Follies in America examines historicized garden buildings, known as "follies," from the nation's founding through the American centennial celebration in 1876. In a period of increasing nationalism, follies—such as temples, summerhouses, towers, and ruins—brought a range of European architectural styles to the United States. By imprinting the land with symbols of European culture, landscape gardeners brought their idea of civilization to the American wilderness. Kerry Dean Carso's interdisciplinary approach in Follies in America examines both buildings and their counterparts in literature and art, demonstrating that follies provide a window into major themes in nineteenth-century American culture, including tensions between Jeffersonian agrarianism and urban life, the ascendancy of middle-class tourism, and gentility and social class aspirations.

Britain's countryside is liberally sprinkled with follies – eccentric, original buildings built for fun by landowners and aristocrats over the centuries. They include prospect towers, ornamental temples, rustic hermits' cottages, faux-prehistoric stone circles, and some buildings that don't seem to have had any purpose at all. In this fascinating and stylish book, folly expert Gwyn Headley brings together some of the most beautiful and intriguing follies cared for by the National Trust, from the craggy fake ruin at Mow Cop in Cheshire to the elegant buildings created by Henry Hoare for his great landscape garden at Stourhead. He also introduces some very extraordinary characters, such as Frederick Hervey, the 'Earl-Bishop', who had an obsession with women, volcanoes and rotundas, and Sir Thomas Tresham, whose fervent Catholicism inspired him to create the extraordinary Lyveden New Bield, an unfinished building suffused with religious symbolism. Fully illustrated with exquisite images of these remarkable buildings, this insightful book will inspire the folly-hunter in us all.

Chronicles nearly 1,450 UK sites which boast follies, grottoes or garden buildings of original or eccentric aspect.

Many of these buildings have been destroyed or severely altered and the only records that survive are the drawings, engravings, architectural plans, and, more rarely, paintings of the period.

Humorous architectural sketches of known monuments and objects.

Architectural Follies in America More than mere curiosities, all of the architectural follies described in this illustrated guide are masterpieces in their own right. Each is the incarnation of its creator's singular passion, vanity, or idée fixe, from the home of the future to the storybook castle, the palace of love to the monument of spite, the house of devotion to the pleasure garden. Architectural Follies in America offers readers an unparalleled opportunity to become acquainted with some of the most outstanding examples of this class of architectural marvel. With Gwyn Headley as our guide, we travel the length and breadth of the United States—from the Leaning Tower of Pisa in Niles, Illinois, to a house made of glass bottles in Death Valley; from the floating Taj Mahal in Sausalito, to the grotto of Lourdes in Emmitsburg, Maryland. In a narrative rich with historical erudition, choice tidbits of gossip, and no small measure of sparkling wit, Headley describes more than 130 structures in loving detail. He tells the full story behind each folly, what is known about its creator, the circumstances surrounding its construction, and its prospects for the future. "Follies stem from passion, obsession, and suspicion. They also come from happiness, grief, and confusion. They can take any form, any style. A folly is a state of mind, not an architectural style. Follies can even have a use or purpose, whether that was in the creator's mind or not." — Gwyn Headley