American Masterworks

About this book

"This century produced such icons of modern architecture as the Greene brothers' arts-and-crafts Gamble House in Pasadena, California, of 1908; Eliel Saarinen's 1929 residence at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan; and Michael Graves's own neoclassical villa in Princeton, New Jersey. Over the decades, American and international architects alike responded to this country's rising standard of living, rapidly expanding suburbs, and receptive, often liberal, clients - factors that encouraged the creative use of both unorthodox building materials and mass-produced components. During the 1920s, for example, Frank Lloyd Wright recovered the now-ubiquitous concrete block from what he termed the "architectural gutter," using it in several remarkable homes in Southern California, among them the Storer House in Hollywood of 1923.". "This and twenty-one other masterpieces of American twentieth-century residential architecture are presented in this illustrated volume, a condensed edition of the bestselling book of the same name. Color photographs are accompanied by text that explores each house in depth and discusses its place in the progression of American architecture, its role in the architect's oeuvre, and its broader relationship to the history of twentieth-century American cultural and artistic movements."--BOOK JACKET.