Henry-Russell Hitchcock (June 3, 1903 – February 19, 1987) was an Americanarchitectural historian, and for many years a professor atSmith College andNew York University. His writings helped to define the characteristics ofmodernist architecture.

Henry-Russell Hitchcock Jr. was born inBoston,Massachusetts, on June 3, 1903, the son of Dr. Henry Russell Hitchcock, a physician and graduate of theHarvard Medical School, class of 1890, and his wife, Alice Davis. He was educated atMiddlesex School andHarvard University, receiving hisA.B. in 1924 and hisM.A. in 1927.

Hitchcock taught at a number of colleges and universities, but primarily atSmith College, where he was also Director of the Smith College Museum of Art from 1949 to 1955. In 1968, he moved to New York City, where he taught at the Institute of Fine Arts atNew York University.

He also taught atWesleyan University,MIT,Yale University,Harvard University, and theUniversity of Cambridge.^[1][2]

While teaching at Wesleyan University in the 1930s, Hitchcock curated an exhibition ofBerenice Abbott's photographs of urban vernacular American architecture.

Over the course of Hitchcock's career, he wrote more than a dozen books on architecture. HisArchitecture: Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (1958) is an exhaustive study of more than 150 years of architecture that was widely used as a textbook in architectural history courses from the 1960s to the 1980s, and is still a useful reference today.

In the early 1930s, at the request ofAlfred Barr, the director of theMuseum of Modern Art, Hitchcock collaborated withPhilip Johnson andLewis Mumford on the museum's exhibition "Modern Architecture: International Exhibition" (1932). The exhibition introduced the EuropeanInternational Style of architecture to an American audience. Hitchcock and Johnson co-authored the bookThe International Style: Architecture Since 1922, published simultaneously with the exhibit.

Four years later Hitchcock's book,The Architecture of H. H. Richardson and His Times (1936) brought the career of American architectHenry Hobson Richardson out of obscurity while also arguing that the distant roots of European Modernism were actually to be found in the United States. Hitchcock'sIn the Nature of Materials (1942) continued to emphasize the American roots of Modern architecture, in this case by focusing on the career ofFrank Lloyd Wright.

In 1948, Hitchcock wrote an essay for the exhibition cataloguePainting toward architecture: The Miller Company Collection of Abstract Art.^[3]

Hitchcock focused primarily on the formal aspects of design and he regarded the individual architect as the chief determinant in architectural history. Hitchcock's work tended to diminish the role of broader social forces. He has sometimes been criticized for this "great man" or "genealogical" approach.

Hitchcock was a founding member of theVictorian Society in Great Britain and an early president of theVictorian Society in America. One of that Society's book awards is the Henry-Russell Hitchcock Award. TheAlice Davis Hitchcock Award, awarded by both theSociety of Architectural Historians and the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain (SAHGB),^[4] is named after Hitchcock's mother.

According to the historian Douglass Shand-Tucci, Hitchcock was gay, and was one of several gay men active in the arts and humanities to emerge fromHarvard University.^[5]

Hitchcock died ofcancer on February 19, 1987, inNew York City, at age 83.

• Hitchcock, Henry Russell,American Architectural Books: A List of Books, Portfolios, and Pamphlets on Architecture and Related Subjects published in America before 1895, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis 1962
• Hitchcock, Henry-Russell,Architecture: Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Penguin Books, Baltimore 1958; second ed. 1963; fourth ed. Penguin Books, Harmondsworth England, and New York 1977,ISBN 0-14-056115-3
• Hitchcock, Henry-Russell,The Architecture of H. H. Richardson and His Times, Museum of Modern Art, New York 1936; second ed. Archon Books, Hampden CT 1961; MIT Press, Cambridge MA 1966 [paperback]
• Hitchcock, Henry-Russell,Boston Architecture, 1637-1954; including Other Communities within Easy Driving Distance, Reinhold Pub. Corp., New York 1954.
• Hitchcock, Henry Russell, and Drexler, Arthur, editors,Built in USA: Post-war Architecture, Museum of Modern Art (Simon & Schuster), New York 1952.
• Hitchcock, Henry Russell,Early Victorian architecture in Britain, Yale University Press, New Haven 1954
• Hitchcock, Henry-Russell,German Renaissance Architecture, Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ 1981,ISBN 0-691-03959-3
• Hitchcock, Henry-Russell,In the Nature of Materials, 1887-1941: The Buildings of Frank Lloyd Wright, Duell, Sloan and Pearce, New York 1942; Da Capo Press, New York 1975 (paperback),ISBN 0-306-80019-5
• Hitchcock, Henry-Russell, and Johnson, Philip C.,The International Style: Architecture since 1922, W. W. Norton & Company, New York 1932, second edition 1966; reprint of 1932 edition 1996,ISBN 0-393-03651-0
• Hitchcock, Henry Russell,Latin American Architecture since 1945, Museum of Modern Art, New York 1955
• Hitchcock, Henry-Russell,Modern Architecture in England, Museum of Modern Art, New York 1937
• Hitchcock, Henry-Russell,Modern Architecture: Romanticism and Reintegration, Payson & Clarke Ltd., New York 1929
• Hitchcock, Henry-Russell, and others,The Rise of an American Architecture, Praeger in association with theMetropolitan Museum of Art, New York 1970.
• Hitchcock, Henry-Russell,Rococo Architecture in Southern Germany, Phaidon, London 1968,ISBN 0-7148-1339-7
• Hitchcock, Henry-Russell, and Seale, William,Temples of Democracy: The State Capitols of the U.S.A., Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York 1976,ISBN 0-15-188536-2

• "Architecture Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries". 1958 edition at archive.org
• Book prologue that explores the nature of Hitchcock's and Johnson's collaboration and travels in Europe
• Society of Architectural Historians Publication Awards
• Victorian Society in America Book Awards
• Henry-Russell Hitchcock papers, circa 1500-1970.Held by the Department of Drawings & ArchivesArchived 2019-06-23 at theWayback Machine,Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University.

• 1903 births
• 1987 deaths
• American art historians
• American architecture writers
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• Deaths from cancer in New York (state)
• Harvard University alumni
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• Smith College faculty
• Wesleyan University faculty
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• LGBTQ people from Massachusetts
• American LGBTQ writers
• 20th-century American historians
• Middlesex School alumni
• 20th-century American male writers
• American male non-fiction writers
• 20th-century American LGBTQ people

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