Urban Spaces and Cultural Settings

Author(s): Gwendolyn Wright

Source: Journal of Architectural Education (1984-), Vol. 41, No. 3, Urban History in the
1980s (Spring, 1988), pp. 10-14
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of the Association of Collegiate Schools of
Architecture, Inc.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1424887
Accessed: 02-06-2018 21:22 UTC

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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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structure? How does a project affect the
local economy and social order?
The interplay of historical forces is even
more the case in cities since the early
nineteenth century, as the number and
diversity of actors has become ever
greater, as the scale of cities, their econ-
omy, and their cultural complexity has
increased almost exponentially.
Strangely, for those professional urban
historians who focus on the modern era,
industrial cities have been the over-
whelmingly preferred topic, and statis- - L.M
tical analysis the prevailing methodol-
'77
ogy. In part for this reason, historians ' 4
concerned with architecture and urban
design can open up important new ter-
rains, even if they concentrate on the
more traditional building types of their
discipline-religious and civic build-
ings, domestic and commercial archi-
tecture, theaters and the like. Cities, after
all, often lure people because of these
grand or exciting attractions, as well as
their economic potential. And, of course,
the two dimensions of urban life are inti-
mately connected. As E.B. White said of
America's great metropolis, "No one
should come to New York unless he is
willing to be lucky."2
In this sense, I would argue, those his-
torians concerned with the cultural com-
plexities of life in particular cities, rather
than urban historians per se, provide an
important model. Carl Schorske's work
on Vienna and Basel shows a wide range
of cultural and political figures-includ-
ing architects like Otto Wagner and the
amateur architectural historian Jacob
Burckhardt-responding to the condi-
tions of their particular cities, even as
they experimented within separate
professional spheres.3 Richard Goldth-
waite's The Building of Renaissance
Florence makes us appreciate the great
palazzi more fully by explaining their
significance in the local economy, their
adaptation to changes in aristocratic
family life, and their impact on neigh-
borhoods and public space in the city.4
Jerrold Seigel's penetrating analysis of
Parisian bohemia situates artists and
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2 1 ts 41
1 Thomugadi (Timgad, Algeria), a Roman colonial city, was
settled by veterans of the army at the height of the empire,
ca. 100 A.D. Jean Jassus, Timgad (Algiers, 1953)
writers within their culture, rather thanstill remain tangential to their explora-
tions. This need not be the case.
mythically apart from it, yet never under-
mines creativity.5 John Merriman, in turn,
brings to life the working-class districtsEven in schools of architecture, urban
of Limoges, France's first socialist city,history can show how major buildings
stressing the role of neighborhood insti-and monuments affected the cities around
tutions and the conflicts between tradi- them: creating distinctive styles and urban
tion and modernity.6 And Thomas Bend- spaces, to be sure, and likewise signal-
er's New York Intellect shows genera- ing changes in the professional status of
tions of intellectuals responding to the artists or the political power of a gov-
city's commerce and its ethnic diversity, ernment or the economic structure of a
creating new institutions of learning and district. We thereby juxtapose the many
neighborhoods of cultural vitality.7 constituencies which affected urban
design and city life at key moments of
It is no wonder that cultural history has, the past, even though the primary focus
in recent years, come to be perhaps the is on designers and their clients. Such an
most innovative and exciting specializa- approach can encourage students, most
tion in the discipline of history. Yet, while of whom will go on to be architects,
many cultural historians allude to the planners or preservationists to consider
significance of place and formal sym- not only their own profession's history,
bolism, architecture and urban design but also how their predecessors' goals
Spring 1988 JAE 41/3
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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
societies where they worked. How did
earlier architects and planners (an
anachronism, of course, by which I mean
all those involved in policy decisions)
choose their references from the past?
How did they respond to the pressures
of clients and public groups? How did
they affect cities, knowingly and
unknowingly? What led them to expand
their formal and social horizons to look
at problems in new ways? The con-
straints of modern practice do not seem
unduly limiting from such a perspective.
Urban history must, of course, encom-
pass a repertoire of forms and spaces,
just as architectural history must cover
certain key monuments. But the field
should involve techniques for analysis,
rather than simply a Sweet's Catalog of
great spaces one can replicate. Today's
design professionals have to see history
as more than a canon of precedents or
a chronicle of progress. It is a complex
and ongoing enterprise, always raising
new questions and a multiplicity of alter-
native images about the past and the
present.
All of us concerned with cities in the past
and the present should take into account
"ordinary" as well as "good" architec-
ture, "boring" as well as grand spaces,
"muddled" as well as elegant designs.
Unplanned settings, rather than care-
fully planned urban design, make up most
parts of most cities, so we must think how
such areas work-whether the goal is
understanding their form in the past or
intervening in the present. There is sim-
ply no way to do this without taking the
cultural domain into account. For exam-
ple, the significance of the grid varied
considerably, as did its proportions and
its focus, when it was used by Greek or
Roman colonists, by Spanish imperial-
ists, or by American surveyors. (Figs. 1-
3) The Piazza San Marco and the Wash-
ington Mall have evolved over time, in
part shaped by aesthetic concerns, in
part to function as spaces for political
Spring 1988 JAE 41/3
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2 Cholula (Mexico), as represented in a drawing of 1580,
shows the design principles recently codified as the Laws of
the Indies, especially in the public buildings facing the
arcaded plaza. Leonardo Benevolo, Storia dell'architettura
del Rinascimento (Bari, 1973)
ritual. Less stately settings as well-for
example European Jewish ghettos,
American commercial strips, or ethnic
neighborhoods in any large city-should
also be studied as cultural artifacts with
both formal and social elements.
No Zeitgeist rule can describe how cul-
ture and aesthetics interrelate in all cir-
cumstances, not even for one time and
place. Yet these two analytical poles are
always at work together in urban his-
tory. In fact, even a "purely formal"
solution, such as Cataneo's ideal towns
of the Renaissance or L'Enfant's Wash-
ington, D.C., suggests the unusual power
and abstraction of architect and client in
that time and place. And, once the space
began to be used, the cultural realm of
course further complicates our full
understanding of the forms.
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The urban historian must, therefore, show
how certain kinds of buildings and spaces
came to be built and to gain preemin-
ence, while others remained thwarted
projects or secret personal visions. This,
not incidentally, entails considering which
forms gained favor among architects and
which-whether the same or different-
appealed to more speculative builders
and clients. For too long we have studied
the history of what architects drew as if
it were necessarily the history of how
cities looked. We must also consider how
the more familiar prototypes relate to
less well-known variations or even anti-
thetical images. After all, the influence
of a form or style by no means simply
filters down through the social structure,
nor is it mere backwardness not to copy
what is fashionable. Formal choices and
cultural priorities were at stake when
provincial cities like Boston or Edin-
 !i .~'...i !i ,?
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* ^ i- ... ..: .... ... e
* 1 . \~ C i . ".?
-~~~~~~~~~.,* . i we1 -.. J-
a. .^ ."^ ?"^ ' 6 ' ~ v ""

...-.* \ '.. I ^- *. " t ,. The challenge of doing urban history

today lies in being able to conceive of
one's work as a synthesis, not just of
....* ... _??. .;^ . '-< . '.J , priorities and even disciplinary tech-
niques, but also of experiences in and
visions of a place. To speak of synthesis
i ; '' I'-S3i i ' ] ' " A J ..' is not to call for a sweeping portrait of
....................... .:'.. ~S i "_J supposedly quintessential elements of
iJ812 i ii urban life or form, but rather to find
........... T . TS comprehensible ways to juxtapose the
' - I ...
....... :'~:.....
J11...._jjj..j
- J2 : 1-J many different approaches to and real-
....... .... .... .. j..4 .. - - --,----- ities of the city. I stress comprehensible
j__ .i J L AJJI_ J ji because there is always the risk of sim-
*- * -- * J' ! _ i ply reeling off facts, stories, and images.
This profusion can obviously be over-
whelming, and a chaos of pictures,
.. -_.,
..-.. -j.q-q:.
.. ...... ~ L x I !~ s ~, L, J 2 events, and data-while resonant with
, ! - J. .. _ j J j_ one definition of urban life-has little
intellectual value.

The urban historian must therefore have

'. ..........-......-* . .........'- ~ . ............/:: ......... J .; .......i. ........ ..... . a clear goal. In the most general terms,
this first entails choosing whether one is
* ^ i w.... .. .....-... ......J...J
............ ........
J.............. seeking to explain the forms more clearly
and fully, or to understand the society
through this new prism. Michael Bax-
andall, who provided one of the most
compelling examples of cultural history
3 Chicago, Illinois, expanding along the lake and river in in his work on Renaissance painting,
1855, had only recently become a commercial entrepot for rightly stresses that one must not simpl-
the Midwest. Harold M. Mayer and Richard C. Wade, Chi- istically attempt to fuse art and society.9
cago: Growth of a Metropolis (Chicago, 1969)
Yet culture, he continues, does not falsely
modulate between the two, so long as it
burgh introduced variations on the pat- new directions without generating is taken in its classical sense, as the skills,
terns of London. Contemporary region- architectural or urbanistic testaments to values, knowledge, and means of
that change. The shifting influences and expression within a society. It is in this
hepigshp : ...,.t: h.-e.......:'~....." .... ..............r, , .... no hr ....s responses between these two kinds of sense that urban historians must venture
This approach does not mean that social reality, the formal and the social, is the into the cultural domain, seeking the
considerations should usurp the role of very essence of urban history. meanings of a variety of forms and form-
formal analysis, but rather that the two givers.
must be integrated. Neither society nor This analytic process obviously draws
form is the passive mirror of the other- from several disciplines, and even sev- The goal of synthesis in urban history is,
which should make us suspicious of eral kinds of history: cultural, social, therefore, that of bringing together the
overly simplistic, static notions of archi- economic, political and intellectual, as myriad experiences, intentions, and set-
tecture either "reflecting" social forces well as architectural. Urban history tings of urban places at a given time-
or "representing" a fixed power rela- should ideally juxtapose many perspec- without producing a cacophony that is
tionship to all observers. Both architec- tives about how cities function and what too loud to appreciate. In formal terms,
ture and society are formative, each makes certain places effective, whether one must consider both monuments and
helping shape the other, and nowhere is in formal, functional, or cultural terms. the spaces around them, the ordinary
this more true than in any kind of urban Only in this way is it possible to take buildings and the pattern of streets and
building. There is no standard formula account of the many different "filters"- open space, the effect of this composite
for connecting the two realms of inquiry; to use Carlo Ginzburg's phrase-through in the past and changes made over time.
sometimes architecture does respond which different groups of people see and One must also distill the distinctive voices
primarily to the aesthetic concerns of the use the city.8 of architects and clients, of elite and
profession, while society can move in ordinary citizens. Focusing on the par-

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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
power to intervene. Most architects see the city itself was an embattled arena
a streetscape in terms of its individual where each of these groups was trying
buildings, while builders see it as a unit, to seize the right to define what good
of the Forms of Life, Thought and Art in France and the
Netherlands in the XlVth and XVth Centuries Edward Arnold
(London) 1924, p.1
2 White, E. B. Here Is New York Harper & Brothers (New
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
reactions to the city. By class, ethnicity,
age, and gender people relate quite dif-
ferently to parks and department stores,
for example, or to city halls and civic
monuments. Moreover, especially in the
modern world, all people experience the
architectural forms were seen, where they
were built, and how they were used.10
Understanding what people were trying
to do with architecture and urban design
at particular moments in the past is one
aspect of recovering the meanings of a
place. One must take full account of the
4 Goldthwaite, Richard The Building of Renaissance Flor-
ence Johns Hopkins University Press (Baltimore and Lon-
don) 1980
5 Seigel, Jerrold Bohemian Paris: Culture, Politics, and the
Boundaries of Bourgeois Life, 1830-1930 Viking/Elizabeth
Sifton Book (New York) 1986
6 Merriman, John The Red City: Limoges and the French
Nineteenth Century Oxford University Press (New York)
1985

city in multiple roles-for example, as
residents of a neighborhood, employees
in a certain milieu, as members of a
political faction or a religious sect. These
shifting perspectives, too, affect how they
use and relate to cities.
The recognition of such divergences is not
merely a populist stance. Indeed, it sug-
gests the necessary, if difficult, responsi-
bility of the historian to explain not only
what happened, but also what it meant at
the time and what that legacy means to
designer's aesthetic goals and the client's
symbolic intentions, no matter what their
status; one must bear in mind the con-
straints of laws, economy, tradition, and
fashion, as well as searching for inno-
vations. The various public responses to
a design and the changes or compro-
mises they elicit must be taken seriously
in their own right, rather than dismissed
as philistine efforts to undermine the
integrity of the designer. Formal analy-
sis in urban history should not be iso-
lated from such cultural issues, but nei-
7 Bender, Thomas New York Intellect: A History of Intellec-
tual Life in New York City, from 1750 to the Beginnings of
Our Own Time Alfred A. Knopf (New York) 1987
8 Ginzburg, Carlo The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos
of a Sixteenth-Century Miller (John and Anne Tedeschi,
trans.) Johns Hopkins University Press (Baltimore and Lon-
don) 1980
9 Baxandall, Michael "Art, Society, and the Bouguer Prin-
ciple," Representations 12 (Fall 1985) pp. 32-43
10 Wright, Gwendolyn Moralism and the Model Home:
Domestic Architecture and Cultural Conflict in Chicago,
1873-1913 University of Chicago Press (Chicago) 1980 and
"Architectural Practice and Social Vision in Wright's Early
Designs," in Nature in the Work of Frank Lloyd Wright
(Vincent Scully, ed.) University of Chicago Press (Chicago)
1988

us today-in both our separate identities ther should it be downplayed as inci-

and our unity as a profession or a nation. dental. Only in this way can we grasp
It is no longer sufficient to posit a historical the full implications of urban places.

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