Thomas Jefferson’s Neoclassical Monticello and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Modernist Fallingwater
Discover some of the most important works of American architecture through the lens of four thematic categories: residences; commercial buildings; spaces for enrichment and reflection; and public buildings, monuments, structures, and memorials. Join art historian Matthew Palczynski as he unpacks what makes a building part of a particular architectural style, including why Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello is Neoclassical and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater is Modernist. Delve further to see how architectural styles provide sociological insights into their respective eras. See which architects stand out in the canon and how to identify their signature styles. Learn how all of this comes together to tell the story of how architecture shapes our spaces for living, working, learning, and respite.
10–11:15 a.m. Residences Through Time
Through a survey of our earliest dwellings to the homes of today, see how residential American architecture evolved stylistically and functionally over the centuries. Trace what tepees, wickiups, igloos, and other residences of Indigenous peoples reveal anthropologically about the needs of the specific communities that made them, and how such places to live range on a spectrum from portable to permanent structures. Consider some of the successes and failures of planned residential communities, from the utopic goals behind Pruitt-Igoe’s urban low-income housing in St. Louis, Missouri, to the template for suburbia laid out in Levittown. Examine what the grandest homes reveal about the character of the personalities who commissioned them, from what Hearst Castle signifies about William Randolph Hearst to what the Biltmore Estate suggests about the Vanderbilts.
11:15 a.m.–12:15 p.m. Iconic Commercial Buildings
Investigate how the architecture of America’s commercial buildings is inexorably interwoven into the economics undergirding those structures. Discover how some of the tallest buildings from the early skyscraper era reflect the ambitions of the corporate titans who envisioned and personally financed them, from F. W. Woolworth to Walter Chrysler. Explore what a commercial building says about the specific needs and goals of the corporation it promotes, from what the architecture of the first (now destroyed) Pennsylvania Station implies about railroad travel in the early 20th century, to what the circular form of Apple Park suggests about one of the most valuable tech companies of today.
12:15–12:45 p.m. Break
12:45–1:45 p.m. “Third Spaces”: Architecture for Enrichment and Reflection
Uncover how the architecture of spaces for enrichment and reflection works to maximize our necessary respites away from home and work. Examine how places of worship, university buildings, and museums evolved over the centuries. Learn how to identify different architectural styles associated with such “third spaces,” from what makes St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan stylistically Gothic, the Quadrangle at Stanford University Richardsonian Romanesque, and Richard Morris Hunt’s design for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the epitome of the Beaux Arts style.
1:45–2:45 p.m. Architecture in the Public Space
Survey what makes our most beloved public buildings, monuments, structures and memorials so special. See how the design for public buildings across America responds to functional concerns unique to each. Learn how the design of some of the most iconic public structures signifies something about their respective zeitgeists, such as how the Gothic arch of the Brooklyn Bridge crystallized the aspirations of an era that built ever taller. Analyze the unique concerns for what makes war memorials so moving, from how water functions in the architecture of the USS Arizona Memorial to how land helps provide the conceptual framework for the Vietnam Memorial.
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