Volume 45, Number 14 · September 24, 1998
The Way to Grant's Tomb
By Joseph Connors
The Dancing Column: On Order in Architecture
by Joseph Rykwert
MIT Press, 598 pp., $35.00 (paper)
It is difficult to walk more than a few blocks in any older American city and not come across examples of the Greek architectural orders. They are easy to distinguish. The Doric, the earliest historically, appeared in the Peloponnese relatively suddenly in the mid-seventh century BC. It is a strong and stately order with few surface frills. The columns stand solidly on their platforms with no base. They are relatively short; the surface is incised with shallow vertical grooves; the shafts tend to taper markedly toward the top. The Doric capital stops the vertical thrust of the column like a saucer placed on top of a cigar. Grant's Tomb in upper Manhattan gives a textbook example of this soldierly style.
Review, 3852 words
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