The Architecture of Charles Bulfinch - Softcover

Kirker, Harold

Softcover

ISBN 10: 067404391X ISBN 13: 9780674043916

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 1998

Synopsis

Charles Bulfinch (1763-1844), son of a wealthy Boston family, exerted a wide influence on architecture in New England, where his version of the Adam style bacame characteristic of the early Republican period. As architect and Boston selectman, he was responsible for the great development of Old Boston. Later he was appointed for the final stages of the Capitol in Washington. In this fully illustrated record of commissions, Harold Kirker sets forth the career of this native-born American architect.

About this title

About the Author:

Harold Kirker is Professor of History, Emeritus, University of California at Santa Barbara.

Review:

American architecture...books...are often eye-candy, confected by journalists without analysis or insight. An occasional exception is a real work of history such as Harold Kirker's The Architecture of Charles Bulfinch...Kirker's scholarly effort provides the essential ground-work for an understanding of how American architecture has developed. Through Bulfinch (1763-1844) we can see how an American-born architect dealt with his British legacy. (Anthony Alofsin Times Literary Supplement)

The photographs of surviving Bulfinch buildings by David Hayes...are excellent...This is a useful and highly welcome study that contains nearly everything that we are likely to be able to know, short of a miracle, about the architecture of Charles Bulfinch. (New England Quarterly)

The Architecture of Charles Bulfinch is the result of meticulous historical research, and Kirker deserves praise for having dug up and organized a great deal of information in a most handsome, well-illustrated [book]...[It] will supplant all previous studies as the basic work on Bulfinch. (Technology and Culture)

Bulfinch, who changed from gentleman-architect to professional because of economic necessity, had a long and important life in both the official and the private architectural annals of the early years of our country. The professional side of that life is here set forth with admirable clarity. (Virginia Quarterly Review)

About this edition

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 067404391X
• ISBN 13: 9780674043916
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 432