Industry, Architecture, and Engineering: American Ingenuity 1750-1950 (Hardcover)

~ Louis Bergeron (Author), Maria Teresa Maiullari-Pontois (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

For a century and a half, the North American landscape was marked by evidence of tremendous industrial activity, by artifacts such as railroad bridges, factories, grain silos, and hydroelectric dams. In the transformation to an information economy, that evidence increasingly takes the form of detritus, of rusting scrap and decaying structures. Writes French economic historian Louis Bergeron, "the line is quickly crossed between the living industrial landscape and the industrial wasteland, dramatic in its immobility, its abandonment, and its gradual degradation."

This sprawling and striking photographic essay, depicting railroad stations, shipyards, canals, steel mills, and other industrial centers, offers a catalog of all that is now giving way to commercial parks and residential subdivisions. Although Bergeron recognizes that the times change--and, indeed, that this industrial landscape is the result of many incremental additions and subtractions over the years--he urges that some of our industrial landscapes be preserved as museums and "heritage corridors." He adds that many other industrial structures lend themselves to "adaptive reuse," in which hotels, restaurants, and galleries might occupy former industrial space. Citing successful examples of this preservation, he remarks that the American public "is developing an attachment to and fondness toward industrial monuments and landscapes, whose significant contributions are beginning to be better understood and appreciated." As an exercise in that understanding and appreciation, this book has much merit--and it's a pleasure to browse through as well. --Gregory McNamee

From Library Journal

By and large, humble buildings have been the detritus of architectural history. With few exceptions, such as the work of the late Henry-Russell Hitchcock and the Society for Industrial Archeology, the canonical history of architecture has rarely included the often large-scale and noble buildings constructed for industry and manufacturing. Thanks to the impressive work of the National Park Service's Historic American Buildings Survey, systematic and informative documentation and study of the industrial vernacular now exist. This handsomely produced volume is filled with exemplary black-and-white photographs of mills, dams, canals, bridges, and other structures that blur the distinction between mere building and architecture. Seemingly incidental in relation to the illustrations, the essays thoughtfully divide the topic into three sections: the history of industrialization, major types (civil, engineering, mining, or manufacturing), and the environmental impact of our industrial heritage. Recommended for larger architecture and urban design collections.DPaul Glassman, New York Sch. of Interior Design Lib.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Harry N. Abrams (November 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0810934736
• ISBN-13: 978-0810934733
• Product Dimensions: 11.5 x 10.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,544,906 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Distinctively Fascinating Book w/Evocative Photos, March 21, 2001

By	James K. Rowbotham "hamptonsautodidact" (Westhampton Beach NY) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I spotted this book in a bookstore, but ordered it online. For anyone interested in American economic history in terms of how our nation evolved via manufacturing and early technology, this book is incredibly interesting. Its coffee table size makes it a bit cumbersome to read continuously. Nonetheless its text is well written.

The real winners here, however, are the wonderful black and white photos of railroad terminals, factory exteriors/machinery, dams, power plants, and allied structures that really capture the collaborative genius that designed and built American industry.

The combined effect of "Industry, Architecture and Engineering" is almost narcotic. I keep going back to look at the photos and marvel at them. That's a far cry from any other large book I've ever seen. It is a brilliantly conceived and produced work.

2.0 out of 5 stars not a history book, May 23, 2009

By	Robert Paul Jones "Sociologist" (Hempstead, Texas) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Despite its title Industry, Architecture, and Engineering: American Ingenuity: 1750-1950 is not a history book. It is not an historical examination of two centuries of U.S. industrialization. Instead, it is a "coffee table" book with a peculiar history and a mixed message. It grew from a French exhibit of black & white photographs of U.S. industrial archeological sites designed to promote preservation of industrial artifacts. The text, which comprises perhaps 10 to 20 percent of the book, does draw heavily on historical scholarship in surveying the architecture and engineering of American industrialization. But this historical account is distorted by the need to build it around the photographs in the exhibit. Moreover, few of the hundreds of photographs date from the historic period identified in the title. Most photographs depict empty, often abandon buildings, bridges, railroad stations, ports or other industrial structures and are devoid of humans or human activity. The colorful, dynamic story of industrializing is incongruous with black & white photographic study of the relics of deindustrialization. The book's negative depiction of deindustrialization undercuts the positive message about architectural & engineering achievement of the past. Conversely, the text does little to enliven the pictures. Consequently the book as a whole--text & pictures--fails to make a clear case for historic preservation.

Metaphorically, this large, heavy book of pictures is poorly "engineered" and "architecturally" unsound. Consider the pictures. Instead of being numbered, titled and compiled in a table of contents, the pictures are identified by location only in relative terms: top, bottom, overleaf, below, above, opposite and so on. Moreover the captions are grouped together while the pictures, which vary in size by a factor of five, are spread across two pages. The arrangement makes finding the caption that goes with a specific photograph difficult on pages containing more than three images. The greater significance of this captioning system is that it prevented the authors form coordinating text with photographs. The authors cannot reference photographs by title or location. Consequently the connection between text and photographs is vague. The book's layout further separates text from photographs by segregating them spatially. The reader encounters three or four pages of text followed by up to twenty pages of photographs. Sometimes textual description precedes the relevant photographs; sometime text follows pictures. These design flaws make for a disjointed reading experience.

Generally the translated text reads well in English. The book is marred by a few minor factual errors. On page 159 the famous grain elevators in Hutchinson, Kansas are mistakenly located in Texas, an understandable mistake for European authors perhaps, but less acceptable for an American translator and publisher.