No comments about America Preserved: A Checklist of Historic Buildings, Structures and Sites.

No comments about Illustrated Dictionary of Architectural Preservation.

No comments about Plazas And Barrios: Heritage Tourism And Globalization in the Latin American Centro (Society, Environment, and Place).

2 comments about Caring for Your Historic House (Heritage Preservation & Nps).

1. I bought this book for myself when I owned a house that was built in 1930. I have since sold the house but the book was so helpful I now plan to give it as a gift.



2. Upon completing an historic preservation workshop at Thomas Jefferson's Poplar Forest in Virginia this fall, a staff member recommended this book to me. It been a tremendous resource to me in my restoration of the Peter Elliott House.

No comments about The Dutch Overseas Architectural Survey: Mutual Heritage of Four Centuries in Three Continents (Cultuurhistorische Studies).

No comments about A Devon House: The Story Of Poltimore.

No comments about Fabrics for Historic Buildings: A Guide to Selecting Reproduction Fabrics. Revised Edition.

5 comments about AMERICAN COUNTRY BUILDING DESIGN: Rediscovered Plans For 19th-Century American Farmhouses, Cottages, Landscapes, Barns, Carriage Houses & Outbuildings.

1. If you have an interest in house plans from times gone by (perhaps you'd like to build a modern home with old plans to get that special quality that only old fashioned houses possess) this book is a great resource. I have read the majority of the victorian era (1840-1900) house plan books which are available (Bicknell's Victorian Buildings, etc) and found the plans in those other books to be so fanciful and so devoid of useful details (i.e. dimensions, materials lists, etc) that they were of no use except as inspiration. This book still does not offer the level of detail that you would need to build a modern home from the old plans, but the plans it provides are more practical and were created by everyday folks who wanted to build a comfortable, smoothly-functioning home that still possessed style and grace. If you are looking for the reason why old homes seem so comfortable, this book will provide the practical explanations of why those old designs still work today (i.e. hallways centrally located provide efficiency and ventilation). This book is a good buy.



2. There was a nice range of different types and styles of buildings, but VERY sketchy information. Just wasn't quite what I was looking for.



3. This is a cool book. My wife and I are buying a 10 acre farmette with an abandoned 1880's style farmhouse, that believe me is in very rough condition. We are planning to renovate the house and construct an additional second story/wing.
   
   This book compiles many different architectural floor plans from the early to mid 1800s. By reading this book, we have a better appreciation for why the house was designed the way it is. For example, the small room off the kitchen on the main floor we determined was actually a "birthing" room (or nursery). Most of the bedrooms were upstairs but this room was on the main floor not only for easy access during the day, but also for warmth (the kitchen generally being the warmest room in the house). You will also note as you peruse through the various plans that room layout was constrained by the need to have access to the chimney/fireplace in selected rooms.
   
   It makes truly fascinating reading. There are several narrative descriptions of the room layouts as they were published in the mid-1800s, giving the viewpoint of the layout in terms of life in that era. One thing that could improve the book is additional narrative for some of the plans from their original published magazines (and why I give it only 4 stars).
   
   Our house did not have a bathroom when it was built, and most of the floor plans in this book do not either. This is not a book for those who are looking for a "new" plan that has an "old" look to it. Most of these plans would just not work well in this day and age (who needs the dairy table room and the ice house off the kitchen anymore?). But it may give you ideas on how rooms were traditionally laid out more than 100 years ago. It is more of a "fun" book than a "working" book, but for our purposes, as we delve into our restoration, it really makes enjoyable reading as it gives a window on architectural design at the turn of the century.



4. I was very disappointed in this book. Ever since I learned that the house I grew up in was built in 1752, I've been fascinated with early American architecture, particularly old farmhouses, outbuildings and barns. I was hoping to discover the original floorplans for some of these sprawling farmsteads I've seen through the northeast and midwest. None of the houses included in this book look like any of the farmhouses I've seen. What about the huge two-story farmhouses meant to hold the dozen or so children farm families had in order to work the farm? Most had a large central hall at the entrance with a large staircase. Some had the kitchen in an ell so the whole house wouldn't be heated by the wood cook stove in the summer, or even had a separate summer kitchen. There is no mention of saltboxes or sprawling capecods with the sheds that connected to the barn. Plus every barn shown has the animals housed on a floor below ground level! Most of the old barns I've seen house the animals on the main level and have a loft for the hay. If you're looking for original floorplans of old houses you're familiar with, look elsewhere!



5. This was exactly what I was searching for....a history lesson on how to properly plan a site for a home with ancillary buildings on anything over an acre.

2 comments about Iowa's Historic Architects: A Biographical Dictionary.

1. Iowa's Historic Architects is a collective biography of architects who worked in the Hawkeye State prior to 1950. Professor Emeritus Wesley I. Shank (Iowa State University) has been writing on Iowa's architectural history for over 25 years. Iowa's Historic Architects has concise biographical entries on 234 architects, each with a short list of building attributions and references.
   
   The book is not presented as a history of architecture in Iowa. I found it essential to have the 1993 Buildings of Iowa (David Gebhard and Gerald Mansheim, in the Society of Architectural Historians "Buildings of the United States" series) at hand while reading Shank's book. Gebhard and Mansheim provide the necessary architectural survey, maps, photographs, and thematic arguments. With this supporting information, the men profiled in Iowa's Historic Architects can be placed in context. A comprehensive reference dictionary of regional architects and their work, in tandem with such a good survey overview, should be an invaluable research tool.
   
   The biographies of Iowa architects are organized on the basic information that defined each man as an architect: where they got their training, where they worked, with whom they were associated, and a selection of their projects. Many of the entries read like obituary notices, with benedictions and lists of the surviving family members at the architect's death. Few of the entries have detrimental information. A reader might infer that Iowa architects were immune to incompetence, bad business, legal battles, character flaws, and passion. The entries include too much genealogy; the dates of birth of an architect's children, for example, generally have no value in evaluating the architect's career.
   
   Some 50 architects whose offices were not in Iowa, but who designed buildings in Iowa, are included in Iowa's Historic Architects. These sketches are properly concise. Professor Shank includes references for each architect (but not specific citations for each building attribution). The book has a useful introductory essay on the history of architectural practice in Iowa, with good details about the implementation of professional ethics and standards of practice. Appendices show where the Iowa architects acquired architectural education and the Iowa cities where they had offices. The bibliography includes National Register reports, the files of the Iowa State Historic Preservation Office, and the 1955 AIA directory of living architects.
   
   Regional dictionaries of architects (or any reference book) may be judged by three standards. The information must be accurate; the information must be inclusive, within the book's geographical and chronological limits; and the information must be accessible. I cannot dispute the accuracy of the information included, but Iowa's Historic Architects fails to fulfill the second and third standards. The book has three fatal flaws:
   
   1. The book is not indexed. This severely restricts access to the information. To learn, for example, who might have designed the wonderful Methodist Church in Menlo, or the Art Deco municipal swimming pool in Decorah, you must read every page of Iowa's Historic Architects with no surety that you'll find anything. Even with the Gebhard & Mansheim volume at hand, the absence of an index is unforgivable. Reference books must be indexed!
   
   2. The book has only a small selection of buildings designed by or attributed to each architect. Architect William Thomas Proudfoot designed hundreds of Iowa buildings, but his entry - the longest in the book - lists only fifty projects. For other architects, Shank includes no more than a dozen Iowa building attributions. How can we assess the achievement of an architect, except by examination of his work? Less glamorous projects, such as apartment buildings, livery stables, commercial remodelings, warehouses, and Sunday School additions, are as valuable as any courthouse, school, or cathedral to characterize an architect's competence. Similarly, scholars pursuing individual properties, typologies, regional histories, or other building patterns will find Iowa's Historic Architects to be frustratingly incomplete.
   
   3. The book fails to list many Iowa architects. The Clark W. Bryan Directory of Architects and Classified Directory of First Hands in the Building Trades (1890) (Springfield, Massachusetts: Clark W. Bryan & Co., 1890) lists 52 architects who had offices in Iowa. Twenty-five of these men, at least, are not found in Iowa's Historic Architects. Another primary source, Hendricks' Commercial Register of the United States For Buyers and Sellers (1918) (New York: S. E. Hendricks Co., Inc., 1918) names 118 Iowa architects. Fifty-nine of these men are not included in Iowa's Historic Architects. In each of these two windows, fifty percent of the Iowa architects are neglected! This does not reflect a conscious "editing-out" of minor architects, for Shank includes Frank Fiedler, C. B. Lakin, J. E. Howe, Henry Throne, and several other obscure Iowa architects about whom almost nothing has been recorded. It appears, rather, that the primary research was inadequate. This is not an inclusive dictionary.
   
   A biographical dictionary of Iowa architects should strive to include every Iowa citizen who was identified, however fleetingly, as an architect, and every out-of-state architect who designed anything in Iowa. It should include every Iowa building and project, built or not, that can be attributed to these architects, with all project references cited. It should be indexed by project sponsor, by locality, and by building type. Iowa's Historic Architects fails on all of these counts.
   
   Scholars requiring information on Iowa's built environment will consult Iowa's Historic Architects. They will be disappointed. This is not the authoritative reference book that it should be.



2. Shank's clear prose is a gold mine of information on a hard-to-nail topic: biographical data on architects in the state of Iowa. A brief summary of the development of the education and licensing of architects is also quite useful. The individual biographical sketches are engaging in and of themselves. A very useful book.

1 comments about Vitruvius: Writing the Body of Architecture.

1. out of any reader who thinks s/he loves architecture, confusing architecture's greasy, grimy engine of manifestation as a 'built thing' with the SPECTACLE of architecture. The book deals with the ten books by V. It has a lot of Latin, with references to contemporary intellectual influences, namely Stoicism and Pythagoreanism. As much as I respect the author's labor, I must admit, she does get a little dry at times being so sincere (read pedantic) to her calling as a scholar. There is a bit more information than any thinking practitioner of architecture would really need. But then, any thinking architect will know what to cull from this rich feast/tour of the post Civil War Augustan Roman imperium.
   So as to not repeat the content of the existing review, I shall speak more of how this book is relevant now by reminding the reader that the structure of the American Imperium is not all that different from the Roman. Just as it was true of Rome, it is still true today that all 'avante-gardes,' despite their rhetoric, work to actually further the Work of Empire. In fact, their very podium on which they utter their battle cries is built into the very structure of Empire.
   The current fascination with the idea of 'body' can be, it turns out, traced back to V himself, who was among the very first to use the term 'corpus' to refer to his writing, as well as to architecture. By corpus, he meant 'whole' as opposed to fragments, and there were many commentaries at the time lying about on many a topic, but all in fragments. So V sets out to put it all together into a co-ordinated whole. According to the author, ORDINATIO is a word that crops up often in V's 10 Books but not as often as RATIO. The book makes it clear why these terms do not carry the meaning when translated into Order and Reason, respectively. This is where the author's surgical description of the Roman conception of the world comes in handy as well as fascinating.
   The author, unlike the reviewer, finds her own conclusion "unsettling": namely that architecture as V defines it for the rest of the Western world henceforth (V distinguished it from 'building') is, by fate, inextricably tied to IMPERIUM. That is, Architecture IS the shadow of IMPERIUM.
   As the archetype of Empire's Architect, V speaks for all architects who serve Empire, all Empires everywhere. While this book makes the modest claim to be looking only at the 10 Book's Roman context, the content, if read carefully, will reveal how V's "prophecy" about architecture is coming to fulfillment more today than ever before now that architecture can move so much faster and shift shape with digital ease, having long ago jettisoned the baggage of the 'perfect proportion/body.'
   V was the first to write about the central role of machines (especially machines of war (killing) and spectacle (laughter and forgetting)) in architecture. Le Corbusier was perhaps the last "classical" architect to bring the circle of fate to its point of origination with his saying that, "A house is a Machine for Living in."