Description
The Ada Louise Huxtable papers contain the writing and research of the
outspoken architecture critic and ardent advocate of the contemporary preservation movement. Huxtable wrote 11 books and worked
as a dedicated
architecture critic at the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. This collection is comprised of correspondence, typescripts,
photographs,
awards and research files spanning her career as a writer and one of the most important voices in the field of architectural
criticism during the
second half of the twentieth century.
Background
Ada Louise Huxtable (née Landman, 1921-2013) was considered the most important voice in architectural criticism over the last
50 years. Born and
raised in New York City, she graduated from Hunter College in 1941 and subsequently studied architectural history at New York
University's Institute
of Fine Arts. Ada Louise married the industrial designer L. Garth Huxtable in 1942. Because of their related interests, the
couple frequently
collaborated throughout their marriage. Together they worked on the design of tableware and serving pieces for New York's
Four Seasons restaurant,
and Garth's influence was also evident in her sporadic writing about the field of industrial design and through the numerous
photographs he took to
illustrate her writing. In 1946 Huxtable was hired by Philip Johnson to work as an assistant curator in the Department of
Architecture and Design at
the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). She left MoMA in 1950 upon receiving a Fulbright Scholarship which provided her the opportunity
to travel to Italy
and research Italian architecture and engineering. She also received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1958 to support her research
on the structural and
design advances of American architecture. While Huxtable wrote freelance articles during the 1950s for several journals including
Arts Digest, Progressive Architecture and the New York Times
Sunday Magazine, her writing career was truly established with the publication of her first book based on her Fulbright research, Pier Luigi Nervi (1960). The New York Times hired Huxtable to write about architecture
full time in 1963 when their art critic Aline Bernstein, the wife of Eero Saarinen, felt that she could no longer cover architecture
without a
conflict of interest. These unique circumstances placed Huxtable as the first ever dedicated architecture critic for an established
daily
newspaper.
Extent
239.5 Linear Feet
(433 boxes, 27 flatfile folders. Computer media 17.151 GB [5,533 files])
Restrictions
Contact Library Reproductions and
Permissions.
Availability
Open for use by qualified researchers. Audio visual materials and digital files are unavailable until reformatted.