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THEBEAUX-ARTS AND THECULTURAL GEOGRAPHY OFTHE AMERICAN CITY MardgesBacon. Ernest Flagg: Beaux-Arts Architect andUrban Reformer. The Architectural History Foundation,Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1986.xiii + 405 pp. Illus. SusanR. Stein, ed. The Architecture of Richard MorrisHunt. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1986. xiv + 192 pp. Illus. Anne Murray de Fort-Menares Richard Morris Hunt and Ernest Flagg were two architects at far poles of the nineteenth-century spectrum. Hunt was prominent, successful, conservative, and a leading member of the eastern design Establishment. Flagg was ostracized by the profession until the end of his career and pursued important but pragmatic development issues. Hunt's reputation is popularly associated with the frothy residences he concocted for the Vanderbilts and Astors on Manhattan and Rhode Island, most notoriously the spectacular Biltmore in North Carolina. While not so well known, the most important of Flagg' s commissions, such as the Scribner and Singer buildings in New York, have beenregarded more seriously by historians and architects as works indicating a progressive, 'modern' sensibility. As the leading exponent of Beaux-Arts classicism in North America, Hunt wastoo closely tied to its fortunes; his star waned with the fashion and through most of this century the man and his work have been neglected or dismissed, though not for want of resources. The outstanding library, office collection and drawings which he began accumulating in Europe were donated to the Amertcan Institute of Architects by his sons in 1926, where the drawings and photographs mouldered in packing crates until cataloguing began in 1978. The publication of this collection of essays was accompanied by an exhibition of material from this rich archive which opened, fittingly, at the Metropolitan Museum in New York in March 1986, where Hunt was an original trustee and finallythe architect of its great Fifth Avenue entrance elevation. The show then went to Washington and Chicago. 112 Anne Murray de Fort-Menares Stein's book is very definitely not a catalogue; it presents nine American scholars' views on as many facets of Hunt's career. The principal problem with essays on a single architect is repetition: they tend to be independent rather than interdependent and might have benefited from more ruthless editing. Hunt's education is reviewed four times in addition to an entire chapter by Richard Chafee detailing every step of his academic career. From 1846 to 1855, Hunt was the first American to study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, at a time when American architectural education was haphazard, and Canadian training virtually non-existent. (Indeed, when Canadian architects were pressing for the organization of an atelier system in 1900, it was Ernest Flagg's name which was suggested for assistance in the matter.) By 1900 over four hundred Americans had studied at the Ecole (and at least two Canadians), changing forever the face of North American towns and cities with an imported philosophy that characterized planning and design into the 1930s. Ernest Flagg was among them. Again the differences between the two men are acute: while Hunt doggedly entered every concours and eventually passed every examination , Flagg stayed just long enough to gain admission to the school for the sake of prestige. Scholarly and popular historical interest in the Ecole des BeauxArts has been steady at least since Drexler's massive exhibition and publication in 1975; surely the Ecole system is well enough known that the discursive references to the school programme could be abbreviated. In Bacon the subject of the Ecole is presented in a large theoretical framework. She charges, however, that unlike Hunt, Flagg remained true to the principles of his education while Hunt ultimately veered off into an ossified, 'archaeological' stream of design. The essays in Richard Morris Hunt do little to dispel this notion, and only two of them deal with Hunt's oeuvre and influence in a broad perspective. Nevertheless, the portrait emerges of a senior designer. Hailed as 'the dean of American architecture,' Hunt was involved in many of the major commisions of the era, among them the base for the Statue of Liberty. Of particular interest is Lewis Sharp's entry on Hunt in relation to Beaux-Arts sculpture. Since the Beaux...

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