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  • Electric Light: An Architectural History by Sandy Isenstadt
  • Abigail Harrison Moore (bio)
Electric Light: An Architectural History By Sandy Isenstadt. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2018. Pp. 304.

As an art historian immersed in an international project on histories of energy, I frequently have to explain why my discipline offers a unique way into understanding the social histories of electricity, and Electric Light: An Architectural History makes this task significantly easier.

This beautifully produced book explores the ways electricity changed architecture. Using five examples (the light-switch, street lights, factories, advertising, and black-out), Sandy Isenstadt illustrates how electric light changed the spaces that surround us, adding to the small but growing literature seeking to explore the history of electricity as a history of people. As Barca, Gooday, Johnson, Jones, Malm, and Sandwell among others show, it is vital that we put human engagement back into the histories of energy. Isenstadt's innovative approach sees him examining electricity as a kind of building material, and the book provides "the first sustained examination of the social effects of electric lighting" on buildings and spaces (just as both Nicholas Cooper in The Opulent Eye: Late Victorian and Edwardian Taste [Whitney Library of Design, 1977] and Chris Otter in The Victorian Eye [University of Chicago Press, 2008], link changes in design and architecture to electricity).

Other reviewers have questioned whether the subtitle, "an architectural history" adequately reflects the examples provided, as Isenstadt does not dwell on architects or their designs. Instead he examines how cultural change took place because of electricity in the places it began to illuminate (or not, in the case of "Groping in the Dark" [ch. 6]). Engaging the reader with his approachable style and impressive range of cultural references, he draws us into cities, streets and rooms, very ably demonstrating why an inter-disciplinary history can help us understand the role of art, architecture, and design at the interface of people and new forms of energy.

Isenstadt enables us to see how social spaces were "perpetually transformed" [End Page 306] by electricity. This is a welcome addition to the work being done to draw out a non-teleological approach to energy, where electricity is not just adopted because it is available, but is considered, explored, displayed, and played with, providing "a new set of visual conditions for ordinary people to negotiate."

In a book that shines new light on many facets of the history of electricity, it is disappointing, however, in its approach to women. The history of energy to date is almost entirely written as a history of men and we have to wait until the section "Women and Switches" (p. 53) to find women considered at all. This section quickly turns to discussing men and the benefit of buttons replacing "female servants," with women portrayed as "confused by switches" (p. 55). Elsewhere, women are seen as baffled, perplexed and/or incompetent in their encounters with electricity.

Whereas the rest of the book provides a subtle, carefully drawn analysis of the cultural history of electricity, the archive choices and comments on women are frustrating in comparison. For example, in "Driving through the American Night" when women are not "swooning" at the "illuminated phallus," they are "paralyzed by the headlights' hypnotic grip," "foolishly assenting" and making the men drivers' behaviour worse simply by their presence in the car (p. 89). Despite the fact that the archives tend to protect and promote patriarchal histories of the past, such an ungenerous illustration of women's responses to electric light is surprising, with little engagement in their active roles as engineers, scientists, designers, and consumers of electricity.

This is a pity, as overall the book achieves its aim to illustrate the social, cultural, and architectural impact of electricity in an interestingly evidenced way. From the micro (push-button) to the macro (black-out during World War II), Isenstadt demonstrates throughout a sense of personal delight in his well-chosen case studies (although I was surprised not to see a reference to Rachel Plotnick's excellent work on light-switches).

Electric Light thus gives readers the opportunity to indulge in deftly drawn snap-shots, illustrated with rich archival detail, the obvious result...

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