Reproduces all of Sheldon's fascinating and historically important photographs and plans for a total of 97 buildings (93 houses, 4 casinos) built during the 1880s. Approximately 200 illustrations.

This magnificent book describes the great country houses built with American industrial fortunes from the end of the Civil War until 1940. The American Country House draws on the rich and often amusing writings of contemporaries to evoke the lives the buildings served as well as architectural shapes they took. 275 illustrations.

Blueprints, sketches, and exterior and interior photographs showcase the finest examples of 1930s country homes from 70 different architectural firms. A variety of styles are featured, from simple cottages to large estates.

Examines Victorian homes, shows and describes their halls, drawing rooms, dining rooms, libraries, music rooms, guest rooms, and parlors

This fascinating book presents a series of 44 designs for vacation homes of varying styles and sizes, created over a century ago by a select group of New York and New Jersey architects. Many of them are two-story, and most were intended to be built on low-to-medium budgets. All of them reflect the ideals of comfort and charm and state-of-the-art technology of the Victorian period. The original publishers compiled a splendid variety of designs, presented them as "seaside and country houses" and included designs for a Victorian club house, pavilion, school house, and a "small seaside chapel." A total of 200 illustrations — including perspective views, front and side elevations, and first- and second-story floor plans — depict these appealing designs. Occasionally the architects have specified construction materials and finishing details such as paint, color, and trim, and in all cases they have included the overall anticipated costs, which range from about $500 to about $9,000. The Victorians, of course, loved architectural embellishments of every kind, and it is no small part of the charm of this book to study the profusion of gables, porches, portholes, dormers, porticoes, chimneys, pinnacles, and more, lavished on even the most modest designs. Above all, the houses and cottages appear to be both comfortable and reassuring, appealing reminders of a gracious age long gone. Those studying and working in the fields of architecture, history, and sociology will find in this wonderful book exuberant examples of a rich and charming architectural style. Those who wish to join the growing number of home builders and restorers re-creating Victorian homes will find inspiration in each of these thoughtful designs.

The drama, expansion, mansions and wealth of New York City's transformative Gilded Age era, from 1870 to 1910, captured in a magnificently illustrated hardcover. In forty short years, New York City suddenly became a city of skyscrapers, subways, streetlights, and Central Park, as well as sprawling bridges that connected the once-distant boroughs. In Manhattan, more than a million poor immigrants crammed into tenements, while the half of the millionaires in the entire country lined Fifth Avenue with their opulent mansions. The Gilded Age in New York captures what is was like to live in Gotham then, to be a daily witness to the city's rapid evolution. Newspapers, autobiographies, and personal diaries offer fascinating glimpses into daily life among the rich, the poor, and the surprisingly large middle class. The use of photography and illustrated periodicals provides astonishing images that document the bigness of New York: the construction of the Statue of Liberty; the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge; the shimmering lights of Luna Park in Coney Island; the mansions of Millionaire's Row. Sidebars detail smaller, fleeting moments: Alice Vanderbilt posing proudly in her "Electric Light" ball gown at a society-changing masquerade ball; immigrants stepping off the boat at Ellis Island; a young Theodore Roosevelt witnessing Abraham Lincoln's funeral. The Gilded Age in New York is a rare illustrated look at this amazing time in both the city and the country as a whole. Author Esther Crain, the go-to authority on the era, weaves first-hand accounts and fascinating details into a vivid tapestry of American society at the turn of the century. Praise for New-York Historical Society New York City in 3D In The Gilded Age, also by Esther Crain: "Vividly captures the transformation from cityscape of horse carriages and gas lamps 'bursting with beauty, power and possibilities' as it staggered into a skyscraping Imperial City." -- Sam Roberts, The New York Times "Get a glimpse of Edith Wharton's world." -- Entertainment Weekly Must List "What better way to revisit this rich period . . ?" -- Library Journal

The Gilded Age (1865-1918) saw the sudden rise of America's first High Society, including such prominent families as the Astors, Whitneys, and Vanderbilts. As an aristocracy based on fortunes recently acquired, these families endeavored to live like Europe's blue-blooded nobility, shedding Puritan restraint as they joyously flaunted their new wealth--especially where their homes were concerned. They erected French chateaus and Italian palazzos on New York's Fifth Avenue, at Newport, and elsewhere, often taking inspiration from Parisian styles of the Second Empire. They rejected more modest American styles just as they rejected middle-class society, and for interior decoration they turned to such artisans as Tiffany, Herter Brothers, and Allard's of Paris. Immensely readable and illuminated with 250 stunning color and black-and-white illustrations, this is the fascinating story of America's first millionaire society, the way they lived and partied, and the lush artistic and cultural legacy they established.

Houses of the Hamptons offers a fascinating glimpse into the

Best source of information and illustrations for private houses in Eastern cities during the early 1880s. Rare photographs of mansions belonging to Vanderbilt, Morgan, Grant, and many others. Extensive, informative new text.