Monday / September 28, 2015 / 5:30 PM - 7:00 PM
Inventing the American House: Howard Van Doren Shaw, Architect
AIA Chicago, 35 East Wacker Drive, #250
Howard Van Doren Shaw, FAIA (1869-1926) was one of the best-known architects of his generation. In 1926, the year of his untimely death, Shaw was awarded the Gold Medal of the AIA. In spite of his reputation, Shaw was dismissed by 20th century historians, and today his work is little known outside the Chicago area. Stuart Cohen, FAIA (Stuart Cohen & Julie Hacker Architects) reassesses the importance of Shaw’s work in his new book, Inventing the American House: Howard Van Doren Shaw (Monacelli Press, 2015). Stuart’s lecture will reconsider Shaw’s work in the context of 20th century ideas of modernity.
Shaw’s diverse work includes Fourth Presbyterian Church on North Michigan Avenue and Ragdale, Shaw’s country home in Lake Forest, now a non-profit artists community. His masterpiece, Market Square in Lake Forest (1916), was lauded for its design as both a unique town green and the first American shopping center designed for automobiles.
His residential work frequently appeared in Town & Country, The House Beautiful, and The Architectural Record whose editor Herbert Croly wrote in 1913, “In the first place Mr. Shaw is extraordinarily popular…These houses are charming and inviting to a degree rarely exceeded in American domestic architecture - a fact which justifies Mr. Shaw’s success as well as accounts for it.”
Copies of the book will be available for purchase and signing by the author. Refreshments provided by SAH Chicago and AIA Chicago.
