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Urban Spaces and
Cultural Settings
U
Gwendolyn Wright is an associate seem to draw openly from a range of work places. Structures and spaces evoke
professor of architectural history at the sources that includes certain admired not just their designers, but all those who
Graduate School of Architecture, Plan- precedents (whether classical or Mod- bring the built environment into being, those
ning, and Preservation, Columbia Uni- ernist-itself now a part of history) which who use or inhabit it, if only by walking
versity. She is the author of Moralism transcend specific locales, as well as through a city street. All of these tenden-
and the Model Home: Domestic Archi- more local architectural and urban cies have altered the scope and the very
lecture and Social Conflict in Chicago design traditions. It is almost a common-
enterprise of architectural history. The
icago, 1980) and Building the Dream: place to show how a new building relatesearlier concerns are still central, of course,
rm Social History of Housing in America to its context-to the city, town, or neigh-
but architect and building are now both
(Cambridge, Ma., 1983). Her current work borhood street-scape-and thus payspart of a larger urban setting.
focuses on French urban design policies homage in another way to what came
in the colonies. before. Ideally these two parallel developments
can 'and should benefit one another.
The complexity of cities calls for a mul- All the same, it is by no means an easyUrban historians can teach architects to
tidisciplinary approach, urging urban task to embrace the past and the larger grasp the complexities of cities-or urban
historians to draw from social, eco- urban milieu. Responding to local tra- design, incremental changes, and social
nomic, political, intellectual, as well ditions entails serious appraisal of adiversity. Likewise, close associations
as architectural sources. In exploring complex culture, even for a small place-with architects can remind historians of
different materials, urban historians skills few designers have been taught. the formal and conceptual ideals which
must carefully consider the motives And the intellectual challenge of broad-preoccupy designers, for the method-
of the various people who shape urban ening the scope of ourarchitectural canon
ologies of such scholars must always be
form and record urban change. They to include great urban spaces, as wellable to include a great variety of goals
must approach urban history not as a as buildings, requires new approaches. and influences, even those which do not
canon of precedents or a chronicle of These larger settings cannot always be readily fit into a social science model of
progress, but as a complex and ongoing neatly classified according to specific
analysis.
enterprise. dates and individual designers. One must
consider how they took form and Historians, like architects, often find this
Equally important is the meaning of a changed over time, acknowledging the larger urban dimension of their work as
city and how that meaning changes over cumulative influence of many different frustrating as it is compelling. This is even
time. Urban history is not just a synthesis groups and persons. true for the study of cities up through the
of priorities and disciplinary techniques, early modern period, though when "the
but also a synthesis of experiences and Simultaneous with this shift, the very world ... was half a thousand years
visions. Integration of social and formal boundaries of architectural history itself younger," in the words of Johann Hui-
analyses is crucial, for both are forma- are changing, too. Hitherto the discipline zinga, "the outlines of all things seemed
tive and each helps shape the other. The was characterized by a preoccupation with more clearly marked than to us."1 Many
intricate webs of power and meaning the intentions of the designer and the for- diverse forces were at work, in harmony
that are elaborated through architectural mal analysis of singular monuments. In or in conflict, to generate and then con-
space need exploration as well. To write recent years the field has suddenly and tinuously modify the urban environment.
urban history is to give narrative form to dramatically expanded. Scholars are Unravelling all these influences becomes
these processes. examining the relations of architecture: more than anecdotal background if a
issues of patronage, public authorities and historian wants to analyze the place-
legal codes, site planning, and the socio- ment of Athenian temples, the street and
The recent rise of interest in urban his- canal pattern of Amsterdam, or the hier-
political reactions of a community. Build-
tory among architects and architectural ings are seldom studied in isolation now; archy of housing in colonial Boston. The
historians signals major shifts in both in fact, many historians delve into the scale of earlier cities and the relative
professions. Architects, absorbing the infrastructure of streets, landscaping, open clarity of the cultural forces at work do,
collapse of an absolutist and ahistorical spaces, and even public services, as they however, make them easier to take in
version of Modernism, are searching for once extended their domain to construc- than most contemporary cities. Histori-
new meanings. They have retrieved his- tion technology. The loosely defined "ver- ans and architects can more readily per-
tory out of the shadows to make it the nacular" has become a significant field ceive the kinds of questions they must
very basis of contemporary design, pro- of study, covering everything not designed ask about cities in any period: What is
viding both a parti for individual build- by architects, ranging from folk traditions the effect of a building's location on
ings and a way of relating buildings to to the mass-produced world of specula- neighborhood development? What is
their surroundings. Most architects now tively-built housing, amusement parks, and demolished to make room for a new
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U
structure? How does a project affect the
local economy and social order?
al "al
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Ul
differed from their own. It comes quite
often as a revelation to see that one's
forebears, too, had to respond to the
exigencies of the particular cities and i ?.
'4]L I ,
-'X
.a.' f P ?.... #.3
Urban history must, of course, encom-
pass a repertoire of forms and spaces,
just as architectural history must cover fss +t1', } }i.',z,^ u :.
All of us concerned with cities in the past ritual. Less stately settings as well-for The urban historian must, therefore, show
and the present should take into account example European Jewish ghettos, how certain kinds of buildings and spaces
"ordinary" as well as "good" architec- American commercial strips, or ethnic came to be built and to gain preemin-
ture, "boring" as well as grand spaces, neighborhoods in any large city-should ence, while others remained thwarted
"muddled" as well as elegant designs. also be studied as cultural artifacts with projects or secret personal visions. This,
Unplanned settings, rather than care- both formal and social elements. not incidentally, entails considering which
fully planned urban design, make up most forms gained favor among architects and
parts of most cities, so we must think how No Zeitgeist rule can describe how cul- which-whether the same or different-
such areas work-whether the goal is ture and aesthetics interrelate in all cir- appealed to more speculative builders
understanding their form in the past or cumstances, not even for one time and and clients. For too long we have studied
intervening in the present. There is sim- place. Yet these two analytical poles are the history of what architects drew as if
ply no way to do this without taking the always at work together in urban his- it were necessarily the history of how
cultural domain into account. For exam- tory. In fact, even a "purely formal" cities looked. We must also consider how
ple, the significance of the grid varied solution, such as Cataneo's ideal towns the more familiar prototypes relate to
considerably, as did its proportions and of the Renaissance or L'Enfant's Wash- less well-known variations or even anti-
its focus, when it was used by Greek or ington, D.C., suggests the unusual power thetical images. After all, the influence
Roman colonists, by Spanish imperial- and abstraction of architect and client in of a form or style by no means simply
ists, or by American surveyors. (Figs. 1- that time and place. And, once the space filters down through the social structure,
3) The Piazza San Marco and the Wash- began to be used, the cultural realm of nor is it mere backwardness not to copy
ington Mall have evolved over time, in course further complicates our full what is fashionable. Formal choices and
part shaped by aesthetic concerns, in understanding of the forms. cultural priorities were at stake when
part to function as spaces for political provincial cities like Boston or Edin-
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U
ticularities of such groups, and even narrative that explains urban change- Urban history then is both an act of
possible conflicts between them, checks new styles, building types, technologies, recovery and a creative gesture toward
the tendency to subsume real differ- and images for cities-by pointing only the future, a way to comprehend and
ences under some rubric of a common to the major figures who espoused these build upon places and cultures over time.
or universal response to cities and their innovations. Neither architects nor politi- Architectural design becomes an ele-
buildings. No single voice can predom- cal leaders can necessarily guarantee that ment in a complex process that creates
inate absolutely. The aesthetic and certain innovations will come to be gen- and transforms place; it is at once mem-
urbanistic strengths of Daniel Burnham's erally accepted, pervading all levels of a ory and vision, problem and resolution,
1909 Chicago Plan deserve our appre- city and spreading beyond its boundaries. individual and collective expression. The
ciation, but the historical account must goal, in part, is to be able to orient our-
also acknowledge its benefits to the city's For example, the simplification of hous- selves-as architects and planners, his-
industrialists and the critiques of Jane ing design in the United States at the turn torians and citizens-to the intricate webs
Addams and other reformers who of the last century has by and large been of power and meaning that are thus
charged that he paid virtually no atten- explained as the effect of key architec- elaborated, in the past and present,
tion to Chicago's crowded immigrant tural innovators, notably Frank Lloyd through architectural space. To write
neighborhoods. Wright. By focusing on Chicago, the city urban history is to give narrative form to
where Wright practiced during these this process; to design with history in
These distinctions are critical for under-years, it is possible to situate him more mind is to acknowledge the multiple cul-
standing how cities took the form they accurately. It is not that Wright's work tural uses and meanings places can have,
did and how people experienced them. did not impress other architects, even in modern society as in the past.
Even architects and planners, buildersbuilders, carpenters, and the general
Notes
and politicians cannot be lumped public. But they had very different rea-
together as if they viewed the city in the sons for promoting a turn toward sim- 1 Huizinga, Johann The Waning of the Middle Ages: A Study
same way because they all have the pler, more standardized dwellings. And of the Forms of Life, Thought and Art in France and the
Netherlands in the XlVth and XVth Centuries Edward Arnold
power to intervene. Most architects see the city itself was an embattled arena (London) 1924, p.1
a streetscape in terms of its individual where each of these groups was trying 2 White, E. B. Here Is New York Harper & Brothers (New
buildings, while builders see it as a unit, to seize the right to define what good York) 1949, p. 10
based ultimately on the overall devel- housing should be. Simply to describe 3 Schorske, Carl E. Fin-de-Siecle Vienna Alfred A. Knopf
(New York) 1980 and "Science as Vocation in Burckhardt's
opment potential, and planners see the the formal changes would miss the fas- Basel," in The University and The City from Medieval Ori-
same place as a map of legal codes- cinating complexity of attitudes and gins to the Present (Thomas Bender, ed.) Oxford University
or social inequities. Other kinds of groups conflicts which underlay how these Press (New York) forthcoming
are even more wide-ranging in their architectural forms were seen, where they 4 Goldthwaite, Richard The Building of Renaissance Flor-
ence Johns Hopkins University Press (Baltimore and Lon-
reactions to the city. By class, ethnicity, were built, and how they were used.10 don) 1980
age, and gender people relate quite dif- Understanding what people were trying 5 Seigel, Jerrold Bohemian Paris: Culture, Politics, and the
ferently to parks and department stores, to do with architecture and urban design Boundaries of Bourgeois Life, 1830-1930 Viking/Elizabeth
for example, or to city halls and civic at particular moments in the past is one Sifton Book (New York) 1986
6 Merriman, John The Red City: Limoges and the French
monuments. Moreover, especially in the aspect of recovering the meanings of a Nineteenth Century Oxford University Press (New York)
modern world, all people experience the place. One must take full account of the 1985
city in multiple roles-for example, as designer's aesthetic goals and the client's 7 Bender, Thomas New York Intellect: A History of Intellec-
tual Life in New York City, from 1750 to the Beginnings of
residents of a neighborhood, employees symbolic intentions, no matter what their
Our Own Time Alfred A. Knopf (New York) 1987
in a certain milieu, as members of a status; one must bear in mind the con- 8 Ginzburg, Carlo The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos
political faction or a religious sect. These straints of laws, economy, tradition, and of a Sixteenth-Century Miller (John and Anne Tedeschi,
shifting perspectives, too, affect how they fashion, as well as searching for inno- trans.) Johns Hopkins University Press (Baltimore and Lon-
don) 1980
use and relate to cities. vations. The various public responses to
9 Baxandall, Michael "Art, Society, and the Bouguer Prin-
a design and the changes or compro- ciple," Representations 12 (Fall 1985) pp. 32-43
The recognition of such divergences is not mises they elicit must be taken seriously 10 Wright, Gwendolyn Moralism and the Model Home:
merely a populist stance. Indeed, it sug- in their own right, rather than dismissed Domestic Architecture and Cultural Conflict in Chicago,
1873-1913 University of Chicago Press (Chicago) 1980 and
gests the necessary, if difficult, responsi- as philistine efforts to undermine the
"Architectural Practice and Social Vision in Wright's Early
bility of the historian to explain not only integrity of the designer. Formal analy- Designs," in Nature in the Work of Frank Lloyd Wright
what happened, but also what it meant at sis in urban history should not be iso- (Vincent Scully, ed.) University of Chicago Press (Chicago)
the time and what that legacy means to lated from such cultural issues, but nei- 1988
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