Henry-Russell Hitchcock

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Hitchcock, Henry-Russell (1903–87). American architectural critic and historian. In 1929 he published Modern Architecture, the first English-language book on the subject, and in 1932 he and Philip Johnson organized the celebrated exhibition at MoMA, NYC, entitled ‘Modern Architecture International Exhibition’, which brought European architects such as Le Corbusier, Gropius, Oud, and Mies van der Rohe to the notice of the American public. In the same year Hitchcock and Johnson published The International Style: Architecture since 1922: the term International Style had been coined by Alfred H. Barr (1902–81—Director of MoMA, who had invited Hitchcock and Johnson to organize the exhibition) and Hitchcock. Having written about F. L. Wright (1928, 1942), Oud (1931), and H. H. Richardson (1936), Hitchock turned his attention to C19 architecture with the magnificent Early Victorian Architecture (1954) and Architecture: Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (1958). Later still he wrote perceptively about South-German Rococo, especially the practitioners, the Zimmermann Brothers (1968), and near the end of his life his first book on German Renaissance architecture was published (1981). The scope of his scholarship and interests was vast, and his output enormous. In 1983 In Search of Modern Architecture: A Tribute to Henry-Russell Hitchcock was published, edited by Helen Searing. He was a pioneer of research into C19 architecture, and impressive, both as a man and a scholar.

Bibliography

Hitchcock (1931, 1938, 1939, 1954, 1966, 1966a, 1966b, 1968, 1968a, 1973, 1976, 1977, 1981, 1993);
Hitchcock & and Johnson (1966);
Hitchcock & and Seale (1976)