Customer Reviews

Summer Cottages in the White Mountains: The Architecture of Leisure and Recreation, 1870 to 1930

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

 

 

This book is a well researched and, to my personal knowledge, an accurate historical account of these houses. The description of the house that my great grandfather had built for our family was biographically accurate and architectually detailed. Beautifully illustrated. Having personal details of the lives of the people who built these houses adds depth and interest. A wonderful reading experience for people with N.H. roots and interest in turn of the century architecture.

If you are looking for an academic treatise on nice houses of this time and place, or want to get a little history on specific houses in the area, I suspect this is a marvelous book. The basic pattern is one or two exterior pictures, often somewhat small, and a couple of pages of text, for each of a hundred lovely old getaway homes for the wealthy of the time. I buy a lot of books in the general vein of beautiful old homes/camps/cottages/cabins in beautiful recreational areas such as Maine and other Coastal New England and like most of them. This one just wasn't good fodder for the fantasy of what it would be to own one of these houses. There were only a handful of interior photos in the whole book, and many/most of the exterior photos are small black and whites from old magazines from the area. I appreciate being educated a little while I dream, but this one was order's of magnitudes too dry for me.