Looking Beyond the Icons: Midcentury Architecture, Landscape, and Urbanism

Renowned for his extensive work in architectural history and historic preservation as an educator, scholar, activist, and public lecturer, Richard Longstreth is one of the most important architectural preservationists of the recent past. Looking beyond the Icons offers a generous and diverse selection of his writings over the past twenty-five years. The author explores a variety of topics related to midcentury (ca. 1945-70) preservation efforts, including practical, intellectual, and psychological dilemmas associated with preserving the recent past, preservation-related deficiencies in the urban planning process, and preservation of specific types of buildings. This collection offers a new understanding of the richness and variety of mid-twentieth-century U.S. architecture, landscape, and urbanism, and provides a detailed analysis of both the imperatives for and the challenges involved in preserving this legacy.

Richard Longstreth is Professor of American Studies and Director of the Graduate Program in Historic Preservation at George Washington University. He is currently president of the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy and is the author, most recently, of The American Department Store Transformed, 1920-1960 and the editor of Frank Lloyd Wright: Preservation, Design, and Adding to Iconic Buildings (Virginia).