Architectural historian Francis Morrone will discuss the career of Henry Hope Reed, with a particular focus on the 1950s and the road that led to the publication of Reed’s book, “The Golden City“—now available in a beautiful new edition, with essays by Alvin Holm and Catesby Leigh, from Monacelli Press—which was published in 1959. We will look at Reed’s collaborations with the famous landscape architect Christopher Tunnard (an arch-modernist whose views changed in the postwar years) and the architect John Barrington Bayley, among others, his involvements with the Municipal Art Society of New York and the Museum of the City of New York and his pioneering walking tours, his critical role in preserving New York’s classical architectural heritage in the years before there was a Landmarks Law, the critical reception of “The Golden City,” and more.
About Francis Morrone
Francis Morrone is an architectural historian and a writer, and the author of thirteen books, including, with Henry Hope Reed, The New York Public Library: The Architecture and Decoration of the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building (W.W. Norton, 2011). He is the recipient of the Arthur Ross Award of the Institute of Classical Architecture and Art, of the Landmarks Lion Award of the Historic Districts Council of New York, and of New York University’s Excellence in Teaching Award, and was a longtime art and architecture critic for the New York Sun (for which he wrote a profile of Henry Hope Reed).