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Posts tagged Paul Ranogajec
The Decorated Tenement: How Immigrant Builders and Architects Transformed the Slum in the Gilded Age
The Decorated Tenement: How Immigrant Builders and Architects Transformed the Slum in the Gilded Age

The Decorated Tenement: How Immigrant Builders and Architects Transformed the Slum in the Gilded Age

Reviewed by Paul Ranogajec

Violette’s important book opens a new chapter on urban housing in architectural history and helps the reader understand a whole set of buildings—indeed, whole swathes of the cityscapes of both New York and Boston—that are prominently visible but often overlooked. Amplifying elite architects’ and reformers’ disdain for so-called tenement “skin-builders,” architectural historians have studied in detail bourgeois design but have paid much less attention to buildings built by and for the working class. The Decorated Tenement helps to correct the historical record, treating the immigrant-built tenement commensurate with its prominence in the two cities. It is a timely book for that, even if the author does not explicitly make the connection to today’s immigration debates.

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Built Environment, Urban Planning, Housing & Realty, Poverty & Inequality, Progressive Era, ReviewsGuest UserPaul Ranogajec, Zachary J. Violette, Boston, Architecture, Tenements, Jacob Riis, Harris Fine, Peter Herter, Henry Herter, Migration, Immigration, Tenement House Act, Eldridge Street Synagogue, 375 Broome StreetComment
Suzanne Hinman's The Grandest Madison Square Garden: Art, Scandal, & Architecture in Gilded Age New York
Suzanne Hinman's The Grandest Madison Square Garden: Art, Scandal, & Architecture in Gilded Age New York

Suzanne Hinman's The Grandest Madison Square Garden: Art, Scandal, & Architecture in Gilded Age New York

Reviewed by Paul Ranogajec

Madison Square Garden was among the premier places to see and be seen in New York City at the turn of the twentieth century. As Suzanne Hinman amply documents in her new book, this palace of popular entertainment was truly a modern wonder of architecture and spectacle. Like the old Penn Station (another McKim, Mead and White building that sadly no longer graces the city’s streets) the Garden helped define the aesthetic and social landscapes of New York in the years around 1900.

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Built Environment, Gilded Age, Reviews, Urban PlanningGuest UserSuzanne Hinman, Paul Ranogajec, Stanford White, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Evelyn Nesbit, Madison Square Garden (MSG)Comment