Technology American urban construction at the turn of 19th–20th centuries caused great interest of specialists all over the world. Urban infrastructure development required a different approach to city development. All this prompted the Russian architects to study the information on technical innovations in Western Europe and the United States. The article deals with the study of the "American style" in architecture Russian architects of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
visual communication, national cultural heritage, intergenerational dialogue, cross-cultural communication
In a long digression on architecture in one of the 1873 issues of his Diary of a Writer, Fedor Dostoevskii made the following sardonic comment on contemporary Petersburg: "And here, at last, is the architecture of the modern, enormous hotel-efficiency, Americanism, hundreds of rooms, an enormous industrial enterprise: right away you see that we too have got railways and have suddenly discovered that we ourselves are efficient people". Here, as in so many other areas, the great writer noted the salient features of an issue that would be much pursued by specialists and professionals, for the terms enormous and efficient define just the qualities that Russian observers valued in American architecture. In their comments on European architecture of the same period, Russians showed an awareness of nuance and style, and they mentioned the "right" names from the perspective of architectural history. Yet, in the case of America, Russian journals made an isolated reference to Henry Hobson Richardson or Daniel Burnham and John Root but otherwise exhibited an indifference to the specifics of a developing American architectural idiom. What they saw was enormous, colossal, incredible, and efficient.
The Russian architectural press, which conveyed these accounts of American architecture to its Russian audience, was essentially a product of the second half of the nineteenth century; and its development was directly related to the professionalization of Russian architects. The beginnings of cohesion in the profession date from the 1860s, when architects in both St. Petersburg and Moscow realized the need to create an association that would rise above narrow, commercial interests to address problems confronting architects as a group. To be sure, commercialism provided the major financial impetus for a professional organization, as the economic forces of nascent capitalism led to the replacement of the older patronage system of architectural commission with a more competitive, contractual approach to the business of building; but in order to promote the interests of professional development and to regulate the practice of architecture, a form of organization that transcended the individual architect or architectural firm was essential.
1. Fedor M. Dostoevskji, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v tridtsati tomakh. Leningrad, Nauka, 1980, 21:106.
2. For a history of the foundation of the Moscow Architectural Society, see Iu. S. laralov, ed., 100 let obshchestvennykh arkhitekturnykh organizatsii V SSSR, 1867-1967 (Moscow: Soiuz arkhitektorov, 1967), 6-11.
3. Iaralov, ed., 100 let, 12.
4. The complicated publishing history of Zodchii and its supplement Nedelia stroitelia is presented in Iaralov, ed., 100 let, 103-4.
5. Zodchii, 1872, no.3:46.
6. Zodchii, 1873, no. 9:110, based on material taken from Birzhevye Vedornosti.
7. Zodchii, 1873, no. 9:107-8.
8. Zodchii, 1873, no. 7-8:94.
9. See Zodchii, 1876, no. 7:85, based on material from Amencan Architect aud Building News.
10. Zodchii, 1876, no. 11-12:120.
11. Zodchii, 1877, no. 3:29-30.
12. A small group of professors and students from Moscow´s Higher Technical School visited the United States in connection with the school´s exhibit at the Philadelphia fair. The three students included Vladimir Shukhov, who became one of Russia´s most distinguished civil engineers. For a discussion of his stay in the United States and its relation to his work, see G. M. Kovelman, Tvorchestvo pochetnogo akademika inzhenera Vladimira Grigorevicha Shukhova (Moscow: Stroiizdat, 1961), 16-19.
13. "Eskizy amerikanskoi arkhitektury i tekhniki," Zodchii, 1877, no. 4:32-34, and no. 5-6:48-56.
14. Zodchii, 1877, no. 11-12:100.
15. Zodchii, 1877, no. 11-12:101.
16. Zodchii, 1878, no. 1:1.
17. Zodchii, 1878, no. 7:73-76.
18. Zodchii, 1878, no. 7:78.
