Customer Reviews

Architecture in Tennessee, 1768-1897

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This is a top shelf study written in an academic style. The target reader is an architectural historian, local historian, or building craftsman.

The essays are just exceptional in their depth of study and presentation of historical context. The photography is all black & white, but the examples are well illustrative of the written material.

One downer is that quite a few of the buildings featured here are long gone, and that diminishes the value of the book as a guide to existing buildings.

In a day where everyone seems to be writing a book on houses, this is a true academic work by a scholar who was formerly a professor of architectural history at the University of Tennesse's School of Architecture (now College of Architecture and Design). Dr Patrick's work took at least 10 years of research and the contemporary photos by his one-time teaching assistant Michael A Tomlan (now a professor himself) were done over a period of 6 years. Period photographs and drawings also illustrate the text.

Chapters are "Early Travelers and Critics", "Techniques and Materials", "Carpenters and Architects", "Patterns, Types, Aesthetics", "The Eighteenth Century", "The Federal Style", "Church Building", "The Greek Revival", "The Romantic Eye", "The Architecture of Southern Nationalism", and "American Styles". Perhaps most interesting is Dr Patrick's assertion that the late, grand plantation houses of the antebellum rich were in a style that was not just a fashion but a movement developed with the culture. That is, that the architecture came about as a result of the complex development of agriculture, slavery, literature and religion and politics of the South. This is an over-simplification of the theory, of course, so I strongly recommend this book to everyone interested in the historic architecture of the South (as there are similarities with surrounding states)and Tennessee in particular.