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John Beach: Oehsner's H.H. Rirhardson

I)ora Crouch: Tirbriner's Genesi.s of lioto

Arrdr.ew Rabeneck : Er ans's Fobricatiort oJ' l: irt ue

Fred Stitt: Ten Working Drawings Books

Winter l9B3 $3.50

mansion built by the Scotsman Andrew Carnegie); and his precision indiridual philosophical notionso their relationship to
influence on American architecture and decorative arts, nota- general ideas, their consequent manifestation in correctional
bly on McKim, Mead and V4rite, and the Iesser known Ogden design, and their eventual effect on prisonerso jailers, and the
Codman. next wave of reformers.
The essayists are all well-informed and entertaining, and We do not have this luxury of distance in discussing contem-
each brings out a different aspect of Adam's creative achieve- porary architecture: the huge volume of criticism, debate, and
ment, emphasizing-as the Cooper-Hewitt is prone to do-the research has yielded surprisingly little. Assertions about the
total design approach to ornament, decorative arts, and archi- productivity of office workers, for example, in relation to archi-
tecture. At the verv least, pleads Henry Hope Reed, we funeri- tectural initiatives, can seldom bear close examination.
cans, who oopersist in neglecting the ceiling, with the result that Evans takes the reader from the Newgate jail of 1750, which
it is the dead part of the room," might Iearn from Adarn to expressed the nature of imprisonment, though not through
adorn and enliven it. architecture, to Joshua Jebb's Pentonville model prison of
1840, in which architecture had become the active instrument of
Works in Architecture of Robert and James Adarn, Robert Oresko, the correctional technician. This span of time saw the advent,
editor, St. Martin's Press, 1982, lB4 pp., illus., $19.95 pb.
passage, and eventual evaporation ofthe notion that imprison-
Citv Dwellings and Countrv Houses: Robert Adam and His Style, ment could redeem prisoners.
Essavs by Elaine Evans l]ee, David Revere McFadden. Alan Tait, and
For the modern student, the book's lesson is in the story of
Henrv Hope Lee, Cooper-Hewitt Museum. Snrithsoniun Institute, 1982,
the rise and wane of faith in architecture as an instrument of
29 pp.. illus., $5.95 pb.
progress and reform. Just as lB37 (death of Sir John Soane,
accession of Queen Victoria) marks the abandonment of this
faith in favor of architecture guo architecturg-1he advent of
what I call the architectural garment busfuress-so we are now
Andrew Rabeneck: seeing the emergence from progressive functionalism into what
most hope will be the sunlight of architecture for its own sake.
THE FABRICATION OF \TIRTUE- From Newgate, the book takes us first to the mercantilism of
E]\GLISH PRISON ARCHITECTURE the Bridewell, with its intlividual ventilated cells and enforced
1750-1840 labor. kisons such as this sought to overcome the "sloth,
profaneness and debauchery" found by the great reformer
R0BIN Ii\,ANS John Howard on his momentous tours of the 1770s and '80s.
The aim was to suppress the darker aspects of hurnan inter-
Prison ffirs tlrc same sense of security to th,e conuict as does a course in the dungeon, and elirninate the risk of jail fever
royaL palace to a King's guest. They are the two buildings transmitted by the foul air. (Energy note: the 1750s found
constructed with the mostfaith, those which giae the greatest Stephen Hales installing retrofit wind-powered mechanical ex-
c:ertainty oJ'being ruhot they are. tract ventilation on a number of jails, including Newgate in
This quotation, from Jean Gen6t's The Thicf s Journal, is 1752.)
chosen bv Robin Evans to set the tone for his large and impor- lf the early impulse was away from evil, then the emergence
tant (I choose the word with care) critical study of prison of William Blackburn in the 1780s as the architectural propo-
architecture during its most fascinating period. Gen6t alludes nent of Howardian reform represents the move toward good.
directly to the substance of Evans's concern, the relationship "Good" did not mean the neglect of punishment, but the ac-
between architecture and social purpose. It is a topic that has knowledgment that the punishment was for the benefit of the
fascinated architects and architectural theorists in our own crirninal, not to protect society. In Blackburn's architecture,
century, though I know of no more informative book on the formal academic principles were often laid aside in the interests
subject than Evands history. of function; the geometrv of secluded cells became the plan
That he deals with correctional architecture of the 18th ¤lenerator, if not the generator of visible form. Evans describes
century should simply focus our interest. The prison as a this period as being "not the demise of academic architecture,
building type, with its ostensiblv unambip5uous and sinpxrlar but its selective extension into foreign territory." Great attention
function, merely provides a caricature of the general relation- was paid to ventilation, plumbing, and drainage.
ship between architecture and social ideas. The clarity of Seclusion was not an absolute article of faith for Howard.
hindsight on those ideas allows Evans to pick out with great although it was an inevitable direction to take in escaping the
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This is a somcuhat sad book, showing us that penoktgists are no nu)re HISTORI
susceptible to reform than prisoners.

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CHAPT]I- I'OR ,\
.SEI'AH,11'I,' PHIS0\. E\ER(]ISE IN TIII, \IOI)T]I, PRISO\

horrors of congregate irnprisonment. Howard visited such ad- De Tocqueville and Cra*{ordo among.others reporting on
mired examples of it as Carlo Fontana's Rome House of Correc- the Arnerican experience, believed de Haviland had solved the
tion (1704), with its 60 solitarv cells, and the enormous lllaison problems of solitude. His work paved the way for Joshua Jebb's
dc Force in Ghent. Pentonville Model Prison of 1842, with its sealed windows,
Solitary confinement and classification offered rnuch: pro- sophisticated acoustic separation, wann-air heating, and indi-
tection frorn disease and assault, and the leisure to reflect and vidual plurnbing and drainage.
repentn but also the punishing terror of solitude. It was the .Iebb's technical achievernent overcame the failures of build-
perfect instrument for a utilitarian philosophv of correctional ing perforrnance which had hitherto taken the blame for succes-
reform. The idea was seized by ser-eral, but its best rnemorial is sive failures of reform. He made the critical link between the
Jeremy Benthatn's Panopticon (1787-91), a machine for exercis- reformation of character and the technologv of the instrument
ing total power and control orer prisoners through an unseen of reform, the prison itself.
hierarchy of inspection. with the jailea god-liken at the center. Pentonville was probablv the rnost technically advanced
Bentham never built his Panopticon, although he spent manv building of its time. Defects of construction could no longer
lears trying to solve the technical problems resulting from the excuse the failure of the prison to redeem the prisoners. De-
circular single-volume geometrv of his plan. prived of its power to transfonn, the prison became what it
The synthetic refonning environment continued to be re- remains todav-a convenient method of exacting punishment
fined-by svsterns for eliminating commttnication between and deterring crime. Its architecture and its concepts of disci-
prisoners, by the substitution of the treadmill for useful labor, pline remain largelv unchanged. The loss of moral ideology as
and, in particular, bv the classification of prisoners, which fuel for architectural innovation leaves the wav clear for the
oothe
reduced the dependence on absolute solitude, and thus the risks corrections specialist, following what Evans calls uncouP-
of death or madness. Iing of architecture and reforrn."
Two American prisons, Auburn, New York, and Cherrv Hill This is a sornewhat sad book, showing us that penologists are
in Philadelphia (1829)" defined the extreme positions in the last no rnore susceptible to reform than prisoners. Yet it is a beau-
episode in the book, the Model Prison. Many died at Auburn tifully written work of great scholarship. [t should be essential
oosilent
under the regime of total solitude-later mitigated to reading for those who would learn the lessons of putting archi-
45ss6i61i6n"-and hard labor. John de Haviland's Cherrv Hill. tecture in the service of social purpose. I recommend it highly.
on the other hand, was designed for a refined classification, the
ooseparate"
system, which was in effect an enlightened solitary The Fabrication of Virtue-English Prison Architecture, l?50-1840
confinemento and included work in the cell and la,v risiting. Robin Evans, Cambridge, 1982,4@ pp., illus., $59.50.

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