1 comments about Gingerbread Gems of Willimantic, Connecticut.

1. This was a nice book, nicely done. The photographs and descriptions gave a thoughtful picture of a town justifiably proud of its history.

No comments about Missouri state parks and historic sites' mission: A question of balance.

No comments about Archaeological Wood: Properties, Chemistry, and Preservation (Advances in Chemistry Series).

No comments about Chartwell: Kent (Guide Books).

No comments about The Flying D Ranch lands of Montana: A history.

2 comments about Preserving Charleston's Past, Shaping Its Future: The Life and Times of Susan Pringle Frost (Contributions in American Studies).

1. Preserving Charleston's Past, Shaping its Future: The Life and Times of Susan Pringle Frost is a small book that packs a big punch. Weighing in at 110 pages (171 counting index, sources, and notes), this book is a fascinating account of Susan Pringle Frost and her firm hand in the creation of the preservation movement in Charleston, South Carolina. To understand this story, one must know a little history of Charleston. Once one of the richest and most beautiful cities in the country, Charleston took a devastating downturn after the Civil War. So when ravaged by fire, hurricanes and even a destructive earthquake, Charlestonians did not have the money to raze and rebuild like many others cities (including Richmond and Atlanta). Instead, they had to restore. As a result, the turn of the century saw many of Charleston's historic buildings still intact but needing lots of work.

   Enter Miss Susan Pringle Frost. Born in 1873 to a very old Charleston family that became impoverished after the Civil War, Pringle Frost was a woman way ahead of her time. She was able break away from the ties that bound traditional Victorian women and to move into a more modern age. Having never married, she first went to work as a court stenographer in 1901--a time when women weren't accepted into the workplace. She eventually went into real estate and became the first woman realtor in Charleston. She was a firm believer in civil rights when it was an unpopular stand in the south. She got involved in the suffrage movement, and hitched her star to Alice Paul. The skills that she learned during the suffrage battles, she used to great effect to get the preservation movement started. She badgered public officials, she recruited followers, she begged loans from bankers, and she was the key motivator in founding the Preservation Society of Charleston--still the premier preservation society in the city. Even before the PSC was founded, she single-handedly contributed to preservation efforts by purchasing run down homes in once properous neighborhoods and restoring them at her own expense. When the city wanted to tear down the homes that make up the now famous Rainbow Row and build something modern, Miss Susan purchased six of them and saved the entire block from the wrecking ball. Without Pringle Frost, Charleston would not be the charming city that attracts millions of tourists each year. Her contributions to the city of Charleston are so very impressive and author Sidney Bland does a fine job of bringing this story to life.




2. The life of Susan Pringle Frost, the Mother of Historic Preservation in Charleston, is explored with perception and sensitivity by Dr. Sidney R. Bland, whom I had the honor of assisting with a small portion of his research. Her father, Dr. Francis L. Frost, a brave Confederate surgeon, spent an angonizing and wholly fruitless decade after the end of the Civil War trying to re-start rice planting on his family's rice plantations on South Carolina's North Santee River. After his failure (and none of his neighbors fared any better), he turned to several other occupations, each of which proved equally fruitless. "Miss Sue," as she was called, along with her two sisters, rose above the limitations of her aristocratic breeding and lent a shoulder to the wheel, taking outside jobs to provide the failed family with an income. Southern gentlewomen that they were, they gave all their earnings to their father, in order that he might remain the titular head of the family. Miss Sue's rise from martyr to the Lost Cause to court stenographer to Charleston's leading Suffragette to the city's first real estate agent to its pioneer historic preservationist blazed the trail for many women both in Charleston and outside the Palmetto State. Sidney Bland's unblinking yet compassionate study of Miss Sue and her era is a precious insight into the rapidly-changing face of the South in the early twentieth century. -- Richard N. Cote', author of Mary's World: Love, War, and Family Ties in Nineteenth-century Charleston (Corinthian Books, 2001).

1 comments about Traditional Details for Building Restoration, Renovation, and Rehabilitation: From the 1932-1951 Editions of Architectural Graphic Standards.

1. Are you an Architect and don't know the parts of a traditional double hung window? Forgot how stone was detailed? Could not draw a lug window sill to save your life? Then this book is for you and your staff. Great drawings (real drawings, not CADD), all hand lettered and illustrated. I use this book to size masonry fireplaces. It is the ultimate resource on all types of wood burning fireplaces and masonry dimensioning! Although there are some things that are out of date (plumbing & electrical)this book tells a story about buildings in the emerging market of historic rehab and historic tax credit project.

No comments about Historic furnishings report: Eugene O'Neill National Historic Site, California (NPS).

No comments about New Construction for Older Buildings: A Design Sourcebook for Architects and Preservationists.

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.