In October and November of 1954, architectural historian Henry-Russell Hitchcock and photographer Rosalie Thorne McKenna visited eleven Latinamerican countries searching for projects that would be part of the Latin American Architecture Since 1945 exhibition organized by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. A publication of the same name would follow soon after in the form of an art catalogue, with a summary of the projects selected during the trip. The book gave a comprehensive view of the architecture in the region during those years and would become the first and most thorough publication on the Modern period in Latinamerican architecture. It is considered a classic publication done by MoMA before 1960.