Preface
Introduction
I
The Ancient World: Greece and Rome
II
The Sacred: Entering the New Jerusalem or
Converting the Pagan?
III
Surpassing Rome: The Profane Becomes Sacred
IV
Arcadia: The Domestic Becomes Sacred
V
Utopia: The Public Becomes Domestic
VI
Form and Meaning: From Philosophy to Style
Image Credits
The central mission of the exhibition program at the New York School of Interior Design is to present shows that can be used by the faculty as a teaching resource and to expose our students to topics in architecture, interior design, and the decorative arts that will enhance their educational experience at the college. The exhibitions are also part of our community outreach as are the lectures that are presented in conjunction with them.
Over the years we have been honored to present exhibitions which originated at other institutions such as The Sir John Soane Museum in London, Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, and the Emerson Museum at Hamilton College. Thanks to the expertise of our faculty and staff, we have been able to present exhibitions of our own creation. These have included Humphry Repton: Landscape Gardener, The Orders of Architecture/The Origins of Ornament; Paul Rudolph: An Interior Perspective; James Amster: Visionary, Designer and Citizen and eight or more exhibitions of faculty art and design projects.
With Making an Entrance we took the kernel of an idea from an exhibition on ‘Doors’ that Hugh Hardy and Madeleine Deschamps presented in Paris some 20 years ago and turned that idea over to the intellect of Eric M. Wolf and his educational background as an architectural historian. I wish to thank Eric for the superb job he has done as curator of the exhibition and author of this catalog. The former will be an important teaching tool and the latter an ongoing resource for our various audiences.
Special thanks to my colleague Tom Romich who is an integral part of our exhibition program, Chris Spinelli, Assistant Director of the Library for his work on bringing together the images for the project, and to Robin Drake and Shelly Zacher for their inimitable exhibition and graphic design talents that make our exhibitions go from ideas to reality.
Inge Heckel
President
The entrance to a building is both a literal and a metaphorical device. While an entrance defined most narrowly is actually a void or space without any designed elements, it can more broadly be defined as the entire architectural composition surrounding the empty space that is the literal entrance. So an entrance can be a door case (like a picture frame), a portico, or even an entire facade or elevation. Literally, an entrance is a portal that provides access to a building. Metaphorically, the entrance is a link between the world outside of an architectural composition and the designed microcosm within. As the first part of a building that one sees on entering, the entrance can represent the design philosophy of an entire building.
This exhibition looks to explore the history and evolution of the entrance in Western architecture, with a particular emphasis on the classical tradition and the modern movement. These two traditions offer many convergent and divergent ideas and design solutions to the problem of making an entrance. A closer look at this one element in architectural design sheds light on broader issues of the history of architecture and the philosophy of design, as well as elucidating some important themes in the cultural history of the Western world.
The various sections of this exhibition will look at different elements and ideas in the design of the entrance, some chronologically and others topically. The first section will look at the entrance in the ancient world, specifically ancient Greece and Rome. In the architecture of classical antiquity can be found many of the forms and concepts that form the basis not only of the classical architecture of the Renaissance through Beaux-Arts movement, but also many of the theoretical underpinnings of modernism--why else would Le Corbusier spend so much time on the Parthenon in his manifesto Vers une Architecture?
The second section will explore the architecture of the sacred, and what the entrance can signify here: it can be conceived as the Gates to the New Jerusalem, as Abbot Suger attempted, or a Christianization of the architecture of paganism. In later spiritual architecture it can be much more abstract.
The third section of the exhibition will explore how, in the period from the Renaissance through the Beaux-Arts, the forms of sacred architecture were adapted to secular functions, from museums and libraries to palaces and government buildings.
The fourth and fifth sections of the exhibition look to compare and contrast the differing visions of the perfect society within the intellectual conceptions of different times. The pastoral "Arcadia" of the Italian villa and the English country house where domestic architecture is for the first time dressed in the architectural attire of the sacred contrasts greatly with the ideals of an urban "Utopia" associated with the notion of progress in the age of modernism, where public spaces are thought of and designed on the model of domestic spaces.
The sixth and last section of the exhibition investigates how, over time, forms that were once highly charged with a particular meaning can come to represent something altogether different; further through repeated application in a myriad of different circumstances, they can come to mean nothing at all and merely enter the vocabulary of ornament and can be used by designers without any particular cultural baggage. It is indeed remarkable how two movements, the modern and the classical, once so charged with radical meaning can today be seen merely as ornamental language.
The Ancient World: Greece and Rome
Greece
The chief monuments of Ancient Greek architecture known today are temples
and theaters. Both these building types attach a great deal of
importance to the entrance: in temples, the literal entrance (which,
ironically, serves largely as a theatrical set), and in theaters, the
fictional entrance of frons scaenae or fixed backdrops (with equal
irony, the Greek theater is entered without a formal entrance). These
two entrance types, the Greek temple and the frons scaenae of the
Greek theater actually have quite a lot in common, for the function of the
Greek temple was vastly different from that of later sacred architecture.
The Greek temple was largely a setting for a liturgy that actually took place in front of it. Only the priests would enter into the temple's interior, which consisted principally of a poorly lit cell containing a cult statue that would actually be brought out of the temple on important holidays. Thus the temple entrance and facade was used in almost exactly the same way that a theater set is used: it was a backdrop for religious performances, not a place of assembly like a church, mosque, or synagogue. These qualities are clearly illustrated by the Parthenon in Athens, the most famous of Greek temples.
The Greek theater is a fascinating building type from the point of view of an investigation of the entrance. This is because the theater has no formal entrance for the audience: they merely enter from the side or the back, as the theater is a natural bowl carved out of a hillside. This said, a large formal entrance is a hallmark feature of the architecture of the theater. However, this entrance is merely a fictional one, used only by the actors. Greek theaters did not have movable, temporary sets like their modern descendents; rather, they had a fixed backdrop, called in Latin the frons scaenae, which provided entrances, windows, etc., to be used by actors in the plays being performed.
Rome
While Roman architecture is often thought to proceed from its Greek antecedents, this is only true to a point. Analysis of the entrance profoundly reveals both the debt to the Greeks and the radical departures present in Roman architecture. Owing to the relatively advanced technologies of the Roman world, the architecture of the interior became much more important in their architecture. This led to a substantial departure from the theatrical or scenographic nature of Greek architecture. However, the common culture of the Greco-Roman world insured that much of the iconography of Greek architecture remained intact. The more dynamic nature of Roman design, with its basis in concrete construction was thus often hidden from the first view of a building.
The outward aspect of the entrance to the Roman temple carries over much from its Greek exemplars; however, it no longer serves primarily as a theatrical backdrop for a liturgy that takes places outside of it. Here its serves as a mask that hides what awaits within from the person entering the building. The clearest example of this is the Pantheon, which, when viewed from the square which originally proceeded it, looked much like a Greek temple. However, behind this front was not a dark cell but rather a huge, well lit, domed rotunda. Roman temples served many functions beyond those of priestly ritual; it is known that the Roman Senate at times met within various temples; generals took their arms to be blessed by the Emperor and gods into temples before setting out on campaigns. Indeed, these temples were as much conceived as interior spaces as exteriors and thus have much more functionally in common with modern sacred spaces.
Unlike the temple, other Roman building types show radical departures externally from their Greek models, or present altogether new building types unknown in the Greek world. The advanced technology of the Roman civilization is largely responsible for these works, but a Roman aesthetic is also very important. The Roman theater and its close cousin the amphitheater have much in common with Greek theaters; however, a look at their entrances is most revealing in understanding their differences. As complete buildings rather than a modified natural landscape, Roman theaters required formal entrances for their audiences. Within these entrances, staircases were necessary to bring the audience to their seats. While the frons scaenae remained much the same as in the Greek theater, the rest of the building was entirely new. Like modern stadiums, these theaters had multiple entrance gates linking directly to stairs and passages going to particular sections. The Roman architects made a virtue of this necessity and introduced one of the most important themes in Western architecture, the repeated "arch in order" motif. While a form of entrance in itself, these repeated arched entrances decentralize the entrance, creating a more dynamic aspect of a building, as in the case of the Colosseum, where the entrance no longer marks the center of the building or provides any emphasis on any one part of the elevation. This again points to the greater focus Roman architecture attaches to the interior of the building, the entrance and facade no longer serving as a backdrop but rather serving as part of a dynamic experience of interacting with the building based on the movement of the person who enters.
The more dynamic use of the entrance is further illustrated in Roman civic architecture such as the basilica and the triumphal arch. The basilica was a large hall with aisles used as a meeting hall for government bodies and courts of justice. Like the theaters and amphitheaters, it was entered through a long colonnade or arcade surrounding its periphery. This is the form of architecture the Christian church was based on, so upon entering a relatively dark aisle, the visitor then proceeds to a relatively bright and tall central nave lit by clerestory windows. Perhaps this dynamic use of the entrance is best illustrated by the Roman form of the triumphal arch. These arches varied, some having one arch, others three. This building type is, like Greek temples and frons scaenae, fundamentally a set piece; however, unlike those examples, it is a set piece meant to be moved through. It is a ceremonial entrance whose only purpose is to be passed through as part of a ceremonial procession, thus the broader public is invited to participate in the ritual, not solely priests or actors.
The Sacred: Entering the New Jerusalem or Converting the Pagan?
After the fall of the Roman Empire, it was the Christian church that had the money and resources to continue to build monumental architecture. As a relatively new religion, Christianity did not have an established building type for the church. As seen, in the Greco-Roman world, the temple served largely as a stage set for a liturgy that took place outside of the temple, with only priestly ritual taking place inside. This, obviously, was not compatible with the Christian liturgy where the congregation is supposed to witness and participate in the mysteries of the church. So the building type used as a model by the early church was not the religious architecture of the pagan world but rather the civic architecture of that world. It was the Roman basilica that formed the model for the Christian church. Over time, this form was modified to better serve its new purpose. The most important alteration of this building type was the establishment of a principle axis leading down the nave to the area containing the altar. This required closing the walls of the long sides and the altar wall, leaving only the wall opposite the altar (the "liturgical west" side) available for a principle entrance. Later on subsidiary entrances were established on the ends of the arms of the transepts--wings added to the sides of the church--to give the building the shape of the cross, the most important of Christian symbols, in plan.
In the Middle Ages the church entrance followed the same evolution as the rest of ecclesiastical architecture and throughout Europe had various regional traditions and variations. From the beginning however, the entrance to the church served to separate the sacred space within from the profane space without. Thus, the church entrance was a symbolic boundary between the sinful world without and the representation of the kingdom of God within--the early church was after all, the setting for the Eucharist, the supreme mystery of the Church and salvation, involving the transformation of bread and wine into the blood and body of Christ, so the portal to this world needed to be monumental and marked. Of course, the earliest places of Christian worship in the Roman world could not have monumental entrances, as the religion was largely persecuted; the entrances were often hidden or secret, with worship taking place in private houses and even catacombs. However, after the Emperor Constantine recognized Christianity and converted, the Church received state patronage. This led to the construction of the first large-scale Christian churches, formally based on the basilican plan, such as the original St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican. As noted above, it was entered at the foot of the cross of the plan and followed the architecture practices of late Imperial Rome.
With the fall of the Roman Empire the architecture of the Church came into its own. In France particularly, the Romanesque and Gothic traditions took their definitive forms. At Vezelay one could argue that the entrance and its surroundings were even the high point of Romanesque art and architecture. In this period the church building represented the height of monumental construction. The entrance here fuses together sculpture and architecture, and the entrance particularly is used to integrate the telling of Christian narratives with the metaphor of entry from the profane world outside into the sacred world within. The architecture of the Gothic takes this idea a step further. As best articulated by the medieval cleric and architectural theorist Abbot Suger, the church became a model of the New Jerusalem, or the kingdom of God, on Earth. Suger put this theory into action at his abbey church of Saint-Denis, outside Paris. Here were planted all the seeds that would eventually flower at the great High Gothic churches of Chartres, Notre Dame--pointed arches, stained glass, increased height, lightening of structure. To this day, Gothic architecture is most clearly identified with Christian worship.
Yet, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, with the renewed interest in the culture and learning of antiquity, starting in Italy and spreading northwards, there was a desire to reconcile Christian worship with the architectural forms of the Greco-Roman (pagan) world. In their theoretical writings the architects of the time referred to churches not with the Latin word ecclesia (church) but rather with the world templum (temple). As noted previously, the purpose and function of a Christian church was largely antithetical to that of the pagan temple, as the church is fundamentally an interior space whereas the temple is fundamentally a theatrical backdrop. So the form of the Renaissance church in plan had to largely remain true to the basilican plan; however, the form of its facades, elevations, ornamental detail, and entrances did not have to remain true to the now established traditions of Christian architecture. As the section of the basilica presents a tall nave between two or four lower side aisles, the traditional temple front was hard to attach in an elegant manner. So the Renaissance architects were forced to find creative all'antica solutions. At the church of Sant'Andrea in Mantua, architect and theorist Leon Battista Alberti chose to use the model of the Roman triumphal arch for the entrance and facade of the church. The symbolism of this choice is clear: the procession from the profane world to the altar where the Eucharist is taken, in the Christian mind, is the true triumphal progression, more so than even the return of the victorious Roman general to the capital at the end of a campaign. In Florence, at the church of Santa Maria Novella, Alberti returned to the more traditional pedimented temple front for the design of the facade. To screen the lower height of the side aisles, he introduced large volutes. This form was to go on to become a standard practice in sixteenth-century churches, reaching its canonical form with Vignola's church of the Gesu' in Rome, becoming the standard for the design of the churches of the Catholic Counter-Reformation. Palladio, in his three church facades in Venice, including the church of the Redentore, adopted a different solution. He made facades, which consisted of the intersection of multiple temple fronts, a narrower one corresponding with the nave of the church rising through a lower, wider pediment springing from the aisles (see diagram).
The Protestant Reformation further complicated the architecture of Christianity. Ironically, in post-Reformation England, the Gothic was associated with Roman Catholicism, even though by this point the Roman church had all but abandoned it in favor of the "Humanist" classical architecture of the Renaissance. All the same, Inigo Jones, the first true architect of the modern Italian Renaissance mode in England, considered classical all'antica architecture to be the appropriate basis for a new Protestant church aesthetic. When charged with repair work at the venerable old Gothic cathedral of Saint Paul's in London, he encased the entire structure in a simplified, classical revetment and added a colossal Corinthian portico to the west end, giving this church, which preserved its Gothic proportions and interior, a massive, Roman entrance.
At the small church of Saint Paul's in Covent Garden, Jones was presented with the opportunity of constructing from scratch the first Protestant church in London. In this project can be seen the birth of the idea of "archaeological" Neo-Classicism. This church provides two "entrances," one real and one false. Conceived as a reconstruction of the ancient "tuscan temple" along the lines of the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitoline Hill in Rome, the church was intended to return the building type to its original, pre-papal purity. Somehow missing in this logic is the fact that it is actually recreating a pagan, un-Christian building type! The front of the church facing Covent Garden is a large Tuscan portico complete with a blind door case in its center. However, this is merely a covered sidewalk for the square, as the real entrance is in the back of the building, as is a relatively humble doorway. This is due to the actual orientation of the church: inside, behind the portico is the altar. Jones's impact on Anglican architecture would be felt for a long time in England, culminating in the rebuilding of Saint Paul's Cathedral after the great fire of London. Here, Sir Christopher Wren built what is one of the most monumental entrances in Christian architecture, preserving the notion of a colossal portico first introduced by Jones in his earlier work at this site.
The subsequent history of ecclesiastical architecture until the advent of modernism tends to be a back and forth volley between the ideas of medieval church designers and the classicism of the Renaissance and Enlightenment--hence, the revivalism seen in such buildings as the Madeleine in Paris or the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York. Modernism presents the biggest challenge to the traditions of sacred architecture in the West since the fall of the Roman Empire. However, the emphasis on secularism and the dominance of the State over religious institutions that accompanied the apotheosis of the modernist aesthetic prohibited it from forming a canonical form of church building. Unlike the modern house or the modern office building, it is very difficult to distill a coherent program in modernist religious architecture. The pluralism of modern religious belief has indeed led to a pluralism of visual manifestations of sacred space. One clear trend, however, is a de-emphasis on the importance of the entrance. From Frank Lloyd Wright's Unity Temple to Le Corbusier's Ronchamp Chapel, we see a myriad of different forms. However, in neither case does the entrance feature prominently. Perhaps this is emblematic of the fact that in the modern era, there is no clear path dictated by society towards God and salvation. As will be explored further below, religion, like many aspects of modernity has moved from a societal institution to a personal journey; design echoes the theme that we must find our own entrance into the realm of the spiritual.
Surpassing Rome: The Profane Becomes Sacred
The Renaissance in Italy ushered in an era of renewed interest in the culture and learning of the ancient world of Greece and Rome. Out of this tradition sprung forth later the philosophies of the Enlightenment and, one could argue, modernism. While the role of the Church remained central in the culture of the Renaissance, it began to share space with the lay nobility and governments in its role of patron of the arts and architecture. As the secular order of society gained more power, there was renewed interest in the secular learning and philosophy of antiquity. The architecture of palaces, government buildings, and cultural institutions looked to Greco-Roman sources, just as had happened with sacred architecture. However, relatively little of the secular and domestic architecture of the ancient world survived into the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Further, much of what did survive was not directly equivalent to contemporary building types and functions: the late medieval/early Renaissance institutions of government and culture were not much like those of the city states, republics and empires of antiquity. For this reason, medieval forms were adapted to work with classical aesthetics, proportions, divisions, and ornament. As in sacred architecture, this involved a great deal of creative interpretation and giving new meaning to old forms.
The Middle Ages developed very few specific building types beyond the church and fortifications. This is to say that monumental medieval buildings served many purposes; a palace belonging to a feudal lord would serve as his residence, his offices, the town or district's law court, and a myriad of other functions. Internal divisions within these buildings was also often loose; furniture would be moved from room to room with the seasons and necessary functions, so a bedroom in the summer might well serve as an audience hall in the winter. So terms like the Italian palazzo or the French hôtel referred more to the fact that a building was a typical large secular building than to any specific function that took place inside of them--they are not equivalent to the modern English terms "palace" or "hotel" at all. The architecture of these palazzi and hôtels, however, did tend to follow largely the same forms differing more from regional architectural traditions than from primary functions or clients.
With the coming of the Renaissance in Italy, the basic forms of these secular buildings did not change radically. Rather, these medieval buildings were given a classical facelift. For this reason the treatment of the facade and the entrance were particularly emphasized, as a classical language derived from other sources could be applied to secular buildings without reinventing their basic forms and functions. These transformations from the medieval to the classical are fascinating, as, despite the common efforts of designers in different places to restore the ancient language of architecture, these new all'antica buildings preserve much of the traditional architecture of their respective regions. This point is clearly illustrated by looking at early Renaissance palaces in Florence and Venice and comparing them with their medieval neighbors. In Florence we consider the Palazzo Rucellai, where Leon Battista Alberti flattened out the superimposed orders of the Colosseum in Rome into pilasters in low relief from the facade. The entrance itself is a classical door case. Yet under this skin is a building much like the medieval architecture of Tuscany (exemplified by the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence). In Venice at the Ca' Vendramin-Calergi, architect Mauro Cadussi uses a similar three-story elevation derived from Roman spectator architecture, yet he preserves the traditional Venetian divisions, loggias, and central water gate as seen in such medieval buildings as Ca' Foscari.
In Vicenza, Italy, architect Andrea Palladio was given the opportunity of literally resurrecting Roman architecture when he was charged with the buttressing and renovation of the town's Palazzo della Regione or municipal meeting hall, which, true to the culture of the Renaissance, he called the Basilica. To buttress the old medieval structure he erected a two-story arcade around the building, using the Roman "arch in order" motif. To compensate for the irregular division of the old building's bays, he introduced colonnettes to support the arches between engaged half-columns. Here was the first use of the so-called "Palladian motif" on a grand scale. The finished ensemble did indeed very much recall the ancient basilicas such as the Basilica Aemilia in the Roman Forum.
The Palazzo Farnese in Rome is a model example of the mature form the Renaissance palazzo would eventually take. Preserved is the fundamental medieval form of the Italian palazzo. The classical detail and proportion is what separates this building from its antecedents. The window cases take the shape of ancient aediculae or tabernacles, themselves derived from the form of the temple portico. The entrance itself is a classical Roman arch. It is the rhythm of the facade that implies the classical orders that are no longer present.
As the power of the State in general and kings in particular grew in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, so did the place of the entrance in civil architecture. Naturally, as the notion of the "divine right of kings" developed, elements of sacred architecture became more and more appropriate in the design of the residences of monarchs. In Spain, where the kings used the title of "Most Catholic Majesty" (el rey catolico) the great new palace of el Escorial combined royal residence, church and monastery. The entrance to the complex is through an entrance that looks like a church facade, however, it is not the church that is behind this entrance, but rather a courtyard providing access to the palace, the monastery, and the church. But the church-like entrance serves to formally and symbolically unite the monarchy (and its power) with the church (and God). In France, by the eighteenth century the power of the monarchy vastly exceeded even that of the Church. In unifying the rambling royal palace of the Louvre, Claude Perrault designed a tremendous new entrance front. Dominating the center of this vast colonnaded facade was a huge, pedimented classical temple front. So the residence of the king evoked the architecture of the ancient temple, or residence of the gods.
Classical architecture was thus used to elevate the function of public buildings. When Thomas Jefferson was designing the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, he used Roman architecture to elevate learning to the level of the divine. The library of the university is actually a miniature version of the Roman Pantheon, complete with its temple front portico entrance. Where the French in the eighteenth century used the temple entrance to elevate and illustrate the power of the monarchy, the young United States used similar imagery and form to elevate the democratic principles of the republic. Bullfinch's design of the U.S. Capitol again used the temple front portico to evoke the power of the democratic institutions of ancient Greece and the Roman Republic.
A pattern was thus set: classical sacred architecture, most clearly expressed by use of the temple front portico, to elevate the importance of a building's function within its society. We can see this pattern applied in countless situations. The British Museum uses this form to elevate the arts and culture. This museum was built at the height of the British Empire. The works contained within were brought back to the capital from the far reaches of the empire and enshrined in what was a temple to that empire. Still later, in the United States the temple front motif was used to enshrine various principles important to our culture, from the cult of progress and technology at old Pennsylvania Station in New York, to the supremacy of commerce and capitalism in our culture expressed by the Wall Street facade of the New York Stock Exchange. As with sacred architecture before, so with civil architecture, other classical motifs were used for entrances to monumental buildings. At the New York Public Library, Carrere and Hastings use the Roman Triumphal Arch again as an entrance, in much the same way it was used by Alberti in Mantua at the church of Sant'Andrea over four hundred years earlier.
Other forms of sacred architecture were also used for civil purposes. At Newgate Gaol, an eighteenth century prison in London, the monumental form of Roman funerary architecture is used to express the nature of the penitentiary. Its entrance really does evoke that of a mausoleum. Henry Hobson Richardson turned to the sacred architecture of the Romanesque period for his inspiration in all sorts of public buildings, from university buildings to libraries. His use of Romanesque arches and ornaments created entrances that evoked those of medieval churches.
While, as will be explored in later sections of this exhibition, the architecture of High Modernism was to finally de-emphasize the entrance of ancient sacred architecture, the machine age architecture of the Art Deco movement largely preserved this concept, though dressing it up in the current fashion. A classic example of this can be found at the Griffith Park Observatory in Los Angeles. Gone are the classical orders, the columns, pediments, and porticoes. Preserved, however, are the massing, proportions, and central entrance atop a flight of stairs. Even the detailing of this building recalls the divisions and ornaments of the classical tradition, with updated, streamlined versions of the Doric frieze. Indeed the relationship of buildings like this to Beaux-Arts buildings like the New York Public Library is not unlike that between the Palazzo Rucellai and the Palazzo Farnese explored above; in both cases, the missing classical details are still implied through massing, proportion, and rhythm.
Arcadia: The Domestic Becomes Sacred
One of the great innovations of the Renaissance was the development of domestic architecture, particularly the country or suburban villa for the nobility. These building types had existed in the Middle Ages but did not correspond to their ancient antecedents. As discussed above, the urban palace at this time was not generally different in form from other types of civil architecture. Country houses, however, were much more specifically residential in the modern sense of the word.
As with religious and secular urban architecture, the Renaissance in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italy brought a new interest in the suburban (literally--outside the walls of the city) and rural homes of the ancient Roman patricians. In the world of ancient Rome, much as today, those who could afford to do so maintained second homes just outside the city or in the country, to escape from the responsibilities and cares of their business and political life in the large cities. These second homes often doubled as the main house on large working farms and vineyards, which their owners used to supplement their incomes as well as providing produce for their own consumption. This true agrarian use of these estates linked them, already in their own times, with the tradition of pastoral poetry. It is from this poetic tradition that the notion of "Arcadia" arises. Arcadia was literally a remote region in the mountains of ancient Greece that was regarded as an earthly paradise by ancient poets. The visual aesthetic of this poetic tradition which architects attempted to build in antiquity and again in the fifteenth- through nineteenth-centuries villas and country houses is perhaps best expressed in the paintings of the seventeenth-century French painter Claude Lorrain.
While few if any ancient villas survived intact into the Renaissance, literary descriptions of them did, most notably Pliny the Younger's description of his own villa. Later archaeology has revealed more about them, most notably in the excavations near Pompeii in the bay of Naples. The Getty Villa in California is a recreation of a Roman villa based on such archaeology and the Villa of the Mysteries at Pompeii is a surviving example. Unlike urban architecture, these rural buildings really took the surrounding landscape into consideration in their design, with the house itself merely playing a role in the overall "Arcadian" ensemble being built.
This interaction with the landscape put a strong emphasis on the entrance of the villa itself, as this entrance now became the terminal of long, vast vistas and paths. The entrance is thus the conclusion of a journey through a garden, farm, park, or vineyard. The ancient temple front motif here plays two roles: that of a grand entrance as seen in other types of civil and religious architecture, and that of making the house appear as one of the ubiquitous classical temples or ruins found in the "Arcadian landscape" as represented in such works as the painting of Claude Lorrain. We thus see a real landscape based on an idealized painted landscape based on a representation of a lost pastoral paradise. An early example of this type of planning with a temple front on a villa serving as the focus of a larger landscape is found at the Villa Medici at Poggio a Caiano. While the key ingredients are all in place here, this usage reaches its most famous and influential form in the many villas the sixteenth-century architect Andrea Palladio built for the Venetian nobility in the mainland countryside of the Veneto region. The Villa Capra or Villa Rotonda, outside Vicenza, is perhaps the best known of these villas. Here Palladio repeats the temple front portico on all four symmetrical sides of the house. These porticoes serve as terminals of different axes of garden paths and vistas through the vineyards.
The success and longevity of Palladio's combination of classical temple portico entrance with the villa set in a park or garden is almost without parallel in the history of Western architecture. While Palladio's restrained classicism briefly fell out of favor in England in the late seventeenth and very early eighteenth centuries in the exuberant baroque architecture of Nicholas Hawksmoor and John Vanbrugh, their greatest masterpiece, Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire preserves this all important element. The temple front here is flanked by a huge baroque palace, but it is still the focus of a drive that stretches on for miles, through one of the largest and most splendid of all English gardens. Later in the eighteenth century, the influence of Palladio became so strong that one of the leading architectural movements of the day is still referred to as Palladianism. Lord Burlington, one of this movement's leaders built Chiswick House, his own suburban villa outside of London, as a tribute to Palladio's villas and, naturally, featured a temple portico as the principle entrance set in extensive parks and gardens.
The "temple in the Arcadian landscape" in villa architecture and landscape design was first developed in Italy and perhaps had the most profound effect in England, yet its influence was felt well beyond these two countries. While the French preferred formal garden to the more "natural" appearing landscape garden, the influence of Palladio's interpretation of the ancient villa can be seen at no less an iconic French location as the Chateau de Versailles. The small villa of the Petit Trianon in the gardens of Versailles is really a Palladian villa dressed in contemporary French fashions. It is a simple rectangular box sitting on axis with the formal parterres of the surrounding gardens. It is entered through a flattened temple front of engaged columns below a projecting entablature. While missing a pediment, the temple front is otherwise intact. In the United States, the White House is a classic example of a large scale Palladian villa, complete with full portico, set in a park and rose garden, serving as a terminal not only of its own grounds but of a major urban axis of a district of Washington D.C., which was indeed a planned city. Perhaps the largest example of the Palladian villa in such a planned landscape can be found as far from its Italian origins as New Delhi, India. The Viceroy's House (now home to the president of the Republic of India) designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens and completed in the 1930s preserves the columned portico and dome of Palladio's Rotonda, and serves as the focal point of the central axis of its landscape; this landscape is no longer a park, garden, or even a district, but an entire city.
Utopia: The Public Becomes Domestic
The origins of the modern lie in the industrialization of the nineteenth century and the rise of the middle classes. Perhaps this is illustrated in no place more clearly than with the development of residential architecture. The importance of domestic architecture and a domestic center of public culture went on to inform the general philosophy of architectural design, effecting even public building. From the growth of the garden suburb to the utopian architectural projects of the Soviet Union in the 1920s, strong political ideology was associated with architectural design--ideologies that strove toward building a utopia--and architects and designers were therefore charged with designing the physical appearance of this ideal world.
While to the contemporary viewer the highly ornamental, extremely busy and complex facades of High Victorian architecture might seem antithetical to the bold, simple lines, denuded of ornament, of the High Modernism of the 1920s and the International Movement, it is in Victorian architecture where the seeds of many of the most important tenets of modernism first germinated. This is clearly revealed in many new aspects of design which begin in the mid-nineteenth century, not least of which is a decentralization and de-emphasis on the importance of the entrance as the defining element on a facade or as the principle feature of a building in its landscape. With the rise of the middle classes, society as a whole began to place a greater emphasis on the spaces these people inhabited, their own domestic space. This is, of course, in contrast to the monumental architecture of the period from antiquity through the French Revolution, which naturally emphasized the role of the nobility and the elites. As their power was manifest through public institutions, these institutions emphasized their placement above the ordinary. Entering these institutions and seats of power was rare for the masses, so these entrances relied on a monumental scale, similar to that found in temples, churches, and sacred places. These institutions were often the terminals of vistas that the public could look down but rarely enter.
In a sense, the new, middle class architecture turned the entrance inside out; it no longer served as a portal between a world inhabited by a public to an inner, secret world, but instead began to function as a barrier between an interior domestic world, "the family home," and the wider world of nature and industry outside. The portico, which functioned as a visual focus of a facade and served merely to guide one entering from the world outside into a building, was transformed into a veranda for sitting and looking out, a sort of exterior room which took interior space outside of a building. This is clearly seen in the house Edward Tuckerman Potter designed for Mark Twain, built in 1874 in Hartford, Connecticut. Here the large veranda has multiple points of entry and is chiefly an area for sitting and looking out. It lacks a central axis and the principle entrance is ambiguous.
While the Victorian house was radical in developing the fundamental aspects of a middle-class domestic-interior-based architecture, its aesthetic was fundamentally conservative. The often busy and overly ornamental visual vocabulary it employed often overwhelmed the relatively small scale of these structures; they could therefore be described as "bourgeois," in the pejorative sense of the word. The very industrialism that led to the rise of the middle class created debates among this class, which was becoming more and more educated and aesthetically sophisticated, about good design and its meaning. From this debate at the turn of the twentieth century came the Arts and Crafts movement. A reaction to the more and more mechanized world of the time, the Arts and Crafts movement expressed the desire to return to a pre-industrial aesthetic, featuring natural materials and virtuosic carpentry. While the movement originated in Great Britain, it was perhaps most widespread and successful in California, from relatively humble "Craftsman Bungalows" to the amazingly refined houses for the very wealthy erected by the Greene & Greene, typified by the Gamble House 0f 1908 in Pasadena.
By 1910 this craftsman architectural vocabulary, derived from domestic design, had entered the realm of public building. This is well illustrated by Bernard Maybeck's First Church of Christ, Scientist in Berkeley, California. As with the domestic architecture it sprang from, the building itself interacts directly with its natural surroundings. Again, the traditional emphasis placed on the entrance is lacking. The many windows at street level is a radical departure from all of the established traditions of Christian architecture. However, these windows serve to bring the outside world directly into the church's interior, as opposed to the traditional use of clerestory windows in religious architecture, which provide light while separating the sanctuary from the outside world.
It is from this environment that perhaps the most famous domestic architect of the last century emerges. Frank Lloyd Wright's "Prairie Houses," such as the Robie House of 1908 in Oak Park (suburban Chicago), Illinois, continues the low lines of the Arts and Crafts movement, retains and develops the relationship of interior to exterior first established in Victorian times, and continues to de-emphasize the entrance. The virtuosic attention to detail and craftsmanship remains, as does the integration of all elements, from glass to furniture, in a unified design.
As stated above, many of the fundamental shifts in emphasis from the public to the private in both society and architecture had already occurred from the Victorian period through 1910. However, the 'teens and 'twenties saw the amazingly quick development and maturation of the modern language of architecture. This period saw a reaction against the negative associations with industrialism and the machine found in the Arts and Crafts movement; rather these very aspects of modern society were embraced. From the Soviet Constructivists, to the proto-Fascist Italian Futurists, to the Liberals of Weimar Germany, to the Industrialist of the United States, virtually all of the avant-garde architectural movements latched on the the notions of progress and utopia inherent in the modernist aesthetic. Indeed it is this international character of the High Modern era that led to its later appellation of "the International Movement" (a term invented by Philip Johnson and the curatorial staff of the Museum of Modern Art for their exhibition on modern architecture in 1932). Writing in 1925, Le Corbusier perhaps best summed up this way of thinking when he stated that a house was "a machine for living."
Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye in Poissy, France of 1928-29 is perhaps the most iconic of these "machines" that he designed. Seen from a distance it seems to float in its landscape, above the ground, and any visual suggestion of an entrance is very well hidden. Its long strips of windows and roof terrace succeed in bringing nature and the outside world inside. The villa's open plan is a radical departure from the relatively dark, cavernous spaces found in Arts and Crafts domestic interiors. While the villa presents a compelling and beautiful exterior, it is clearly an envelope for an architecture chiefly conceived as an interior space.
Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House of 1946-50 in Plano, Illinois takes these ideas even further, perhaps as far as they can go. Here is a completely free plan contained inside a glass box. When the curtains are open, the interior has a 360 degree view of its surrounding landscape. As for the entrance, it is merely articulated by a floating staircase. The open veranda at the top of this staircase cannot be discerned from a distance, as the supporting steel columns are exactly the same as those that support the glass which encloses the interior. The difference between interior and exterior is thus made almost completely ambiguous.
Already in the 1920s architects were using this visual language of "International Modernism" for public buildings as well as domestic ones. When Alfred H. Barr, Jr., founding director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York began thinking about the design for the first purpose-built venue of the museum, he instructed the designers to think about a domestic scale for the galleries, as this was the scale of room that these works were intended for. The resulting building on 53rd Street in Manhattan clearly maintained many of the concepts discussed above. The entrance of the building was not raised from street level as it would have been in most museums. Rather, its glass doors were merely articulated by a curved metal projection above them. The facade presented a low, long wall to the street articulated by long window strips reminiscent of those used by Le Corbusier at the Villa Savoye. The building itself was thought of as a representative work of modern art, like all the objects contained within. It is worth noting that MoMA was the first major art museum in the United States to contain a department of architecture and design. The domestic scale of the museum was useful not only to give the art an appropriate context, but also to make visitors feel less intimidated by the often difficult avant-garde art on display within it.
The Seagram Building of 1959 on Park Avenue in Manhattan is a logical place to conclude this section. It is this building, one of the most imitated in twentieth-century architecture, that brings together all of the concepts here discussed in a truly monumental scale in the context of a corporate headquarters, something seemingly far removed from a domestic interior. Again we have the unarticulated glass entrance opening onto an open space (here an urban, rather than green landscape); entering the building and going to work should be a natural part of a worker's day. This repurposing of ideas from the domestic sphere to that of the workplace is not really a contradiction, however; it is, in itself, one of the major societal shifts of the age of modernism. With the growth of liberal democracy, a dominant middle class, a forty-hour work week, it is largely a testament to the eventual success of much of the utopian idealism of the Victorian and modern eras.
Form and Meaning: From Philosophy to Style
The forms of both the classical tradition and the modern movement remain in the design vocabulary of contemporary designers. Yet the "post-modern" era we live in today lacks the ideology of the Renaissance, the Enlightenment or the moment of High Modernism of the early twentieth century. As this exhibition illustrates, the meaning of architectural language can and does change over the centuries: the temple front portico that in ancient Greece would only have been found in sacred architecture was later found in royal palaces, country villas, cultural institutions, and banks; however, in all of these uses of the form, something of its ability to signify the sacred was preserved. When, in contemporary architecture, this language is used in Las Vegas, it is merely as a style to invoke a heroic or decadent past, without any allusion to sacred form or function.
Of course, playful, ironic use of architectural language without a deep connection with the original meaning of forms is nothing new. As long ago as the Roman Empire, architects played with forms that were already ancient and from foreign cultures. This is clearly seen at the Pyramid of Gaius Cestius in Rome. While this monument, like the Old Kingdom pyramids of Egypt built over one thousand years earlier, was a tomb, its scale and proportions are entirely different (not unlike the use of classical ornament at Caesars Palace); furthermore, the religious meaning of the Egyptian pyramids is entirely lost in the Roman monument; the religion of imperial Rome and its funerary ritual is something entirely removed from that of Old Kingdom Egypt.
It is the nineteenth century that is best known for the use of all types of ornamental languages and "styles" with little regard for their original iconographic meaning; hence the term "eclecticism" is used to describe architecture and design that combines elements from a myriad of different cultures and periods. As this is the age of world empire, such influences as "oriental architecture," whether from India, Turkey, Arabia, or East Asia all enter the visual vocabulary of architects and designers. As early as the English Regency period we see this romantic use of oriental imagery in major commissions such as the Royal Pavilion at Brighton, designed by John Nash, an architect usually noted for his refined classicism.
By the 1870s, such eclecticism is common usage in the United States. At Olana in Hudson, New York, what is basically a very large Victorian mansion is dressed up in a dazzling "Moorish" orientalist costume. While ornamental details and the form of windows clearly show a knowledge of Moorish architecture, certainly there is nothing in the Islamic architecture of medieval Spain or Arabia that could really be seen as a precedent for this house! And looking for any meaning or allegory in the usage of such forms here, beyond showing a taste for the exotic would be a wild goose chase. This usage does reveal, however, the shrinking of the world through the advent of steamships and railroads. Both clients and designers could now be familiar with distant, foreign cultures. Colonialism and international commerce brought not only foreign merchandise to the markets of Europe and the United States, but they also brought huge amounts of new decorative forms. As both the Royal Pavilion and Olana show, however, these forms were still employed on architectural compositions that were firmly rooted in their native traditions.
By the 1920s, alongside the radical work of the High Modernists, such eclecticism continued. Rather than the patronage of European royalty such as that enjoyed by the Brighton Pavilion, the eclecticism of the early twentieth century was commissioned by the "robber baron" royalty of the United States. At his estate of San Simeon in California, newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst had architect Julia Morgan build one of the most exuberant manifestations of this eclecticism. Consisting of a great house, bungalows, and pavilions of all different characters and "period styles," none of these styles are employed with any particular metaphoric, narrative or iconographic function. The entrance of the main house or "Casa Grande" presents the facade of a Spanish style church, complete with two symmetrical bell towers. The large outdoor swimming pool is surrounded by imperial Roman colonnades and a temple front portico. This temple front portico has nothing behind it; it is merely a stage set, an entrance leading nowhere. Indeed, this "playful" and "ironic" use and juxtaposition of traditional forms and period styles is not at all far removed from the usage much later in the twentieth century of the so-called "post-modern" architects.
At the beginning of the current century, many of the recurring themes of the history of the entrance in architecture converge. As many aspects of contemporary society are seen as a return to the "gilded age," it is not surprising that many of the architectural themes of that age have returned. The literature of contemporary architecture is replete with discussion of "the failure of modernism"; this is not far removed from the discussion in broader cultural history of the failures of industrial society, the failure of the utopian politics of socialism, communism, and liberalism, and the false promises of progress that ideologues from all sections of the political spectrum preached in the early twentieth century. Large corporations and celebrity culture have perhaps taken the place of the old aristocracy, yet the distribution of wealth in our society, with a shrinking middle class and greater and greater proportions of the total wealth of the economy being placed in the hands of fewer and fewer people, seem to bring about a very literal return to the societal structure of the gilded age.
It is perhaps not altogether surprising, therefore, that the dominance of the architecture and design of modernism has declined in the past thirty years or so. Again, study of the design element of the entrance reflects this trend. Robert Venturi and Michael Graves are seen as two of the founders of "post-modern" architecture. Both their work shows a renewed interest in emphasizing the entrance. At the Vanna Venturi House in Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania, the house Venturi designed for his mother, the entrance is the principle design element, placed front and center in an elevation that elegantly stylizes the classic form of the American house, as seen in quilt patterns and children's drawings. Referencing the classics in a very ironic and playful way is perhaps taken to the very limits by Michael Graves in his headquarters for the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California. Following classical planning, the entrance is on axis with a reflecting pool. Above it is a rendition of a classical temple front with a pediment supported by caryatids based on Disney cartoon figures. Here the play is merely with classical forms, the substitution of cartoon characters for the Persian slaves of ancient Greek architecture; the play is with form, not with meaning.
Even the seemingly amorphous architecture of Frank Gehry, which defies any established "style," seems to suggest a return to the premodern status quo regarding usage of the element of the entrance. In designing the Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, one of the most important new cultural institutions in that city in the last quarter century, Gehry returns to placing a strong emphasis on the entrance. Unlike the other theaters of L.A.'s Music Center, the entrance to the auditorium is not on street or plaza level. As in Beaux-Arts architecture, the theater is entered at the top of a staircase; the cultural institution is again elevated from the street level. While the overall form of the building is radically new, the spatial planning is actually a return to an earlier monumentality, in opposition to modernism's basis on a domestic scale.
Yoshio Taniguchi's recent expansion of the Museum of Modern Art presents a fascinating terminus for this exhibition. This project perhaps best illustrates the difference between the architecture of High Modernism and the use of that period's forms and ornamental language as a "historical style," divorced from its original meaning and context. As stated above, domestic scale and an agenda integrated with the art on display within were fundamental to the conception of the original museum building opened in 1939. The 2004 iteration of the building maintains much of the "look" of the original; however, the entrance is no longer a subtle feature, merely indicated by a curving overhang (though that element is still preserved on 53rd Street). Rather, the entrance is now out of scale with the rest of the 53rd Street elevation, giving it much greater emphasis. From the street one can look through it, all the way through to the 54th Street entrance. This is in keeping with what lays behind it: a colossal open atrium, surrounded by new, very large scaled galleries, scaled for looking at post-war and contemporary art on a much more massive scale then that which was made for pre-war domestic interiors. While still located at street level, the new entrance is conservative in its monumentality and represents the same renewed interest and emphasis placed on the entrance as seen in architecture that is much more aggressively "postmodern." The entrance, like the museum itself, represents a return to monumentality and a departure from founding director Alfred H. Barr, Jr.'s vision of the museum as a "laboratory" for the exploration of modern art. Rather, it presents a return to the more traditional view of a museum as a temple to the high culture of the past. It is interesting to note that the strength of the collection there housed, the art of the modern period, can now be seen as part of this historical past.
Part I
Parthenon
The Acropolis / photographed by Walter Hege ;
described by Gerhart Rodenwaldt. 722.8 R687, pl. 12, pl. 13
Geek Theater at Epidaurus;
Diagram of Greek Temple
Greek architecture / A. W. Lawrence. 722.8
L419, fig. 93 (p. 160), fig. 166 (p. 283), pl. 38 (b), pl. 147, pl. 148, pl.
150
Pantheon
The Pantheon : design, meaning, and progeny /
William L. MacDonald. 726.1 M135, p. 23, pl. 16
Theater at Sabratha (Tripolitania,
Libya); Theater of Marcellus, Colosseum, Pantheon, Arch of Constantine, Arch of
Titus
Roman architecture / John B. Ward-Perkins.
722.7 W266r, pl. XVI; p. 43 (Fig. 68) p. 56 (fig. 81), p. 60-61 (figs.86,
87), p. 87
(figs. 126-127), p. 183 (fig. 289).
Pantheon
Principles of Roman architecture / Mark Wilson
Jones. 722.7 W754p, p. 176, p. 178
Basilica Aemilia
UCLA Digital Roman Forum:
http://dlib.etc.ucla.edu/projects/Forum/
reconstructions/BasilicaFulvia_1
Arch in order motif
I quattro libri dell' architettura / di Andrea
Palladio. 724.1 P164q, Book I, p. 30
Part II
Old Saint Peter’s
Saint Peter's: the story of Saint Peter's
Basilica in Rome. 726.6 L487, p. 84-85, p. 100 (image on right)
Vezelay
Vézelay : the great Romanesque church / by
Véronique Rouchon Mouilleron. 726.509 R854v, p. 7 (image on right)
Saint-Denis
French Gothic architecture of the 12th and
13th centuries / Jean Bony. 726.50944 B697, p. 96 (pl. 88)
Notre Dame de Paris
French Gothic architecture of the 12th and
13th centuries / Jean Bony. 726.50944 B697, p. 241 (pl. 223)
Sant’Andrea, Mantua
On Alberti and the art of building / Robert
Tavernor. 720.92 A334 T234o, p. 164, fig. 134 (image on upper left)
Santa Maria Novella, Florence
On Alberti and the art of building /
Robert Tavernor. 720.92 A334 T234o, p. 100, Fig. 80 (image on top of left page)
Il Gesu’, Rome
Art history / Marilyn Stokstad.
709 S874 2008, p. 691, fig. 20-31
Il Redentore, Venice
Andrea Palladio, 1508-1580 :
architect between the Renaissance and Baroque. 720.92 A64 W965, p. 158.
Architectural principles in the age of humanism / Rudolf Wittkower. 724.12 W832 1998, p. 90, fig. 92
Tuscan Temple, Reconstruction
Etruscan and Roman
architecture, Axel Boëthius, J.B. Ward-Perkins. 722.7 B6735, Plate 12 (at
back of book)
Saint Paul’s Church, Covent
Garden
Inigo Jones, by John Summerson.
720.92 J77 S955, p. 90-91, figs, 39, 41.
Old Saint Paul’s Cathedral,
London (Destroyed)
St. Paul's Cathedral : Sir
Christopher Wren / Vaughan Hart. 726.51092 W945 H326, p. 14 (fig. 36)
Saint Paul’s Cathedral, London
St. Paul's Cathedral : Sir
Christopher Wren / Vaughan Hart. 726.51092 W945 H326, p. 25
Church of the Madeleine, Paris
Architecture in France,
1800-1900 / Bertrand Lemoine. 720.944 L555, p. 11
Saint John the Divine, New York
American churches / Roger
Kennedy. 726.5 K36, p. 94
Unity Temple
Unity Temple : Frank Lloyd
Wright / Robert McCarter. 726.51092 WRIGHT M123, p. 31 (image on lower
right), p. 50-51
Ronchamp Chapel
Le Corbusier : la chapelle de
Ronchamp = the chapel at Ronchamp / Danièle Pauly. 726.50944 P333 1, p. 16-17
(figs. 4, 6, 7)
Part III
Palazzo Vecchio
Florence : the city and its architecture / Richard Goy.
720.94551 G724f, p. 136
Palazzo Rucellai
Florence : the city and its architecture / Richard Goy.
720.94551 G724f, p. 260
Ca’ Foscari
Gothic architecture in Venice. 720.94531 A783, plates
209, 210
Ca’ Vendramin Calergi
Palaces of Venice / Andrea Fasolo. 728.82 F248p, p. 139
Basilica, Vicenza
Andrea Palladio : the architect in his time / Bruce
Boucher. 720.92 P164 B753, p. 92, 103
Palazzo Farnese
Edifices de Rome moderne ; ou, Recueil des palais,
maisons, églises, couvents et
autres monuments publics et particuliers les plus
remarquables de la ville de Rome /
dessinés, mesurés et publiés par Paul Letarouilly.
720.945 L645a, plate 93, 94
El Escorial
Building the Escorial / George Kubler. 720.946
K95, plates 7, 82
Louvre
The palace of the sun : the Louvre of Louis XIV /
Robert W. Berger. 725.17 B496, fig. 43, 44, 48
University of Virginia Library
University of Virginia, the Lawn : Thomas
Jefferson / Michael Brawne. 727.309755 B826, p. 25, 35
Newgate Gaol
English architecture : a concise history / David Watkin.
720 W335e, p. 143
United States Capitol
The United States Capitol : its architecture and
decoration / Henry Hope Reed. 725.11 R324u, p. 11
Oliver Ames Free Library
Henry Hobson Richardson and the small public library in
America : a study in typology / Kenneth A. Breisch.
727.82473 B835, p. 157, 158
British Museum
A history of building types / Nikolaus Pevsner. 725.09
P514, p. 127
Old Penn Station
New York's Pennsylvania Stations / Hilary Ballon.
725.31 B193n, p. 53, 57, 86
New York Public Library
The New York Public Library : its architecture and
decoration / Henry Hope Reed. 027 R324, p. 14, 46
New York Stock Exchange
George B. Post, architect : picturesque designer and
determined realist / Sarah Bradford Landau.
720.92 P857 L253g, cover, p121
Griffith Park Observatory
Iconic LA : stories of LA's most memorable buildings /
Gloria Koenig. 720.9794 K78i, p. 69, 70, 74
Part IV
Pastoral Landscape,
Claude Lorrain, 1638,
Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis,
Minnesota.
Getty Villa
The Getty Villa / Marion True, and Jorge Silvetti.
727.709794 T866g, p.32, 108.
Villa of the Mysteries
Roman architecture / John B. Ward-Perkins.
722.7 W266r, p. 39 (pl. 58, 59)
Villa Medici
Italian villas and palaces. 728.8 M41
Oversize, pl. 120
Villa Rotonda
Villas & palaces of Andrea Palladio,
1508-1580. 728.8 R778, p. 139, 144
Blenheim Palace
English homes / by H. Avray Tipping. 728
T595 Per. 4, Vol. 2, p. 67 (pl. 106), p. 94 (pl. 133).
Chiswick House
English homes / by H. Avray Tipping. 728
T595 Per. 5, Vol. 1. p. 141 (pl. 169)
Petit Trianon
Monographie des Palais & parcs de
Versailles et des Trianons / notice par J. Roussel. 728.8 R865oversize,
pl. 7
White House
Report of the Commission on the Renovation of the
Executive Mansion. 975.3 U58, p. 9, 10.
Viceroy’s House
Indian summer--Lutyens, Baker, and Imperial Delhi
/ Robert Grant Irving. 722.44 I72, p. 168 (pl. 61), p. 355 (pl. 266)
Part V
Mark Twain House
Victorian America : classical Romanticism to
gilded opulence / Wendell Garrett. 728.373 G239, p. 198.
California Craftsman Bungalow
Bungalow nation / Diane Maddex. 728.373
M179b, p. 42 (top)
Gamble House
Greene & Greene / Randell L. Makinson. 728.3
M235, v. 1, p. 161
First Church of Christ,
Scientist
Arts & crafts masterpieces. 724.6 A792,
(marked color plate, left)
Robie House
Frank Lloyd Wright's Robie House : the
illustrated story of an architectural masterpiece / Donald Hoffmann. 728.8 W949
H711r, p. 40, p. 44 (top left)
Villa Savoye
Le Corbusier : la villa Savoye = the villa Savoye
/ Jacques Sbriglio. 728.8092 L433 S276, p. 16 (bottom)
Farnsworth House
Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House / Paul
Clemence. 728.373 M632 C625m, p. 15.
Farnsworth House: Ludwig Mies van der Rohe / Maritz Vandenberg. 728.373 M632 V227f, p. 41.
Museum of Modern Art (1936)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York : the history
and the collection / introduction by Sam Hunter. 709.040074 M986,
p. 21.
Seagram Building
Mies in America / edited by Phyllis Lambert.
720.92 M632 M632, p. 402 (4.228), color plate 31 (no page number)
Part VI
Caesar’s Palace
I.D. vol. 43, Sept/Oct. 1996, p. 69 (top)
Pyramid of Gaius Cestius
Roman architecture / John B. Ward-Perkins.
722.7 W266r, p. 14 (fig. 10)
Royal Pavilion
The Royal Pavilion, Brighton / by John Dinkel.
728.82 D585, p. 53 (left)
Olana
Great houses of the Hudson River / edited by
Michael Middleton Dwyer, 728.8097473 G786, p. 42.
San Simeon
Julia Morgan, architect / Sara Holmes Boutelle.
720.92 M848 B778, p. 189, 207.
Vanna Venturi House
Mother's House : the evolution of Vanna Venturi's
house in Chestnut Hill / edited and introduced by Frederic Schwartz.
728.37092 V469 M918, p. 204.
Walt Disney Studios
Michael Graves, buildings and projects,
1990-1994. 720.92 G776 A161 1995, p. 22 (top)
Disney Concert Hall
Frank Gehry, architect / J. Fiona Ragheb,
editor. 720.92 G311 F828, p. 198 (bottom left)
Museum of Modern Art (2004)
The new Museum of Modern Art / Glenn D.
Lowry. 727.7097471 L921n, p.6, p. 19 (bottom)
Guest Curator: Eric M. Wolf , PhD, MSLIS, Director of the NYSID Library. As Director, he co-teaches the BFA thesis preparation course and the MFA directed thesis research course. Dr. Wolf joined us from the Frick Art Reference Library where he was Assistant Cataloguer. His previous employment included cataloguing, archival, and consulting posts for the Blumka Gallery, the Pierpont Morgan Library, and the LaGuardia and Wagner Archives at La Guardia Community College. He received his BA with honors in Art History from the University of California, Santa Cruz, an MA and PhD in Art History from Harvard University, and an MSLIS from the School of Library and Information Science of Pratt Institute. He has received numerous awards, has a number of publications to his credit and is an active member of ARLIS/NA, VRA and NYTSL. He has lectured on Ancient Roman Architecture at the University of Massachusetts, and was a Teaching Fellow and Library Assistant at Harvard. His thesis dissertation was, The Ecclesiastical Architecture of Francesco di Giorgio Martini: A Study of Theory and Practice.