Joseph F. Hudnut (1886–1968) was an American architect scholar and professor who was the first dean of Harvard University’s

Graduate School of Design The Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) is the graduate school of design at Harvard University, a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It offers master's and doctoral programs in architecture, landscape architecture, urban ...

. He was responsible for bringing the German modernist architects

Walter Gropius Walter Adolph Georg Gropius (18 May 1883 – 5 July 1969) was a German-American architect An architect is a person who plans, designs and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in conne ...

and

Marcel Breuer Marcel Lajos Breuer ( ; 21 May 1902 – 1 July 1981), was a Hungarian-born modernist architect and furniture designer. At the Bauhaus he designed the Wassily Chair and the Cesca Chair, which ''The New York Times'' have called some of the most im ...

to the Harvard faculty.

Education

Hudnut was born in Big Rapids,

Michigan Michigan () is a state in the Great Lakes region of the upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the 10th-largest state by population, the 11th-largest by area, and the ...

. He received an undergraduate degree from Harvard University in 1909 and a bachelor of architecture from the University of Michigan in 1912. He taught at Alabama Polytechnic Institute from 1912 to 1916, leaving to study at Columbia University, where he received a master of science in 1917. During World War I, he served with the

American Expeditionary Forces The American Expeditionary Forces (A. E. F.) was a formation of the United States Army on the Western Front of World War I. The A. E. F. was established on July 5, 1917, in France under the command of General John J. Pershing. It fought alon ...

in Italy.

Career

Hudnut opened an architectural practice in New York in 1919 but returned to academia in 1923, teaching architecture at the University of Virginia and serving as director of the university’s McIntyre School of Fine Arts. Hudnut became a professor at Columbia University’s School of Architecture in 1926 and the school’s dean in 1933. In 1936, he became dean of the newly created Graduate School of Design (GSD) at Harvard University, which brought together architecture, landscape architecture, and planning into one school; he remained dean of the GSD until retiring in 1953. Hudnut's own architectural designs were conservative, but as an educator he promoted modern design, and in the 1930s, he brought the German modernist architects Walter Gropius—founder of the

Bauhaus The Staatliches Bauhaus (), commonly known as the Bauhaus (), was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined crafts and the fine arts.Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4th edn., 200 ...

—and Marcel Breuer to the Harvard faculty. Their move to the United States led to a change in American architectural education, away from historicism to an architecture that relied on craft and modern industrial techniques.Jill Pearlman, “Inventing American Modernism: Joseph Hudnut, Walter Gropius, and the Bauhaus Legacy at Harvard” (Charlottesville, Virginia: University of Virginia Press, 2007).

Writings

Hudnut wrote several books on architecture and art, including “Modern Sculpture” (1929), “Architecture and the Spirit of Man” (1949), and “The Three Lamps of Modern Architecture” (1952), as well as many articles, and he continued to lecture on architecture after his retirement. Hudnut served on the

U.S. Commission of Fine Arts The U.S. Commission of Fine Arts (CFA) is an independent agency of the federal government of the United States, and was established in 1910. The CFA has review (but not approval) authority over the "design and aesthetics" of all construction with ...

from 1950 to 1955.

References

Anthony Alofsin, “The Struggle for Modernism: Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and City Planning at Harvard” (New York: Norton, 2002). Joseph Hudnut, Dead; Columbia and Harvard Dean Hired Bauhaus Leaders; Obituary (“New York Times,” January 17, 1968). Joseph Hudnut, Ex-Harvard Dean of Architecture; Obituary (“Washington Star”, January 17, 1968). Thomas E. Luebke, ed., “Civic Art: A Centennial History of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts” (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, 2013): Appendix B. {{DEFAULTSORT:Hudnut, Joseph 1886 births 1968 deaths Harvard University faculty Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning alumni American designers People from Big Rapids, Michigan Harvard University alumni Columbia University alumni