CMU Press Publishes Henry Hornbostel’s Journals
By Riona Duncan
Henry Hornbostel was an influential architect in the early twentieth century, who designed landmarks like the Williamsburg Bridge in New York City and the Harding Memorial, US President Warren Harding’s elaborate tomb. “Time Well Spent: An American Architect in Europe, 1893,” a new October 2025 release from Carnegie Mellon University Press, brings to life Hornbostel’s formative 1893 journey to Europe as a young man. This journey influenced him for the rest of his life, as he designed famous buildings across the country – and in Pittsburgh, where he built nearly half his works and designed Carnegie Mellon’s campus. “Time Well Spent” includes reproductions and transcriptions of Hornbostel’s sketchbook and journals, and contextualizes them with essays about the significance of travel in architectural education.
“The book gives unique insight into how relevant this travel experience was for Hornbostel as a recent architecture graduate,” said CMU School of Architecture’s Francesca Torello, the book’s editor. “The volume includes his remarkably concise, expressive sketches and recurring annotations titled ‘Idea.’ From these the reader can follow how his mind was working, processing details of the architecture he was seeing in Europe to use in his own designs. The journal is also a very funny account, as Hornbostel talks about his travel adventures and his friends."
On the evening of October 9, the Press hosted a book launch where Torello discussed the long tradition and special importance of travel for architects and Hornbostel's enduring legacy. Attendees reflected on Hornbostel’s enduring legacy at CMU and beyond, and had the opportunity to purchase the book and get it signed.
“We’re so excited to be publishing this book,” said CMU Press Editorial Director Nicky Agate. “After several CMU publishing services were consolidated under the Carnegie Mellon University Press banner at the University Libraries last year, we wanted to add an academic imprint that specialized in areas of campus strength, such as the rich and varied research at the School of Architecture.”
Deep Connections to Carnegie Mellon University
Hornbostel was a nationally-renowned architect, but he was especially successful in Pittsburgh, where he designed landmarks such as the Soldiers and Sailors Monument and Rodef Shalom Congregation. He also won the campus design competition for Carnegie Mellon University — then Carnegie Technical Schools — and is responsible for many of the most distinctive buildings on campus.
“His legacy is all around campus, in buildings like Margaret Morrison Carnegie Hall and the College of Fine Arts building,” said Don Carter, retired Senior Research Fellow at the Remaking Cities Institute and CMU professor. “He designed classical buildings, but with industrial materials that fit the character of the university. Buildings that have been added since his time are still respectful of his master plan in terms of their colors and proportions. He created the context for the whole campus!”
Henry Hornbostel's journals.
Hornbostel was also a professor and Dean in the School of Architecture, where he was known for his dapper dress and larger than life personality. According to a story that circulates on campus, his students even held a funeral procession and burial for the pet monkey he often brought to class.
“One way he taught students was through his buildings,” said Torello. “The College of Fine Arts building was designed to offer the experience and benefit of travel to his students at a time when they could not travel — because the cost was still prohibitive and then because of World War I".
The College of Fine Arts building has frescoes in the Great Hall that depict famous buildings and places. On the outside of the building, sculptural niches were designed to showcase chapters in architectural history. These elements combine to make the building both beautiful and pedagogical.
Other distinctive buildings on campus that Hornbostel designed include Porter Hall, Hamburg Hall, and Baker Hall. Baker Hall is especially notable for its vaulted terracotta staircase, and Hamershlag Hall for its cylindrical temple design intended to hide a smokestack.
Collaboration Within the Libraries
“The University Libraries were instrumental in making this book happen,” said Torello. “Hornbostel’s papers are held in the Architecture Archives here, so that’s how I originally began doing scholarship about him — and any book is a team project, but this one particularly so — there were so many different elements involved in the production of this volume!”
One major obstacle to the project was the COVID-19 pandemic, which closed the Archives in the middle of the transcription process. That’s when the Digitization Lab stepped in.
“As soon as we could, we immediately scanned his journals and sketchbooks in,” said Ann Marie Mesco, the digitization projects manager. “We’re very careful about handling this kind of book. We use a book scanner and a counterweighted table, so there’s very little damage in the process.” These high quality scans allowed Torello to continue transcribing Hornbostel’s papers while working from home, so the project could go forward even when the world was shut down.
The scans from the digitization lab are also featured in “Time Well Spent” as careful reproductions of Hornbostel’s pages, accompanied by transcriptions that make it far easier to read his ornate cursive. “With the sketchbook in particular, you really get a sense of a young architect dashing about between different sites, hurried sketches overlapping with annotations squeezed in anywhere they fit. This posed quite a design challenge for the facsimile, which needed to honor the original while also making the content more accessible for modern readers,” said Talia Perry, digital projects & publishing specialist responsible for “Time Well Spent’”s design.
Martin Aurand, the former architecture librarian and archivist, wrote the book’s foreword. “Francesca spent a lot of time in my office doing transcriptions” he said. “If she was stumped we would work together. I spent 30 years thinking about our Hornbostel collection, so I’m excited for this book to exist.”
The Architecture Archives also provided funding from the Caste endowment and the William Arthur Thomas endowment to bring “Time Well Spent” to life.
“We’re very fortunate to have such generous endowments,” said Arts and Humanities Librarian Lynn Kawaratani. “A lot of our collections are kept within opaque boxes and drawers, so this project allows the community to preview what’s hidden away and what’s possible within the Archives.”
“Time Well Spent: An American Architect in Europe, 1983” is available now through Carnegie Mellon University Press.
Riona Duncan is a student writer covering the University Libraries, the ETC, IDeATe, and the CMU Press. She is a junior studying Literature & Culture, with an additional major in Environmental and Sustainability Studies. This past summer, she worked as a newsroom intern at 90.5 WESA, Pittsburgh’s NPR news station, and she is also the Public Affairs Director at Carnegie Mellon’s college radio station WRCT.