The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 5 June 2001
edited by Robert Wojtowicz
This book is a collection of Lewis Mumford's essays written for the Sky Line column in The New Yorker. While he wrote intermittently for the magazine for thirty years, this collection covers the period of 1931 to 1940. Why Wojtowicz decided upon this selection is unclear, but it nevertheless is an excellent overview of Mumford's thinking on New York architecture during an interesting period. This was, after all, the Depression, but numerous public and commercial works were completed during this time, and it also hosted the advent of many "modern" buildings. Mumford was an unapologetic modernist. His greatest, and most amusing, critiques are of buildings that struggle for ornament and embellishment. This isn't merely a modern curmudgeon at work, arguing for plain simple buildings, though. He had a distinct goal to his writing. Mumford believed in the "form follows function" axiom, was a fan of Wright and the Bauhaus, and had a compassionate sense of human scale in building. Indeed, the first essays eulogize the very idea of the skyscraper, one of a few unrealized prognostications Mumford makes in this collection. He also has a lot of admiration for the new public housing projects being built at that time, many as a result of Robert Moses's slum clearances. While he admires the architecture, Mumford's usual social stance is missing from the essays. One might expect him to be more critical of Moses's heavy handed approach. Mumford, however, is also putting a lot of faith in the ability of architecture to form new social structures. It would be a great help to visit the sites Mumford writes about. Though many no longer exist, the reader could benefit from the sense of context. Many do exist, though, and are famous landmarks of the New York landscape. Rockefeller Center, for example, is a theme throughout this book, as Mumford's opinion travels an arc from disdain to cautious respect for this collection of buildings. The book, too, opens with two autobiographical essays that are both a prelude to the book and an insight into Mumford's point of view. The book goes on to span a wide array of subjects and sites, from the death of skyscrapers to housing for the poor to the Museum of Modern Art, to the 1939 World's Fair. Mumford's writing is engaging and amusing, refreshingly bright in contrast to his somewhat heavier book-length criticism, history, and social theory.
By Lewis Mumford: [The Golden Day] [Sticks & Stones] [The City in History]