INSCRIBED ASSOCIATION COPY

MYSTERY AND REALITIES OF THE SITE

Richard Neutra

10.25 x 8 book with 64 pages and 50 b/w photographs, plans and drawings. Cover image and interior photography by Julius Shulman (³Many full-page photographs by Julius Shulman² according to the dust jacket). The first book published in the United States concerning the architectural work of Richard Neutra.

From the New York Times, October 27, 1997:
CARL FEISS, A PIONEER OF URBAN PRESERVATION, DIES AT 90

"Carl Feiss, a visionary architect and pioneering urban planner who helped transform the science of clearing slums into the art of historic preservation, died on Oct. 10 at a retirement home in Gainesville, Fla. He was 90 and had played an important role in historic restorations in Charleston, S.C., Savannah, Ga.. Annapolis, Md., Alexandria, Va., and scores of other cities in the United States and abroad.

"Mr. Feiss was one of the first of the professional planners who emerged in the 1930's to elevate what had been a grab bag of activities by civil engineers and other municipal officials into a distinct discipline. In the forefront of his field almost from the beginning, he ended his career teaching a new generation of planners at the University of Florida.

"Mr. Feiss, whose father was a men's clothing manufacturer, grew up in an artistic Cleveland household. (Mr. Feiss was a lifelong painter.) He earned a degree in architecture from the University of Pennsylvania, spent three years teaching at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., and then obtained one of the first master's degrees in urban planning offered by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"Within a year of receiving his degree, in 1938 at age 31, he had been made the director of the housing and planning division of the Columbia University School of Architecture. He had also become deeply involved in zoning and other planning issues in New York City.

"Although he was so devoted to public construction projects that he once suggested that the much-maligned form might someday produce an American Parthenon, from the start Mr. Feiss was a planner with a difference. He advocated low-density, low-cost development of vacant land and tangled with New York's master builder, Robert Moses, over grandiose plans to build expensive public housing on the rubble of cleared slums.

"He then spent five years in Denver, where he ran the city's planning commission, established an urban planning department at the University of Denver and helped found the Denver Art Museum. Mr. Feiss went to Washington in 1950 as the chief planner for slum clearance for the forerunner of the Department of Housing and Urban Development and had an epiphany.

"At a time when urban renewal generally meant bulldozing neighborhoods to make way for modern steel-and-concrete structures, Mr. Feiss decided that for all their rundown condition, many buildings being swept away were architectural or historic gems whose restoration could be the basis for renewal of an invaluable municipal heritage.

"He left his post in Washington in 1955 and became an independent consultant. He led the campaign that produced the Federal Historic Preservation Act of 1966 and a National Register of Historic Places, and was a sought-after expert on the complexities of historic preservation.

"Mr. Feiss, whose clients included state, county and city agencies from Connecticut to Bogota, Colombia, hardly invented the notion of preserving and restoring rundown neighborhoods of architectural or historic significance. The idea, long the province of the docent class, generated almost too much support: at a time when the bulldoze-and-build approach offered the advantage of straightforward simplicity, the trick of historic preservation was to get an assortment of often squabbling civic groups, public agencies, elected officials and private businesses to work together.

"Mr. Feiss, who wrote and lectured widely on the subject and all but invented the methodology of preservation, was a master at coordinating an intricate array of tasks: creating an inventory of worthy buildings, mapping district lines, obtaining necessary zoning and other legislation, creating and enacting economic revitalization plans and arranging creative financing."

Born and raised in Vienna, Richard Neutra (1872-1970) came to America early in his career, settling in California. His influence on post-war architecture is undisputed, the sunny climate and rich landscape being particularly suited to his cool, sleek modern style. Neutra had a keen appreciation for the relationship between people and nature; his trademark plate glass walls and ceilings which turn into deep overhangs have the effect of connecting the indoors with the outdoors. Neutra's ability to incorporate technology, aesthetics, science, and nature into his designs him recognition as one of Modernist architecture's greatest talents.

A very interesting association copy, considering the checkered history of the preservation efforts for Neutra's work from Palm Springs to Gettysburg.

out of stock