Architecture and Town Planning in Colonial North America (Creating the North American Landscape)
Contributors: Georgiana W. Kornwolf (Assistant)
Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press; Johns Hopkins University Press
Published: October 31, 2002
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 536
ISBN-13: 9780801859861
Subjects: Architecture; History of specific subjects; Urban & municipal planning; Modern period, c 1500 onwards; General; 17th-18th Century Architecture; Urban Planning; Public, Commercial, or Industrial Buildings; North America; USA; History - General; Art / General; Public Policy - Regional Planning; 17th century; 18th century; Architecture, Colonial
First sentence: The population of nearly 4 million reported in the 1790 census of the United States was distributed among the thirteen colonies, with 290,000 living in Maine, Vermont, Kentucky, or Tennessee.
Description: An extraordinary work, unparalleled in its breadth and depth of detail, this three-volume set offers the first comprehensive history of architecture and town planning throughout colonial North America, from Russian Alaska to French Quebec, to Spanish Florida and California, to British, Dutch, and other settlements on the East Coast. Across this vast terrain, James Kornwolf conjures the outlines of the constructed environment as it emerged in settlements and communities, in structures and sites, and in the flourishes and idiosyncrasies of the families and individuals who erected and inhabited colonial buildings and towns. Here as never before readers can observe the impulses and principles of colonial design and planning as they are implemented in the buildings and streets, harbors and squares, gardens and landscapes of the New World. Incorporating more than 3,000 illustrations, Kornwolf's massive work conveys the full range of the colonial encounter with the continent's geography, from the high forms of architecture through formal landscape design and town planning. From these pages emerge the fine arts of environmental design, an understanding of the political and economic events that helped to determine settlement in North America, an appreciation of the various architectural and landscape forms that the settlers created, and an awareness of the diversity of the continent's geography and its peoples. Considering the humblest buildings along with the mansions of the wealthy and powerful, public buildings, forts, and churches, Kornwolf captures the true dynamism and diversity of colonial communities--their rivalries and frictions, their outlooks and attitudes--as they extended their hold on the land. His work conveys for the first time the full scale, from intimate to grand, of their enduring transformation of the natural landscape of North America.