THE 'AMERICAN ARCHITECT AND BUILDING NEWS' 1876-1907 (MASSACHUSETTS)

The American Architect and Building News (1876-1938) was the first successful architectural journal to be published in this country; previous efforts to found such a periodical had failed after only a few years. Published in Boston, the American Architect was most closely connected with the architectural community during its first thirty-one years when it was edited and eventually published by architects.;The American Architect's editors never used its columns to proselytize for any one architectural style. Stylistic questions were pointless, they believed, until American architects were better educated and recognized as professional practitioners. Education and professionalization were the overriding editorial concerns. Despite the instructional value of architectural criticism, however, the editors assiduously avoided it; they feared that it would only anger contributors and thereby jeopardize the journal's source of illustrations.;The editors also asserted that the American Architect was a national publication; its illustrations, however, revealed that it was basically an organ for a group of Boston and New York architects with strong ties to the editors. The journal promoted the careers of such prominent Eastern practitioners as H. H. Richardson, McKim, Mead, and White, Peabody and Stearns, and Carrere and Hastings. All styles (if not all architects) were, however, illustrated.;The American Architect was part of a larger communications revolution in late nineteenth-century architecture. Never before had so much information and so many illustrations been available. The processes used to transmit these ideas and images, especially the photographic reproduction, had a profound impact upon the design and perception of architecture.;The journal succeeded because it had the resources of one of America's foremost publishing houses behind it. Its editors, all Boston architects, were dedicated and energetic. It also enjoyed the new architectural schools' and professional societies' full support. The American Institute of Architects provided crucial backing during its early years. The journal also took advantage of new phototechnologies developed in the 1870s and became the first architectural periodical to reproduce photographs.