Before architecture firm Warren & Wetmore erected Gilded Age estate houses on Long Island, Newport country clubs, Park Avenue apartment blocks and the Beaux-Arts style Grand Central Station[1], Whitney Warren (1864-1943) spent ten formative years in Paris – from 1884 to 1894. Trained by historicists Honoré Daumet and Charles Girault at L’École des Beaux-Arts,[2] the...
New York City Art Deco forerunner Ely Jacques Kahn (1884-1972) would have been nothing if it weren’t for the few formative years spent at Paris’ hallowed École nationale supérieure des Beaux Arts (National Superior School of Fine Arts); from 1908-1911. Contributing to Midtown Manhattan’s 1910 to 1930 building boom, the architect conceived more than a...
Architectural commissions were an important part of Jack Lenor Larsen’s work, and frequently provided the impetus for the development of new technologies. His first commission was for Lever House, designed by Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Completed in 1952, Lever House was one of the first glass curtain-wall office towers in the country....
Recognized for an Art Nouveau style all his own, French architect Hector Guimard (1867-1942) designed over a hundred buildings during a prolific fifteen-year span: 1898-1913. He is perhaps best known for having devised the iconic Paris Metro entrance in 1907, a wide-spread scheme employing standardized components that recreate natural forms through the structural and sculptural...
In 1767 the French writer and critic, Denis Diderot expounded the ”poetics of ruins” writing, “a palace must be in ruins to evoke any interest.”[1] Diderot’s comments were directed toward paintings by the French artist Hubert Robert that often featured real and fantastical Italianate ruins. Such vogue for ruin paintings were inspired by sites frequented...
German-born Margarethe (Grete) Fröhlich was a young artist when she moved to Frankfurt, Germany in 1929. In the early 1920s Frankfurt had experienced a housing crisis. In an effort to address the shortage of affordable housing, the city embarked on a major building project, constructing nearly 15,000 residences in a period of five years. The...
This drawing is the creation of Jean-Jacques Lequeu, a French architect and draftsman of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. A faint inscription in the bottom right corner of the drawing announces that it is a project for a monument at the entrance to the navy arsenal in Toulon, a major port in the...
Architect Rafael Viñoly made hand sketches as well as beautiful watercolors for his projects. For the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, Philadelphia (1998–2001), Viñoly was tasked with providing a cultural complex: a hall for the Philadelphia Orchestra and a second performance space for multiple types of theatrical productions. The center was also to serve...
In 1977, in honor of the bicentennial celebrations of a year previous, Cooper Hewitt mounted an exhibition entitled 200 Years of American Architectural Drawing (see more on the exhibition in a special feature on the Architectural League’s website). Curated by David Gebhard and Deborah Nevins, the show and its accompanying publication featured a range of...
