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Rating: 
Summary: Victorian Glory
Review: When I visit a strange town, there's nothing I like better than to wander up and down the streets, checking out the stores and the housing styles. If I happen on a district of Victorians, you can't pry me out with gunpowder--which is why San Francisco is one of my favorite cities. Owning this book is like being able to take a "house walk" any time you care to--even if it's 10 PM and blizzarding. Naversen's gorgeous full-color photographs, each arranged in a double-spread with some history about the house, take us from the Wedding Cake House (an 1826 Federal house in Kennebuk, ME, that was Victorianized in the mid-'50's) and Lyndhurst, a Gothic stonework castle begun in Tarrytown, NY, in 1838, to the Beaux-Arts Burrage Mansion, built in Boston's Back Bay 61 years later. Along the way he touches on all the major styles of Victorian domestic architecture, and presents houses large and small, well-known and obscure, masonry and frame, stark white and joyous Painted Lady. (His photos of the Lesley-Travers Mansion in New Castle, DE, and the Edward King House in Newport, RI, were taken around sunset and make the buildings appear to have dipped in blood, while the 1861 Moses Bulkeley House of Southport, CT, dozes amid lush greenery, the gorgeously and emphatically Pink House of Wellsville, NY, stands like a shout against an overcast sky and foliage just beginning to turn, and the Philadelphia house called Burholme is glorious in bisque against an unbelievably blue sky.) If you love to stare at the best examples of Victorian housing, this book and its companion are for you--but you may want to use a napkin to protect the pages!
Rating:
Summary: Victorian Glory
Review: When I visit a strange town, there's nothing I like better than to wander up and down the streets, checking out the stores and the housing styles. If I happen on a district of Victorians, you can't pry me out with gunpowder--which is why San Francisco is one of my favorite cities. Owning this book is like being able to take a "house walk" any time you care to--even if it's 10 PM and blizzarding. Naversen's gorgeous full-color photographs, each arranged in a double-spread with some history about the house, take us from the Wedding Cake House (an 1826 Federal house in Kennebuk, ME, that was Victorianized in the mid-'50's) and Lyndhurst, a Gothic stonework castle begun in Tarrytown, NY, in 1838, to the Beaux-Arts Burrage Mansion, built in Boston's Back Bay 61 years later. Along the way he touches on all the major styles of Victorian domestic architecture, and presents houses large and small, well-known and obscure, masonry and frame, stark white and joyous Painted Lady. (His photos of the Lesley-Travers Mansion in New Castle, DE, and the Edward King House in Newport, RI, were taken around sunset and make the buildings appear to have dipped in blood, while the 1861 Moses Bulkeley House of Southport, CT, dozes amid lush greenery, the gorgeously and emphatically Pink House of Wellsville, NY, stands like a shout against an overcast sky and foliage just beginning to turn, and the Philadelphia house called Burholme is glorious in bisque against an unbelievably blue sky.) If you love to stare at the best examples of Victorian housing, this book and its companion are for you--but you may want to use a napkin to protect the pages!
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