Francis Morrone April 2025
The biggest reason I don’t send this newsletter more often than I do is that I try to wait until a full season or so of lectures, tours, etc., has been scheduled, so I can include everything in one mailing, as opposed to alerting you to each individual event as it is scheduled—and risk overwhelming your in-box. But sometimes the scheduling gods just don’t smile on me, and I wind up with a lecture series that will begin before the season’s other dates are finalized.
The series about to begin is for the 92nd Street Y, and has the rather prosaic title of “Four of the Most Important Architects of the Nineteenth Century.” Perhaps it was post-holiday malaise, but that’s got to be the most boring title ever. The lectures themselves, I promise, won’t be as boring. This is a four-parter, with one hour each on one of my four favorite architects, not just of the 19th century, but of all time: the Englishman C.R. Cockerell, the Germans Karl Friedrich Schinkel and Gottfried Semper, and the Austrian Otto Wagner. Now, none of these is a household name. It’s possible you’ve never heard of some or all of these architects. But you know their buildings! Or you have their buildings to look forward to on your travels. These architects’ buildings are not just worthy of keeping an eye open for, but worth building a whole travel itinerary around.
As I said, you probably already know some of their buildings: Cockerell designed the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, one of the greatest buildings in Britain; Schinkel designed the Altes Museum in Berlin; Semper designed the opera house (known as the Semperoper) in Dresden and the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna; and Wagner designed the Karlsplatz railway station of the Vienna Stadtbahn and the Church of St. Leopold in Steinhof, Vienna. Not only did each of these architects design very important buildings, but each designed in a highly distinctive and original style: These architects’ buildings look like the buildings of no other architects. Most of all, each of these architects’ buildings embody a kind of elemental power, in the way they exercise your eyes (none of these architects was what we’d call a minimalist) and etch themselves on your mind. That’s why I think this may be a particularly visually rich series of lectures.
The one-hour lectures are by Zoom, and take place on four successive Wednesdays at 3:00 from April 2 to April 23. The price is $156, or for members $124.80. And as always the lectures will be recorded so you can watch them at your own convenience. The order will be Cockerell, Schinkel (an architect of such importance that he deserves a four-parter of his own), Semper (my personal favorite), and Wagner.
I’ve spent most of my professional life in the 19th century. (And since I live in a 19th-century house, most of my personal life as well!) So the most important architects of the 19th century are for me very important people indeed. On the whole, my favorite architects are Michelangelo, Borromini, and Hawksmoor—supremely competent, but also a little (at times a lot) weird, and always passionate and questing. Each of these 19th-century architects is of that type. There’s another architect in that category, whom some of you have heard me say is my favorite architect: Edwin Lutyens. Several people have asked me to do a series on Edwin Lutyens. And I shall! This “Four of the Most Important Architects” series I conceived as a prelude to a four-parter devoted to Lutyens alone. That’s coming up soon, but the date has not been finalized. When it is, I will let you know—but it will be this spring.
After the Lutyens series, I will be doing a four-parter on Florence. I will use the recently reopened Vasari Corridor, and the buildings—such as the Uffizi and the Palazzo Vecchio—that it connects as a reference point in discussing aspects of Florentine history. Not least will I talk about Giorgio Vasari himself, not only a designer but often said to be the father of the field of art history. This will happen after the Lutyens series; stay tuned.
Also forthcoming, and I will supply dates and registration information as they become available, will be a number of walking tours sponsored by the Scarsdale Adult School. As many of you know, I don’t lead many walking tours these days. But I don’t lead zero. Most of these tours will be in Manhattan and will be neighborhood tours, including Morningside Heights, Riverside Drive and Riverside Park, Hudson Yards and environs, the Lower East Side, and more. Again, stay tuned.
So at the risk of overwhelming your in-box, I will let you know the details of these forthcoming lectures and tours as those details emerge.
Recommendation:
If you can get your hands on the April issue of the monthly New Criterion you will find my review of a book I highly recommend: Interwar: British Architecture 1919–1939 by Gavin Stamp (London: Profile Books, 2024, 592 pp.). This is a book on one of the most fascinating topics in architecture, by my favorite architectural writer of my lifetime. It’s also a posthumously published book: Gavin Stamp died in 2017, at the age of 69. He was at work on this book, his magnum opus, when he died, and his widow, Rosemary Hill (whose own biography of A.W.N. Pugin is the best biography of an architect I’ve ever read), put it all together for publication. Lutyens figures prominently in the book. I’d link to my piece online, but it’s behind a paywall! So if you can’t find the magazine, and want to read my review, email me and I will send you a PDF of it. Meanwhile, to get a taste of the great Gavin Stamp, you may enjoy Gavin Stamp’s Orient Express, his often hilarious 2007 television series recounting his journey by rail across Europe, available for free on YouTube.
I hope to see you soon.