Customer Reviews

Carrere & Hastings, Architects

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If I could award this book ten stars I would, it's that good. Acanthus Press puts out gorgeous, well researched books and this could be their best publishing to date. Carrere and Hastings excelled in the grand Beaux Art style and it is so refreshing that so much of their work has survived. This is an exhaustive, scholarly piece of art and the author, Kate Lemos should be proud of this work. I was aware of much of the architecture of this Carrere and Hastings, but was surprised at the breath of their work. The images in this book are fantastic and the text is highly informative. If you have any interest in Carrere and Hastings or Guilded Age architecture, or just frankly appreciates gorgeous books, then you will love this book. In a word, spectacular.

Acanthus Press has packaged an extensive collection of archival photography with the lucid and expert essays of four appreciative observers of Beaux-Arts and Eclectic architecture to produce this monumental, two-volume tribute to John Carrere and Thomas Hastings. The architectural quality of the firm's work is reflected in the lavish production values assigned to book. This seems particularly apt since since Carrere & Hastings included among their commissions the New York Public Library. The quality of the Gilded Age firm's work was matched by the volume and range of its output: hotels, retail and office buildings, country estates, city mansions, theatres, institutional buildings, churches, monuments and exhibitions. Through these many projects, Carrere & Hastings put their stamp on the face of the nation and helped define an age. In addition to preserving the memory of many buildings that have long ago been replaced by less aesthetically pleasing structures, the text surprises with insights and vignettes on C&H, the period in which the firm operated and even public policy. Essayist Charles D. Warren's contribution on civic architecture provides an excellent introduction to the evolution of policy and practice in the awarding of architectural contracts on government buildings, beginning with the Tarnsey Act of 1893. Essayist William Morrison, who has made a specialty of the study of Broadway theater architecture, applies it here, but extends his reach to a range of other commercial buildings, with a special focus on C&H's hotels--too few of which survive. The credentials of the writers have produced text that is both authoritative and accessible. Morrison and fellow essayist Kate Lemos (who ably handles the extensive section on C&H libraries)are architectural historians, while Warren and Mark Alan Hewitt are practicing architects. Individually and collectively, they provide descriptive detail and historical context in clear, crisp prose. The set features hundreds of exquisitely reproduced photographs and the volumes are housed in a debossed box with inset plates both front and back. A worthy tribute to the architects it commemorates and to the age in which they practiced.

A delicious pleasure from start to finish, this ranks quite easily as one of the towering achievements of scholarship on American Beaux-Arts architecture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Solid presentation of fact, robust analyses, and amply illustrated, this one study almost single-handedly commands the larger perspective of an entire generation's architectural output in order to clarify the nuances and accomplishments of one of the most visible -- yet least known -- components of the pre-Modernist aspirations America had for her built environment. Exquisite production values, thorough and reliable editing, and an aristocratic approach to seeing the big picture make this is an *essential* addition to my library.