Customer Reviews

Houses of the Founding Fathers

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One of my favorite pleasures is visiting historic homes. Nothing gives you a sense of history and biography like entering the dining room or bedroom of the house of an historical figure and examining family portraits, admiring classical moldings, and peering through wavy eighteenth-century window panes at a garden topiary below. Aside from visitng old homes, the next best thing is paging through collections of them such as those found in this handsome volume by Hugh Howard and photographer Roger Straus III.

The authors have visited the homes of forty of the luminaries of eighteenth-century America and given us not only magnificent color photos of the interiors and exteriors of these houses, but Howard has written elegant summaries of the owners' lives, their political importance, and their domestic architectural tastes.

What is unusual about Howard and Straus' effort is the range of selection. There are the expected chapters on Mount Vernon, Monticello, and the homes of the Lees and Randolphs of Virginia, but the book also includes the residences of more obscure members of the nation's founders such as Benjamin Chew of Pennsylvania, William Paca of Maryland, and William Whipple of New Hampshire, a signer of the Declaration of Independence.

This is not only a book for the coffee table, but one to be read with appetite and consulted on your next trip to America's historic homes.

This book is many things. First, it's a selective architectural survey of many of the homes of our most important founders. While not exhaustive, the selection of sites is representative of important examples in the late Georgian, Adam, and Federal styles throughout the East. Well placed side-bars bring the readers attention to other sites and personalities, such as a neighboring plantation, church, or an important visitor, that frame each of the feature sites in historical context. It's a very nice touch that adds depth and beauty to the book.

All the houses are beautifully captured by Straus' stunning photography. Something potential buyers should know is that much of the photography is of the interiors, and there are few close shots of architectural details. This book is really intended for a general readership rather than for architectural historians.

Howard's text is really quite good, also intended for the curious reader rather than the serious history scholar. This is a book to be enjoyed rather than studied. It's for casual browsing, but offers enough architectural and historical insight to be interesting to the well informed reader. There's much more quality here than what we normally expect in a "coffee-table book."

Now, if I could just get Amazon to deliver this book to me undamaged...

Much more than a coffee table book, it has superb pix, great stories with each house, and architectural detail as well. Many great interiro shots of rooms, etc. For the heft, quality, pix and presentation, the price is WELL worth it. Highly recommended.

Houses of the Founding Fathers

This book is long overdue, and well worth the wait. The photographs and text, along with the history tidbits interwoven throughout give a real sense of the life and times of those men and women who created our country. The authors have gone beyond presenting the basic architecture styles to bring us into the everyday aspects of life of our Founding Fathers and their families. The perspectives and lighting of the photographs make us believe that 'we are there'. The authors have obviously done their research and made this book easy to follow with timelines, facts, features, and explanations of how the houses came into being in the first place - and how they have fared over the past two centuries. For anyone interested in American History - this book is for you!

In their eye-opening volume, "Houses of the Founding Fathers," author Hugh Howard and photographer Roger Strauss III, effortlessly bring each historic household to life through colorful details and well-chosen anecdotes, while taking us on a whirlwind photographic tour of 18th century residences and proprietors. "Houses of the Founding Fathers" crackles with beauty and style.

Well-written and illustrated in three parts, "The Colonies Unite", "A Time of War", and "The Federal Era," Strauss and Howard's book is a probing examination of the great homes of early America during perhaps its most fascinating period.

Gorgeous photographs of the houses monopolize the pages, but the author does feed the reader tidbits of information in his lively commentary.

Some of Strass and Howard's best pages are colorful portraits of the nation's elite. We learn that Virginia Speaker of the House George Whyte's coffee was intentionally poisoned with yellow arsenic. From his deathbed, upstairs, the signer of the Declaration of Independence cried out, "I am murdered!" -- Three days later, he was dead. Whyte's nephew was acquitted of the murder when the key witness -- a slave -- could not by Virginia law testify against a white man.

As in Natchez: The Houses and History of the Jewel of the Misissippi and Thomas Jefferson: The Built Legacy of Our Third President, the author's astute presentation of grand houses shows us why these domiciles of the founding fathers have so nobly survived to our own times.

The best parts of the book occur when Hugh Howard shows us America's less celebrated treasures -- like General Knox's Montpelier in Thomson, Maine, the Matthias Hammond House of Annapolis, Maryland and the Vassall-Craigie-Longfellow House of Cambridge, Massachusetts.

This is a compelling and moving real estate album, and Hugh Howard is an author of proven qualities. He can write beautifully. Photographer Roger Strauss III has an eye for an image and a gift for capturing a view, such as the majestic setting of George Washington's Mount Vernon overlooking the Potomac River. His subjects are grand on the world-class scale. While the houses are familiar, they rarely have been documented in such interesting detail.

What more could one want to know about Germantown, Pennsylvania's Cliveden? Benjamin Chew's Georgian-style summer retreat was a classic five-bay, double pile, two-and-a-half story house, with a unique place in history. The strong stone mansion was transformed into a fortress by British troops during the Battle of Germantown on October 4, 1777.

The book is a must for anyone claiming a love of historic houses, but it is also the perfect antidote for anyone who still thinks a clean chamber pot should be stored under the bed instead of its rightful place in the kitchen. As you peruse Mr. Howard's entertaining and surprising text, you will never look at a ceiling medallion, an overmantel or a compass window, not to mention a great hall sporting all of the above, in the same way again. You will realize that you are looking, according to Mr. Strauss; at a combination of craftsmanship and style you will not find anywhere else.

In "Houses of the Founding Fathers," Hugh Howard provides a mesmerizing discourse covering everything and anything about the homes of the men that guided the American Revolution. We get the Corinthian columns, the carved mantels, the ornate ceilings, the Palladian windows, the twisting balusters, the shield-back chairs; the magnificence of it all.

What makes this book worth reading, however, is not the author's compilation of the varieties of architectural styles. Instead, its importance lies within the chapters; the author sketches the lifestyles of the households that dwelt there, the architectural expressions of the period's elite, and tells the fascinating tales of the transformation in the fortunes of the elite. Clearly, he is there to show us a real sense of just who were William Wipple,Silas Deane and Sarah Livingston Jay.

"Houses of Founding Fathers" is a skillful, absorbing, often moving contribution to the popular understanding of one of the few episodes in history to live on untarnished and undiminished in our collective memory; and rightly deserves preservation.

This book has not only stunning photos and info about the houses, but also tons of history. It's like "If Walls Could Talk" for all of our founding fathers' homes. Family life, politics, business, & more went on in these homes, and this book delves into all of it. However, it does ignore the slavery issue, since it isn't PC to be reminded that most wealthy landowners, North & South, had slaves; including the founders.

This book is a gem of photos and text about all sorts of Americans and how they lived. Most impressed that it did not just cover the usual presidents

I have really ejoyed this book. Much more than just a book about old houses. There is lots of interesting history. A very good value.

This is a superb book...and a great gift for anyone interested in our country's history. The photographs by Roger Straus are excellent and "make" the book!

I loved looking at the pictures in this book! It drew me back to a time that molded our country, if only from the view of our most influential founding fathers. My favorite is the Tea Room at Jefferson's Monticello. I would add a tea room onto my home in an instant if I thought the architecture of my current home would match. (I do keep a photo of it on the wall in my office.) So, I suffice to look at the homes and imagine the deep discussions which must have influenced the paths which our wonderful country has traced. This book is a beautiful tribute to our culture.
Bernardette Costa
Author, The Six Colorful Annies