______________________________________________________________
The June 2001 issue of the Journal of the Society of Architectural
Historians will be mailed in the first week of June.

VOLUME 60 NUMBER 2 JUNE 2001

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ARTICLES:

136 From Caesarea to Athens: Greek Revival Edinburgh and the
Question of Scottish Identity within the Unionist State
JOHN LOWREY

158 Engaging the Mind's Eye: The Use of Inscriptions in the
Architecture of Owen Jones and A.W.N. Pugin
CAROL A. HRVOL FLORES

180 Tradition and Transformation: Continuity and Ingenuity in
the Temples of Karnataka
ADAM HARDY

200 Louis Sullivan's First National Bank Building (1919-1942),
Manistique, Michigan
ROBERT TWOMBLY

EXHIBITIONS:

208 Utopia: The Search for the Ideal Society in the Western
World, The New York Public Library, New York City, 14 October 2000
-27 January 2001; REVIEWED BY NICHOLAS OLSBERG

Before and After the End of Time: Architecture and the Year 1000,
Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts,
26 August 2000-31 December 2000; REVIEWED BY PETER FERGUSSON

Art and the Empire City: New York, 1825-1861, Metropolitan Museum
of Art, New York City, 19 September 2000-7 January 2001; REVIEWED
BY EVAN CORNOG

BOOKS:

214 Regional Histories

The Bishop's Palace: Architecture and Authority in Medieval Italy,
by Maureen C. Miller; REVIEWED BY JILL CASKEY

Architecture and Art of the Deccan Sultanates, by George Michell
and Mark Zebrowski; REVIEWED BY ALKA PATEL

Modena 1598: L'invenzione di una capitale, edited by Massimo
Bulgarelli, Claudia Conforti, and Giovanna Curcio; REVIEWED
BY MARTHA POLLAK

Urban Images of the Hispanic World: 1493-1793, by Richard L.
Kagan with the collaboration of Fernando Marias; REVIEWED BY
CATHERINE ZERNER

National Romanticism and Modern Architecture in Germany and
the Scandinavian Countries, by Barbara Miller Lane; REVIEWED
BY HARRY FRANCIS MALLGRAVE

223 Architects

Philbert De l'Orme: Architecte du roi (1514-1570), by
Jean-Marie Pérouse de Montclos; REVIEWED BY ANNE-MARIE SANKOVITCH

Louie Le Vau, Mazarin's Collège, Colbert's Revenge, by
Hilary Ballon; REVIEWED BY CLAUDE MIGNOT

Cast-Iron Architecture in America: The Significance of James
Bogardus, by Margot Gayle and Carol Gayle; REVIEWED BY
DIANA S. WAITE

Sullivan's City: The Meaning of Ornament for Louis Sullivan,
by David Van Zanten; REVIEWED BY LAUREN S. WEINGARDEN

231 Government Architecture

Architects to the Nation: The Rise and Decline of the
Supervising Architect's Office, by Antoinette J. Lee;
REVIEWED BY RICHARD LONGSTRETH

The United States Capitol: Designing and Decorating a National
Icon, edited by Donald R. Kennon; REVIEWED BY PATRICK SNADON

235 Theory

Les Annotations de Guillaume Philandrier sur le De Architectura de
Vitruve, Livres I à IV, edited by Frédérique Lemerle; REVIEWED
BY INGRID D. ROWLAND

The Culture of Building, by Howard Davis; REVIEWED BY DELL UPTON

Warped Space: Art, Architecture, and Anxiety in Modern Culture,
by Anthony Vidler; REVIEWED BY JOAN OCKMAN

240 Technology

The Works: The Industrial Architecture of the United States,
by Betsy Hunter Bradley; REVIEWED BY WILLIAM LITTMANN

The Fireproof Building: Technology and Public Safety in
the Nineteenth-Century American City, by Sara E. Wermiel;
REVIEWED BY LEE GRAY

244 Abstracts

Abstracts

>From Caesarea to Athens: Greek Revival Edinburgh and the Question
of Scottish Identity within the Unionist State

In the early nineteenth century, the city of Edinburgh cultivated a
reputation as "the Athens of the North." The paper explores the
architectural aspects of this in relation to the city's sense of
its own identity. It traces the idea of Edinburgh as a "modern
Athens" back to the eighteenth century; when the connotations were
cultural, intellectual, and topographical rather than architectural.
With the emergence of the Greek revival, however, Edinburgh began
actively to construct an image of classical Greece on the hilltops
and in the streets of the expanding city. It is argued that the
Athenian identity of Edinburgh should be viewed as the culmination
of a series of developments dating back to the Act of Union between
the Scottish and English Parliaments in 1707. As a result,
Edinburgh lost its status as a capital city and struggled to
reassert itself against the stronger economy of the south.
Almost inevitably, the northern capital had to redefine itself
in relation to London, the English and British capital. The
major developments of Edinburgh in the eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries, including the New Town and the urban
proposals of Robert Adam, are interpreted in this light. As
the eighteenth century progressed, the city grew more confident
and by the early nineteenth century had settled upon its role
within the Union and within the empire, which was that of cultural
capital as a counterbalance to London, the political capital.

The architectural culmination of the process of the redefinition
of Edinburgh, however, coincided with the emergence of another
mythology of Scottish identity, as seen through the Romantic
vision of Sir Walter Scott. It implied a quite different,
indigenous architecture that later found its expression in the
Scots Baronial style. It is argued here, however, that duality
does not contradict the idea of Edinburgh as Athens, nor, more
generally, does it sit uneasily with the Scottish predilection
for Greek architecture, but rather that it encapsulates the very
essence of Scottish national identity: both proudly Scots and
British.
JOHN LOWREY
University of Edinburgh

Engaging the Mind's Eye: The Use of Inscriptions in the
Architecture of Owen Jones and A.W.N. Pugin

In attempting to create an appropriate architecture for an
industrialized world, nineteenth-century architects argued the
merits of particular materials and styles and debated principles
of ornamentation and polychromatics. Although opposed in many
aspects of theory and built form, their works share one aspect,
a new interest in the use of inscriptions as emblematic
ornamentation. The article proposes Owen Jones's publication
of the Plans, Sections, Elevations and Details of the Alhambra
(1836-1845) as one source for this attention to inscriptions and
investigates the significance of the use of text within the
decorative schemes produced by the British architects Owen Jones
(1809-1874) and A.W.N. Pugin (1812-1852). The article advances
the position that although Jones and Pugin had different motives
for using inscriptions, both display a comprehension of Islamic
ornamentation as understood and explained by Jones. New
information on the relationship between James and Pugin is
introduced and their mutual agreement and involvement in many
concerns important in nineteenth-century architecture and the
decorative arts are stressed.

In addition, the essay explores the topic of architectural
inscriptions theoretically and from a sociocultural perspective,
emphasizing the importance of epigraphs within studies of the
built environment, ornamentation, and visual culture, as a rich
resource for understanding the mentality of a particular period
and as a significant expression of the intentions informing
aesthetic schemes developed by individual patrons and designers
such as Jones and Pugin. Inscriptions are classified and defined
in the article as informative, aesthetic, or emblematic, and the
ideas and terms introduced in the essay are compared with the
findings and theoretical concepts proposed in the work of the
noted Islamicist Oleg Grabar.
CAROL A. HRVOL FLORES
Ball State University

Tradition and Transformation: Continuity and Ingenuity in the
Temples of Karnataka

A continuous tradition of Dr|vida (south Indian) temple architecture
flourished in Karnataka, southwest India, between the seventh and
thirteenth centuries. This article focuses on the eleventh-century
temples, arguing that the later forms can only be understood in
relation to the constantly developing tradition, looked at as a
whole. A formal analysis is put forward, based primarily on the
evidence of the monuments themselves. From the monuments, an
appropriate way of seeing can be deduced, allowing an understanding
of both individual temple compositions and of the way in which the
forms evolve. A clear evolutionary pattern emerges, tending toward
dynamism and fusion. Seen retrospectively, there is a sense of
inevitability, as if the inherent potential of the architectural
language is unfolding. Yet there is great inventiveness. The
article illustrates the nature of this inventiveness and discusses
its relationship to the evolutionary pattern. It concludes that
it was not fixed forms that were passed down, but a way of creating,
and that the sense of evolutionary direction this produced can be
understood in relation to the world view the temples embody.
ADAM HARDY
De Montfort University, Leicester

Louis Sullivan's First National Bank Building (1919-1922),
Manistique, Michigan

Louis Sullivan's proposals for remodeling the First National
Bank Building (1919-1922) in Manistique, Michigan, were executed
in part. They reveal his underappreciated ability to bring order
to someone else's design chaos by skillfully manipulating the
tiniest of details. They also suggest that after his partnership
with Dankmar Adler ended in 1895 he refined a vocabulary of façade
composition meant to differentiate commercial structures according
to program. When newly available archival material is fully
exploited, it will likely reveal a good deal more about this
neglected building, which was not only Sullivan's sole bank
remodeling but also proof that as his career came to a close
his ornament remained as powerful as ever.
ROBERT TWOMBLY
The City College of New York