American farmhouses continue to capture the imagination and speak to our collective longing to return to a simpler time and place. This handsome volume features large-format, full-color photographs of farmhouses throughout the United States and Canada, accompanied by graceful text designed to educate readers about the history of farmhouses and the distinctions between regional architectural styles.
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Few images channel American nostalgia more effectively than that of the rural farmhouse, shaded by tall trees or open to fields and a big, blue sky. Mohr, a freelance writer and author of The Barn and The Log Home, seems especially attuned to this feeling of loss and pride, tracking it as a preservationist and living it daily as a resident of a converted barn. This collection of photographs taken in Amish country and on the Maine beachfront, shot in the Carolinas and Louisiana, features a multitude of well-preserved salt boxes and Victorian plantation houses, along with a few picturesquely dilapidated ruins as well. The photographs are straightforwardly documentary, occasionally touched with a beam of late afternoon sunshine, while the accompanying text details the farmhouses' historical and regional architectural differences. In simple, forthright prose spiced with first-person encounters with particularly appealing locations, Mohr guides the reader through a crucible of charm and wistfulness while maintaining a sense of self-awareness and genuine appreciation throughout. "These houses offer welcome, warmth and a sense of all that came before," she writes. "They each have a story to tell."
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
About the Author
Nancy L Mohr is the author of American Barns and The Log Home also from Running Press, and her articles have appeared in Smithsonian, House Beautiful and Ladies Home Journal. She is deeply involved in agricultural and farm preservation and lives in a converted barn.
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Nancy L. Mohr is the author of The Lady Blows A Horn, a biography of Nancy Penn Smith Hannum, the Cheshire Hunt's legendary master of hounds. Nancy Mohr is also the author of several books and numerous articles in national magazines. An admitted newspaper junkie, she has frequently been represented on the Commentary pages of the Philadelphia Inquirer, and writes for local and regional newspapers.
Nancy graduated from Mount Holyoke College. She and her husband, John, met at J. Walter Thompson advertising agency in New York City. In subsequent years they moved to the Greenspring Valley outside Baltimore, and in 1964 to Chester County, Pennsylvania where they have both been deeply involved in land conservation. Their five children grew upon the family farm in Unionville, acquiring their parents' passion for conservation and preservation. Teaching English at Upland Country Day School, Nancy spent many years counseling non-profit organizations in fundraising and public relations (closely working with the Leonardo Horse, a dramatic gift from America to the people of Italy). She is co-founder of the Kennett Revitalization Task Force, and emeritus president of Chester County 2020. Nancy is known for her dedication to nurturing a sense of community and cooperation through the CC2020 programs and working with the Brandywine Conservancy in establishing the Headwaters Conservation Program and was deeply involved with the King Ranch project. She serves on the Chester County Planning Commission. She was the long-time chair of the County's Task Force on Tax Reform, and a member of the Agricultural Development Council.
One of Chester County's 'heroes in conservation' Published: Daily Local News, Sunday, September 05, 2010
By Michael Rellahan, Staff Writer
What is one to make of Nancy L. Mohr, the recently retired president and executive director of Chester County 2020, the Kennett Square-based community-building organization?
She is not a fearsome advocate for a cause, as was her late friend, Nancy Penn Smith Hannum, of whom Mohr wrote the biography "The Lady Blows a Horn," someone fiercely confronting those who would stand in the way of her drive to preserve as much open land as she could.
Nor is she a spirited player in the political world, as was Eleanor Morris, the widow of the legendary legislator Sam Morris, to whom she is related by chance and by marriage and who has also dedicated her life to the preservation of open space. Rather, although Mohr may share with them a passion for the protection of natural resources in Chester County, what ultimately sets her apart from those two matriarchs is her desire to bring people together.
"I would describe her as one of our heroes in conservation, but I think of Nancy as a facilitator and coordinator," said John B. "Jock" Hannum Jr., Mohr's friend, Nancy Hannum's son, and chairman of the Chester County 2020 board. "She doesn't push, like my mother would. She didn't have an agenda, like a Republican or a Democrat. She was pro-county, pro-conservation. She looked at the world through the prism of this very special county."
"She's a very caring person who was motivated to do something about disappearing farmland and natural resource protection, and whose unique contribution was the way she always made it about community and bringing people together in partnerships," said Molly Morrison, head of Natural Lands Trust who began working with Mohr as a county government liaison with land preservation groups in the 1990s.
"Nancy was able to foster hope and respect for our community," said Sharon Parker, superintendent of the Unionville-Chadds Ford School District, for which Mohr put together one of her notable Community Conversations in 2009. "Her greatest gift was to put people in a room and have each come away feeling respected."
Mohr herself is somewhat more low-key in describing herself. "I do love people," she said in a recent interview. "I'm very much a people person. And all these things that I do have to do with community."
Mohr, lives with her husband, John, in Newlin at the Sevynmor Farm, named for the seven Mohrs in the family -- herself, her husband, and their five children. She stepped down from the leadership post she had with Chester County 2020 in July. She had suffered a stroke in September last year and, although she has largely recovered, had come to accept that she would be unable to put as much effort into the organization as had been her norm, which is to say 24/7/365.
"It was a very frightening experience," Mohr said of the stroke. "It was like being in a box you couldn't get out of. And in a non-profit, you feel like you have to do everything yourself. But it was obvious I did too many things, and so I promised my family I would pull back. Now, I'm just another volunteer."
Mohr and her family came to Chester County in 1964, settling here after a life in the world of the advertising in Manhattan. She worked as an editorial assistant for the firm of J. Walter Thompson. What Mohr has put on her resume in the four decades since is remarkable. She has:
*worked at Upland Country Day School;
* consulted for the Brandywine Conservancy, where she assisted on the project that helped preserve the former King Ranch property outside Unionville;
*co-founded the Kennett Revitalization Task Force;
* chaired the Chester County Task Force on Tax Reform;
* served as a member of the county Agricultural Development Council and its planning commission;
* won the county's Distinguished Service to Agriculture Award in December 2009.
But she clearly is most proud of the work she has done the past nine years with Chester County 2020, an organization founded in the 1990s by the late philanthropist and preservation advocate Henry Jordan. "If you gain from your community, then you have a responsibility to give back to that community," she said of the organization's founding principle. "Everyone does it in their own way. That's what 2020 is about."
And of the many projects she spearheaded in her position as executive director then as president and chief executive officer -- among them the annual Keep Farming First forums, the Chester County Land Trust Consortium, the Master Planners program at West Chester University and others -- the top of her list is reserved for the Community Conversations series.
Starting in 2002, Mohr and others with the organization began to assemble groups of people with common interests to tackle both rural and urban issues in the county - transportation, affordable housing, farming, and land preservation. Little by little, though, these laid the groundwork for municipally based get-togethers known as the Ticket to Tomorrow.
At those sessions, residents of a municipality where there had been worries over one or more topics were invited to meet for an evening and to share the factors that made where they lived a community. Parker recalled that at one of those events she witnessed Mohr's ability to foster conversations that left the participants feeling respected. Very simply, the organization would get people talking with each other instead of at one another.
The meetings have been held in East Fallowfield, Kennett, West Bradford, Pennsbury, South Coatesville and Modena, the Route 1 corridor municipalities in southern Chester County, Kennett Square, Unionville-Chadds Ford, New Garden, West Vincent and the Octorara School District.
"Few people feel they have enough hours in their days or days in each week to become community volunteers," Mohr said. "Clearly an evening's community conversation is a generous gift from residents to their community. By the end of a conversation, the prospect for making good things happen has increased dramatically."
The idea was not for her organization to direct participants toward a specified goal. "We don't tell them what they should be doing," she said. "There really is just a lot of talking, and they have to be the ones who make the decisions. We have no agenda.
Although Mohr rejects the notion that the conversations are an effort at conflict resolution -- she prefers the term "shared vision" -- they have clearly played that role at times.
She herself cites for example the Ticket to Tomorrow in February 2007 in East Fallowfield, a municipality that was finding its way into newspaper headlines about hyper-contentious public meetings, where accusations flew like flocks of angry crows. Mohr recalled walking into the meeting and thinking, "My, it's very chilly in here."
"But we mixed people up and got them to talk candidly, and little by little people started working together," she said. "Everyone was so busy the entire evening. At the end, I remember someone coming up to me and saying, 'Now I have a community.'"
Mohr remembers that when she came to the county in 1964, it had mostly a small town feel. "It was very easy to get to know people, and it wasn't difficult to feel part of things."
Now that is history. Over the years she has seen the changes in the county with a knowing eye. "Some were unavoidable, but some might have been chosen with a wiser eye if we had looked listened and considered," she said.
But she feels the wealth of people in the county can lead it to better days, with some effort. "I see potential all over the county, but people have to be part of their community," she said. "We can't expect to do all the things that we'd like to do. But we have to all do a little bit. Chester County can be so much more. But we have to keep doing it."
Nancy graduated from Mount Holyoke College. She and her husband, John, met at J. Walter Thompson advertising agency in New York City. In subsequent years they moved to the Greenspring Valley outside Baltimore, and in 1964 to Chester County, Pennsylvania where they have both been deeply involved in land conservation. Their five children grew upon the family farm in Unionville, acquiring their parents' passion for conservation and preservation. Teaching English at Upland Country Day School, Nancy spent many years counseling non-profit organizations in fundraising and public relations (closely working with the Leonardo Horse, a dramatic gift from America to the people of Italy). She is co-founder of the Kennett Revitalization Task Force, and emeritus president of Chester County 2020. Nancy is known for her dedication to nurturing a sense of community and cooperation through the CC2020 programs and working with the Brandywine Conservancy in establishing the Headwaters Conservation Program and was deeply involved with the King Ranch project. She serves on the Chester County Planning Commission. She was the long-time chair of the County's Task Force on Tax Reform, and a member of the Agricultural Development Council.
One of Chester County's 'heroes in conservation' Published: Daily Local News, Sunday, September 05, 2010
By Michael Rellahan, Staff Writer
What is one to make of Nancy L. Mohr, the recently retired president and executive director of Chester County 2020, the Kennett Square-based community-building organization?
She is not a fearsome advocate for a cause, as was her late friend, Nancy Penn Smith Hannum, of whom Mohr wrote the biography "The Lady Blows a Horn," someone fiercely confronting those who would stand in the way of her drive to preserve as much open land as she could.
Nor is she a spirited player in the political world, as was Eleanor Morris, the widow of the legendary legislator Sam Morris, to whom she is related by chance and by marriage and who has also dedicated her life to the preservation of open space. Rather, although Mohr may share with them a passion for the protection of natural resources in Chester County, what ultimately sets her apart from those two matriarchs is her desire to bring people together.
"I would describe her as one of our heroes in conservation, but I think of Nancy as a facilitator and coordinator," said John B. "Jock" Hannum Jr., Mohr's friend, Nancy Hannum's son, and chairman of the Chester County 2020 board. "She doesn't push, like my mother would. She didn't have an agenda, like a Republican or a Democrat. She was pro-county, pro-conservation. She looked at the world through the prism of this very special county."
"She's a very caring person who was motivated to do something about disappearing farmland and natural resource protection, and whose unique contribution was the way she always made it about community and bringing people together in partnerships," said Molly Morrison, head of Natural Lands Trust who began working with Mohr as a county government liaison with land preservation groups in the 1990s.
"Nancy was able to foster hope and respect for our community," said Sharon Parker, superintendent of the Unionville-Chadds Ford School District, for which Mohr put together one of her notable Community Conversations in 2009. "Her greatest gift was to put people in a room and have each come away feeling respected."
Mohr herself is somewhat more low-key in describing herself. "I do love people," she said in a recent interview. "I'm very much a people person. And all these things that I do have to do with community."
Mohr, lives with her husband, John, in Newlin at the Sevynmor Farm, named for the seven Mohrs in the family -- herself, her husband, and their five children. She stepped down from the leadership post she had with Chester County 2020 in July. She had suffered a stroke in September last year and, although she has largely recovered, had come to accept that she would be unable to put as much effort into the organization as had been her norm, which is to say 24/7/365.
"It was a very frightening experience," Mohr said of the stroke. "It was like being in a box you couldn't get out of. And in a non-profit, you feel like you have to do everything yourself. But it was obvious I did too many things, and so I promised my family I would pull back. Now, I'm just another volunteer."
Mohr and her family came to Chester County in 1964, settling here after a life in the world of the advertising in Manhattan. She worked as an editorial assistant for the firm of J. Walter Thompson. What Mohr has put on her resume in the four decades since is remarkable. She has:
*worked at Upland Country Day School;
* consulted for the Brandywine Conservancy, where she assisted on the project that helped preserve the former King Ranch property outside Unionville;
*co-founded the Kennett Revitalization Task Force;
* chaired the Chester County Task Force on Tax Reform;
* served as a member of the county Agricultural Development Council and its planning commission;
* won the county's Distinguished Service to Agriculture Award in December 2009.
But she clearly is most proud of the work she has done the past nine years with Chester County 2020, an organization founded in the 1990s by the late philanthropist and preservation advocate Henry Jordan. "If you gain from your community, then you have a responsibility to give back to that community," she said of the organization's founding principle. "Everyone does it in their own way. That's what 2020 is about."
And of the many projects she spearheaded in her position as executive director then as president and chief executive officer -- among them the annual Keep Farming First forums, the Chester County Land Trust Consortium, the Master Planners program at West Chester University and others -- the top of her list is reserved for the Community Conversations series.
Starting in 2002, Mohr and others with the organization began to assemble groups of people with common interests to tackle both rural and urban issues in the county - transportation, affordable housing, farming, and land preservation. Little by little, though, these laid the groundwork for municipally based get-togethers known as the Ticket to Tomorrow.
At those sessions, residents of a municipality where there had been worries over one or more topics were invited to meet for an evening and to share the factors that made where they lived a community. Parker recalled that at one of those events she witnessed Mohr's ability to foster conversations that left the participants feeling respected. Very simply, the organization would get people talking with each other instead of at one another.
The meetings have been held in East Fallowfield, Kennett, West Bradford, Pennsbury, South Coatesville and Modena, the Route 1 corridor municipalities in southern Chester County, Kennett Square, Unionville-Chadds Ford, New Garden, West Vincent and the Octorara School District.
"Few people feel they have enough hours in their days or days in each week to become community volunteers," Mohr said. "Clearly an evening's community conversation is a generous gift from residents to their community. By the end of a conversation, the prospect for making good things happen has increased dramatically."
The idea was not for her organization to direct participants toward a specified goal. "We don't tell them what they should be doing," she said. "There really is just a lot of talking, and they have to be the ones who make the decisions. We have no agenda.
Although Mohr rejects the notion that the conversations are an effort at conflict resolution -- she prefers the term "shared vision" -- they have clearly played that role at times.
She herself cites for example the Ticket to Tomorrow in February 2007 in East Fallowfield, a municipality that was finding its way into newspaper headlines about hyper-contentious public meetings, where accusations flew like flocks of angry crows. Mohr recalled walking into the meeting and thinking, "My, it's very chilly in here."
"But we mixed people up and got them to talk candidly, and little by little people started working together," she said. "Everyone was so busy the entire evening. At the end, I remember someone coming up to me and saying, 'Now I have a community.'"
Mohr remembers that when she came to the county in 1964, it had mostly a small town feel. "It was very easy to get to know people, and it wasn't difficult to feel part of things."
Now that is history. Over the years she has seen the changes in the county with a knowing eye. "Some were unavoidable, but some might have been chosen with a wiser eye if we had looked listened and considered," she said.
But she feels the wealth of people in the county can lead it to better days, with some effort. "I see potential all over the county, but people have to be part of their community," she said. "We can't expect to do all the things that we'd like to do. But we have to all do a little bit. Chester County can be so much more. But we have to keep doing it."
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First Sentence:
houses, and farmhouses in particular, settle in the mind and heart, capturing one forever? Read the first page Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New England, Greek Revival, United States, New York, Gothic Revival, Top Left New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
houses, and farmhouses in particular, settle in the mind and heart, capturing one forever? Read the first page Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New England, Greek Revival, United States, New York, Gothic Revival, Top Left New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 6
books:
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- Houses by Mail: A Guide to Houses from Sears, Roebuck and Company by Katherine Cole Stevenson in Back Matter
- The American Dream by Lew Smith in Back Matter
- Old Ontario Houses: Traditions in Local Architecture by Tom Cruickshank on page 40
- Architecture and the American Dream by Craig Whitaker in Back Matter
- Biographical Sketches by C. Kegan Paul in Back Matter
See all 6 books this book cites
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