Michael J. Lewis

Imperial Gothic: Religious Architecture and High Anglican Culture in the British Empire, ?c. 1840–70? by g. a. bremner ?yale, 364 pages, $95 Over the course of a few years in the 1840s, the colonial architecture of high-church Anglicanism progressed from timorous neo-gothic copyism to . . . . Continue Reading »

Students in my history of architecture course are amused to discover that the final exam offers a choice of questions. Some are bone dry (“discuss the development of the monumental staircase from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century, citing examples”) and others deliberately open-ended (“General Meade overslept at Gettysburg and the South has won the Civil War; you are commissioner for the new national capital and must tell us which architects you will choose and what instructions you will give them.”) In offering this whimsical range of options, I do nothing original; my own professors at Haverford College did much the same in their day. Continue Reading »