Smithsonian Archives of American Art

 
McCoy, Esther (b. 1904 d. 1989)
Esther McCoy interviews, 1987 June 8 - Nov. 14

Photographer, Architectural historian
New York, N.Y.; Los Angeles, Calif.

An interview of Esther McCoy conducted by Joseph Giovannini for the Archives of American Art. McCoy speaks of her childhood and early education; moving to New York in the 1920s; meeting and getting to know various writers including Theodore Dreiser; beginning her own writing career;

her involvement in radical politics; the beginning of her interest in architecture; working as a free-lance writer; working with the builder, Tim Robert, as a draftsman; writing a novel about architecture; Southern California's role in the development of modernism; writing for magazines in the 1940s; writing several books on architecture, including one on Richard Neutra; current trends in architecture.