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"The book is a significant contribution to a recent body of literature examining the more conservative elements of the Arts and Crafts movement and its close cousin, the Colonial Revival. Meister has mined a rich vein of archival material to produce a clear, readable monograph that elucidates Warren's restrained, English-inspired architecture."—Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians
The first full-length study of an important turn-of-the-century New England architect , educator, and leader of the Boston Arts and Crafts movement.
H. Langford Warren (1857–1917) was an important link in the chain of individuals who contributed to the architectural practice, theories of design, and the teaching of architectural history in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century. Best known in the Boston area, Warren first worked under the renowned architect Henry Hobson Richardson before establishing his own practice. Friends and colleagues during this period included Charles Eliot Norton, the noted art historian, and Harvard’s Charles Herbert Moore, a leading Ruskinian painter. Hired by Harvard University in 1893, Warren developed its architectural curriculum. In 1897 he helped found Boston’s Society of Arts and Crafts. At the time of his death in 1917, Warren was Dean of the School of Architecture at Harvard and President of the Society of Arts and Crafts.
At the turn of the century, Warren’s philosophical vision offered a conservative and ethnocentric perspective attractive to many Bostonians and to a significant segment of Americans nationwide. According to this view, English culture was the basis of American culture. Through his work at Harvard and in the Arts and Crafts movement, he articulated and promoted an aesthetic guided by an attachment to the past, and he encouraged his students at Harvard to revive and reinterpret English and Anglo-American models. Another characteristic of Warren’s aesthetic was "restraint," a quality generally attributed to the region’s Puritan settlers. "Restraint" also meant a rejection of both the lavish ornamentation of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris and the more original styles such as Art Nouveau that were emerging at the turn of the century.
Following the ideals of John Ruskin, William Morris, and later leaders of the English Arts and Crafts movement, Warren and his architect-colleagues promoted a close collaboration with the craftsmen who enhanced their buildings. The resulting building designs represent a significant contribution to the development of American Arts and Crafts architecture, complementing the proto-modern work of designers such as Frank Lloyd Wright. In fact, Arts and Crafts architecture in North America was extremely diverse. Meister examines the greater complexity of this architecture by exploring the eclectic historicism of Warren, a key figure in the movement that was centered in Boston.
“a delightful… book… Meister's masterful exploration of Herbert Langford Warren's career illuminates… The reader is rewarded with a comprehensible account of shifting architectural trends in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and a surprisingly fascinating discussion of a man who serves as an important component in understanding the Boston society that he served… Meister offers a well-written, scholarly and useful account… interested readers will be rewarded by discovering more than they may have expected. Meister… succeeds admirably.”—The New England Quarterly
“Maureen Meister presents a clear and concise body of new research… In addition, Meister identifies a specific style of building created and inspired by Warren… that has been largely overlooked by architectural historians to date… by consulting many rare and unpublished sources… Meister sheds new light on this little-known architect and tastemaker and proves that he was largely responsible for Boston's contribution to the arts and crafts movement… Meister has written the definitive book on H. Langford Warren.” —Winterthur Portfolio
“Maureen Meister makes the point that some architects are influential because they have a lot of clients, while others exert their influence less directly—but more widely—through students… Warren's own blend of Gothic, Georgian, and Colonial forms was perceived as the proper New England style long after his death in 1917. In serving the Society of Arts and Crafts for longer than anyone else, Warren further imprinted area taste.”—Old House Interiors
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MAUREEN MEISTER has taught art history courses at the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University, Northeasten University, and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, since 1982. In recent years, she has been lecturing on American architecture at Tufts University. She edited H. H. Richardson: The Architect, His Peers, and Their Era (1999).
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