Montgomery Schuyler (1843–1914).

With a handful of like-minded writers, Montgomery Schuyler founded a new kind of magazine in 1891—ARCHITECTURAL RECORD—a publication that almost immediately became one of the most important and influential of its kind.

Already a journalist of some repute, but lacking any architectural training, Schuyler soon became an exponent of a progressive American esthetic and the leading architectural critic of his time. His point of view was founded on the critical premise that "the radical defect of modern architecture in general, if not of American architecture in particular, is the estrangement between architecture and building, between the poetry and the prose." He believed that architecture is building, and he aimed to repair the damage and set the record straight for the sake of the American public. Schuyler's point of view essentially became that of the magazine.

Edward R. Smith, Reference Librarian of the Avery Architectural Library at Columbia University, wrote the following for RECORD at the time of Schuyler's death:

The large and genial atmosphere of the older time has persisted in the personality of several men who are well within the field of our friendly recollection. Such [a one] was Montgomery Schuyler, of the same generation as [Russell] Sturgis, and intimately associated with him. He had the same large sympathies and the same breadth of knowledge. He had not the same incisive force, but instead a gentle and temperate quality of mind, which is perhaps quite as valuable. He was not a trained architect, as Sturgis was, but by much study and constant association with active men he became sufficiently conversant with detail. Perhaps the lack of more definite equipment made possible the broad and human point of view, which he held better than any American writer on architecture.

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The World's Fair at Chicago was the formal introduction of the new school of architects, who, trained in Paris, have done so much to bring us into sympathy with the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Most of us have now pinned our faith to classicism in some form, and swear by Piranesi: but to all this Mr. Schuyler was temperamentally antipathetic. He treats the wonderful Chicago ensemble of 1893 in a characteristic manner; generously conceding the splendid results, but pleasantly suggesting the doubt, whether, after all, the result of this vast experiment will be permanently beneficial. We have gone far enough now with the classic movement to begin to consider whether our kind friend had not some reason for his fears. The main interest in Mr. Schuyler's work centers in his large grasp of the principles and record of architecture in America. Within the limits of this article it is only possible to show the splendid sketch, which he has left, and to express the deep regret that there is no hand with sufficient cunning to raise the pen which he has laid down.

From: MONTGOMERY SCHUYLER and the HISTORY of AMERICAN ARCHITECTURE,
by Edward R. Smith
Vol. XXXVI, No. 3, September 1914, pp. 264-267.