PDF Ebook A Field Guide to American Houses (Revised): The Definitive Guide to Identifying and Understanding America's Domestic Architecture, by Virg
By downloading the on-line A Field Guide To American Houses (Revised): The Definitive Guide To Identifying And Understanding America's Domestic Architecture, By Virg book right here, you will obtain some advantages not to choose the book establishment. Just attach to the internet and also start to download and install the web page web link we share. Currently, your A Field Guide To American Houses (Revised): The Definitive Guide To Identifying And Understanding America's Domestic Architecture, By Virg prepares to delight in reading. This is your time and also your serenity to obtain all that you desire from this publication A Field Guide To American Houses (Revised): The Definitive Guide To Identifying And Understanding America's Domestic Architecture, By Virg
A Field Guide to American Houses (Revised): The Definitive Guide to Identifying and Understanding America's Domestic Architecture, by Virg
PDF Ebook A Field Guide to American Houses (Revised): The Definitive Guide to Identifying and Understanding America's Domestic Architecture, by Virg
A Field Guide To American Houses (Revised): The Definitive Guide To Identifying And Understanding America's Domestic Architecture, By Virg. The established technology, nowadays assist everything the human demands. It includes the day-to-day activities, works, workplace, amusement, as well as more. One of them is the terrific internet connection as well as computer system. This condition will certainly alleviate you to assist one of your pastimes, reviewing behavior. So, do you have going to review this publication A Field Guide To American Houses (Revised): The Definitive Guide To Identifying And Understanding America's Domestic Architecture, By Virg now?
When going to take the experience or thoughts forms others, publication A Field Guide To American Houses (Revised): The Definitive Guide To Identifying And Understanding America's Domestic Architecture, By Virg can be an excellent resource. It's true. You can read this A Field Guide To American Houses (Revised): The Definitive Guide To Identifying And Understanding America's Domestic Architecture, By Virg as the source that can be downloaded and install below. The way to download and install is additionally easy. You could check out the link page that we provide and then buy guide making a bargain. Download A Field Guide To American Houses (Revised): The Definitive Guide To Identifying And Understanding America's Domestic Architecture, By Virg as well as you can deposit in your personal gadget.
Downloading the book A Field Guide To American Houses (Revised): The Definitive Guide To Identifying And Understanding America's Domestic Architecture, By Virg in this site lists can provide you a lot more advantages. It will certainly reveal you the best book collections and also finished compilations. Numerous publications can be discovered in this website. So, this is not only this A Field Guide To American Houses (Revised): The Definitive Guide To Identifying And Understanding America's Domestic Architecture, By Virg However, this book is referred to check out because it is an inspiring publication to offer you much more opportunity to obtain encounters as well as ideas. This is simple, review the soft documents of guide A Field Guide To American Houses (Revised): The Definitive Guide To Identifying And Understanding America's Domestic Architecture, By Virg and you get it.
Your impression of this book A Field Guide To American Houses (Revised): The Definitive Guide To Identifying And Understanding America's Domestic Architecture, By Virg will lead you to obtain exactly what you precisely need. As one of the inspiring books, this book will supply the presence of this leaded A Field Guide To American Houses (Revised): The Definitive Guide To Identifying And Understanding America's Domestic Architecture, By Virg to accumulate. Also it is juts soft file; it can be your collective file in device as well as other device. The vital is that usage this soft data book A Field Guide To American Houses (Revised): The Definitive Guide To Identifying And Understanding America's Domestic Architecture, By Virg to review and take the perks. It is exactly what we imply as publication A Field Guide To American Houses (Revised): The Definitive Guide To Identifying And Understanding America's Domestic Architecture, By Virg will improve your ideas as well as mind. Then, reviewing publication will additionally boost your life high quality a lot better by taking excellent activity in well balanced.
Here at last: the fully expanded, updated, and freshly designed second edition of the most comprehensive and widely acclaimed guide to domestic architecture—in print since its publication in 1984, and acknowledged everywhere as the unmatched, essential reference to American houses.
Focusing on dwellings in urban and suburban neighborhoods and rural locations all across the continental United States—houses built over the past three hundred years reflecting every social and economic background—this guide provides in-depth information on the essentials of domestic architecture with facts and frames of reference that will enable you to look in a fresh way at the houses around you. With more than 1,600 detailed photographs and line illustrations, and a lucid, vastly informative text, it will teach you not only to recognize distinct architectural styles but also to understand their historical significance. What does that cornice signify? Or that porch? The shape of that door? The window treatment? When was this house built? What does the style say about its builders and their eras? You'll find the answers to these and myriad other questions in this encyclopedic and eminently practical book.
Here are more than fifty styles and their variants, spanning seven distinct historical periods. Each style is illustrated with a large schematic drawing that highlights its most important identifying features. Additional drawings and photographs provide, at a glance, common alternative shapes, principal subtypes, and close-up views of typical small details—windows, doors, cornices, etc.—that can be difficult to see in full-house illustrations. The accompanying text explains the identifying features of each style, describing where and in what quantity they can be found, discussing all of its notable variants, and tracing their origin and history.
The book's introductory chapters provide invaluable general discussions of construction materials and techniques, house shapes, and the various traditions of architectural fashion that have influenced American house design through the past three centuries. A pictorial key and glossary simplifies identification, connecting easily recognized architectural features—the presence of a tile roof, for example—to the styles in which that feature is likely to be found.
Among the new material included in this edition are chapters on styles that have emerged in the thirty years since the previous edition; a groundbreaking chapter on the development and evolution of American neighborhoods; an appendix on approaches to construction in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries; an expanded bibliography; and 600 new photographs and line drawings throughout.
Here is an indispensable resource—both easy and pleasurable to use—for the house lover and the curious tourist, for the house buyer and the weekend stroller, for neighborhood preservation groups, architecture buffs, and everyone who wants to know more about their own homes and communities. It is an invaluable book of American architecture, culture, and history.
- Sales Rank: #89896 in Books
- Published on: 2013-12-03
- Released on: 2013-12-03
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 10.31" h x 1.75" w x 7.81" l, 4.70 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 880 pages
From Booklist
*Starred Review* This outstanding volume covers more than 50 styles of American residential architecture, from early settlement homes of the seventeenth century to the modern “Millennium Mansions” of the present day. Expanded and completely revised from the 1984 edition, this edition includes American house design from the last three decades and adds more than 600 new photographs and illustrations.The introductory section, “Looking at American Homes,” is broken down into distinct narratives. “Style: The Fashions of American Houses” distills the majority of houses into one of four principal architectural traditions; “Form: The Shapes of American Houses” features copious line drawings that show ground plans and proportions; “Structure: The Anatomy of American Houses” details the walls, roofs, and structural elements of a house; and “Neighborhoods: The Groupings of American Houses” highlights the different types of neighborhoods, including a discussion of plans, density, streets and sidewalks, and development influences.Each section that follows covers a specific style (e.g., “Dutch Colonial,” “Italianate,” “Queen Anne,” “Tudor,” “Mission,” “Prairie,” “Ranch”), with notes on identifying features, principal subtypes, variants and details, and geographic occurrence. Numerous black-and-white photographs illustrate the wide variety of houses found within each style, and line drawings express both fine and broad details. The appendix “Approaches to Construction in the 20th and 21st Centuries” discusses prefabricated structures and “green” construction. Copious notes and a bibliography for further reference round out the work. Both scholars and average readers will find much to enjoy in this volume. Highly recommended for most public and academic libraries—and the price point may allow for a circulating copies. --Rebecca Vnuk
Review
"Magisterial . . . The illustrated story of why our houses—great and humble and everything in between—look the way they do."
—Michael Tortorello, The New York Times
"Once you've pored through Virginia McAlester's photo-packed bible of American home design, you'll be able to identify the saltboxes, Dutch colonials, and brownstones lining your own street, and you'll understand the historical significance of each one."
—Tina Jordan, Entertainment Weekly
"The go-to resource for architecture spotters."
—Peter Terzian, Elle Décor
"Chronicles the past 400 years of American styles, from wigwam to mobile to modern."
—Alexandra Wolfe, The Wall Street Journal
"A classic."
—Pilar Viladas, House Beautiful
"Encyclopedic . . . For lovers of historic homes, this is a rich trove of not just details, but reasons for them."
—Susan Clotfelter, The Denver Post
"880 pages of scholarly wonder."
—D Magazine
"The definitive guide to American housing styles."
—Jim Weiker, The Columbus Dispatch
"Outstanding . . . Expanded and completely revised . . . Both scholars and average readers will find much to enjoy in this volume."
—Rebecca Vnuk, Booklist (starred review)
About the Author
Virginia Savage McAlester is a lifelong advocate of historical preservation with deep professional interests in architecture. She has an undergraduate degree from Harvard University, where she attended Radcliffe College and completed the first-year curriculum of the Harvard Graduate School of Design. She is a founding member and past president of Preservation Dallas, and serves as an advisor emeritus for the National Trust for Historic Preservation. She is author of The Making of a Historic District: Swiss Avenue, Dallas, Texas and coauthor of The Homes of the Park Cities, Dallas: Great American Suburbs. She lives in Dallas, Texas, where she is an honorary member of the state and local chapters of the American Institute of Architects (AIA).
Most helpful customer reviews
46 of 47 people found the following review helpful.
A Stylish Guide to Styles
By Bruce C. McLeod
This book is a "must" for anyone who likes to look at houses. Its novel, central purpose is to aid in identifying the architectural styles of American homes. It does this in a manner analogous to "field guides" for birds, bugs or plants, but instead of wings and beaks or leaves and bark, it describes roof lines, window treatments and the many other visible characteristics that define each style. Introductory chapters offer an engaging historical background for floor plans, construction techniques and exterior features; these chapters are clear, concise and accessible even to a novice. The chapter on neighborhoods, new for the 2nd edition, presents a fascinating account of how geography and advances in transportation have influenced people's decisions to live in communities and the homes they were likely to build in a given locale. The author is well aware that illustrations are crucial in a volume of this nature; she provides hundreds of straightforward line drawings that clarify structural and decorative concepts, plus hundreds more instructive photographs of actual dwellings. In the chapters on individual styles these figures complement one another to convey both the essential elements of each style and the range of variations that may be encountered "in the field". Add an exhaustive reference section at the end and you have a versatile work that will enrich the afternoons of casual weekend wanderers while also serving the needs of serious students of architectural history.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
Cheap at Twice the Price, Depending on the Price -- A Must-Have Regardless
By Allen Smalling
I know of no single one-volume work on American architectural styles that has (a) established such a good track record in its previous editions, (b) added to much new information for this (2013) edition, and (c) is available significantly below retail at Amazon. This book is aimed at the layman -- obviously, an 880-page tome with over 600 pages devoted to text is not for people who want a quick looker-upper, but it is fascinating nonetheless and not over the heads of those motivated by curiosity. If you hear Jed Clampett's TV mansion referred to as "Beaux-Arts" (boze-ahrt) style -- well, it is, and this book will tell you about the history of such edifices, just as it does with "Second Empire," "Minimal Traditional," "Italianate," pretty much the whole range of American houses, old and new, vernacular and individually designed. Cheers to Virginia Savage McAlester and her hardworking staff for bringing the original 1984 volume -- itself no slouch -- gloriously up-to-date. I own not only the 1984 predecessor and this new volume, of course, but have been proud to make this one a gift to friends far and near. It's that good.
Cheap at Twice the Price? Could be. Prices have been fluctuating lately, but are always well below the benchmark retail of fifty U.S. dollars.
Hint: This would make a terrific present not only to an architecture student, but to someone who has just received her or his Real Estate sales broker's license.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
For Anyone Curious about Houses
By Marjie, Mother of 9
My dearly beloved is a big fan of houses. He loves to study the architecture and details of housing everywhere we go. So, when I saw this book reviewed in the Wall Street Journal, I knew it would be perfect for him. At the beginning of the book, there are charts with diagrams to help the reader identify the type of house he/she is looking at. For example, a sketch of a roof with a 2 or 3 word description, and the book recommends looking at one or more type of house to see which it is. However, it's also very good for reading, with chapters on the layouts of early towns and so forth. There is also a section on the housing used by various Native American groups. Each chapter about a style of houses includes a few pages of history, etc, before sketches, details about characteristics of the type, and photos of actual houses of each style from various parts of the country. Good for a long reading session, but it's also a fast and easy reference for when you just want to know what you've just seen.
See all 256 customer reviews...
A Field Guide to American Houses (Revised): The Definitive Guide to Identifying and Understanding America's Domestic Architecture, by Virg PDF
A Field Guide to American Houses (Revised): The Definitive Guide to Identifying and Understanding America's Domestic Architecture, by Virg EPub
A Field Guide to American Houses (Revised): The Definitive Guide to Identifying and Understanding America's Domestic Architecture, by Virg Doc
A Field Guide to American Houses (Revised): The Definitive Guide to Identifying and Understanding America's Domestic Architecture, by Virg iBooks
A Field Guide to American Houses (Revised): The Definitive Guide to Identifying and Understanding America's Domestic Architecture, by Virg rtf
A Field Guide to American Houses (Revised): The Definitive Guide to Identifying and Understanding America's Domestic Architecture, by Virg Mobipocket
A Field Guide to American Houses (Revised): The Definitive Guide to Identifying and Understanding America's Domestic Architecture, by Virg Kindle
A Field Guide to American Houses (Revised): The Definitive Guide to Identifying and Understanding America's Domestic Architecture, by Virg PDF
A Field Guide to American Houses (Revised): The Definitive Guide to Identifying and Understanding America's Domestic Architecture, by Virg PDF
A Field Guide to American Houses (Revised): The Definitive Guide to Identifying and Understanding America's Domestic Architecture, by Virg PDF
A Field Guide to American Houses (Revised): The Definitive Guide to Identifying and Understanding America's Domestic Architecture, by Virg PDF
