On a Grander Scale: The Outstanding Life of Sir Christopher

Lisa Jardine 2003 3.6 stars/10 reviews 4 copies in the library

Through the prism of the tumultuous life and brilliant intellect of Sir Christopher Wren, the multitalented architect of Saint Paul's Cathedral in London, historian Lisa Jardine unfolds the vibrant, extraordinary emerging new world of late-seventeenth-century science and ideas. The man behind the bold, imposing beauty of Saint Paul's was as remarkable as the monuments he has left us. Wren was a versatile genius who could have pursued a number of brilliant careers with equal virtuosity. A mathematical prodigy, an accomplished astronomer, a skillful anatomist, and a founder of the Royal Society, he eventually made a career in what he described disparagingly in later life as "Rubbish " -- architecture, and the design and construction of public buildings. Wren was a major figure at a turning point in English history. He mapped moons and the trajectories of comets for kings; lived and worked under six monarchs; pursued astronomy and medicine during two civil wars; exercised his creativity through the English Commonwealth, the Great Fire, the Restoration. His royal employment out lasted abdication, Dutch invasion, and the eventual extinction of the Stuart dynasty. Beyond the public achievements, Jardine explores Wren's personal motivations and passions. He was a sincere, intensely moral man with a remarkable capacity for friendship. His career was shaped by lasting associations forged during a turbulent boyhood and a lifelong loyalty to the memory of his father's master and benefactor, the "martyred king," Charles I.

His Invention So Fertile: A Life of Christopher Wren

Adrian Tinniswood 2001 4.8 stars/4 reviews 1 copy in the library

In His Invention So Fertile, Adrian Tinniswood offers the first biography of Christopher Wren in a generation. It is a book that reveals the full depth of Wren's multifaceted genius, not only as one of the greatest architects who ever lived--the designer of St. Paul's Cathedral--but as an influential seventeenth-century scientist. Tinniswood writes with insight and flair as he follows Wren from Wadham College, Oxford, through the turmoil of the English Civil War, to his role in helping to found the Royal Society--the intellectual and scientific heart of seventeenth-century England. The reader discovers that the great architect was initially an astronomer who was also deeply interested in medicine, physics, and mathematics. Family connections pulled him into architecture, with a commission to restore the chapel at Pembroke College, Cambridge. Tinniswood deftly follows Wren's rise as architect, capturing the atmosphere of Restoration London, as old Royalists scrambled for sinecures from Charles II and Wren learned the art of political infighting at court, finally becoming Surveyor of the Royal Works-the King's engineer. Most important, the author recounts the intriguing story of the building of St. Paul's. The Great Fire of 1666--vividly recreated in Tinniswood's narrative--left London a smoldering husk. Wren played a central role in reshaping the city, culminating with St. Paul's, his masterpiece--though he had to steer between King and cathedral authorities to get his radical, domed design built. As the Enlightenment dawned in England, Wren's magnificent dome rose above London, soon to become an icon of London and world architecture.

Lady Elizabeth Wilbraham (163-1705)

Women of Steel and Stone: 22 Inspirational Architects, Engineers and Landscape Designers

Anna M Lewis 2014 4.8 stars/5 reviews 6 copies in the library

An inspiration for young people who love to design, build, and work with their hands, Women of Steel and Stone tells the stories of 22 female architects, engineers, and landscape designers from the 1800s to today. Engaging profiles based on historical research and firsthand interviews stress how childhood passions, perseverance, and creativity led these women to overcome challenges and break barriers to achieve great success in their professions. Subjects include Marion Mahony Griffin, who worked alongside Frank Lloyd Wright to establish his distinct architectural-drawing style; Emily Warren Roebling, who, after her husband fell ill, took over the duties of chief engineer on the Brooklyn Bridge project; Marian Cruger Coffin, a landscape architect who designed estates of Gilded Age mansions; Beverly L. Greene, the first African American woman in the country to get her architecture license; Zaha Hadid, one of today’s best-known architects and the first woman to receive the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize; and many others. Practical information such as lists of top schools in each field; descriptions of specific areas of study and required degrees; and lists of programs for kids and teens, places to visit, and professional organizations, make this an invaluable resource for students, parents, and teachers alike.

Sarah Losh

The Pinecone: The Story of Sarah Losh, Forgotten Romantic Heroine -- Antiquarian, Architect, and Visionary

Jenny Uglow 2013 3.8 stars/8 reviews 2 copies in the library

In the village of Wreay, near Carlisle, stands the strangest and most magical Victorian church in England. This vivid, original book tells the story of its builder, Sarah Losh, strong-willed, passionate, and unusual in every way. Sarah Losh is a lost Romantic genius—an antiquarian, an architect, and a visionary. Born into an old Cumbrian family, heiress to an industrial fortune, Losh combined a zest for progress with a love of the past. In the church, her masterpiece, she let her imagination flower—there are carvings of ammonites, scarabs, and poppies; an arrow pierces the wall as if shot from a bow; a tortoise-gargoyle launches itself into the air. And everywhere there are pinecones in stone. The church is a dramatic rendering of the power of myth and the great natural cycles of life, death, and rebirth. Losh’s story is also that of her radical family, friends of Wordsworth and Coleridge; of the love between sisters and the life of a village; of the struggles of the weavers, the coming of the railways, the findings of geology, and the fate of a young northern soldier in the First Afghan War. Above all, it is about the joy of making and the skill of unsung local craftsmen. Intimate, engrossing, and moving, The Pinecone, by Jenny Uglow, the Prize-winning author of The Lunar Men, brings to life an extraordinary woman, a region, and an age.

James Wyatt (1746-1813)

James Wyatt, 1746-1813, Architect to George III

John Martin Robinson 2012 5 stars/1 review not in the library

James Wyatt (1746–1813) is widely recognized as the most celebrated and prolific English architect of the 18th century. At the start of his lengthy career, Wyatt worked on designs for the Oxford Street Pantheon's neo-Classical interior as well as Dodington, the Graeco-Roman house that served as the model for the Regency country house. Wyatt was the first truly eclectic and historicist architect, employing several versions of Classical and Gothic styles with great facility while also experimenting in Egyptian, Tudor, Turkish, and Saxon modes. His pioneering Modern Gothic marked him as an innovator, and his unique neo-Classical designs were influenced by his links with the Midlands Industrial Revolution and his Grand Tour education. This groundbreaking book sheds new light on modern architectural and design history by interweaving studies of Wyatt's most famous works with his fascinating life narrative. This masterly presentation covers the complex connections formed by his web of wealthy patrons and his influence on both his contemporaries and successors.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

Thomas Jefferson: Architect: The Built Legacy of Our third President

Hugh Howard and Roger Straus III 2015 1 copy in the library

Harold Kirker 1998 4.5 stars/2 reviews 1 copy in the library

Charles Bulfinch (1763-1844), son of a wealthy Boston family, exerted a wide influence on architecture in New England, where his version of the Adam style bacame characteristic of the early Republican period. As architect and Boston selectman, he was responsible for the great development of Old Boston. Later he was appointed for the final stages of the Capitol in Washington. In this fully illustrated record of commissions, Harold Kirker sets forth the career of this native-born American architect.

The Life and Letters of Charles Bulfinch, Architect

Charles and Ellen Bulfinch 2010 no raring not in the library

Michael J Lewis 2001 4.5 stars/6 reviews 2 copies in the library

Frank Furness' energy, confidence, brashness, vulgarity, and full-throated love of life vibrate in his architecture. This first biography details his abolitionist upbringing in staid Philadelphia, the horror of war and its translation into aggressive architecture - train stations, banks, and libraries - and illuminates his influence on his century and the world.

Evolving Transcendentalism in Literature and Architecture: Frank Furness, Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright

Naomi Tanabe Uechi 2013 not in the library

Susan Stein 1986 5 stars/4 reviews 2 copies in the library

Reviewer: Richard Morris Hunt, along with Henry Hudson Holly, was one of the greatest American architects of residential architecture at the end of the nineteenth century and is best remembered for the palaces he designed primarily for the Vanderbilt family. He also had a large non-residential practice. Unfortunately, his fame was fleeting as a later generation of Modernists reviled him for his eclectic approach to design. This book helps to rectify the problem and provides a solid survey of his works.

Richard Morris Hunt

Pauls Baker 1980 4.2 stars/5 reviews 1 copy in the library

Richard Morris Hunt is the definitive biography of the man who was widely regarded by his contemporaries as the dean of American architects and who was a seminal figure in establishing architecture as a profession in the United States. Covering all of Hunt's major commissions -- including his famous fifth Avenue mansions and Newport "cottages" -- the book provides a fresh look at the artistic achievements of America's Gilded Age.bPaul Baker's reassessment of Hunt's works naturally covers his most famous buildings, such as The Breakers and Marble House in Newport, Biltmore House in North Carolina, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the base for the Statue of Liberty. But it also reveals Hunt's designs for houses on a more intimate scale, public buildings and monuments, and commercial structures.

Benjamin Henry Latrobe (1764-1820)

Dr Kimball and Mr Jefferson: Rediscovering the Founding Fathers of American Architecture

Howard Hugh 2006 4.8 stars/6 reviews 4 copies in the library

Yes, they make rather an odd couple-but, truly, Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) and Fiske Kimball (1888-1955) are the Johnson and Boswell of the story of American architecture. If not for Dr. Fiske Kimball, we might never have known that Thomas Jefferson was an architect. Though he was hailed as a brilliant statesman, Jefferson was all but unknown as an artist and an architect for nearly a century. But Kimball, an industrious scholar with a keen eye, made a series of critical discoveries that changed not just the image of Jefferson, but also rewrote the story of American architecture, introducing its first real practitioner. Benjamin Henry Latrobe, Charles Bulfinch, William Thornton, Robert Mills-Kimball identified the key figures who together with Jefferson transformed the craft of building into the art of architecture, at the same time setting the aesthetic tone for a young country still struggling to define itself. Part detective story, part narrative history, Dr. Kimball and Mr. Jefferson recreates the stories of these visionary men through the lens of the amazing Fiske Kimball, who, in resurrecting their legacy, helped found the twin disciplines of historic preservation and architectural history.

The Domestic Architecture of Benjamin Henry Latrobe

Michael L Faxio and Patrick Snadon 2006 5 stars/4 reviews not in the library

Benjamin Henry Latrobe, an English émigré and the first professional architect of international stature to practice in the United States, invented an American house type for the new democratic republic. Calling upon his diverse education and travel experiences in Europe and his training with eminent architects and engineers in London, Latrobe responded to American manners and climate by producing what he called his "rational house," an application of Enlightenment thinking to the design of a proper living environment for the citizens of the world's most recent democracy. Establishing a new benchmark in Latrobe studies, Michael W. Fazio and Patrick A. Snadon extend their analysis to Latrobe's training and career in England and Europe, his principles of design, and his methods of architectural practice. The authors trace the evolution of his design thinking through analytical essays on all of his major domestic commissions and conclude with a summary discussion of his position within the international architectural scene, his design theories, the integration of interior design and engineering into his architectural practice, and the preservation of his houses.

Robert Mills (1781-1855)

Altogether American: Robert Mills, Architect and Engineer, 1781-1855

Rhodri Windsor Liscombe 1994 no rating not in the library

The career of Robert Mills (1781-1855) provides a fascinating account of the beginnings of an independent American architecture--Mills described himself as "altogether American"--and of the socio-political and cultural development of the Republic prior to the Civil War. Although a Southerner by birth, Mills espoused abolitionist and enlightened views, in part learned from his chief mentors Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin H. Latrobe. He actively promoted the establishment of national artistic institutions and published on a variety of issues, particularly transportation. The range of Mills's interests matched the typological and geographical breadth of his practice. He executed commissions from Newburyport, Massachusetts, to Mobile, Alabama, and worked in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Columbia, South Carolina, and Washington D.C. In the capital he designed the first truly monumental Federal buildings and the most enduring symbol of the United States, the Washington Monument. Combining architectural history and biography, this book relates Mills's professional achievement and eventful private life to the wider historical context by selectively utilizing the extensive archival records, most of which remain unpublished. The text is written to satisfy those familiar with architecture, but avoids technical language, and so will also appeal to those interested in creativity and historical biography.

Robert Mills: America's First Architect

John Bryan 2001 4.5 stars/2 reviews 1 copy in the library

The first architect trained in America, Robert Mills is best known as the designer of many iconic buildings in our nation's capital: the Washington Monument, the Department of Treasury headquarters, the Patent Office Building (now National Portrait Gallery), and the Post Office Headquarters. Mills, whose career spanned the period 1810 to 1855, was a colleague of James Hoban, architect of the White House, and Thomas Jefferson, designer of Monticello and the University of Virginia. He trained with Benjamin Henry Latrobe, designer of the Virginia State Capitol and the Bank of Pennsylvania. With this circle of friends, Mills was instrumental in creating the physical design of the new republic. Robert Mills: America's First Architect is the first complete monograph on this pivotal architect--beautifully illustrated with never-before-published watercolors and renderings and new color photography commissioned for the book. Author John Bryan, a best-selling historian and wonderful storyteller, weaves the history of Mills's architectural designs and engineering inventions together with the lives of the individuals who most influenced him, and shows how he can rightly be called our founding father of architecture.

Robert Morris's Folly: The Architectural and Financial Failures of an American Founder

Ryan K Smith 2014 5.0 stars/3 reviews not in the library

Geoffrey Tyack 2013 no rating not in the library

John Nash is universally recognised as one of the most important architects of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Britain. As the man responsible for the creation of Regent Street and Regent's Park, he left an indelible mark on the West End of London, and his two most famous buildings - the Brighton Pavilion and Buckingham Palace - are crucial to any understanding of the monarchy in the age of the Prince Regent (later George IV). Yet, even before he became involved in these ambitious projects, he made a major contribution to domestic architecture through the design of a series of stylistically varied villas, country houses and cottages in which he applied the doctrines of the Picturesque with an inventiveness and panache that has rarely been surpassed. No complete study of Nash's work has been published since Sir John Summerson's The Life and Work of John Nash, Architect in 1980. Since then, new scholarship has revised some of Summerson's conclusions and cast new light on several important aspects of Nash's work. The aim of this book - which originated in a symposium held by the Georgian Group in September 2009 - is to bring together this recent scholarship in a single volume, and so bring this most engaging of architects to a new generation of readers.

The Life and Work of John Nash, Architect

John Summerson 1981 no rating not in the library

Justin Martin 2012 4.7 stars/53 reviews 2 copies in the library

Frederick Law Olmsted is arguably the most important historical figure that the average American knows the least about. Best remembered for his landscape architecture, from New York's Central Park to Boston's Emerald Necklace to Stanford University's campus, Olmsted was also an influential journalist, early voice for the environment, and abolitionist credited with helping dissuade England from joining the South in the Civil War. This momentous career was shadowed by a tragic personal life, also fully portrayed here. Most of all, he was a social reformer. He didn't simply create places that were beautiful in the abstract. An awesome and timeless intent stands behind Olmsted's designs, allowing his work to survive to the present day. With our urgent need to revitalize cities and a widespread yearning for green space, his work is more relevant now than it was during his lifetime. Justin Martin restores Olmsted to his rightful place in the pantheon of great Americans.

Frederick Law Olmsted: Designing the American Landscape

Charles Beveridge and Paul Rocheleau 2005 4.7 stars/19 reviews 3 copies

Witold Rybczynski 2000 4.4 stars/6 reviews 5 copies in the library

In a brilliant collaboration between writer and subject, Witold Rybczynski, the bestselling author of Home and City Life, illuminates Frederick Law Olmsted's role as a major cultural figure at the epicenter of nineteenth-century American history. We know Olmsted through the physical legacy of his stunning landscapes—among them, New York's Central Park, California's Stanford University campus, and Boston's Back Bay Fens. But Olmsted's contemporaries knew a man of even more extraordinarily diverse talents. Born in 1822, he traveled to China on a merchant ship at the age of twenty-one. He cofounded The Nation magazine and was an early voice against slavery. He managed California's largest gold mine and, during the Civil War, served as the executive secretary to the United States Sanitary Commission, the precursor of the Red Cross.

Edward Graham Paley (1823-1895)

The Architecture of Sharpe, Paley and Austin

Brandwood, Geoff 2012 no rating not in the library

One of England's greatest Victorian architectural practices was based, not in London, but in the relatively quiet town of Lancaster. For just over a century the leading practice in the area was that of Sharpe, Paley and Austin. It was founded, just at the start of the Victorian Gothic Revival, by the remarkable, multi-talented Edmund Sharpe - architect, engineer, businessman, politician and winner of the Royal Institute of British Architect's Royal Gold Medal for his work in architectural history. E.G. Paley developed the practice and took on in 1867 the man who elevated it to greatness - Hubert Austin, described as an architect of genius by Pevsner. The firm established a national reputation, especially for its many fine churches, ranging from great urban masterpieces to delightful country ones, which are imbued with the spirit of the Arts & Crafts movement. The practice was extraordinarily prolific and took on commissions for almost every imaginable building type - country houses, railways, schools, factories, an asylum and commercial premises in addition to the churches. The book explores--with the aid of Austin's great-grandson--not only the firm's buildings but also a fascinating web of family and professional interconnections which provide the backdrop to the story. It is richly illustrated, including family photographs never previously published. This treatment will appeal to architectural historians, students of the architecture of the Victorian and Edwardian eras and social historians.

Joseph Paxton (1803-1865)

The Busiest Man in England: A Life of Joseph Paxton, Gardener, Architect and Victorian Visionary

Kate Colquhoun 2006 5.0 stars/3 review 2 copies in the library

Today one would be hard pressed to choose a "Pre-eminent Victorian," but among the Victorians themselves it was agreed that one figure towered above the rest. His name was Joseph Paxton (1803 1865), and he bestrode the worlds of horticulture, urban planning, and architecture like a colossus. This was the self-taught polymath who had a solution to every large-scale logistical problem, the genius whom an impossibly overworked Charles Dickens dubbed "The Busiest Man in England." Rising quickly from humble beginnings, Paxton, at age 23, became head gardener and architect at Chatsworth, the estate of the sixth Duke of Devonshire. Under Paxton's direction, Chatsworth was transformed into the greatest garden in England, a paradise of magnificent greenhouses, gravity-defying fountains, and innovative waterworks. Queen Victoria herself came to marvel; here was Britain's answer to the hanging gardens of Babylon. But it was the Crystal Palace, home of the Great Exhibition of 1851, that secured Paxton's fame. Two thousand men worked for eight months to complete this unprecedented temporary structure of iron and glass. It was six times the size of St. Paul's Cathedral, and entertained six million visitors. In the wake of its spectacular success, Paxton was in constant demand to design public buildings and propose ways to ease congestion in London, then the world's most populous city.

Will Price (1861-1916)