Ada Louise Huxtable

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Ada Louise Huxtable

The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition | 2008 | The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Copyright 2008 Columbia University Press. (Hide copyright information) Copyright

Ada Louise Huxtable , 1921?-, American architecture critic, b. New York City. As architecture critic for the New York Times (1963-82), she became a pioneer of contemporary architectural journalism. In her often trenchant writings she followed the path from modernism to postmodernism and contributed effectively to the preservation movement. Huxtable was awarded (1970) the first Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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"Ada Louise Huxtable." The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2008. Encyclopedia.com. 9 Dec. 2009 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>.

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Huxtable, Ada Louise Landman

A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture | 2000 | | © A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture 2000, originally published by Oxford University Press 2000. (Hide copyright information) Copyright

Huxtable, Ada Louise Landman (1921– ). American architectural critic. She established her reputation with a series of trenchant articles in the New York Times from 1963, but before then had published her monograph on Pier Luigi Nervi (1960) and many articles in various journals. Her love of her native city was expressed in Classic New York: Georgian Gentility to Greek Elegance (1964), and her forth-right writings have assailed the insupportable hideousness of many aspects of American cities: indeed, her Will They Ever Finish Bruckner Boulevard? (1970) has been described as a ‘Primer on Urbicide’. A passionate conservationist, she was a major figure in the creation of a Landmarks Preservation Commission for New York City in 1965 to resist the ‘blind mutilation’, as she called it, ‘in the name of urban renewal’. She also championed excellence in contemporary architecture, denouncing the ‘big, the expedient, and the deathlessly ordinary’, and making plain her exasperation with the General Services Administration (the body in charge of all Federal construction in the USA) for proliferating banality. She made her admiration for Mies van der Rohe clear, and has called the skyscraper one of the ‘great technological and architectural achievements of our civilization’. Her The Tall Building Artistically Considered: The Search for a Skyscraper Style (1982, 1984) is a major study of the subject. Pevsner described her as ‘the best architectural critic’ of his time.

Bibliography

Huxtable (1960, 1960a, 1961, 1964, 1970, 1976, 1984, 1986, 1986a, 1997)

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JAMES STEVENS CURL. "Huxtable, Ada Louise Landman." A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. Oxford University Press. 2000. Encyclopedia.com. (December 9, 2009). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O1-HuxtableAdaLouiseLandman.html

JAMES STEVENS CURL. "Huxtable, Ada Louise Landman." A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. Oxford University Press. 2000. Retrieved December 09, 2009 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O1-HuxtableAdaLouiseLandman.html

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