Sticks and Stones: A Study of American Architecture and Civilization: Enriched edition. Exploring the Intersection of Architecture, Culture, and Society in America

by Lewis Mumford

Great classic of American cultural history and important study of American architecture and civilization, still stimulating in its sweep and insights. Discusses the early New England towns, vernacular building, Colonial and Federal periods, Henry Hobson Richardson and other important architects of the late 19th century, the Classical Revival, up to the early 1920s. 21 illus.

Genres: Nonfiction, Architecture, History, American History, Art History, Art

124 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1924

About the author

Lewis Mumford (October 19, 1895 – January 26, 1990) was an American historian and philosopher of technology and science. Particularly noted for his study of cities and urban architecture, he had a tremendously broad career as a writer that also included a period as an influential literary critic. Mumford was influenced by the work of Scottish theorist Sir Patrick Geddes.

Reviews

[Gerj]

Crisp, clear, engaging. A mixture of true architectural critique with a brilliant social history of the United States. A short read that's well worth it.

[Paul]

Really enjoyed this. Mumford walks through the history of American architecture, as influenced by social, economic, and technological change. Basically:

• Import nice, vernacular medieval villages from Europe
• The rise of a wealthy trading class leads to the standardization of architecture via adherence to Renaissance forms
• The Revolution makes us think we’re Greek or Roman, so we copy their architecture, not noticing that we’re 2000 years and an ocean away
• The tide of industrialism turns us schizophrenic, either aiming towards the future with ugly industrial structures or romanticizing the past with weird eclectic hodgepodges
• Romanticism falls away because the architecture of medieval towns isn’t suited for crowded capitalist cities
• Rome redux – we turn into an overseas empire and dress our industrialized buildings up like imperial Roman monuments
• Cities become less about human habitation and more about financial speculation, leading to new forms (skyscrapers, identical suburbs) that don’t speak to human scale or spirit

He points out some notable eddies (Richardson, Sullivan, Wright) operating within/against these broader currents, but that’s the overall picture.

The last chapter is his review of the present (i.e., 1924) problem (urbanization, resource drain, mechanization/alienation) and the prescription: returning to a healthier urban-rural balance with smaller towns and regional planning, and restoring humanity to industry via handicraft. The embodiment of these goals, architecturally, is the garden city. But he recognizes that this isn’t going to work without a much deeper societal change:

“There will have to be a pretty thorough reorientation in our economic and social life before the garden-city will be anything more than a slick phrase, without content or power.”

100 years on, Mumford’s analysis feels cogent and prescient, recognizing the flaws of modern architecture just as modern architecture was getting started. The critiques of capitalism, imperialism, and technology sound like they could’ve been written today. Obviously, his solution of a crafts-oriented society living in garden cities didn’t work out. He’s definitely guilty of romanticizing the medieval world, and returning to guilds and hovels doesn’t feel like a progressive fix to modern problems. And maybe it was always unrealistic to propose fundamentally changing society’s values as a solution. But I’m not sure he was wrong – maybe things won’t change without wholesale rebirth, and a century later, we’re stuck in the same rut, waiting for that change to come. After all:

“Architecture, like government, is about as good as a community deserves. The shell that we create for ourselves marks our spiritual development as plainly as that of a snail denotes its species. If sometimes architecture becomes frozen music, we have ourselves to thank when it is a pompous blare of meaningless sounds.”

Also, just a note on style – this is how all architecture criticism should be, IMO. It’s very readable, lyrical at times, and he presents his ideas in a straightforward enough way that you can really think about whether or not you agree with them, rather than wasting your energy trying to parse what he’s saying. The book is old, but it’s aged well.

[Maxwell Leer]

Amazing commentary on the decy of crafmanship, masonry and architectural form in the aftermath of the civil war. Mumford also raises critical points surrounding the effects of the gridiron plan in american cities: "Even today our parks our what our cities should be, and are not." Olmsted, Lloyd Wright, and others eerge as heroes in a disintegrated landscape, while others rushing to build in industrial or romantic forms collapse into bad judgement, mere facaderie, and hollow forms.

[Andrew]

I listened to this book via Audible.

I was first introduced to Mumford back in college, and while I don't have distinct memories of the book from that class, I do remember the professor fondly. So when I came across Sticks and Stones on Audible, I decided to give it a read.

This is a very dry and scholarly work, which I was mostly expecting. The content is interesting - especially to see how well it has aged over the past century - and it provided a lot of things to mull over and consider in a modern context. I think many people might not give a lot of thought to how architecture reflects our society and culture and the impact it can even have on things like sustainability and cost. In areas like these, I greatly enjoyed Sticks and Stones.

The main problem with the book is all about the recording - the narrator is very stilted and not easy to listen to. In addition, due to some error of editing, several sections are each repeated twice with no easy way to skip through them.

If you read the book instead of listen or find a different recording (avoid the Spoken Realms version read by Joseph Tabler), Sticks and Stones has some value to impart and will hopefully help you see architecture in a new light.

[Tony Crispin]

Pretty good! Obviously architectural and American history has evolved a lot since Sticks and Stones publishing (1924, one hundred years ago) but this book's main strength is its prescience and ability to help us in this present view the early stages of urbanistic capitalism. This was written right around when the industrial city and romantic suburbs were taking flight and the key observation here is that the contemporary urban development tried to imitate the machine era: growth, efficiency, max profit, minimum cost, etc. and how this effects our urban environment and culture. Great quick little read for anyone interested in the history of cities and/or the development of capitalism.

[Pschmunk]

The brilliant insights and observations covering early American architecture and settlements are mixed with misplaced criticism of urban centers in general and Architecture in Chicago specifically, which he had yet to visit when the book was written. These opinions are amended in this edition by the author with additional notes in italics following some chapters. In the end, the book still points toward development away from cities as the answer. The suburban developments that followed in the decades since the book was published did not live up to the promise.

[Benjamin J. Ballard]

Despite it's age, this book is still relevant as it mainly surveys the evolution of American architecture from early colonial days until the 1920s, and we are all pretty familiar with what has happened since then.

If you are of the opinion that architecture was pretty good in general until modernism came along, or until modern construction methods and materials came along and gave us "fake" versions of everything, this may burst your bubble, as Mumford finds plenty to critique in every era.

[Dimitrii Ivanov]

Язвительный искусствоведческий обзор сменяется иеремиадой на предмет состояния современной цивилизации, линия от Рёскина к Моррису и далее к Берману. Хороший перевод (даром что с немецкого издания), если не считать названия книги, хотя топонимы и имена транскрибированы старомодно.

[Jessy]

more fascinating as a document of time rather than content.

[Matthew]

I was talking about this book one day and I was surprised that Brent actually knew who this guy was. Apparently he is a respected author.

These are essays on early American architecture, so its mostly focused on buildings in the northeastern portion of the United States.

Mumford is annoyed that these buildings are lazy imitations of European ideals, and that these buildings are not taking full advantage of the materials in their region.

Mumford looks at a building designed for civic use, like Penn Station, and asks why the building has such high ceilings, which drives up heating costs, and wastes space in all the wrong places - he's also critical of the station's harsh industrial design.

It's clear that this book has had some influence on academia, because echoes of this sort of thought were in texts I read in Geography and Anthropology courses, but other than trendy luxury hotels and certain new museums, American architecture at large is still suffering from the problems Mumford outlines in this book.

[César Hernández]

mumford never disappoints. who else could write a book about the history of architecture that's as witty and interesting as it is prescient (e.g., he's critical of the suburbanization that was only barely beginning in the 1920s when he wrote this book)? he travels from early new england villages to booming new york, with smoe stops along the way, to make the point that we don't have to live on top of each other in hurried, unimaginative neighborhoods. though he romanticizes small town life he does a great job of advocating a more humanized version of urban design.

[Cheery]

Hope springs eternal. Mumford may be recognized as a founding father in the urban planning field, but his writing style leaves so much to be desired.

[Mike Emett]

Required reading for the "History of American Architecture" graduate seminar.