NEW YORK — Henry-Russell Hitchcock, considered the dean of America's architectural historians and teachers, has died of cancer at the age of 83.
Hitchcock died here Thursday.
"Of our generation, he was the leader of us all," architect Philip Johnson said. "He set a new standard of architectural scholarship and accuracy of judgment. In my opinion, the standard has yet to be equaled."
Hitchcock's books on architectural history became standard references.
"They are the armature within which many other scholars work," said Helen Searing, another architectural historian.
Hitchcock, a native of Boston, began his career as a writer while he was still a student at Harvard University, where he was part of a circle of intellectuals who advocated modernism in the arts. He was among such authors as T. S. Eliot, Virgil Thompson and Lincoln Kirstein writing for the Hound and Horn.
Before he was 30, he had written "Modern Architecture: Romanticism and Reintegration." He also wrote "The International Style" with Johnson in 1932 and helped organize an influential exhibition in 1932 on the then-radical architectural style at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
