The Papers of Benjamin Henry Latrobe. Series II: The Architectural and Engineering Drawings. Vol. 2: The Architectural Drawings of Benjamin Henry Latrobe. Pts. 1 and 2 ed. by Jeffrey A. Cohen and Charles E. Brownell

Abstract

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 629 would have over the region’s ecological destiny,” Steinberg writes. “Call it a stream and private landowners [corporations like Gulf, Texaco, Amerada, and others] would experience a windfall” (p. 60). The protracted legal struggle was fought over whether Grand—Six Mile Lake was a lake or a stream. The problem was, as Steinberg wryly observed, that “[n]one of the meanings given the words lake and stream adequately represented the body of water in question” (p. 68). Touche. The essence of this book is captured in this paradox: real estate isn’t. Writing at thejuncture ofcritical legal theory and environmen­ tal history, Steinberg ushers us into a labyrinthine world devoid of rational gravity. It is all reminiscent of the widow Winchester, who, believing she would die when her mansion near SanJose, California, was completed, continued adding room upon room, staircase upon staircase, all going nowhere. Theodore Steinberg has written a book both scholarly and farcical about private property as shibboleth. I dare say Erasmus himselfwould have applauded Steinberg’s aplomb. Michael Black Mr. Black rents airspace somewhere over San Francisco, California. He is coeditor (with Frank Fischer) ofa recent anthology entitled GreeningEnvironmentalPolicy: The Politics ofa SustainableFuture (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995), and is completing California’s Last Salmon: The Unnatural Policies ofNatural Resource Agencies (University of California Press, in press). The Papers of Benjamin Henry Latrobe. Series II: The Architectural and EngineeringDrawings. Vol. 2: The ArchitecturalDrawings ofBenjamin Henry Latrobe. Pts. 1 and 2. Edited byJeffreyA. Cohen and Charles E. Brownell. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1994. xxx+326 pp. and xii+327-750 pp; index. $125.00. These two books (denominated “parts” ofone volume) complete the first scholarly edition devoted to the remarkably versatile Benja­ min Henry Latrobe (1764-1820), who claimed for himself, in his own lifetime, the title of “father” to the architectural profession in the United States (p. 12). Architectural historians in this country, still somewhat under the spell of the great man approach to history, have tended to accept his claim uncritically, the effect ofwhich, iron­ ically, has been to minimize the difficulty ofhis achievements as well as to foreshorten the humbling ground of context. Latrobe had the benefit of advanced training in England—under the architect S. P. Cockerell and the engineer John Smeaton—but he had suffered both professional and personal disappointments there before arriv­ ing in Norfolk, Va., in early 1796. The preeminence he attained in his fields in America during two and one-half decades of exacting, poorly paid, often spiritually depleting work was earned the hard way. Others from Britain and France, with comparable talent and professional training, made brief appearances at important con­ 630 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE struction sites in America, but either did not stay or failed to rise to national prominence. They lacked Latrobe’s ambition and determi­ nation, his commitment to science, his ability to engineer—and were either unable or unwilling to adjust their European training to the more demanding, if less structured and sophisticated, eco­ nomic and cultural environment of the new republic. In the end Latrobe’s principal rivals would be his own students. The Architectural Drawings, much like the previous volume in the Latrobe drawings series (Darwin Stapleton, ed., The Engineering Drawings ofBenjamin Henry Latrobe. [New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univer­ sity Press, 1980]), is presented in catalog format. The architectural projects define the entries, arranged more or less chronologically. This not only responds to the scholarly community’s need for a refer­ ence work and guide to the drawings but also gives due emphasis to the variety ofwork Latrobe undertook and to the role ofparticular settings and challenges, roughly as he encountered them. Threequarters of the more than 360 architectural drawings that have sur­ vived—a fraction of the original, much larger corpus—are repro­ duced (more than one-half at large scale; thirty-one images are in color). Despite the catalog format, there is a great deal of commentary in these two oversized books—too much perhaps for those who fail to find the drawings that interest them reproduced satisfactorily here (they must hope for a future CD-ROM version and...