Identifying American Architecture: A Pictorial Guide to Styles and Terms, 1600-1945

by John J.G. Blumenson

Book Overview

This book enables the reader to determine styles and identify architectural terms by comparing real buildings with the book's many photographs.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393306100
• ISBN13: 9780393306101
• Release Date: January 1979
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 144 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 8.5" x 5.6"

Customer Reviews

Useful book

This book is set up in a way that is simple to flip through and pinpoint details on buildings.

J. J. G. Blumenson - Identifying American Architecture

Excellent pictorial coverage of styles combined with clear definitions of criteria

An Informative, Easy to Access Guide That's Helped Me Many Times

While other "field guides" to American architecture provide more details or bigger/better photos than this one, a key part of what makes 'Identifying American Architecture' so good is what it DOESN'T tell you. That is, it focuses on naming basic (and often not-so-basic) architectural elements in a broad range of styles for you, without the encyclopedic details of each style's history and genealogy, which can be researched elsewhere. This pinpointed, in-the-moment approach is VERY helpful when you're walking around an area with a rich mix of architectural styles, as in Boston, Chicago, New York, Nashville, San Francisco, and other major cities established 150-300 years ago. In Boston, for example, you can easily find yourself looking at a 1790 Federal-style townhouse one minute, a Richardsonian church from the 1870s the next, and a Second Empire government building (circa 1890) a minute after that. With this easy-to-carry guide in hand, you can quickly identify the differences, point them out to friends, make notes, and move on. Likewise, this book is a good, easy access reference to have on hand when reading any book -- fiction or non-fiction -- featuring a lot of architectural description. Again, it doesn't have deep details, but there's enough to help you picture and/or understand scenes better. Students and writers also find it helpful in knowing their pilasters from their parapets when writing descriptions of historic buildings and neighborhoods. In addition to offering at least 4 examples of each architectural style, with the various elements all enumerated clearly, this book also features an alphabetical index of primary architectural elements that make up classic buildings. That's then topped off with a Pictorial Glossary of Terms, where many of the architectural elements that make up classic architecture are shown and denoted in just enough detail to be useful and clarifying. All in all, for a 128 page book, this one has A LOT of very useful information, presented in an even MORE useful and accessible format. Worth every nickel.

Highly recommended for students of American architecture

Enhanced with 214 photographs, John Blumenson's Identifying American Architecture: A Pictorial Guide To Styles And Terms 1600-1945 enables the reader to associate real buildings with architectural styles, elements, and orders. Every photograph is keyed to an explanatory text pointing out characteristic features of each building's style. An extremely "user friendly" identification tool, Identifying American Architecture is highly recommended for both students of American architecture and the non-specialist general reader with an interest in identifying architectural classifications of buildings they encounter on trips and excursions throughout the country or in his own neighborhood.