Barry lewis is available for lectures, seminars, and other types of speaking engagement.
Please browse the list below for possible lecture topics
American Architecture of the 19th & 20th Centuries
The innovative and modernistic qualities of American styles from the Greek Revival and neo-Gothic through the Victorian Gothic, the neo-Romanesque and the Beaux-Arts.
Paris
An introduction to Right Bank Paris where 17th century planning created a truly beautiful city and 19th century planning created a truly modern one. The belief that a great city is a livable city remains. Paris is known as the City of Light- and it is. But more to the point, it is the City of Life----and that's why we all want to be there.
For a video version of the entire lecture (about 75 minutes) please click here.
An Overview of London
London through the years from the origins of the merchant City of London and the royal City of Westminster, the creation of the famous "squares" and the West End, the plans and rebuilding of the 19th century to the newest developments such as Lloyd's of London and Canary Wharf.
The English Influence on American Architecture
From Robert Adam, John Soane and John Nash (who was responsible for the original Regent Street and Regent's Park) to the work of Arts & Crafts designers such as William Butterfield, Phillip Webb and Norman Shaw.
Introduction to New York City
An overview of NY's history and development from the Dutch days to the postModern--and post-Industrial--1980's.
Antebellum New York
When Midtown was at Broadway and Grand Street and the brownstone lined streets of the "Upper East Side" lay between Union Square and 34th St.
Cast-Iron Architecture in England & France: Modernism in the Victorian Age
The development of metallic architecture (precursor to the steel and glass buildings of today) in the design of great greenhouses, railroad stations, libraries and department stores and the pursuit of a modernistic "metallic" style to express these new realities
Cast-Iron New York
Victorian "glass box" department stores and post-Civil War "metallic styled" warehouses and commercial buildings presage the modern movements of the 20th century.
New York in the Gilded Age
"Skyscrapers" downtown, grand department stores around Union Square and chateaux for the noveaux riches on Fifth Avenue while the booming city spread outward over the majestic Brooklyn Bridge and the spider-like elevated railroads.
The Victorian "Moderne": The Beginnings of Modern American Design
The modern movement in the Victorian era--from the neo-Gothic and Shingle style innovations in domestic design to the neo-Grec's and neo-Romanesque's search for a modern idiom.
Home in New York
The rowhouse, the mansion and the apartment house--or--how life for New York's middle class has never been easy.
Brooklyn and the Brooklyn Bridge
An engineering marvel that turned a small town into the fourth largest American city.
"Streetcar" Neighborhoods of New York City
The "el" trains, the subways and the neighborhoods they created from the Upper West Side to Flatbush.
Beaux-Arts New York
European tradition and American pragmatism forged a new city on a 20th century scale.
The New York Skyscraper
The evolution of the New York skyscraper from the first elevator buildings of 1870 to Rockefeller Center and the Seagram Building.
The First American Skyscrapers: Chicago & New York
The work of New York's Richard Morris Hunt and McKim, Mead & White and Chicago's Louis Sullivan and Burnham and Root.
Grand Central Terminal
Development of a city-within-a-city and its effect on 20th century New York.
The Model City: The Legacy of Olmsted and Vaux
Planning in New York: parks, parkways and planned communities from Forest Hills Gardens (Queens) and Prospect Park South (Brooklyn) to city-scaled Parkchester in the Bronx.
The Anglo-American Garden Suburb: London & New York
The English ideal of country life translated into urban communities of the 19th and early 20th centuries: from London's Regent's Park to Hampstead Garden Suburb. Here in New York, Forest Hills Gardens, Jackson Heights, Kew Gardens and Sunnyside Gardens.
The European Origins of New York Art Deco: Glasgow, Prague & Vienna 1900-1920
Glasgow's Mackintosh, the Viennese Secession, Prague's Cubism and German Expressionism provide the roots for the Art Deco of '20s and '30s America.
Art Deco New York: The 1920's Art Deco & the 1930's Art Moderne
New York's "skyscraper style", its German Expressionist origins and its New York applications--from the Chanin and Chrysler Buildings to Rockefeller Center.