This is an attempt to evaluate architecture in America in terms of our
civilization. I have not sought to criticize particular buildings or
tendencies: I have tried, rather, by approaching our modern problems
from their historic side, to criticize the forces that from one age
to another have conditioned our architecture, and altered its forms.
Lest my purpose be misunderstood, I have left out illustrations; for
a building is not merely a sight; it is an experience: and one who
knows architecture only by photographs does not know it at all. If the
omission of pictures lead the reader occasionally to break away from
the orbit of his daily walks, and examine our development in cities and
buildings for himself, it will be sufficiently justified.
This book would not have been put together but for the persistent
encouragement and kindly interest of Mr. Albert Jay Nock: and it was
in The Freeman that the first five chapters, in somewhat briefer form,
appeared. My hearty thanks are likewise due to Mr. Charles Harris
Whitaker, whose private help and whose admirable public work as editor
of the Journal of the American Institute of Architects have both laid
me under a heavy obligation. My intellectual debt to Messrs. Victor
Branford and Patrick Geddes will be apparent to those who have followed
their work. In the concluding chapters I have been stimulated and
guided in many places by unpublished reports and memoranda written
by Mr. Clarence Stein, Mr. Benton Mackaye, and Mr. Henry Wright.
My friendly thanks are also due to Mr. James Henderson, Mr. Geroid
Tanquary Robinson, and Miss Sophia Wittenberg.
Besides the essays in The Freeman, some of the material in Sticks
and Stones has appeared in the Journal of the American Institute of
Architects (Chapter Six), in The New Republic, and in The American
Mercury. I thank the editors for their permission to draw on these
articles.