ARCHITECTURAL WORLD

Architect, United States David Adler, a proponent of Paris’s École des Beaux-Arts and its classical teachings of symmetry, balance, and superb proportions and an all-inclusive plan whereby a building relates to its surroundings, was one of America’s most important great-house Entries A–F 25 architects. Born to Isaac David, a prosperous second-generation wholesale clothier, and his wife, Theresa Hyman, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Adler was educated at the Lawrenceville School and Princeton University. After graduating from Princeton in 1904, Adler moved to Europe, where he traveled extensively and studied architecture at the Polytechnikum (1904–06) in Munich and at the École des Beaux-Arts (1908–11), whose curriculum included lessons in structural and technical applications. However, because Adler was interested exclusively in design, he returned to the United States without mastering these key assignments, bringing with him a collection of 500 picture postcards that documented the importa...

Buildings often outlive their function; however, their inherent durability often gives the building another life. There is a long tradition of buildings being adapted to suit new functions. Roman basilicas were converted to serve as worship spaces for the nascent Christian church. In medieval times, Roman fortifications were resurrected to form part of the fabric of the mercantile cities. It was not until the advent of ready demolition and the mechanization of the building process during the Industrial Revolution that the practice of adapting old buildings to new uses became less the norm. Following World War II, the pace of change in urban form, precipitated by technological advances and social upheavals, quickened. As buildings became obsolete and shifting land values directed economic development away from central cities, particularly in North America, large-scale demolition became commonplace. In some cases, well-built warehouses and industrial structures stood on land that had bec...