Customer Reviews

North Shore Boston: Country Houses Of Essex County, 1865-1930

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

 

 

This is a beautiful book and a great follow up to the book on Chicago's North Shore. These books are so luxurious and elegant, the craftsmanship is just amazing, I highly recommend both. It is wonderful to explore this well researched and interesting book. The black and white historic pictures are crisp and detailed and the history well researched. Anyone who has any interest in historic estates or just appreciates fine craftsmanship in a book will not be disappointed. I commend the authors and publisher for a job well done.

This book is a treasure of information about the great homes north of Boston and contains outstanding rare and crisp photographs that tell so much. Due to the quality of this publication, I would not hesitate to add any book published by Acanthus Press, which obviously takes great pride in creating their architecture books. The preservation of the great remaining mansions and estates is vital to our continued rediscovery and appreciation of our past and this book is an important resource. I found that the award-winning author, Pamela W. Fox, to have great talent in writing an architectural book that is a joy to read. Probably you do the same thing with this type of book as I: you go through the volume the first time looking at the fine photographs and reading the captions, and then when you have time you read the text. I would call this getting triple the value, as after you have looked, and read, you will now use this book as a reference. (LarryLufkin@comcast.net)

I saw this book and as soon as I started looking through it I fell in love. This novel chronicles the expansive mansions on Boston's North Shore, with black and white photographs of both the exteriors and interiors. These pictures made me feel like I was part of that life, and helped me understand how people actually decorated those "Maderley" type manor houses. I was shocked to know families actually lived in them, and furnished them so lavishly!

For anyone who is a fan of architecture or old houses, even victorian decorating, check this book out! I love old houses and seeing the way people decorated them, and this HUGE book took me further in than I ever expected. Some of these have blueprints, which helped me figure out the layout of these grand mansions, and how many rooms there really were.

Overall, the content and pictures were fine, but I was disappointed at the small number of plans included. This is a major beef of mine with most of the later volumes in this series. For example, the excellent book by Kathrens on Trumbauer - it has plans for most of his houses. Kathrens' later book on houses of New York only had half as many. His newest (not published by Acanthus) on Newport houses, goes back to providing more plans. I wonder if editorial decisions at Acanthus led him to another publishing house?
Anyone seriously interested in architecture needs the plans to get a sense of circulation, and relationships between rooms. The series purports to be concerned with architecture, yet most of what we get are pictures. I don't mind the pics, as they are of the period, and wonderful resources, but I want more plans. I have been collecting the entire series, as I have been looking for these types of books for a long while. But they are turning out not to be what I think it could have been - definitive. The book is handsome, as are all in the series. Because of the lack of more plans, I wouldn't recommend paying full price. Buy from Amazon, or one of the marketplace sellers. I did, and the book was brand new. Got it more than $30 off the regular price.