Having remained in oblivion for three quarters of a century, the reevaluation of Horatio Greenough’s “functionalist” theory during the mid-20th century had its due start in the 1910’s, when literary men like Van Wyck Brooks and Lewis Mumford became alarmed by the increasingly broken pace of a materialistic world, and encouraged the revival of the mid-19th century American spirit, when the harmony of spiritual and material life had been successfully achieved. Through this academic line of inquiry, Greenough’s critical efforts were thus gradually salvaged during the following two decades. Mumford would then function as a central node, spreading information that enhanced Greenough’s popularity and significance not only among foreign architects, but also among domestic scholars from other disciplines.
