Huxtable, Ada Louise [key], 1921–2013, American architecture critic, b. New York City as Ada Louise Landman, grad. Hunter College (1941). As architecture critic for the New York Times (1963–82), she was a pioneer of contemporary architectural journalism. In her articulate, authoritative, biting, and trenchant writings she followed architecture's path from modernism to postmodernism. Huxtable criticized the mindless destruction of classic buildings and the equally mindless development that often followed it, and she contributed effectively to the preservation movement. She was awarded the first Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism in 1970 and a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant in 1981. In later years she was the architecture critic of the Wall Street Journal. She also wrote 11 books; many of her finest essays are collected in On Architecture (2008).
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2024, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
See more Encyclopedia articles on: Architecture: Biographies
