ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY: Progressive Architecture in The Architectural Record, 1891-1925

Notes

This bibliography represents a survey of articles, editorials, and plates that appeared in The Architectural Record [AR] over nearly three decades.  As the most influential mainstream Eastern architectural periodical, AR represented a powerful voice among practitioners and critics of the day.  The articles referenced here are a compilation of the arguments for and against historical revivalism, with special attention to the work of Progressives like Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, and others who participated in the movement toward building forms reflective of the indigenous American democracy.  Other streams of thought include the development of architectural education, standards of professional practice, engineering trends, and building materials.

The annotations, excerpts, and short abstracts of each piece concentrate on the value of the text toward the progressive discussion.  Many of these writings contain a wealth of references, often with illustrations, to classical European buildings.  Naturally in a publication issued to encourage architectural dialectic, contemporary American designs are frequently featured.  The miscellaneous illustrations of art works and selections of prose and poetry interspersed as filler are also instructive in the psychology of the architectural profession at the time.

The facsimiles provided here are scans of photocopies made in early 1990.  The technology of that early day produced grainier reproductions than more modern equipment, but the information is conveyed legibly enough for general research.  These images have been compressed and gray scaled, with a modest amount of sharpening to make the text as readable as possible.  Plates of non-progressive designs that appeared in the sequence of pages for a given piece are included for the sake of continuous pagination, but are not indexed unless they are relevant to the purpose of the bibliography.   Interesting illustrations from the Edison Company for electric fixture designs or other kinds of miscellaneous sketches or photographs can be found on some text pages.  These, however, are not separately indicated and await as pleasant surprises.

Mark Hammons