Modern Architecture

Art History 282/682

Week 2, Class 1

Engineering and Architecture in the Nineteenth Century

Thomas Cole, The Dream of the Architect, 1840, commissioned for architect Ithiel Town

Alexander Leydenfrost, Science on the March, 1952

engineer Calvin Woodward, 1895

"The engineer is by nature an iconoclast. He has small respect for the traditions. He snaps his fingers in scorn at all whose chief pride and glory lies in their submission to the 'tyranny of the ancients.' He cares less for what he has been than what he may be. His triumphs, his masterpieces, his heroes, his golden age, are all in the future. He walks forward, with his face to the front; not backward, with his face to the past. The engineer makes precedents; other men follow them."

engineer Louis Gibson, 1904

"The architect and the engineer stand back to back. The architect has the ages for his vista but his vision is blinded and he sees no more after the sixteenth century. The engineer has his face turned the other way. His inspiration is the future. The past does not cloud his brain."

engineer Frank Koester, 1914

"Of all the structures erected, the bridge is possessed of the greatest individuality, unity and feeling. It is at once an inspiration and a utility, and it marks as no other structure does the progress of man from barbarism to civilization."

cast iron, wrought iron, and steel

Abraham Darby I, Coalbrookdale, England

Henry Cort, puddling

Henry Bessemer, Bessemer Converter

Siemens Furnace

Abraham Darby III, Thomas Pritchard, Iron Bridge, Severn River, Coalbrookdale, England, 1779

Thomas Wilson and Rowland Burdon, Bridge over the Wear River, Sunderland, England, 1796

based on design by Thomas Paine

Thomas Telford, proposal for bridge over the Thames River at London, 1801

James Finley, Wire Bridge at the Falls of the Schuylkill, Philadelphia, 1809

Charles Ellet, Fairmount Suspension Bridge, Philadelphia, 1842

Thomas Telford, Menai Straits Bridge, Wales, 1819-1826

Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Clifton Suspension Bridge, Bristol, England, 1829-1864

John, Washington, and Emily Roebling, Brooklyn Bridge, New York, 1867-1883

Architecture critic Montgomery Schuyler in 1883 on the Brooklyn Bridge: "It is not unimaginable that our future archaeologist, looking from one of these towers upon the solitude of a mastless river and a dispeopled land, may have no other means of reconstructing our civilization than that which is furnished him by the tower on which he stands. What will his judgement of us be? This, or something like this, ought to be a question with every man who builds a structure which is meant to outlast him, whether it be a temple of religion or a work of bare utility like this. It so happens that the work which is likely to be our most durable monument, and convey some knowledge of us to the most remote posterity, is a bridge. This is in itself characteristic of our time."

James Buchanan Eads, Eads Bridge, St. Louis, Missouri, 1867-1874

Benjamin Baker, Firth of Forth Bridge, Edinburgh, Scotland, 1883-1890

Alexandre Gustave Eiffel, Garabit Viaduct, central France, 1880-1884

Alexandre Gustave Eiffel, Eiffel Tower, Paris, 1889

John Nash, Brighton Pavilion, Brighton, England, 1815-1821

Henri Labrouste, Bibliothèque Ste Geneviève, Paris, 1843-1850

Louis-Auguste Boileau, St-Eugène-Ste-Cécile, Paris, 1854-1855

Thomas Deane & Benjamin Woodward, Oxford Museum, Oxford, England, 1855-1860

John Ruskin

James Bogardus, Bogardus Foundry, New York, 1848

James Bogardus, Harper Brothers Building, New York, 1854

Peter Ellis, Oriel Chambers, Liverpool, England, 1864-1865

Godfrey Thomas Greene, Boat Store at Sheerness Naval Dockyard, England, 1858-1861

Joseph Paxton, Chatsworth Conservatory, Derbyshire, England, 1837-1840

Joseph Paxton, Crystal Palace, London, 1851

Victor Baltard, Central Markets, Les Halles, Paris, 1853

Henry Pettit and Joseph Wilson, Main Building, Centennial Exhibition, Philadelphia, 1876

Ferdinand Dutert, architect, Victor Contamin, engineer, Galerie des Machines, Paris, 1889

George Gilbert Scott, architect, W. H. Barlow & R. M. Ordish, engineers, Midland Hotel and St. Pancras Station, London, 1863-1876

Frank Furness (head house) and the Wilson Brothers (train shed), Broad Street Station, Philadelphia, 1881-1893

Francis Kimball (head house) and the Wilson Brothers (train shed), Reading Terminal, Philadelphia, 1891