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One of the most
remarkable demonstrations of the didactic clout
a "lowly" architectural guidebook can wield happened only a short drive from Toronto,
and in a city whose image was, by the 1980s, abysmal--either as an old, ugly,
filthy sad-sack epitome of American-style rust belt urban decay, or, to Torontonians,
as the unforgettably cheesy land of Irv Weinstein reporting on those eternal house
fires in Cheektowaga. Architecture afficionados might have been aware there was something
going on here besides houses-a-fire (much as fans of fine art knew of Albright-Knox);
but the great works of Sullivan, Wright, and industrial architecture remained inert outside
of the textbook illustration or slide projector. It was all begging to be contextualized,
given an actual urban (or otherwise) setting--and incredibly, in 1981, seemingly right in
the middle of the city's nadir, it was given that setting, through the publication of
"Buffalo Architecture: A Guide".
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And what a splash
it was. A book that bore the MIT Press mantle, with a primary
introduction by Reyner Banham (who taught in Buffalo for a spell, and whose wife
Mary Banham in fact helped coordinate the project under the "Buffalo Architectural
Guidebook Corporation"), another introduction on the Olmsted park system by Charles
Beveridge, a reprint of a fine 1940 essay by Henry-Russell Hitchcock, contributions
by other scholars such as Francis Kowsky and Jack Quinan--it was, almost, too much
for Buffalo to deserve. The provenance placed it on an implicitly higher level than
the usual guidebook; it was clearly directed as much to a non-resident scholarly
audience as to the resident Buffalonian or the simple interested tourist. Collecting
the textbook architectural marvels and giving them a physical context, and answering
many mysteries in the process, it turned Buffalo into a cult destination, an unlikely
nexus for the curious architectural pilgrim; while Buffalonians could beam with pride
at what they possessed, visitors and scholars got to see the buildings as something more
than architectural prima donnas: as objects with neighbours or near-neighbours of
passing--or more than passing--note. Most of all, the book gave readers a strange,
haunting feel for the city, in its current physicality, and not without an undertone
of heartbreak and elegaic melancholy; no matter what its current state, this was a place
where great things happened and great architects passed, and which could still rally every
once in a while. So successful was "Buffalo Architecture" at its didactic task that one
barely notices that its actual guidebook function comes across as, almost, an afterthought
(although the familiar white-space-heavy Modernist layout of MIT Press may be somewhat to blame).
An architectural guide in and of itself cannot renew a city, of course, as the back-and-forth
lurching of Buffalo over the past generation proves. But for those who know, Buffalo's now a
much, much richer place; like all good architectural guidebooks, "Buffalo Architecture" gave
its users a deep, visceral connectedness to the city, virtually turning them into honorary
citizens. And nobody, perhaps, felt this sensual bridesmaid's draw more deeply than the handful
of Torontonians who scored a copy --they fell in a quixotic kind of love with the city their own
had lately left in the dust!
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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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