Living architecture

Fascinating, important, and lushly illustrated, Living Architecture is the first biography of nineteenth-century America's greatest architect and the first full-color treatment of his rich and marvelous work. Written by James F. O'Gorman, the leading Richardson scholar, and photographed by Cervin Robinson, this compelling volume situates the architect's life and work within the shifting context of post-Civil War society. As a member of that generation of giants who brought American culture to maturity in the 1870s, Richardson, like Winslow Homer, Mark Twain, and Emily Dickinson, created an aesthetic distinct from its European origins, an architecture rooted in the American land and expressive of the new American urban forms. Richly detailed, thoughtfully organized, and brilliantly formed, Richardson's architecture originated a series of new building types for America's emerging social pattern, including cosmopolitan corporate icons for downtown and natural residential forms for the suburbs and the country. Trinity Church, the Marshall Field Wholesale Store in Chicago, the Allegheny County Courthouse and Jail in Pittsburgh, academic buildings at Harvard, and elegant private homes for such cultural and business elites as the Adamses, Hayses, and Ameses - these and other buildings defined Richardson's aesthetic and helped establish a new American architecture.