In its May 1902 issue (PDF page 126), under the heading “L’Art Nouveau,” Architectural Record promised to “publish a number of articles illustrating the recent architectural, sculptural, decorative, and metallic work” that exemplified “the so-called ‘new art.’ ” And how new that art must indeed have seemed in comparison to the dark, overwrought, and historicizing Lexington Avenue house of Mr. Henry W. Poor, realized for him by McKim, Mead & White and featured in the same issue. What a contrast were the frank expression of materials and sinuous vegetal lines of Hector Guimard’s Humbert de Romans concert hall in Paris, completed a year earlier and the subject of the first article in the series. Among those that followed was “An Architect’s Opinion of ‘l’Art Nouveau,’ ” written by the 35-year-old Guimard himself, in which the Frenchman informed his American confrères that if any place was ripe for the creation of a “new art,” it was the U.S.