Hugh Howard

Hugh Howard (born 1952) is an American historian, writer, and speaker. He has written numerous books about architecture, art, and American presidents, but describes himself as a narrative historian: he seeks to use stories to capture the sweep of history, with facts, personalities, and places adding texture to events. His most recent book, Architects of an American Landscape, published by Atlantic Monthly Press in 2022, examines the creative friendship of Frederick Law Olmsted, the co-designer of Central Park and founder of the discipline of landscape architecture, and Henry Hobson Richardson, the most admired American architect of the nineteenth century. Previous books include Architecture's Odd Couple (Bloomsbury, 2015), also a dual biography, which looked at the careers of Frank Lloyd Wright and Philip Johnson, architects who bracketed the twentieth century and who had a complicated relationship as "frienemies." Howard has written two books concerning the architectural work of Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson, Architect (Rizzoli, 2003) and Dr. Kimball and Mr. Jefferson (Bloomsbury 2006), as well as a book about the birthing of American painting by the many who painted portraits of George Washington, The Painter's Chair (Bloomsbury, 2009). He has also collaborated with photographer Roger Straus III on a series of large-format volumes, including Houses of the Founding Fathers (Workman, 2007), Houses of the Presidents and Houses of Civil War America (Little, Brown, 2012 and 2014, respectively).