Accents as Well as Broad Effects
Subtitle: Writings on Architecture, Landscape, and the Environment, 1876-1925
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: August 19, 1996
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 376
ISBN-13: 9780520201262
Subjects: Architecture; Other prose: from c 1900 -; 20th century; c 1800 to c 1900; Criticism; 19th Century Architecture; Landscape Architecture And Design; Mrs.,; Landscape architecture; History; Architecture / General; Van Rensselaer, Schuyler; 19th century; Van Rensselaer, Schuyler,; 1851-1934; Aesthetics; Architectural criticism; United States
First sentence: The practice of architecture stands upon a different footing from the practice of the other arts.
Description: Mariana Griswold Van Rensselaer (1851-1934) is highly regarded among architectural historians for her 1888 biography of the nineteenth-century architect Henry Hobson Richardson. Less well known are her writings on architecture, decorative art, gardening, and landscape design, works that provide a rare view of cities and rural environments in turn-of-the-century America. Now David Gebhard brings Van Rensselaer's most significant writings together in one volume.

An established critic in environmental and literary circles, Van Rensselaer wrote for the general public in such journals as the Century Magazine and for a specialized audience of landscape architects in Garden and Forest. She was a long-time contributor to American Architect and Building News, the first architectural journal in the United States. She is an engaging and accessible writer, and her articles on Frederick Law Olmsted and the Boston Public Library won great praise.

Although the only woman in a field that was male-dominated at the time, Van Rensselaer was, curiously enough, opposed to women's suffrage.