Tag Archives: Henry Hope Reed

Learn more about classicism

Posted on January 31, 2021 by David Brussat

Alexis de Tocqueville discovered, during his visit to our country in the early 1830s, that we Americans form more associations to pursue civic goals than in Britain or, I suppose, in France, his native land, else he would not have … Continue reading →

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Scott: The mechanical fallacy

Posted on November 15, 2020 by David Brussat

Perhaps the most eloquent, erudite, evocative denunciation of modern architecture came near the beginning of its ascendancy with Geoffrey Scott’s chapter “The Mechanical Fallacy” from his 1924 book, The Architecture of Humanism. Scott has the modernists dead to rights. The … Continue reading →

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Architecture of the picturesque

Posted on October 26, 2020 by David Brussat

Having just twitted a panel of architects for having “touched on weighty academic matters that would never enter the mind of most citizens,” I beg readers’ pardon for touching on such a matter here. Many classicists blame “the picturesque” for … Continue reading →

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The foreboding of H.H. Reed

Posted on March 27, 2020 by David Brussat

I reprint this post less than a year after its publication last May because, for the first time in modern architectural history, there is a chance that the Modern Movement might get its come-uppance. The proposed executive order to shift … Continue reading →

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EO: The two paths ahead

Posted on March 4, 2020 by David Brussat

The draft executive order that is stirring within the Trump administration is forcing classicists in the field of architecture to choose one of two paths forward. The path that goes through the E.O., if it is not already throttled in … Continue reading →

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A tale of two fountains

Posted on August 19, 2019 by David Brussat

Nicholas Boys Smith is a founder of London’s new-urbanist Create Streets organization and is now the co-chairman of the British government’s Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission along with Sir Roger Scruton. Boys Smith had replaced Scruton after the latter was … Continue reading →

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Return to ‘The Golden City’

Posted on August 2, 2019 by David Brussat

I kid you not. The other day a correspondent wrote me out of the blue suggesting that I read a book called The Golden City, by Henry Hope Reed. “Curiously, Ron,” I replied, “I’m reading The Golden City right now.” … Continue reading →

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The foreboding of H.H. Reed

Posted on May 12, 2019 by David Brussat

Here’s a passage from “Warning to the Architectural Avant-Garde,” in the May 1959 issue of the journal L’Architettura, by Bruno Zevi, as translated in a collection of essays called Architecture in America: A Battle of Styles, edited by William A. … Continue reading →

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Hawthorne on architecture

Posted on March 5, 2019 by David Brussat

My recent post “Modern or modernist?” described several nominations to replace those two words for contemporary architecture, or, more accurately, anti-traditional architecture. It did not discuss whether modernist architects would agree to use a new word chosen by classicists. I … Continue reading →

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“Modern” or “modernist”?

Posted on February 10, 2019 by David Brussat

Occasionally I am urged to stop using “modern architecture” and use “modernist architecture” instead. The complaint, which issues from some of architecture’s top thinkers and makes considerable sense, is that the word modern normally means “of today” or “up to … Continue reading →

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