HUXTABLE, Ada Louise

Born circa 1920s, New York, New York

Daughter of Michael L. and Leah Rosenthal Landman; married L. Garth Huxtable, circa 1942

Ada Louise Huxtable was born and raised in Manhattan, where her passion for cities and buildings flourished. She edited the student newspaper at Wadleigh High School, Manhattan's high school for music and arts. At Hunter College, she majored in fine arts, was elected Phi Beta Kappa in her junior year, and graduated magna cum laude. Huxtable has said she "never chose a career. I began as a scholar, writing and researching for my own pleasure and enrichment in a field that was of great interest to me." She has always found immense personal satisfaction in that academic research.

In 1946 she became assistant curator for architecture and design at New York's Museum of Modern Art. She worked there until accepting a Fulbright scholarship in 1950 (and in 1952) for study and advanced research in architecture and design in Italy.

Her writing on art and architecture has been published in Art Digest, Progressive Architecture (where she was a contributing editor for almost 10 years), Art in America (again, a contributing editor for a decade), Interiors, Arts, and Architectural Review. Her work has also appeared in popular magazines such as Consumer Reports, Holiday, Horizon, and Saturday Review.

One of the many publications carrying her bylined articles in the 1950s was the New York Times magazine. In 1963, as her articles appeared with greater frequency, she was asked to take the newly created and prestigious post of architecture critic for the New York Times.

Influential in the founding of New York's Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1965, she defines preservation as "the retention and active relationship of the buildings of the past to the community's functioning present." The director of New York's office of midtown planning and development has said he "would consciously go out of my way to get her advice on issues…she has such a keen understanding of the politics, the money, and the realities involved in any given situation that I can treat her as a peer."

Her books include Four Walking Tours of Modern Architecture in New York City (1961), published by the Museum of Modern Art, and Classic New York: Georgian Gentility to Greek Elegance (1964). Both were intended as part of a six-volume series and represent years of painstaking research and personal reflections.

Will They Ever Finish Bruckner Boulevard? (1970, 1972) is a collection of her articles from the Times. In one edition, her publishers labeled it "a primer on urbicide" as no one is immune from her caustic evaluations. She called the Pan Am building "a prime example of a New York specialty: the big, the expedient, and the deathlessly ordinary."

Huxtable is an outstanding authority on urbanism. Besides being a member of the New York Times editorial board and winning the first Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism, she has received many significant awards from professional and cultural organizations and more than a dozen honorary degrees. The Wall Street Journal has noted her ability to get "everyone—the builders included—eating out of her hand and telling her everything she wants to know. Then she retreats behind a closed door and out comes this very gutsy critique."

Huxtable has no fear of attacking big city interests, such as building speculators and real estate developers, when the occasion warrants. Her work has been both praised and damned by the reading public; it is trenchant, lively, precise, and—clearly—influential.

Other Works:

Pier Luigi Nervi (1960). Kicked a Building Lately? (1976, 1988). Goodbye History, Hello Hamburger: An Anthology of Architectural Delights and Disasters (1986). Architecture Anyone? (1988). The Tall Building Artistically Reconsidered (1992). Inventing Reality: Architectural Themes and Variations (1993). The Unreal America: Architecture and Illusion (1997).

Bibliography:

Angeletti, M., "The Architectural Criticism of Ada Louise Huxtable" (thesis, 1995). Diamondstein, B., Open Secrets (1971). Lloyd, J., Ada Louise Huxtable: A Case Study (1975). Papadakes, A., Architecture of Today (1997). Papadakes, A., A Decade of Architectural Design (1991). Williams, H. M., ed., Making Architecture: The Getty Center (1997). Wodehouse, L., Ada Louise Huxtable, An Annotated Bibliography (1981).

Reference works:

CB (1973). Oxford Companion to Women's Writing in the United States (1995).

Other references:

Architectural Record (Apr. 1993, May 1993). ARTnews (1997). CSM (9 Apr. 1969, 11 Nov. 1973). Harper's Bazaar (Aug. 1972). House Beautiful (Sept. 1970). Interior Design (Feb. 1993). Metropolis (1998). New York (3 Nov. 1975). Newsweek (23 Aug. 1965). NY (17 Dec. 1973). NYT (5 May 1970, 26 Sept. 1973, 2 Jan. 1975, 13 Mar. 1977, 29 Sept. 1977). Opera News (July 1999). WSJ (7 Nov. 1972).

—KATHLEEN KEARNEY KEESHEN