author
Russell Sturgis
1836–1909
An architect, critic, and energetic champion of the arts, he helped shape how Americans talked about buildings as much as how they designed them. He was also among the founders of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, linking his name to one of the country’s great cultural institutions.
1 Audiobook
How to judge architecture: a popular guide to the appreciation of buildings
by Russell Sturgis
About the author
Born in Baltimore County, Maryland, on October 16, 1836, he studied at the Free Academy in New York and trained in architecture with Leopold Eidlitz before continuing his studies in Munich. Although he practiced as an architect and designed notable buildings, including work for Yale, he became especially well known as a writer and critic on art and architecture.
His career ranged across design, scholarship, and public culture. He contributed widely to dictionaries, encyclopedias, and periodicals, edited the major reference work A Dictionary of Architecture and Building, and lectured on art and design. He is also remembered as one of the founders of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1870.
He died in New York on February 11, 1909. Today, he is often valued not only for the buildings he designed, but for helping make architecture more understandable to a broad reading audience.