“Review of American Building Art: The Nineteenth Century, by Carl W. Condit”

AboutShort review praising Carl Condit's survey of nineteenth-century American building technology — interior framing, trusses, reinforced concrete, metal and concrete arches, and suspension construction — for placing American engineering achievement in an unprecedented historical context, and for highlighting under-recognized figures such as Daniel Badger, George Herbert Wyman, Timothy Palmer, Albert Fink, and Ernest Ransome. Eaton disputes Condit's claim that "the best architecture usually lay outside the main stream of technical innovation," citing William Strickland's Naval Hospital and Adler & Sullivan's technologically inventive Chicago Auditorium as counterexamples where aesthetic and technical achievement coincided. He concludes that the book establishes an essential "technological environment" for understanding the curious design tensions in Louis Sullivan's large commercial buildings, and states he eagerly awaits the promised second volume.

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