Technology and Culture

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 347 agricultural depression which soon followed. In spite of many reports and investigations, the Levels remained badly drained with little hope of improvement until the new act of 1930. Almost too little space has been devoted to the period since then when the problems facing the different areas have been tackled scientifically and comprehensively. There are of course no longer the conflicting interests of navigation and drainage, but the need to keep water at different levels in the peat and silt lands has been met by electric pumping, and using the rivers as storage channels. New cutoff rivers have been dug to take the floods away, but an imaginative scheme to use the old Taunton-Bridgewater Canal as a flood-relief channel proved too expensive. The present-day policy is based on the realization that the existing channels can cope with normal flooding conditions, but that to build new channels, sluices, etc., able to contain the greatest floods would be prohibitively expensive. Therefore, the whole drainage requirements are based on a pastoral economy, partly to conserve the peat lands and stop them from shrinking, not one like the Fens, where most of the land is under the plow and the peat is virtually disappearing. Williams must be congratulated on the production of this book be­ cause this is the first comprehensive account of the drainage of these lands. A review cannot tell how the difficulties facing each separate area are treated, for one of the fascinations of this book is seeing how the drainage problems of each river basin were, over the years, gradually isolated and overcome. R. L. Hills* The Architecture of Charles Bulfinch. By Harold Kirker. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969. Pp. 398; illustrations. $11.95. Charles Bulfinch was the dominant architectural force in Boston in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and, along with Benjamin Latrobe, Robert Mills, and William Strickland, was one of the leading architects in the country. An architect, public servant, and town planner, Bulfinch transformed Boston from a provincial capital into an urbane and elegant city. In addition to numerous commercial, domestic, and ecclesiastical structures in and around Boston, he designed state capitols for Massa­ chusetts, Connecticut, and Maine and did considerable work on the United States Capitol in Washington. His influence in Boston was fur­ ther extended by such followers and imitators as Alexander Parris and Asher Benjamin, and was disseminated throughout New England by the inclusion of his designs in Benjamin’s very successful architectural pattern books. * Dr. Hills, director of the Manchester Museum of Science and Technology, is the author of Machines, Mills and Uncountable Costly Necessities, about windmill and steam engine drainage in the Fens, and Power in the Industrial Revolution, about the early history of cotton spinning and cotton mills. 348 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Despite his indisputable importance in American architecture, a de­ finitive architectural monograph on Bulfinch has yet to be written. The Life and Letters of Charles Bulfinch, Architect (1896) by the archi­ tect’s granddaughter, Susan Ellen Bulfinch, and Charles A. Place’s Charles Bulfinch, Architect and Citizen (1925), the two standard works on the subject, chronicle Bulfinch’s personal life and career in public service; Harold and James Kirker’s Bulfinch's Boston, 1181-1811 (1964) is a mixture of cultural and political history that discussed Bulfinch’s practice, but only superficially touched upon his architecture. By treat­ ing the buildings themselves, Harold Kirker’s The Architecture of Charles Bulfinch attempts to fill this long neglected and most important gap in the Bulfinch literature. Within the limits he has set for himself, Kirker has produced a useful and competent study. In a straightforward chronological listing, each of Bulfinch’s commissions is discussed in a short, thoroughly docu­ mented history, accompanied by abundant and excellent illustrations. Considering the large amount of material included, this arrangement has much to be said for it. Among its disadvantages may be noted the tendency to treat buildings as isolated entities and to give the mislead­ ing impression that all the works are of equal importance, since they are given similar space and treatment. And however valuable as a reference tool...