Customer Reviews

Identifying American Architecture: A Pictorial Guide to Styles and Terms, 1600-1945 (American Association for State and Local History)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Enhanced with 214 photographs, John Blumenson's Identifying American Architecture: A Pictorial Guide To Styles And Terms 1600-1945 enables the reader to associate real buildings with architectural styles, elements, and orders. Every photograph is keyed to an explanatory text pointing out characteristic features of each building's style. An extremely "user friendly" identification tool, Identifying American Architecture is highly recommended for both students of American architecture and the non-specialist general reader with an interest in identifying architectural classifications of buildings they encounter on trips and excursions throughout the country or in his own neighborhood.

I have been collecting field guides to American domestic archiecture for many years and beyond a doubt this is the very worst guide that I have come across. This guide has many strikes against it.

First, it is too short to give the reader any real understanding of the different styles of American domestic architecture. Many styles are ignored and the styles that are covered are done so superficially. As an example, the section on the International Style of architecture only has two washed out black and white photographs. The few details that are explained are done so in the most superficial manner.

Second, the quality of the printing is very poor. The quality of the paper and binding makes the book look like it was produced int he 1970's. Worst of all, the photographs used to show the different styles are washed out. A revolution in publishing has happened in the past twenty years and this publisher has missed out in the opportunity to produce a modern looking guide.

Finally, there are some wonderful field guides in current production. Don't waste your money on this guide. Check out the guides produced by Lester Walker and Virginia McAlester. Those are the types of guides that can inspire the reader to learn more about history and American houses. Avoid this guide!

Well, it's not the worst field guide I ever saw but as a previous reviewer said, it has some serious flaws. Most notably, I struggled to focus on the wee tiny numbers that identify the architectural characteristics.

Man, those are some small numbers. And sometimes they get so clustered together, you're not sure which number goes with which architectural feature.

The long, thin layout of the graphics works against this book, too. The pictures of houses just don't fit well in this format.

And (sadly), I agree that some of the photos are a little washed out. With all that said, I do believe you can learn something from every book and this book does contain a wealth of information.

Rose

author, The Houses That Sears Built

and co-author, California's Kit Homes

While other "field guides" to American architecture provide more details or bigger/better photos than this one, a key part of what makes 'Identifying American Architecture' so good is what it DOESN'T tell you. That is, it focuses on naming basic (and often not-so-basic) architectural elements in a broad range of styles for you, without the encyclopedic details of each style's history and genealogy, which can be researched elsewhere.

This pinpointed, in-the-moment approach is VERY helpful when you're walking around an area with a rich mix of architectural styles, as in Boston, Chicago, New York, Nashville, San Francisco, and other major cities established 150-300 years ago. In Boston, for example, you can easily find yourself looking at a 1790 Federal-style townhouse one minute, a Richardsonian church from the 1870s the next, and a Second Empire government building (circa 1890) a minute after that. With this easy-to-carry guide in hand, you can quickly identify the differences, point them out to friends, make notes, and move on.

Likewise, this book is a good, easy access reference to have on hand when reading any book -- fiction or non-fiction -- featuring a lot of architectural description. Again, it doesn't have deep details, but there's enough to help you picture and/or understand scenes better. Students and writers also find it helpful in knowing their pilasters from their parapets when writing descriptions of historic buildings and neighborhoods.

In addition to offering at least 4 examples of each architectural style, with the various elements all enumerated clearly, this book also features an alphabetical index of primary architectural elements that make up classic buildings. That's then topped off with a Pictorial Glossary of Terms, where many of the architectural elements that make up classic architecture are shown and denoted in just enough detail to be useful and clarifying.

All in all, for a 128 page book, this one has A LOT of very useful information, presented in an even MORE useful and accessible format. Worth every nickel.

This book is set up in a way that is simple to flip through and pinpoint details on buildings.

Excellent pictorial coverage of styles combined with clear definitions of criteria