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While the self-reflective
architectural culture in part bred (through the Pevsner guides, or through
the Architectural Review) by Pevsner and his contemporaries led to a
fair flutter of British architectural guides and throne-pretending reasonable
facsimiles over the years, the self-absorbed ahistorical swagger of
postwar America meant that the first real wave of American architectural
guidebooks did not arrive until the 1960s, by which time an incipiently
"postmodern" professional consciousness of history and context became
accepted practice. More often than not endorsed by the American Institute
Of Architects (usually in connection with annual convention locations),
these early guides (among the first were the AIA Washington guide and
"Chicago's Famous Buildings" from 1965) tend to come off as clear, competent,
and a bit leadfooted--the work of an still Modernist-tinged architectural
establishment in the early throes of sympathetically reconciling the
breadth of American architectural history with the will to "cheerlead
the present". But at their best, their pure sturdy servicability--to
use Vitruvian terminology, they might be called "Doric" guidebooks--was
enough to sustain many of them through several editions. Nevertheless,
the select few guides (notably those for "university towns" like New
Haven and Cambridge) which strove for a higher, almost "English" (or,
perhaps, "Ionic") level of comprehensive sophistication make us regret
that there weren't more like them before the 80s (or to this day, in
fact).
An interesting
signal of how architectural guide priorities changed over a generation
is that while the 1971 "Detroit Architecture: AIA Guide" had an entry,
with no clue as to its context, on the then brand-new Macomb County
Building, a fairly typical 60s-style skyscraper courthouse in Mount
Clemens, the "Macomb County Building" listed in the 1993 BUS-series
"Buildings Of Michigan" was its 1931-33 Art Deco predecessor next door,
and the newer building was ignored altogether! (And paradoxically, Docomomo/Wallpaper*-culture
has meant the ledger's probably swung back in the newer building's favour
since then.)
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Introduction
Pevsner and WPA
America: the first wave
AIA Guide to New York City
David Gebhard: America's Pevsner
Goldberger, Banham, and Moore (and more).
Buffalo: Vindication
Chicago: Maturity
The Buildings of the United States series
London + Vienna + Berlin = Cartesian Europe
One Vancouver, many Montréals
Toronto: Opportunity
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