A Concrete Atlantis: U.S. Industrial Building and European Modern Architecture by Reyner Banham

Abstract

316 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE ative publicity, improve their public image, eliminate ‘unfair’ com­ petition, and in general, increase sales” (p. 289). Like so many other “reformers,” they turned to the government to ensure “fair play in the marketplace.” Ronald L. Numbers Dr. Numbers is professor of the history of medicine and the history of science at the University of Wisconsin—Madison. His publications include Sickness and Health in America: Readings in the History ofMedicine and Public Health (2d ed.; Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), coedited with Judith Walzer Leavitt, and Medicine in the New World: New Spain, New France, and New England (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1987). A Concrete Atlantis: U.S. Industrial Building and European Modern Ar­ chitecture. By Reyner Banham. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1986. Pp. ix + 266; illustrations, notes, index. $25.00. Reyner Banham’s A Concrete Atlantis entices the reader with the promise of a fascinating tour through early-20th-century American industrial architecture. His purpose is not simply to examine the his­ tory of industrial buildings but to lead us eventually to the beginnings of European modern architecture. To European architects, suggests the author, American factories and grain elevators represented a new society based on scientific rationality. Banham compares the new in­ dustrial society to Bacon’s “New Atlantis”; hence the book’s title. He argues that “there is a causal, cultural, and conscious connection” between the utilitarian structures and the work of Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier, leaders of the modern movement (p. 3). He examines the connection through the writings and buildings of both architects as they look to American builders who “have retained a natural feeling for large compact forms fresh and intact” (p. 9). Historians of technology will appreciate Banham calling attention to these interesting and important structures, but Banham’s primary audience is the architectural historian, for he concentrates on the aesthetics of the individual buildings rather than on what went on inside or how and why a new factory type emerged. His scrupulous attention to architectural changes brought by new construction tech­ nology belies his neglect of the industrial demands that lay behind the transformation of early-20th-century factories. The period cov­ ered (1900—1925) was a time of great change in American industry, when engineers rationalized both production and the buildings that housed it. Banham overlooks the practicality of the owners of industry and overemphasizes the role of aesthetics in the designing of factories and grain elevators. The engineering ideal—scientific production— rather than architectural aesthetics was the main force behind the transformation of the American factory. TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 317 The book is divided into three long chapters—“The Daylight Fac­ tory,” “The Grain Elevator,” and “Modernism and Americanism.” In the first two, Banham surveys dozens of industrial buildings, describ­ ing their structural and design details. “The Daylight Factory” pro­ vides a lengthy discussion of the transition from wood and masonry mill buildings to the reinforced concrete and steel-framed daylight factory. He illustrates the transition by examining several factories in Buffalo, New York, most notably the Larkin Company’s plant. The second chapter is a unique contribution to the literature for there is little written about grain elevators. Here Banham pays more attention to functional concerns; he tells us how a grain elevator works and why it looks the way it does and describes the problems ofgrain storage as well as solutions experimented with during the 19th century. In chapter three, Banham presents his thesis. Discussing the work of Gropius and Le Corbusier and looking closely at their architecture, writing, and lectures, Banham constructs a persuasive argument show­ ing the ways in which the architects drew on American industrial models. American structures (in North and South America, not just the United States) fascinated Gropius; he wrote that they “can almost bear comparison with the work of the ancient Egyptians in their over­ whelming monumental power” (p. 202). One wishes that this intrigu­ ing thesis had been drawn out, extended beyond European industrial architecture, and sprinkled through the rest of the work. One of the book’s strengths lies in the rich illustrations, including reprints from early sources such as...