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Christine Cipriani

@christinecipriani.bsky.social
1.2K followers 429 following 200 posts

Architecture and history / Biography of Ada Louise Huxtable forthcoming (Norton, Mar. '27) / Coauthor, CAPE COD MODERN (Metropolis)

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Christine Cipriani @christinecipriani.bsky.social · 6h
Randomly remembering my trip to Habitat 67 in 2023
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Peter Coffinman @petercoffman.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Just getting in under the wire for #StaircaseSaturday #SaturdayStairs #SaturdaySteps I walked by the Kingston Post office today, and got this nice taste of Modern geometry.
Two staircases cross diagonally behind a rectilinear grid of tall, narrow windows.
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Christine Cipriani @christinecipriani.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Steinways removed from Kennedy Center and put up for sale
alternet.org
Kennedy Center moves to sell all of its Steinway pianos
Photos show piano movers rolling massive Steinway grand pianos through the red-carpeted halls of the Kennedy Center this week.
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Sarah Archer @sarcher.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Today I learned that the Manhattan House of Detention is called “The Tombs” because its original 1838 structure on Centre Street, an Egyptian Revival building by architect John Haviland, resembled an Egyptian tomb complex:
The original Egyptian Revival-style Tombs building is shown in a photograph from 1893
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Christine Cipriani @christinecipriani.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Perfect column by @philipkennicott.bsky.social. It is truly surreal to have a book on Ada Louise Huxtable in production -- naturally including her savaging of the KC, but also its broad appeal -- and watching this stupidity unfold.
wapo.st
Column | The Kennedy Center is empty and in peril. Its community is in anguish.
The fiasco of this week’s closure reveals the truth of President Trump’s motivations — and what the arts community stands to lose.
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Christine Cipriani @christinecipriani.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Love this photo of the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève (Henri Labrouste, 1851) by Mario Basner
basnerfineart.com
Mario Basner, Saint Genevieve Library, 2021
Limited Edition of 185 total works - signed and numbered by artist.
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Barry Butler Photography @barrybutler9.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Beams at the Bean. This morning in Millennium Park in Chicago.
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Joshua J. Friedman @joshuajfriedman.com · 10/09/2026
My favorite doorknobs are the ones the New York City public schools installed at the turn of the 20th century. You can still occasionally find one on eBay!
A brass doorknob with the all-caps lettering "PUBLIC SCHOOL—CITY OF NEW YORK," surrounded by a swirling motif that looks rather like leaves.
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Matt Weiland @mattweiland.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
Coming this fall from @wwnorton.com... A stonemason's tale of conserving Canterbury Cathedral, Angkor Wat, Trevi Fountain, Obelisk of Axum, and more. "A captivating, informative journey with an expert guide."― KIRKUS "What a joy to read a craftsman so clearly in love with his craft."―Simon Jenkins
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Christine Cipriani @christinecipriani.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Here it is --
cnn.com
Trump administration threatens to demolish Kennedy Center if renovations aren’t allowed | CNN Politics
The Kennedy Center may need to be demolished and replaced with an open-air performance space if its current building cannot undergo extensive renovations, lawyers for the venue said in court papers on...
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Christine Cipriani @christinecipriani.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Friends! Friends!! WE HAVE A COVER
Book cover for The Critic: Ada Louise Huxtable and the Building of Modern America, showing a 1974 photo of Huxtable (then NYT architecture critic) against a montage of buildings and a turquoise background
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Dr. Todd Arrington @btarrington.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
180 years ago today-Aug. 10, 1846-President James K. Polk signed legislation creating the Smithsonian Institution—today the world’s largest museum, education, and research complex. The name honors British scientist James Smithson, the institution’s founding donor. Image: Smithsonian Institution.
This black and white image shows an engraving of a large building that resembles a castle. This is one of the earliest buildings of the Smithsonian Institution.
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Christine Cipriani @christinecipriani.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
Lovely remembrance of Tom Hines by Paul Makovsky. I spent a lovely afternoon w/Tom in L.A., where he gave me his signature tour of Wilshire Blvd (I drove, he talked) & told me about the time he took Ada Louise Huxtable--at her insistence--to In-N-Out Burger. www.architectmagazine.com/design/the-m...
architectmagazine.com
The man who changed how we see American modernism.
Discover the legacy of Thomas S. Hines, the architectural historian who reshaped American modernism. Read how his scholarship changed architecture.
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Ada Palmer @adapalmer.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
Reminds me of a fabulous quote from the head of Cologne cathedral, when asked whether seeing the cathedral without scaffolding was a pipe dream, she said “It’s not a pipe dream it’s a nightmare, it would mean we no longer care about maintaining it.” On monuments Scaffolding = love! ❤️
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Chicago Architecture Center @chiarchitecture.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
🧊 Icehenge could be yours! Frank Gehry's iconic front desk at the Inland Steel building is going up for auction. bit.ly/4vT7GXG 📸: Lee Bey/Sun-Times
A modern reception area with a unique desk and columns made of large, translucent, greenish crystal-like materials. White curtains are in the background, and the floor has a dark speckled pattern. There are two monitors on the desk and an office chair behind it.
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Isokon Gallery @isokongallery.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
Vienna. We got a seat easily in the tiny Loos American Bar (Adolf Loos 1908). The evening was warm and most people wanted to sit outside.
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Christine Cipriani @christinecipriani.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
Loving my new, Googie-ish Route 66 stamps. The white building is Beverly Hills City Hall.
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Christine Cipriani @christinecipriani.bsky.social · 30/05/2026
Beautiful exhibition of Mozart stuff at the Pierpont Morgan Library. First image is his old neighborhood in Vienna, near Stephansdom.
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Christine Cipriani @christinecipriani.bsky.social · 26/05/2026
This week marks TWELVE YEARS IN PRINT for The Little Regional Modernism Book That Could. Thanks to all who have bought and enjoyed -- and are still buying and enjoying -- Cape Cod Modern! 🙏
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Christine Cipriani @christinecipriani.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
The famous tulip garden of Benjamin Zander, founder and conductor of the Boston Philharmonic, at his beautiful house on Brattle St., Cambridge. (He invites randos to linger and enjoy.)
Tulips in a brilliant array of colors, rimmed by a low brick wall, fill the front garden of a white clapboard house in Cambridge, Mass.
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Otto Saumarez Smith @osaumarezsmith.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
Something jollier from Coventry: the delightful confection of Festival fru fru that is Alfred H. Gardiner’s Christ Church, Coventry (1953-8).
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Christine Cipriani @christinecipriani.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
Really feeling this (by Dwight Garner). It was depressing to page through Huxtable's archive and see dozens of reviews from papers all over the country -- *for books about architecture.*
nytimes.com
Where Have All the Book Reviews Gone?
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Christine Cipriani @christinecipriani.bsky.social · 21/04/2026
That perfect English handwriting, in this wonderful story about the rediscovery of John Keats's letters to Fanny Brawne. Still, I wish the letters were being donated to a British museum rather than auctioned off again. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/20/a...
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Christine Cipriani @christinecipriani.bsky.social · 20/04/2026
You'll see some of these gorgeous schools in my book about Ada Louise Huxtable (Winter '27), as she attended several. Many were designed by C. B. J. Snyder -- and there's also a book about him!
fordhampress.com
From Factories to Palaces - Jean Arrington
WINNER, THE VICTORIAN SOCIETY NEW YORK, 2022 BOOK AWARDHow a prolific yet little-known architect changed the face of education in New York CityAs Superintendent of School Buildings from 1891 to 1922, ...
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Barry Butler Photography @barrybutler9.bsky.social · 16/04/2026
Cherry Cherry. The blossoms in Jackson Park.
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Christine Cipriani @christinecipriani.bsky.social · 09/04/2026
A moving elegy for Toronto's McLaughlin Planetarium by @lloydalter.bsky.social: "I suspect that the planetarium experience that I loved so much is gone forever. ... It was like lying on the dock in summer... I don't think kids or adults have the patience for that today."
lloydalter.substack.com
Toronto's McLaughlin Planetarium: now losing its body as well as its soul
The planetarium experience I loved so much is gone forever, and now the building is going too.
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Philip Kennicott @philipkennicott.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
I go back to Benjamin Latrobe, Adam Smith and the founding fathers to argue that Trump is the most destructive force to hit Washington since the British burned it in 1814. www.washingtonpost.com/style/2026/0...
washingtonpost.com
Column | Trump is the biggest threat to D.C.’s architectural splendor since War of 1812
President Trump’s garish, piecemeal changes to Washington’s urban design and architecture are poised to destroy symbolism upheld for centuries.
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Christine Cipriani @christinecipriani.bsky.social · 27/03/2026
Cover of the architecture magazine Pencil Points, Sept. 1939, before the AIA convention in D.C. Some beautiful photos inside. Thanks to George Smart of U.S. Modernist for putting these online: www.usmodernist.org/PA/PP-1939-0...
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Christine Cipriani @christinecipriani.bsky.social · 24/03/2026
Love this little brick -- from the Maine birthplace of a Declaration signer -- www.historicnewengland.org/explore/coll...
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Jonathan Foyle @jonathanfoyle.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
An intensely crafted Lutyens detail at Tigbourne Court, Surrey (1899-1901)
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Christine Cipriani @christinecipriani.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
💓
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Peter Merholz @peterme.com · 17/03/2026
I have a design joke, but it's not ready yet
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Christine Cipriani @christinecipriani.bsky.social · 15/03/2026
Here it comes: "The president has mused about constructing Corinthian columns for new gov't buildings and potentially using them at the White House..." "Cook...said he was conscious of the discrepancy between the ballroom’s planned Corinthian columns and the White House mansion’s Ionic columns."
wapo.st
Appointee wants to replace White House columns with the ones Trump prefers
The head of a federal arts commission is proposing the more ornate Corinthian style for the nearly 200-year-old columns at the building’s front entrance.
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Kate North @curatorkate.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
Stamford, Lincolnshire, is jam-packed with beautiful historic buildings, but I think this has to be my favourite 😍🤩
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Jonathan Berk 🏠 @berkie1.bsky.social · 08/03/2026
those first 6pm sunset of the year vibes
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Anthony Moser @anthonymoser.com · 07/03/2026
easily one of the coolest maps i have ever seen
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Christine Cipriani @christinecipriani.bsky.social · 06/03/2026
Stairwell vignette, Yale Center for British Art, Louis Kahn, 1974
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Christine Cipriani @christinecipriani.bsky.social · 02/03/2026
Original Waldorf-Astoria, 5th and 34th (future site of Empire State Building), Henry Hardenbergh 1893, demolished 1929. Photo courtesy Library of Congress
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Christine Cipriani @christinecipriani.bsky.social · 02/03/2026
Really worth reading 👀 "The surge in construction of the large data centers... [is] emerging as another potential contributor to America’s housing shortage... selling parcels to data-center developers can be far more profitable than any other use of the land."
wsj.com
Big Tech Is Buying Up America’s Land—and Home Builders Can’t Compete
Resistance grows to more land sales in Northern Virginia. “They’d rather have homes than data,” said a former Prince William County supervisor.
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Michael Lobel @mlobelart.bsky.social · 23/02/2026
"Winter Scene from My Window," 1933, by Allan Rohan Crite, influential Boston-based African American artist & illustrator whose work is now on view in a show at Rutgers University's Zimmerli Art Museum zimmerli.rutgers.edu/art/exhibiti...
Painted snowy urban street scene with figures walking about, including a boy with a shovel
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Christine Cipriani @christinecipriani.bsky.social · 23/02/2026
Looking forward to the Raclette Olympics 🔥
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Chicago Tudor Revival AF @tudoraf.bsky.social · 20/02/2026
A little (okay, big) half-timbering treat for the weekend. 7616 Rogers Ave., ca. 1915?
Color photo of a Tudor Revival apartment building at a bit of an angle. A fence, with matching stucco💅, obscures the entrance and ground floor but you can see brown-on-white half-timbering around second and third floor sun porches, extending to gable, which has two little windows. Behind this section is the main part of the house, also front-gabled with lines of half-timbering between the roofs and one big diagonal timber extending two floors down. Another section of the building peeks out further down on left, probably for the entrance.
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Christine Cipriani @christinecipriani.bsky.social · 20/02/2026
Excellent read by @aluckmann.bsky.social on the new wave of Shaker appreciation www.archpaper.com/2026/02/shak...
Three oval Shaker baskets on a wooden Shaker table against a white clapboard building
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Alan Strauber @alanstrauber.bsky.social · 09/02/2026
I am very excited to share that I signed a publishing contract today for my forthcoming book, Grand Central Terminal and the Rise of Midtown Manhattan, with SUNY Press. Estimated release date is the end of 2028. I know my Dad is smiling down.
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Only In Boston @onlyinbos.bsky.social · 02/02/2026
It's so cold in Boston right now that packs of coyotes are able to cross the water today. 📸: @jcass35
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Christine Cipriani @christinecipriani.bsky.social · 28/01/2026
Balthazar Korab, 1959: Minoru Yamasaki, Reynolds Metals Regional Office, Southfield, Mich. www.loc.gov/resource/ds....
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Kate North @curatorkate.bsky.social · 18/01/2026
A bit of a bleak day weather-wise today, but Fountains Abbey is still beautiful and atmospheric, regardless! 😍 Here’s the lovely 12th century bridge on the left and breakwater to the right.
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Christine Cipriani @christinecipriani.bsky.social · 18/01/2026
A friend's daughter plays in the Delft university orchestra, and my friend shared this incredibly cool graphic for their next concert:
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Christine Cipriani @christinecipriani.bsky.social · 17/01/2026
Model for Museum of Modern Art, Philip L. Goodwin and Edward Durell Stone, 1939
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James Taite @jamestaite.bsky.social · 16/01/2026
“my place Saturday tapping a new cask of amontillado come on over”
wall in which an arched opening has been clearly bricked in later
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