Once the wealthiest Black neighborhood in the world, the Sweet Auburn Historic District in Atlanta, Georgia, now occupies a distinct place, both historically and geographically. It is at once the globally significant birthplace of the civil rights movement; and it also lays in the wake of social, commercial, and urban challenges that have left some of its most important spaces and places in a state of peril--and even in danger of demolition--as Atlanta grows in, around, and over it.
Now, for the first time, author, preservationist, and cultural developer Gene Kansas shines a spotlight on the district in Civil Sights. An illustrated and historic guidebook designed to educate visitors and inspire action, Civil Sights not only describes and depicts historically significant Sweet Auburn buildings and streets; it also tells the stories of people and places, then and now, that came together to move mountains before, during, and after the civil rights movement. These are the streets and buildings in which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Congressman John Lewis, Roslyn Pope, Alonzo Herndon, Ella Baker, John Wesley Dobbs, and countless others laid the groundwork for a social movement of equality that would sweep the country, change laws, and positively affect lives around the world. With accounts of such places as the first integrated fire station and the Butler Street YMCA that served as Atlanta's Black City Hall, and of the churches, restaurants, and entertainment halls that have dotted the neighborhood, Kansas unspools a riveting history that also aims to illuminate a path to preservation. Most importantly, Civil Sights poses questions of historical accountability to us all: How are we educating, advocating, and investing in the causes that Sweet Auburn represents? This volume includes illustrations from Atlanta architect Clay Kiningham, a foreword from New York Times best-selling author and journalist Gary M. Pomerantz, and an afterword from former dean of Georgia Tech's Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts Jacqueline Jones Royster.A jewel of Japanese residential architecture, presented through stunning immersive photographs and detailed fold-out plans
One of the great examples of Japanese residential architecture, the Yoshijima House has stood in the historic old city of Takayama for over 100 years. Built in 1907 after a fire and under the direction of Nishida Isaburo, the complex functioned as a residence for the Yoshijima family, a wealthy merchant household that brewed sake. The builders used luxuriant wood including elm, red pine and cypress: rich materials that were becoming more readily available as the Edo period gave way to the Meiji era.
Different sections of the main building served diverse functions. The large entryway and its adjacent rooms served as the shop entrance and the places in which business was conducted. An eight-tatami room known as a kazuki was where the Yoshijima family went about their daily, personal activities. The building's second floor was intended for guests and also housed a tea ceremony room and a Buddhist altar. Throughout the Yoshijima House, semitransparent shoji, or sliding doors, allow for gentle filtration of light throughout the rooms, while a skylight in the tiled roof provides greater illumination.
In the latter half of the 20th century, both Japanese and international architectural historians began to champion the Yoshijima House as a paragon of domestic architecture. Charles Moore praised it in the magazine Shinkenchiku, and Japanese building photographer Yukio Futagawa compared its significance to Athens' Parthenon. Although today it functions as a living museum, the Yoshijima House is not stocked with objects that recall its occupants. Indeed, it is this bareness and simplicity that allows the building's incredible craftsmanship to shine through.
This oversized volume is based on the 1988 book Important Cultural Properties: The Yoshijima House. Unlike that original edition, the 385 full-bleed color photographs by Hata Ryoo are here systematically arranged, facilitating a complete room-by-room tour of the house. Thirty-one architectural plans, including six gatefolds, allow for true appreciation of the building in all its greatness.
Lost in America documents the life and death of America's architectural and historic treasures. The book is based on a remarkable archive created by the Historic American Building Survey (HABS), a Works Progress Administration project that still documents the nation's most important buildings.
Lost in America focuses on 100 buildings that have been torn down over the past 90 years. Some―like New York's Penn Station and Chicago's Stock Exchange―were majestic. Others―like a tiny bridge in rural Montana and a small farmstead torn down for Denver's International Airport―were modest. But they all reflected America's story before they were razed. Using haunting black-and-white images by the nation's top architectural photographers, the book presents a timely look at what we've lost.
An urgent appeal to rethink the heritage enterprise
A critical reassessment of historic preservation policies in the United States, Second-Order Preservation brings needed attention to the hierarchical underpinnings and effects of established preservation frameworks. Questioning the criteria by which value is ascribed to historic buildings and neighborhoods, Erica Avrami works to elucidate and transform how--and which--claims to place become codified in and reinforced through public policy.As she eschews dominant case-study approaches that center the individual object of preservation, such as a discrete building or site, Avrami develops the concept of second-order preservation as a means of integrating broader considerations around social justice, equitable land-use planning, and environmental sustainability. Ranging from municipal to state to national and international levels of governance, her critique of the origins and evolution of heritage policy reveals how this conventional emphasis on the object has contributed to policy tensions and systemic exclusion.
Stressing the need to reform current preservation practices to serve more diverse publics, Avrami encourages a turn to an approach that substantively considers contexts and implications of preservation in the scheme of climate and justice. Second-Order Preservation maintains the interrelation between theory and practice, serving as both a critical reflection and a provocation aimed at advancing a more just set of urban policy agendas.
Monica Randall grew up on the Gold Coast of Long Island and was fascinated by the massive estates and their tantalizing stories. Millionaire F. W. Woolworth built Winfield, the grandest of its manors in the 1910s. On a clear day, you can see the New York City skyline from its balustraded roof, yet for nearly a century few have been allowed to enter its gates.
In the 1960s Monica was living in one of the fabled mansions built by a Five-and-Dime heiress. While there, she began a career scouting locations for movies; she used many of the surrounding estates including Winfield. After a brief incarnation as a charm school, Winfield was closed and auctioned off. At the auction, Monica met a mysterious European businessman, who bought the house. After a whirlwind romance, they became engaged, and Monica moved in to Winfield, only to have her suspicions confirmed: Winfield is haunted. Amid magnificent gilded carvings and marble, a labyrinth of secret passageways, hidden chambers, and deserted tunnels help reveal the true nature of its eccentric builder.
Through exhaustive research and countless interviews, Monica gradually uncovered stories of the Woolworths' sad past: the suicide of Edna Woolworth (Barbara Hutton's mother), Woolworth's obsession with Napoleon and the Egyptian occult, and the rumors surrounding the unsolved fire which burnt the first Winfield to the ground. This riveting memoir explores the culture and history of an era gone by, filled with enthralling stories of infamous scandals and breathtaking Gilded Age tales of New York society. Captivating and impossible to put down, this book will enchant readers everywhere.
Throughout the last fifty years the Gold Coast mansions were regularly razed for sub-developments; Winfield is the last of the marble palaces still standing.
Focused on an early twentieth-century home in Texarkana, Arkansas, Doris Douglas Davis's The Ahern Home of Texarkana offers not only a discussion of the architecture of a Classical Revival dwelling but also provides a closely observed account of the material culture and social structures of a particular time and place in the American South.
Built in 1905-1906 by Patrick Ahern, who immigrated to the United States from Dungarvan, Ireland, in 1881, the house at 403 Laurel Street was home to Ahern, his wife Mary, their six children, and a variety of descendants for over a century before its acquisition by the Texarkana Museums System in 2011. Today, the house, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, serves as a writing retreat, music center, and venue for historical presentations and educational activities.
Based on archival materials, interviews with members of the family and those who knew them, and other research, Davis's examination of the home and its inhabitants also includes a discussion of the complex relationship between persons of privilege such as the Aherns and the domestic servants, predominantly African American, whose often-arduous work made possible the smooth functioning of the household within its social context in the Jim Crow South. Describing the fraught relationships in the South between Black domestic servants and their white employers, Davis presents evidence of the inevitable despair wrought by inequality and the tremendous capacity of the human heart to love.
This detailed tour of the home, its construction and furnishings, and the socio-historical context of its day-to-day activities provides readers a window of understanding and appreciation that will inform students and scholars of material culture as well as those interested in historical preservation.
Historic preservation, which started as a grassroots movement, now represents the cutting edge in a cultural revolution focused on green architecture and sustainability. This book provides comprehensive coverage of the many facets of historic preservation: the philosophy and history of the movement, the role of government, the documentation and designation of historic properties, sensitive architectural designs and planning, preservation technology, and heritage tourism, plus a survey of architectural styles.
An ideal introduction to the field for students, historians, preservationists, property owners, local officials, and community leaders, this thoroughly revised edition addresses new subjects, including heritage tourism and partnering with the environmental community. It also includes updated case studies to reflect the most important historic preservation issues of today; and brings the conversation into the twenty-first century.
UPDATED TO 2024!!
A Source book for Photographers and Explorers. Descriptions to all of Canada's Remaining Historic Covered Bridges. This includes 88 for Quebec, 58 for New Brunswick, and 2 each for British Columbia and Ontario.
Photographs of each Bridge
GPS Positions
Written directions from a nearby town
A short history of Covered Bridges in North America
Notes on interesting or unique history or structure
A review of the various Truss Types
Quebec Self guided Tours
Abiti-Est County Tour
Abiti-Ouest County Tour
Compton County Tour
Gatineau County Tour
Labelle County Tour
Matane County Tour
Matapédia County Tour
UPDATED FOR 2014!!
Covered Bridges of the North
A Source book for Photographers and Explorers.
Descriptions to all of the Northern States 33 Remaining Historic Covered Bridges in Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, South Dakota and Wisconsin
Black and white Photographs
GPS Positions
Written directions from a nearby town
A short history of Covered Bridges in North America
Notes on interesting or unique history or structure
A review of the various Truss Types
Self guided Tours
Named one of the Seven Wonders of Illinois, Robert Allerton Park is visited by nearly 100,000 people annually. Allerton, a wealthy Chicago philanthropist and art collector, donated his palatial country estate to the University of Illinois in 1946 with the intent that it should be maintained as a wildlife preserve and an example of landscape gardening. Today Robert Allerton Park is a National Natural Landmark and on the National Register of Historic Places.
Take a tour of the home and gardens, led by architecture graduate student David L. Finnigan. Beautiful color photography and original architect's drawings bring the history of Allerton Park to life. Dozens of archival photographs, 21 in color, have all been painstakingly restored especially for this book, many never before published.
This extensively researched book begins with the story of the Allerton family, from origins as Mayflower pilgrims to Samuel Allerton's fortunes in the Chicago banking and stockyard industry. Follow the path of young Robert Allerton, Samuel's only son, as he travels to Europe for art school, becomes a patron of the Art Institute of Chicago, and develops his Piatt County estate into an oasis on the prairie with formal gardens and statuary. The story concludes with the changes to the Park since 1946 when the University of Illinois acquired the property. Beautifully produced and lavishly illustrated, Inside Allerton stands as a definitive record of this unique destination in central Illinois.