Category Archives: Architecture History

Remansioning a Back Bay mansion

Posted on February 16, 2014 by David Brussat

The Ames-Webster Mansion, on Dartmouth Street in Boston’s Back Bay, will soon be renovated. A press release forwarded to me by John Margolis, president of the New England chapter (on whose board I sit) of the Institute of Classical Architecture … Continue reading →

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More on the modernist coup d’etat

Posted on February 15, 2014 by David Brussat

John Massengale, head of the New Urbanists in New York and a classicist who often writes in to TradArch to note that modernism is at least as popular as traditional design in the cafes and restaurants of the Big Apple, … Continue reading →

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More Semes on modernist “coup d’etat”

Posted on February 15, 2014 by David Brussat

[This post is the second part of two beginning earlier this morning here.] In response to my recent post on the fecklessness of an editorial in the January edition of Pencil Points about the new modern architecture, Steven Semes sent … Continue reading →

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Why Britannica missed the “storm clouds”

Posted on February 15, 2014 by David Brussat

Following my recent post of the concluding paragraphs of the Encyclopedia Britannica’s articles on architecture in its 11th (1910-11) and 12th (1922) editions, architectural historian Steven Semes, who teaches at Notre Dame’s architecture program in Rome, sent along some detailed … Continue reading →

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Wandering into Pencil Points

Posted on February 13, 2014 by David Brussat

Yesterday I opened my Princeton selection of reprints from Pencil Points, the journal for architectural draftsmen, to an editorial from the January 1925 issue on the new modern architecture, entitled “Living Architecture.” Here are a couple passages from it: When … Continue reading →

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Column: “The Rise and Fall of Penn Station”

Posted on February 13, 2014 by David Brussat

Before Pennsylvania Station opened in 1910, travelers headed for New York on the Pennsylvania Railroad, owned by the largest company in the world, had to debark in New Jersey and cross the Hudson River by ferry to Manhattan. It’s hard … Continue reading →

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Past blast: Video homage to Penn Station

Posted on February 10, 2014 by David Brussat

Tonight I watched a PBS “The American Experience” presentation on the rise and fall of Pennsylvania Station, which I will preview for Thursday’s column and which will broadcast to the public next Tuesday. To gin readers up for that, enter … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Architecture Education, Architecture History, Blast from past, Book/Film Reviews, Old Video, Preservation | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

Old videos: Two from 1940s Rhode Island

Posted on February 9, 2014 by David Brussat

Two old film clips of Rhode Island take viewers on tours of the nation’s smallest state – the smallest but not the least significant! The first is a propaganda film focusing on the home front and its values; the second … Continue reading →

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No lampooning Lampoon Castle

Posted on February 8, 2014 by David Brussat

Among the most charming and beloved buildings in Cambridge is the old Lampoon Building (Lampoon Castle), where Harvard’s famous yuk-yuk club, the Harvard Lampoon, graduated, years ago, the founders of National Lampoon magazine. The building, designed by Edmund Wheelwright, a … Continue reading →

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Column: Driving down Market Street in 1906

Posted on February 6, 2014 by David Brussat

San Francisco before the Great Earthquake of 1906 was a lively city, to say the least. We are lucky to have a moving picture of it from a camera hand-cranked by filmmaker Harry Miles. His Bell & Howell was on … Continue reading →

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