American building
Subtitle: 1 : the historical forces that shaped it
By: by James Marston Fitch.
Edition: 2nd ed., rev. and enl.
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Published: 1966
Place of publication: Boston
Language: eng
Number of pages: 350
Subjects: Building -- United States; Architecture -- United States
Description: This book is a complete and comprehensive history of architecture in the United States. The first edition of American Building, published in 1947, was an immediate success and was reprinted several times. Now the author has made a complete revision of the book, greatly expanding and reworking the historical material in the light of recent historical research, and bringing the text down to date. The volume is much more fully illustrated, having almost 250 pictures closely integrated with the text. 
Here we learn why the English seventeenth-century house could not be successfully transplanted to New England; who introduced the log cabin; why the white columns of the Greek Revival stood for quite different things in different parts of the country; why we may in the future build skyscrapers with manufacturing on the lower floors, business and commerce in the middle, and apartments on the top. Here we see, in its proper setting, the work of such giants as Thomas Jefferson and Louis Sullivan, of John Roebling and Joseph Paxton, of Wright and Gropius, Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe. 
Professor Fitch's view of architecture is wide-ranging and dynamic. It takes into account the materials, the needs, the technical equipment, esthetic theory and creative genius that shaped saltbox and skyscraper. In his hands, the complex strands which go to make up the building of any period are clearly presented, in a style which reflects the author's awareness of the pivotal important of architecture in our daily life.
Notes: Includes index.

Includes bibliographical references.