O'Gorman discusses the individual and collective achievement of the recognized trinity of American architecture: Henry Hobson Richardson (1838-86), Louis Sullivan (1856-1924), and Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959). He traces the evolution of forms created during these architects' careers, emphasizing the interrelationships among them and focusing on the designs and executed buildings that demonstrate those interrelationships. O'Gorman also shows how each envisioned the building types demanded by the growth of nineteenth-century cities and suburbs--the downtown skyscraper and the single-family home. [A] brilliant analysis ...a major contribution to our understanding of the beginnings of modern American architecture."--David Hamilton Eddy, Times Higher Education Supplement.
American Foreign Service Officers abroad ought not to organize anti-American demonstrations, but young Max Lacey does so from love of country. It makes sense in the magical, dysfunctional, Republic of Enga ada, where imagination supplies what history has denied. Early in his diplomatic career Lacey arrives in the port city of Alcal as Director of the Enga adan-American Cultural Center. He finds a decaying building, a spaced-out Academic Director, an unhelpful Embassy supervisor in the distant capital, and internal plots against the nearly-bankrupt Center. With the help of his imaginative local staff (very much including the lovely Rosa Fuentes Serena), and inspired by the visit of larger-than-life Cultural Affairs Officer Harvey Tyrone, he makes progress until exiled President Espejo returns to challenge the military government. Convoluted Enga adan politics then present new dilemmas and dangers: Max can serve U.S. interests by saving the Center, but only if he undermines the U.S. Ambassador. As he agonizes over opposing loyalties to his country, he develops new loyalties to the people of Enga ada. When civil war threatens he makes his fateful choice, ending up with more romance and adventure, and a briefer diplomatic career, than he ever dreamed.
ABC of Architecture is an accessible, nontechnical introduction to architectural structure, history, and criticism. Author James F. O'Gormon moves seamlessly from a discussion of the most basic inspiration for architecture (the need for shelter from the elements), to an exploration of space, system, and material, and, finally, to an examination of the language and history of architecture. He shows the nonspecialist how to read a design in plans, sections, and elevations, and how architects, like other artists, make creative use of space and light.
Since the Renaissance, books and drawings have been a primary means of communication among architects and their colleagues and clients. In this volume, 12 historians explore the use of books by architects in America in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, a period when the profession of architecture was first emerging in the United States. As architects separated themselves from amateur and gentlemen designers on the one hand and masons and carpenters on the other, members of the profession were distinguished by their ability to draw and their possession of a common body of learning gleaned from printed sources. Clients and patrons expected architects to derive their designs from precedents communicated in books. These publications reproduced the work of European masters and, eventually, Anglo-American examples as well. The essays in the volume range from studies of architectural publications available in the colonies, to the appearance of American architectural incunabula, to the revolution in architectural publishing that occurred in the 1830s and 1840s. In addition to the editors, contributors include Sarah Allaback, Bennie Brown, Jeffrey A. Cohen, Abbott Lowell Cummings, Robert F. Dalzell, Jr., Michael J. Lewis, Martha J. McNamara, Damie Stillman, Richard Guy Wilson and Charles B. Wood III.
When Isaiah Rogers died in 1869, the Cincinnati Daily Times noted that “in his profession he was, perhaps, better known than any other person in the country.” Yet until now there has been no study that fully examines his remarkable, influential, and instructive career. Based largely on Rogers’s own diary, this book tells his story and adds much to our understanding of architectural practice in the United States before the Civil War.In 1944 the distinguished historian Talbot Hamlin wrote of New York’s Merchant Exchange (1836–42) that the building had “been so grandly conceived, so simply and directly planned, and so beautifully detailed . . . [that] the whole was welded inextricably into one powerful organic conception that shows Rogers as a great architect in the fullest sense of the word.” Rogers's Tremont House in Boston has been called the world’s first modern hotel; it spawned many progeny, from his first Astor House in New York to his Burnet House in Cincinnati and beyond.Rogers designed buildings from Maine to Georgia and from Boston to Chicago to New Orleans, supervising their construction while traveling widely to procure materials and workmen for the job. He finished his career as Architect of the Treasury Department during the Civil War. In this richly illustrated volume, James F. O’Gorman offers a deft portrait of an energetic practitioner at a key time in architectural history, the period before the founding of the American Institute of Architects in 1857.
Caribbean Tsunamis - A 500-Year History from 1498-1998 broadly characterizes the nature of tsunamis in the Caribbean Sea, while bearing in mind both scientific aspects as well as potential interest by the many governments and populations likely to be affected by the hazard. Comprehension of the nature of tsunamis and past effects is crucial for the awareness and education of populations at risk. Audience: This book provides a thorough, yet highly accessible review of tsunamis in the Caribbean. It is of interest not only to tsunami and natural hazards specialists at academia and governmental institutes, but also to policy makers and to the general public.
Caribbean Tsunamis - A 500-Year History from 1498-1998 broadly characterizes the nature of tsunamis in the Caribbean Sea, while bearing in mind both scientific aspects as well as potential interest by the many governments and populations likely to be affected by the hazard. Comprehension of the nature of tsunamis and past effects is crucial for the awareness and education of populations at risk. Audience: This book provides a thorough, yet highly accessible review of tsunamis in the Caribbean. It is of interest not only to tsunami and natural hazards specialists at academia and governmental institutes, but also to policy makers and to the general public.
