Buildings of Pennsylvania: Philadelphia and Eastern Pennsylvania (Buildings of the United States)

Buildings of Pennsylvania: Philadelphia and Eastern Pennsylvania follows the Pennsylvania migration narrative in broad swathes: Philadelphia and its surrounding counties of the original Quaker settlement zone, the Piedmont and the German agricultural zone, the Scots-Irish frontier beyond the Blue Mountain, the coal country with its trade connections to New York City and its East European coal miners, and the Northern Tier claimed and settled by New Englanders. Principal author and editor George E. Thomas and his contributing authors use the physical evidence of community plans, building typologies and structural systems, and landscape to gain an understanding of the settlement of William Penn's Commonwealth. The interaction of various groups set the stage for the great industrial explosion that made the commonwealth a center of the American Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The rising industrial culture found its aesthetic counterpart in the architecture of Frank Furness, who turned the dross of industry into the gold of design; his values continued through his students William L. Price and George Howe and on into the late twentieth century in the careers of Louis Kahn and Robert Venturi. In addition to Philadelphia, the book surveys the rival German-influenced small cities of the Piedmont, the brief but explosive flourishing of wealth in the twin coal country cities, and a host of secondary county towns and villages that carry on vernacular building traditions overlaid with metropolitan architecture serving regional and national clients. The volume, which includes a glossary, bibliography, and over 400 illustrations (photographs, maps, and drawings), is the counterpart to Buildings of Pennsylvania: Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania, which covers the western portion of the state.

• | Author: George E. Thomas
• | Publisher: University of Virginia Press
• | Publication Date: March 07, 2011
• | Number of Pages: 696 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Hardcover
• | ISBN-10: 0813929679
• | ISBN-13: 9780813929675