Henry-Russell Hitchcock

Henry-Russell Hitchcock (1903–1987) was an American architectural historian. A long-time professor at Smith College and New York University, his writings helped to define modern architecture.

Henry-Russell Hitchcock was born in Boston and educated at Middlesex School and Harvard University, receiving his A.B. in 1924 and his M.A. in 1927.

In the early 1930s, at the request of Alfred Barr, Hitchcock collaborated with Philip Johnson (and Lewis Mumford) on "Modern Architecture: International Exhibition" at the Museum of Modern Art (1932), the exhibition that presented the new "International Style" architecture of Europe to an American audience. Hitchcock and Johnson's co-authored book The International Style: Architecture Since 1922 was published simultaneously with the MoMA exhibit.

Four years later Hitchcock's book, The Architecture of H. H. Richardson and His Times (1936) brought the career of American architect Henry 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's In the Nature of Materials (1942) continued to emphasize the American roots of Modern architecture, in this case by focusing on the career of Frank Lloyd Wright.

In 1948, Hitchcock published the essay in the book/exhibition catalogue Painting toward architecture: The Miller Company Collection of Abstract Art (Meriden, CT). The foreword was written by Alfred Barr, and the main organizer of the exhibition, and Miller Co. art director, was art collector Emily Hall Tremaine.. The exhibition originated at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford and travelled to several venues across the United States (1947-52). At the time, Hitchcock was teaching at Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT. He arranged for a second viewing, with a different selection of works, after his arrival to Smith College.

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