Thirty years after the legendary show Modern Architecture: An International Exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), its curators, Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson, launched a series of symposia assessing the development of this new architecture. Whereas the MoMA show was accompanied by a book, the symposia had to wait almost 50 years for the proceedings to be published. It is like opening a time capsule—and a compelling one.

The three Modern Architecture Symposia (MAS) took place at Columbia University in May 1962, 1964, and 1966, and were organized by Columbia historian George Collins and the director of Avery Library, Adolf Placzek. They brought together a formidable ensemble of scholars and critics from a range of institutions to examine three decades (not in strict order): the first, 1918 to 1928; the second, 1929 to 1939; and finally the third, 1907 to 1917.