author
A. D. F. (Alfred Dwight Foster) Hamlin
1855–1926
Born in Constantinople and educated in both the United States and Paris, this early architecture teacher helped shape how architectural history was taught in America. He spent decades at Columbia and wrote a widely used history of architecture that introduced generations of students to the field.
2 Audiobooks
The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, vol. 06, No. 01, January 1900 The Ten Most Beautiful Buildings in the United States.
by A. D. F. (Alfred Dwight Foster) Hamlin
A Text-Book of the History of Architecture Seventh Edition, revised
by A. D. F. (Alfred Dwight Foster) Hamlin
About the author
Born on September 5, 1855, in Constantinople, Alfred Dwight Foster Hamlin was the son of missionaries Cyrus Hamlin and Harriet Martha Hamlin. He graduated from Amherst College in 1875, then studied architecture in Boston and Paris, bringing an unusually international background to his later teaching and writing.
Hamlin became one of the formative figures in architectural education at Columbia, where he taught from the 1880s until his death and served as director of the architecture program from 1903 to 1912. He was also connected with the firm of McKim, Mead & White early in his career, but he is remembered especially as a teacher and historian who helped establish architecture as a serious academic subject in the United States.
He wrote several books on architecture, including A Text-Book of the History of Architecture, which became an influential classroom text. Hamlin died in 1926, but his long career left a lasting mark on the study of architecture and architectural history in America.