Signed 'PAN'Pub Date : 2020-09-18DOI: 10.5040/9781472556639.ch-004
F. Furness
{"title":"The Humanist","authors":"F. Furness","doi":"10.5040/9781472556639.ch-004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5040/9781472556639.ch-004","url":null,"abstract":"Landmark Architecture is a publication generated by the nationwide concern for local preservation that has spawned a series of urban inventories of lost buildings (Lost America, Lost New York, Lost Boston). Here the formula is varied to combine a history of architecture and planning from Fort Pitt to PPG Place based largely upon demolished works (the repetition of \"Gone\" in the photo captions reiterates the dull thuds of a wrecker's ball) with a section-by-section catalogue of extant monuments presumably worth preserving. Walter Kidney has emerged as worthy successor to \"Mr. Pittsburgh,\" James Van Trump, as chronicler and defender of the steel city's architectural heritage. He writes gracefully and vividly, occasionally turning a memorable phrase (the Cathedral of Learning is, for example, \"absurd but beautiful\"), and occasionally rising to lyrical heights. His text is aimed at the laity, those who will influence the preservation program of the Landmarks Foundation. They will find much here to enrich their historical understanding and their architectural perception. For them, the essay is a good read; the catalogue, a wise (ifhefty) cicerone. For them, this is a generous book only somewhat marred by the lack of a bibliography. For the professional historian, the same text will at times seem slightly out of focus, as in the fuzziness which blurs Kidney's handling of Georgian and Federal styles, as well as his cavalier concern for labeling ingeneral. Myown particular problem centers upon Kidney's misuse of the term \"eclecticism,\" a misuse which carries over from his earlier and otherwise useful Architecture of Choice (1974). \"Eclecticism,\" according to Webster's Third New International Dictionary, is \"the selection of ... elements from ... various ... sources ...for the purpose of combining them into a satisfying ...style.\" The eclectic building is,like one ofMcGuffey's eclectic readers, an anthology, the result of assembling disparate bits and pieces out of a usable past. Yet Kidney seems to think that any building designed with reference to the past is eclectic, even one based largely upon one past","PeriodicalId":267332,"journal":{"name":"Signed 'PAN'","volume":"334 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134099678","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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