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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 728.370973
EAN: 9780618387991
Edition: 1
ISBN: 0618387994
Label: Mariner Books
Manufacturer: Mariner Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 416
Publication Date: March 09, 2004
Publisher: Mariner Books
Studio: Mariner Books

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Related Items:

• A Field Guide to American Houses
• Identifying American Architecture: A Pictorial Guide to Styles and Terms : 1600-1945
• The Visual Dictionary of American Domestic Architecture
• American Homes: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Domestic Architecture - A landmark reference with more than 1,000 illustrations, elevations, and palns
• A Concise History Of American Architecture (Icon Editions)
• see more

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Editorial Review:

Product Description:
American Houses is a historical guide to the architecture of the American home. While other architectural field guides show only façades, this book includes floor plans, showing how the form of a house arises from its function. Photographs and drawings of exteriors illustrate the significant field marks of each style and help pinpoint the key elements that can identify a house even when it has been remodeled beyond recognition. Beautifully illustrated, clearly written, and impeccably researched, American Houses is an essential reference for anyone interested in the history of American residential architecture.




Rating: - A Field Guide with Little Imagination
There is a great tradition in the United States of Field Guides to American Domestic Architecture. Almost all of the Guides break down into two camps. The first group are the Guides that illustrate architectural styles through the use of photographs. The second group of Guides show styles through the use of black and white line drawings. Of the two camps, I prefer line drawings because they allow the reader to focus on the mulitple architectural details that come together to form an architectural ... Read More

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Rating: - A wonderfully entertaining read
This book is a great overview of American architecture. It is entertaining for the non-architect but full of detail and histry for those who already have a lot of knowledge of the subject matter. Foster has obviously spent considerable time and energy researching his material. The floorplans are informative and help the reader to visualize a certain style and to understand the practical forces that shaped each architectural style. A must read for anyone with an interest in American architectural history!

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Rating: - "Related" Topics
Brilliantly researched, "Gerry" Foster manages to build the houses he describes in our minds through his illustrative diction and syntax. With its diagrams and managable set up, this book is a treat for all those who aspire to understand what goes into the frame work of an American home. For those who have read Foster's Field Guide to Trains, I assure you will agree with me when I say that I look forward to more works by this highly talented painter, architect, author, and father. I had the pleasure of recently ... Read More

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Rating: - An artist's perspective
The author is the illustrator as well, and his pen and ink renditions are museum worthy. As an artist, and not an academic, his approach is informal and slightly irreverent.

The book's emphasis is on the Colonial era, whose styles he divides into New England, Hudson River, Mid-Atlantic, Chesapeake, Southern, French and Spanish. He then sums up the 19th century styles, predominantly Greek Revival, Italianate, Queen Anne and other late Victorian styles, and ends with the Colonial Revival, Bungalow, and ... Read More

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