Andrews, Wayne.

Wayne Andrews (1913-1987) was born in Kenilworth, Illinois and educated in the Winnetka public schools, Lawrenceville School, and Harvard. He received his doctorate in American history at Columbia University under Allan Nevins; his Ph.D. thesis, "Architecture, Ambition and Americans," was among the first important analyses of culture as it relates to architecture. From 1948 to 1956 he was Curator of Manuscripts at the New York Historical Society, and from 1956 to 1963 he was an editor at Charles Scribner's Sons. He held the first American art history chair established at an American university as Archives of American Art Professor at Wayne State University, Detroit from 1964 to 1983. After his retirement he returned to his beloved Chicago where he lived for the remainder of his life with his wife Elizabeth. They had one daughter, Elizabeth Waties. He wrote several books on the topics of architecture and literature and was a former president of the New York chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians. The University of Delaware Department of Art History has a large collection of his architectural photographs. He died of a heart-attack in Paris, France on August 17, 1987.

From the guide to the Wayne Andrews Architectural photographs collection 1969001., (Alexander Architectural Archive, The University of Texas at Austin.)

Wayne Andrews was born on September 5, 1913, in Kenilworth, Illinois. As a teenager he attended the Lawrenceville School, a preparatory boarding school near Princeton, New Jersey. Andrews’ early interests included the French language and culture, and through frequent travels to Paris he made the acquaintance of several leaders of the burgeoning Surrealist movement. In 1930, at the age of seventeen, Andrews and Lawrenceville classmate James Douglas Peck co-founded a mimeographed journal of French culture (written in French) called La revue de l’élite . The journal went through several iterations and titles ( La revue de l’élite, La revue intime, and Demain ) while maintaining an essentially similar format and nearly identical content and themes. Andrews and Peck sent copies of the periodical to the writers, artists, and critics who inspired them, to a mixed but largely positive reception.

Andrews graduated from Harvard College in 1936 and subsequently worked as a banker and then as Curator of Manuscripts for the New York Historical Society. In 1956 he earned a PhD in art history from Columbia University. During his time at Harvard and Columbia Andrews wrote Surrealist prose which was later collected in two volumes, Pianos of Sympathy (1936) and Who Has Been Tampering with These Pianos? (1948), both published under the pseudonym Montagu O’Reilly. Upon graduation from Columbia Andrews began work as an editor at Charles Scribner’s Sons, and in 1963 wrote a biography entitled Germaine: A Portrait of Madame de Stael .

In 1964 Andrews accepted a position created expressly for him as the Archives of American Art Professor at Wayne State University in Detroit. In this portion of his life Andrews became known as a prolific architectural historian and photographer, and wrote extensively on the topic. In earlier works such as Architecture, Ambition, and Americans: A Social History of American Architecture (1955, revised ed. 1978) and Architecture in America: A Photographic History from the Colonial Period to the Present (1960, revised ed. 1979) Andrews provided introductions to national architecture, while later publications centered around regional United States architecture.

Andrews’ interest in European culture remained active during this period with his continued publication of social and cultural histories and biographies, such as Siegfried’s Curse: The German Journey from Nietzsche to Hesse (1972) and Voltaire (1981). Andrews’ final book, The Surrealist Parade, presents a “cunningly brief and amusingly opinionated personal history of Surrealism,” (Richard Burgin, New York Times Book Review, 1990), the bulk of which is focused around Andrews’ acquaintance and friend, Surrealist leader André Breton. Andrews died of a heart attack at the age of seventy-three on August 17, 1987, while travelling in Paris. He lived permanently with his wife Elizabeth and daughter Elizabeth (Lisa) Waties in Chicago and had nearly completed his work on The Surrealist Parade . Though the manuscript was only “nine tenths” finished, according to publisher James Laughlin, The Surrealist Parade was published by New Directions in 1988.

From the guide to the Wayne Andrews Papers, 1930-1988 (bulk circa 1978-1988), (The University of Texas at Austin, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center)