Carrere & Hastings, Architects
(EXCERPT) THE new two-volume monograph Carrere & Hastings Architects is the first book to shine a spotlight on an effervescent design team whose legacy in New York has been lasting, from its introduction of the Beaux-Arts style in the 1890s to its debonair skyscraper for the Standard Oil Company on lower Broadway in the 1920s. Published by Acanthus Press, this comprehensive account of the lifework of John Merven Carrere and Thomas Hastings depicts an organization international in scope with works from London to Vicksburg to Rome to Vancouver but at the same time supremely grounded in New York, dedicated to the civilizing possibilities of the new metropolis. The two volumes, with contributions from Mark Alan Hewitt, Kate Lemos, William Morrison and Charles D. Warren, naturally pay great attention to the men s best-known commissions in New York, like the Frick mansion and the New York Public Library. What is unusual is the attention they pay to the other works which form a network suggesting a comprehensive view of what could truly be a City Beautiful. Bringing an intelligence and sophistication to New York that has never been surpassed, the two designers arrived in the early 1880s after several years at the ??cole des Beaux-Arts, white hot with the newest ideas from Paris. They both worked for a few years in the offices of McKim, Mead & White until their professional association began in 1885. (EXCERPT) --The New York TimesThe 11-pound, two-volume boxed set...seems to be the product of another era an oevre complete to rival the early twentieth-century four-volume on McKim, Mead & White. The wide margins, heavy stock, and light sheen of the paper that enhance the elegance of the gray-toned historical photographs all suggest that the work of Carrere & Hastings deserves to share the honors accorded their more celebrated contemporaries... the essays of the four authors are substantive...overall architectural quality and civic importance of Carrere & Hastings' work emerges clearly. --Journal of the Society of Architecural Historians