Living Architecture

An atmospheric text resonates more profoundly thanks to some 150 photographs capturing the quiet grandeur of the buildings designed by Henry Hobson Richardson (1838-86). Born in Louisiana, Richardson made his career in the North, aided by his personal charm and the social connections he made while a Harvard undergraduate. He invented American architecture with masterpieces of vigorous historicism such as Boston's Trinity Church; even the modernists who followed were influenced by Richardson's veneration of architecture as important public art. Architecture historian James F. O'Gorman evaluates his subject's work and life appreciatively but with discernment.