Customer Reviews

The Mediterranean House in America

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This large book, lavish with full color pictures, traces the American love affair with the mediterranean home. It includes examples of both the early styles, and the contemporary.

Typically, these homes are built in the warm weather states--California, Florida, and across the southwest. They have a history there, too, inherited from the Spanish colonists. The columns and baroque decorations were currently in style when the Spanish first came to America.

Red tile roofs, elaborate wrought iron scroll work, and spacious interiors are typical. Even at their most elaborate, there is an easy informality about these homes. Many have an indoors/outdoors feel, fitting perfectly into the western states with their warmer weather.

Some of the most famous designers of Spanish style homes are included. Marion Sims Wyeth, for example, created the famous Mar-a-Lago and many of the lovely homes in Palm Beach.

Much recommended.

I have no training whatever in architecture but I do have a strong interest in social history and material culture, and housing and architecture is an important part of that. Buildings tend to last longer than most man-made objects and the necessities of society and climate incorporated into the design of one's living space are a major source of historical interpretation. I also lived for several years in southern Europe and since then in semitropical areas of the U.S., especially San Antonio, where Mediterranean styles have long been popular, and where I developed a taste for them myself. Even when such a house is large and expensively appointed, it will somehow seem less formal and perhaps less forbidding than a Federal or Georgian-style place. Abrams specializes in gorgeously photographed oversized volumes and this one is no exception. A well-written introductory chapter summarizes the history behind Spanish, Italian, and southern French architecture and how it has been adapted since colonial times in south Texas, southern California, and Florida. (In some areas, like Coral Gables and Montecito, there has been a deliberate historical effort to maintain a specifically Mediterranean architectural unity in the community.) This is followed by pictorial studies of twenty-five particular homes (no commercial buildings are included) with interior and exterior photos and ground plans, and footnoted commentary on their designers and builders and the families inhabiting them. Each of these, of course, is one-of-a-kind and at least half of them are drool-worthy. Some exhibit great continuity between outside and inside views, but I was also struck by how many are "Mediterranean" only on the outside, with generic modern styling inside. But it's nice to see that some homes built just in the last decade are basically similar to what have become archetypes constructed in the 1920s and '30s. I'm especially partial to the designs of O'Neill Ford, well known in San Antonio, who seems to like vaulted brick ceilings. Books like this one are a great time-sink.

This book is outstanding. It covers many homes not seen in previous books. The photography is quite good, too. This is
a good coffee table book.

i was very disapointed, it wasn't what i expected .it was just ok.they were old picture not realty what the houses look today