Review: Learning from Frank Furness: Louis Sullivan in 1873; Furness in Space: The Architect and Design Dialogues on the Late Nineteenth-Century Country House; Frank Furness: Making a Modern Library—From Gentleman’s Library to Machine for Learning; Frank Furness: Working on the Railroads; Building a Masterpiece: Frank Furness’ Factory for Art; and Face and Form: The Art and Caricature of Frank Furness

To mark the centennial of Frank Furness’s death, a number of educational and cultural institutions in and around Philadelphia collaborated on Furness 2012, a series of exhibitions, a symposium, and a website that sought to place the architect, and by extension the city, securely within the modernist narrative. A quirky individual, Furness (1839–1912) wrestled with nearly every major building type of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Banks, railroad stations, libraries, educational and medical institutions, clubhouses, places of worship, urban townhouses, and country estates all bear his unmistakable stamp. Among his American contemporaries, only H. H. Richardson equaled Furness in both range and creativity. Why is Furness not better appreciated outside his native Philadelphia? That is the question Furness 2012 attempted to answer, and, in large part, it succeeded.

Furness was born into a prominent and accomplished Philadelphia family in 1839, just as the city was transforming itself...