Chapter I: Front Matter

Transcriber’s Notes:

Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).

Additional Transcriber’s Notes are at the end.

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STICKS AND STONES

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STICKS AND STONES

A STUDY OF AMERICAN ARCHITECTURE
AND CIVILIZATION

LEWIS MUMFORD

BONI AND LIVERIGHT
PUBLISHERS :: :: NEW YORK

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Copyright, 1924, by Boni and Liveright, Inc.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

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_Architecture, properly understood, is
civilization itself._
--W. R. LETHABY

_What is civilization? It is the humanization
of man in society._
--MATTHEW ARNOLD.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. THE MEDIEVAL TRADITION 13

II. THE HERITAGE OF THE RENAISSANCE 35

III. THE CLASSICAL MYTH 53

IV. THE DIASPORA OF THE PIONEER 75

V. THE DEFEAT OF ROMANTICISM 99

VI. THE IMPERIAL FAÇADE 123

VII. THE AGE OF THE MACHINE 155

VIII. ARCHITECTURE AND CIVILIZATION 193

ENVOI 237

NOTES ON BOOKS 241

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This is an attempt to evaluate architecture in America in terms of our civilization. I have not sought to criticize particular buildings or tendencies: I have tried, rather, by approaching our modern problems from their historic side, to criticize the forces that from one age to another have conditioned our architecture, and altered its forms. Lest my purpose be misunderstood, I have left out illustrations; for a building is not merely a sight; it is an experience: and one who knows architecture only by photographs does not know it at all. If the omission of pictures lead the reader occasionally to break away from the orbit of his daily walks, and examine our development in cities and buildings for himself, it will be sufficiently justified.

This book would not have been put together but for the persistent encouragement and kindly interest of Mr. Albert Jay Nock: and it was in The Freeman that the first five chapters, in somewhat briefer form, appeared. My hearty thanks are likewise due to Mr. Charles Harris Whitaker, whose private help and whose admirable public work as editor of the Journal of the American Institute of Architects have both laid me under a heavy obligation. My intellectual debt to Messrs. Victor Branford and Patrick Geddes will be apparent to those who have followed their work. In the concluding chapters I have been stimulated and guided in many places by unpublished reports and memoranda written by Mr. Clarence Stein, Mr. Benton Mackaye, and Mr. Henry Wright. My friendly thanks are also due to Mr. James Henderson, Mr. Geroid Tanquary Robinson, and Miss Sophia Wittenberg.

Besides the essays in The Freeman, some of the material in Sticks and Stones has appeared in the Journal of the American Institute of Architects (Chapter Six), in The New Republic, and in The American Mercury. I thank the editors for their permission to draw on these articles.

LEWIS MUMFORD.