Product Description

Lewis Mumford (1895-1990) is still revered as one of America's leading cultural critics and an international authority on architecture and urbanism.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #721830 in Books
• Published on: 2000-08-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 300 pages

Amazon.com Review
Sidewalk Critic opens with two charming autobiographical essays that introduce readers to Lewis Mumford (1895-1990), who was the architectural critic for the New Yorker from 1931 to 1963. He also published more than 20 books on various topics including architecture, literary criticism, technology, and philosophy. Sidewalk Critic is a selection of Mumford's writings, primarily taken from the "Sky Line" column of the New Yorker, which he wrote during the '30s. As a born and bred New Yorker growing up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Mumford offers a wonderful vantage point from which to view the changing city: "It was about 1905 that automobiles were becoming so common that crying 'get a horse' didn't seem so funny anymore."

Maybe it was Mumford's roots in New York that caused him to have rather emotional reactions to new architecture in the city. He attacked the plans for building Radio City in Midtown, criticizing the increase in congestion that another skyscraper was sure to bring: "When the cross-town traffic permanently blocks the downtown traffic ... and when the queues form at the subway stations at five o'clock ... the practical man may finally come down to earth. At present he is still in cloudcuckooland. It was by the cannons of cloudcuckooland that Radio City was designed." In various columns Mumford discussed such well known New York landmarks as the Museum of Modern Art, the Cloisters, and the Triborough Bridge. Throughout the book are attacks on stylistic atrocities, overspending, urban planning, and an occasional congratulations for a job well done. The 272-page book includes 16 pages of black-and-white photos. --Jennifer Cohen

From Library Journal
Time and the impatience of our culture have conspired to leave Lewis Mumford as someone we dimly recognize but probably haven't read. By gathering some of the best of Mumford's "The Sky Line" columns from The New Yorker of the Thirties, editor Wojtowicz does readers of our era a great service. Mumford was best known as an architectural critic, but this collection shows him as an urban aesthetician at his best when writing as an analyst of the values, life, and political culture of New York City. Today, his ridicule or praise of a strip of brick or his dissection of window placement in a massive wall may be of little consequence, but these essays remain valuable because they demonstrate Mumford's ability to find art and precision in many of the city's physical spaces while clarifying the sociological schematic of New York. Wojtowicz's compact biography of Mumford is a fitting prelude to the essays of this very busy writer. Diamonstein is the chair of the Historic Landmarks Preservation Center. The third edition of her book includes a section on recently designated landmarks while holding to the format of the 1988 and 1993 editions: a straightforward black-and-white photograph of the building is accompanied by a brief text on its history, purpose, and significance. This book is formal and comprehensive, making it a significant library reference source with particular usefulness in the New York metropolitan area. Both works are recommended for all architecture as well as regional collections.?David Bryant, New Canaan
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From The New Yorker
""SIDEWAEK CRITIC: LEWIS MUMFORD'S WRITINGS ON NEW YORK,' edited by Robert Wojtowicz . Here, at last, is a selection of Mumford's Sky Line pieces from 1931 through 1940, the body of work that made him the prince of America's architecture critics. By turns amused, romantic, and biting, he took in everything from lunchrooms and laundries to landmarks like Rockefeller Center (a 'melancholy pile'). To Mumford, the skyscraper was little more than a businessman's 'gewgaw,' yet Manhattan's burgeoning skyline enraptured him: 'One wants to greet it with a cheer.'"