Monuments and Main Streets: Messages from Architecture

This is a highly original volume of architectural essays. On a base drawing of the art and craft of modern architecture, Harris Stone superimposes various tracings of streets, buildings, and the people who use them. He takes up the compelling issues in modern architecture as a movement, including the relationships of industrial technology to the tradition of handcrafted work, the design to the construction process, and monumental buildings to the architectural vernacular. Throughout he focuses on the dialectic between forward-thrusting and backward-leaning tendencies within the modern movement.

Harris Stone (1934-1995) was professor of architecture at the School of Architecture and Urban Design, University of Kansas, and coordinator of the school’s programs of architectural studies in Italy. He is the author of four Monthly Review Press books, each hand-lettered and illustrated: Workbook of an Unsuccessful Architect, Monuments and Main Streets, Hands-On, Hands-Off: Experiencing History Through Architecture, and Dispersed City of the Plains.