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James Gamble Rogers and the Architecture of Pragmatism (American Monograph)
 
 
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James Gamble Rogers and the Architecture of Pragmatism (American Monograph) [Hardcover]

Aaron Betsky (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)


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Book Description

American Monograph December 20, 1994
foreword by Paul Goldberger

Only recently has the period between the two World Wars emerged as pivotal in the redefinition of American taste. The work of James Gamble Rogers (1867-1947) represents a built expression of the country's cultural elite during these years and comprises a significant chapter in American architectural history. Aaron Betsky covers the entire span of Rogers's career, paying particular attention to his more important buildings. These include the Harkness mansion, the Yale Club, and the buildings of Columbia-Presbyterian in New York; the downtown campus, library, stadium, dormitories and other assorted buildings of Northwestern University; and the Harkness Memorial Quadrangle, residential colleges, Graduate School, Law School, and Sterling Memorial Library at Yale, which with their blending of English medieval and renaissance motifs and their historical associations are perhaps the fullest expression of the neo-Gothic style in America.

Aaron Betsky investigates the central issues of American architecture through Rogers' private house commissions for wealthy clients seeking to define their lives and livelihoods through temples of taste, his corporate structures notable for both lucid organization and symbolic ornamentation, and his designs for universities and hospitals which integrated historical and social metaphors into redefinitions of institutional function.

The American Monograph series.

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About the Author

Aaron Betsky is a designer and critic living in Los Angeles, where he is the Coordinator of Special Projects at the Southern California Institute of Architecture and a Contributing Editor for Architectural Record , ID Magazine, and Metropolitan Home.

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 320 pages
  • Publisher: The MIT Press (December 20, 1994)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0262023814
  • ISBN-13: 978-0262023818
  • Product Dimensions: 10.4 x 7.3 x 1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,458,281 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars A master of collegial gothic -3.75 stars, January 26, 2009
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This review is from: James Gamble Rogers and the Architecture of Pragmatism (American Monograph) (Hardcover)
Yale's Harkness Memorial Quadrangle was hailed as a `Neo-Gothic masterpiece' by Architectural Record in an issue fully devoted to the project in 1921. Yale rewarded designer James Gamble Rogers (a Yale alumnus, `Scroll & Key' initiate, and École des Beaux-Arts graduate) with an honorary Doctorate and the post of Consulting Architect. Over the next eleven years Rogers produced Sterling Memorial Library, numerous residential colleges, and a campus with an enduring (if derivative) institutional ethos.

Rogers was no less influential at Northwestern University, the University of Chicago, and several other educational institutions. He produced two large insurance company headquarters (Connecticut General and Ętna in Hartford), mansions and the Yale Club and in New York City, several courthouses, banks, a museum, resort clubs and housing, churches and parish houses, and hospitals (36 rural hospitals for the Commonwealth Fund; Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center and Memorial Sloane-Kettering Hospital in New York City). His work was valued for its comfortable functionality and easily identifiable purpose.

The utility of cultivating social ties with fellow-alumni and wealthy patrons is nowhere better exhibited than in Rogers' able career. He married into an influential Chicago family (relatives of the McCormicks); Edward S. Harkness and John Sterling were both wealthy Yale graduates, as were several other clients. Yet his ability matched his charisma. He successfully moved his practice from the altier (studio) model to a architectural corporate practice that produced profitable, lasting work befitting each commission.

This volume (hardcover) comprises a 234-page text, 225 illustrations, and a Chronology of Work (1893-1946). The only defect is the belaboring of architectural theory (without much context) at the expense of the Rogers' late personal history. Larger issues (e.g. modernists' condemnation of derivative design as heresy) are largely unexplored, as is the birth (and contrasting career) of Frank Lloyd Wright in 1867 (three months after James Gamble Rogers).

Nonetheless, this is the best text on a neglected, important architect whose work remains much-beloved today.
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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding, September 10, 1998
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This review is from: James Gamble Rogers and the Architecture of Pragmatism (American Monograph) (Hardcover)
I have never had such pleasure!
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