Frank Snyder’s Building Details, originally published in 12 parts between 1906 and 1914, includes 16x21-in. detail drawings of some 70 buildings and residences, including the John Russell Pope-designed residence of Mrs. H. B. Jacobs in Newport, RI.
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In the Details
Building Details
by Frank M. Snyder
W. W. Norton & Company, New York, NY; 2007
144 pages; hardcover; 120 b&w plates with photographs; $60
ISBN: 978-0-393-73245-0
Reviewed by Will Holloway
When Frank M. Snyder’s Building Details was originally published between 1906 and 1914, it was the latest incarnation in the line of architectural how-to books dating from the late-18th century. In the introduction to the recent W. W. Norton re-issue of Building Details, Peter Pennoyer, principal of New York, NY-based Peter Pennoyer Architects, and Anne Walker, an architectural historian at the firm, detail the development of the type. The pattern books of the late-18th and early-19th centuries, notably the works of Asher Benjamin and Minard Lafever, they write, “[…] presented prototypes, abstracted from place and time, rather than actual built work. As architectural inspiration, they offered a basis for personalized interpretation because their presentation did not lend easily to a string of exact copies.”
Starting in the mid-19th century, a new generation of books with more precise representations emerged from the Beaux Arts tradition; by the late-19th century, “With the rapid introduction of new technology, building methods, and systems,” the authors write, “it became necessary for architects to integrate increasingly more technical information into their renderings. By the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, working drawings had achieved an astounding complexity and were considered the norm in more sophisticated offices.”
It was in this environment that Building Details emerged. It was published in 12 parts over an eight-year period; each part contained 10 large detail drawings – from window and door frames to mantels, stairs and cornices – of some 70 buildings and residences in eight states, mainly New York and the Northeast. “With one-hundred-twenty 16- by 21-inch plates of details and photographs of civic buildings, banks, churches, clubs, and houses designed by some of the of the country’s leading architects, including McKim, Mead & White, John Russell Pope, Grosvenor Atterbury, and Cram, Goodhue & Ferguson,” write Pennoyer and Walker, “Building Details was one of the first of many books to use examples of built work to demonstrate and encourage proper construction.”
Snyder was a graduate of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and a little known architect from Pelham, NY, who had worked in the offices of McKim, Mead & White, John Russell Pope and Cram Goodhue & Ferguson. Along with detail drawings of such notable public buildings as McKim, Mead & White’s University Club and Knickerbocker Trust Company building in New York City and Symphony Hall in Boston, Cass Gilbert’s United States Customs House in New York City, and Ackerman & Ross’ Union County Court House in Elizabeth, NJ, Snyder’s impressive collection includes a wide variety of details from several lesser-known residences. The residence of Miss Dunning in Briarcliff Manor, NY, for instance, which was designed by Harold Van Buren Magonigle (better known for the Liberty Memorial in Kansas City, MO, and the Monument to the USS Maine and the Fireman’s Memorial in New York City), features prominently; Building Details includes drawings of its dining-room mantel and fireplace as well as elevations, sections and floor plans. Other residential details include the cornice and frieze of John Russell Pope’s residence of Mrs. H. B. Jacobs in Newport, RI; the drawing-room windows of McKim, Mead & White’s residence of Charles Dana Gibson in New York City; and the bedroom mantel of Charles A. Platt’s residence of Mrs. James Roosevelt in New York City.
With the recent resurgence of interest in traditional architecture, and the countless examples of poorly executed historically inspired contemporary designs, Building Details may prove as valuable today as it was a century ago. To that end, W. W. Norton’s re-issue, in association with the Institute of Classical Architecture & Classical America, should be particularly helpful as a teaching tool for today’s traditional architects. “At the turn of the twentieth century, when the influence of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts was at its height, skill at measured drawing was the cornerstone of an architect’s education,” write Pennoyer and Walker. “Although computer rendering has become the norm in most architectural offices, many architects continue to design manually and Building Details easily conveys the magnificence of architectural drawing to those who wish to learn from it.”
To facilitate the learning process, Building Details also includes a companion DVD-ROM with TIFF files of the plates at their original 16x21-in. size, bringing to life, as Pennoyer and Walker write, “[…] remarkable buildings – both extant and lost – that continue to inform and inspire us.”
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