William H. Jordy (1917 – 10 August 1997) was a leading American architectural historian. At the time of his death, Jordy was Henry Ledyard Goddard Professor Emeritus of Art History at Brown University, where he taught for many years.
Jordy received his Ph.D. at Yale University in 1948. He joined the Yale faculty that year and remained until 1955, when he joined the Department of Art History at Brown, and began the long teaching career for which he is famous.
His books include two volumes of the five-volume American Buildings and Their Architects series and Buildings of Rhode Island (published posthumously) in the Society of Architectural HistoriansBuildings of the United States series. He contributed occasionally to the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians and wrote regularly on architectural subjects for The New Criterion.
Books
Jordy, William H., American Buildings and Their Architects: Progressive and Academic Ideals at the Turn of the Twentieth Century, Doubleday, Garden City NY 1972
Jordy, William H., American Buildings and Their Architects: The Impact of European Modernism in the Mid-twentieth Century, Doubleday, Garden City NY 1972
Jordy, William H., and Monkhouse, Christopher P., Buildings on Paper: Rhode Island Architectural Drawings, 1825-1945, Bell Gallery, List Art Center, Brown University, Providence RI 1982
Jordy, William H., Henry Adams: Scientific Historian, Yale University Press, New Haven 1952
Jordy, William H., "Symbolic essence" and Other Writings on Modern Architecture and American Culture (Mardges Bacon, editor, for the Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture), Yale University Press, New Haven 2005, ISBN0-300-09448-5
References
Pierson, William H., Jr., "William Henry Jordy: A Reflection," Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians v. 56, n. 4 (1997), pages 412-413, 538.
