The Works: The Industrial Architecture of the United States (review)

Betsy Hunter Bradley has written a detailed analysis of American industrial architecture over the period from roughly 1840 to 1940, when engineers and architects focused on improving natural conditions of light and ventilation. The 1940s marked the emergence of a new type of factory, with artificial lighting and air conditioning. Bradley seeks to “explain what these manufacturing facilities are and why they look the way they do” (p. 3), certainly an ambitious goal. The result is much like a well-engineered manufacturing plant: the individual elements are well integrated, in a functional sense, to generate a coherent product in the end. Author and publisher have produced an attractive, appealing book with more than one hundred illustrations and a useful glossary of industrial architecture terms. The Works is divided into three parts. The first consists of three chapters that introduce the major components of the factory complex or “manufacturing works.” The opening chapter explains the often confusing terminology applied to factories since the mid-nineteenth century, examines the various perceptions and portrayals of manufacturing facilities, and B O O K R E V I E W S