Vizcaya: An American Villa and Its Makers (Penn Studies in Landscape Architecture) [Hardcover]

Witold Rybczynski (Author), Laurie Olin (Author), Steven Brooke (Photographer)

Book Description

Series: Penn Studies in Landscape Architecture | Publication Date: December 7, 2006

The Miami estate of Vizcaya, like its palatial contemporaries Biltmore and San Simeon, represents an achievement of the Gilded Age, when country houses and their gardens were a conspicuous measure of personal wealth and power.

In Vizcaya: An American Villa and Its Makers, a celebrated architecture critic and writer and an award-winning landscape architect explore the little-known story of Vizcaya, an extraordinary national treasure. Witold Rybczynski and Laurie Olin use a rich collection of illustrations, historic photographs, and narrative to document the creation of this stunning house and landscape. Vizcaya was completed in 1916 as the winter retreat of Chicago industrialist James Deering. The cosmopolitan bachelor, who chose Miami for its warm climate, enlisted the guidance of artist Paul Chalfin, with whom he traveled throughout Italy to survey houses and gardens. With the assistance of architect F. Burrall Hoffman, Jr., and garden designer Diego Suarez, the 180-acre site on Biscayne Bay was transformed into a grand estate, complete with lagoons, canals, citrus groves, a farm village, a yacht harbor, and a 40-room Baroque mansion.

The lure of this architectural and landscape masterpiece, named for a Spanish Basque province, is undeniable. John Singer Sargent planned a short visit in 1917 but stayed for several months, producing an inspired series of watercolors, many of which are reproduced here for the first time. The book is further enriched by archival material and by the color images of noted photographer Steven Brooke, paying homage to Vizcaya as a lens through which readers learn about architecture, landscape and garden design, interior decoration, and art.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Vizcaya . . . retells and interprets the fascinating story of the great American dream made real."—Miami Herald

"Vizcaya, long thought of as a wealthy man's folly, has finally gotten the critical consideration it has so richly deserved in this eminently readable book."—Architecture in Print

"Mr. Rybczynski and Mr. Olin judge the villa as they find it today and in the context of the historical process that produced it, rather than through a filter of modernist criteria. . . . An admirable job of conveying the history of Vizcaya."—Wall Street Journal

"On every page the authors breathe life into the plastered stone walls of the estate, and photographer Brooks captures the sunny, light-filled ambiance of the locale in splendid photographs, many in color. Altogether the very model of a major monograph on an important great estate. Essential."—Choice

About the Author

Witold Rybczynski is the Martin and Margy Meyerson Professor of Urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of many books, including the award-winning biography of Frederick Law Olmsted, A Clearing in the Distance, and the best-selling Home: A Short History of an Idea. He has written on architecture and urbanism for the New York Times, New Yorker, Slate, and New York Review of Books. Laurie Olin is Practice Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania and Principal of the Olin Partnership, a landscape architecture firm in Philadelphia. He is the author of La Foce: A Garden and Landscape in Tuscany, both published by the University of Pennsylvania Press.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 296 pages
• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press (December 7, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812239512
• ISBN-13: 978-0812239515
• Product Dimensions: 10.3 x 8.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #766,771 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very strongly recommended, February 2, 2007

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Vizcaya: An American Villa and Its Makers (Penn Studies in Landscape Architecture) (Hardcover)

An impressive architectural achievement of the Gilded Age when country manors and their gardens were a conspicuous documentation of personal wealth and power by their owners, the Miami estate of Vizcaya was the equal to such famous contemporary structures as the Bilmore and the San Simeon. The collaborative work of Witold Rybczynski (Martin and Margy Meyerson Professor of Urbanism, University of Pennsylvania) and Laurie Olin (Practice Professor of Landscape Architecture, University of Pennsylvania), Vizcaya: An American Villa And Its Makers" is the complete story of how this magnificent building came to be constructed, landscaped, and utilized as a 180-acre estate on Biscayne Bay complete with lagoons, canals, citrus groves, a farm village, a yacht harbor, and a 40-room Baroque mansion. Enhanced with a wealth of seventy color and 96 b/w illustrations, "Vizcaya" is an informed and informative body of impeccable scholarship presenting a seminal study that is very strongly recommended as an addition to professional, academic, and community library American Architectural History reference collections and supplemental reading lists.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Vizcaya, by Rybczynski and Olin, September 19, 2007

By 

Joseph B. Stahl "JBrandeisS" (New Orleans, LA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Vizcaya: An American Villa and Its Makers (Penn Studies in Landscape Architecture) (Hardcover)

This book by two architects that is the story of Vizcaya, the James Deering Estate built in the early twentieth century in Miami as the lavish and sumptuous expression of the great wealth of its tractor-manufacturer owner, is an exceptionally first-class literary production from every point of view that could have a bearing on its subject. Written in the technically precise phraseologies appropriate to architecture and interior decoration, its prose is free of and stands above the contamination that abounds in the otherwise usual debasement of modern literature, and it is illustrated with a landslide of stunningly magnificent photography in both color and black-and-white. But something else with which it is illustrated is what recommended this book to me. I am neither an architect nor an interior decorator, nor has the stuff of those callings ever engaged much of my attention, but as soon as my eye fell on the watercolors painted of Vizcaya by John Singer Sargent when he was a guest of Deering's there in 1917, while I turned the leaves of a friend's copy of the book, I knew immediately as one with a profound attachment to watercolor painting that I must own this book for myself. For although I have held perhaps a hundred Sargent watercolors in my hands in the Metropolitan, Brooklyn and Boston Museums, and seen many more besides in other books, I had never before seen these, as they have lain quietly in private collections without ever being published to my knowledge until now, and they are among the finest examples of Sargent's amazing wizardry in this medium, which defies belief that a human being could have painted them. And the rest of the book is a plus even for one not particularly attracted to matters of residential design or interior décor, for it is a record of an era of refinement, gentility and taste, a belle époque in American history that is gone.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars VIZCAYA AS IN VAHALLA, January 6, 2008

By 

Shannon Deason (Houston) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Vizcaya: An American Villa and Its Makers (Penn Studies in Landscape Architecture) (Hardcover)

Vizcaya is one of the great Gilded Age estates, build by an heir to a huge fortune, who had no family or children, so he devoted all his time and wealth to this palace on Biscayne Bay..and if you've ever layed eyes on this pile you can appreciate it was money well spent. This book is the best resourse I've seen on Viscaya; the text is scholarly and extremely well researched. The images are very well realized, and frankly in a book like this, great images are a must, because you can't imagine a place like this, unless you can actually see it, no description, no matter how articulate can do this place justice. If you have any interest in great residental architecture, or the history of south Florida or just appreciate great books, then I can't imagine you not loving this book.