Architecture: Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

Written in 1929 by one of the century's most distinguished architectural historians, this book captures a pivotal moment: the end of an era that had witnessed the complete transformation of the built world. Hitchcock argues persuasively that the nineteenth and twentieth centuries constitute far more than a mere prologue to the age of steel and concrete. Beginning with Romantic Classicism's elegant departure from Baroque excess, he traces the remarkable journey through the revolutionary iron-and-glass structures of the Crystal Palace, the revivalist movements that reimagined historical traditions, the sinuous organic curves of Art Nouveau, and finally the emergence of modernism's titans: Perret, Wright, Gropius, Corbusier, and Mies van der Rohe. What emerges is not a simple march of progress but a complex dialogue between past and present, national traditions and international exchange, ornament and purity. Hitchcock writes with the authority of someone who witnessed these developments firsthand, making this both a scholarly achievement and a primary document. For anyone seeking to understand how we arrived at the architectural landscape of the twentieth century, this remains an indispensable foundation.