by geographical regions in three main divisions: Mexico, Central America and western South America. Architecture, sculpture, and painting occupy most of the volume, but town planning, pottery, textiles, and jewelry are also discussed. Many of the illustrations portray little known sites, buildings, and objects.

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A wealth of art and architectural treasures survive from Ancient Egypt—a civilization that endured from the fourth millennium B.C. to the conquest of Alexander the Great. In this book, Ancient Egyptian monuments, their decorations, and many other works of art are reproduced in more than four hundred beautiful illustrations.

The Ancient Egyptians in their tombs attempted to recreate life for the dead in a naturalistic way, often against the background of the landscape in which they lived. This book shows the tombs at Thebes, including the treasure-filled burial place of Tutankhamen, the temples of Luxor and Karnak, and the palaces of Akhenaten at Tell el Amarna and of Amenhotep III at Thebes. It also presents many revealing portraits depicting a range of subjects from the kings and queens who built the pyramids at Giza and Saqqara to their own civil servants.

Many works reproduced in black-and-white in the print version of the book have been replaced with high-quality color illustrations in this electronic version.

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Yale University Press/Pelican History of Art

Virtually all the masterpieces of Islamic art—the Alhambra, the Taj Mahal, and the Tahmasp Shahnama—were produced during the period from the Mongol conquests in the early thirteenth century to the advent of European colonial rule in the nineteenth. This important book surveys the architecture and arts of the traditional Islamic lands during this era.

Conceived as a sequel to The Art and Architecture of Islam: 650–1250, by Richard Ettinghausen and Oleg Grabar, the book follows the general format of the first volume, with chronological and regional divisions and architecture treated separately from the other arts. The authors describe over two hundred works of Islamic art of this period and also investigate broader social and economic contexts, considering such topics as function, patronage, and meaning. They discuss, for example, how the universal caliphs of the first six centuries gave way to regional rulers and how, in this new world order, Iranian forms, techniques, and motifs played a dominant role in the artistic life of most of the Muslim world; the one exception was the Maghrib, an area protected from the full brunt of the Mongol invasions, where traditional models continued to inspire artists and patrons. By the sixteenth century, say the authors, the eastern Mediterranean under the Ottomans and the area of northern India under the Mughals had become more powerful, and the Iranian models of early Ottoman and Mughal art gradually gave way to distinct regional and imperial styles. The authors conclude with a provocative essay on the varied legacies of Islamic art in Europe and the Islamic lands in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

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On May 1, 1780, England’s Royal Academy of Arts opened its twelfth annual exhibition, the first to be held in the magnificent rooms of William Chambers’s newly built Somerset House. For the next fifty-seven years, the Great Room of Somerset House effectively defined the center of the London art world--the place where viewers had to see and be seen, and where artists fiercely vied for the attention of potential buyers. Such great exhibition performers as Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Lawrence, John Constable, J. M. W. Turner, and David Wilkie sharpened their skills during these stimulating decades. In this extensively illustrated book, seventeen renowned experts revisit and assess the Somerset House years, a period of great achievement and central importance in the history of British art.

The book’s contributors view the Somerset House phenomenon from a broad range of perspectives. They deal with the physical nature of the exhibitions, the audience, the role of the press, the Royal Academy’s place within the larger world of urban entertainments, and how the conditions of display shaped and even transformed patterns of art production. In addition, they explore such topics as the tactics of exhibitors in different genres of painting, the exhibition histories of works in other media, and the impact on foreign artists and observers of an increasingly self-confident national school of British art.

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