For eighteen months Robert Hanna put his architectural career aside to drive his faithful Dodge Aspen back and forth across Nebraska. He logged fifteen thousand through all seasons and weather. He ducked tornadoes and braved snowstorms to draw barns, bridges, depots, mills, storefronts, mansions, courthouses, churches, theaters, band-stands, ballparks, and other monuments to the human proclivity for building.
"My book of drawings and watercolors is a celebration of spaces—little spaces, really. Set down a towering county courthouse in the middle of a wide Nebraska horizon, and even government looks mighty small," writes Hanna. "I have drawn and painted these pictures from inside the world of the buildings and places they represent."
This record of an appreciative journey from Santee to Bayard, from Otoe County to Sioux County, from Carhenge at Alliance to the train station at Weeping Water, from Maskell's one-room city hall to the state capitol, from Omaha cityscapes to Sandhills landscapes, from North Plane to West Point and points in between is a work to savor and treasure.
