Architecture

Step inside Washington's own Gothic cathedral

Despite being built entirely during the 20th century (1907-1990), the techniques used to construct the Washington National Cathedral were the same as those used on the centuries-old Gothic churches in Europe. What powered the larger tools and cranes was different, but otherwise, the processes, ordering, and artistic finishing were almost entirely medieval. The last time a building of this magnitude was built using these techniques, cameras did not exist. Images of America: Building Washington National Cathedral divides the 20th century into decades to detail what must be the first published beginning-to-completion photographic record of the construction of a Gothic cathedral.

Over 200 historic photographs and fascinating text combine to create an illustrated history of New Jersey's thirty-eight lighthouses and forty-one life-saving stations.

From the seventeenth to the twentieth century, New Jersey's low-lying, sandy coast has been the site of thousands of shipwrecks as ships bound for New York City or Philadelphia foundered on its offshore shoals. As coastal and international trade dramatically increased after the War of 1812, the federal government was forced to increase safety aids to mariners. To ensure their safe passage, a series of lighthouses was built and the U.S. Life-Saving Service was created. More than two centuries of the history of New Jersey's treacherous coast are preserved in Guarding New Jersey's Shore: Lighthouses and Life-Saving Stations. Gathered from a wide array of sources, more than 200 historic photographs and fascinating, documented text combine to create the only illustrated history of the state's thirty-eight lighthouses and forty-one life-saving stations. Sandy Hook, built in 1764, is the nation's oldest operating lighthouse. Navesink's Twin Lights was the first lighthouse to use electricity and was the home of Marconi's early radio experiments. From the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor, which once served as a lighthouse, to Cape May Point, and up the Delaware Bay and River, the fascinating story of protecting mariners from perils Down the Shore is presented and preserved in Guarding New Jersey's Shore: Lighthouses and Life-Saving Stations.

This book offers an inside look at the beginnings and story of Caumsett State Park, from great English estate to nationally protected land.

Marshall Field III was 28 years of age and one of the richest people in the world when he came upon the idea of replicating the environment in which he had spent his youth. Raised and educated in England, Field sought the life of an English gentleman here in the United States. In 1921, Field purchased almost 2,000 acres of waterfront property on Long Island's North Shore, which would become Caumsett. Forty years later, Field's third wife, Ruth, opened bids for the right to purchase Caumsett and all that it had become. The highest bid, in excess of $5 million, came from a builder who planned to subdivide the estate and construct 700 homes. A second bid, from Robert Moses, then parks commissioner of New York State, was more than $1 million less. Ruth reflected on her life and what her late husband would have wanted. She turned to trusted adviser and confidant Adlai Stevenson and stated that she wanted to accept the lower bid. Fourteen months later, Caumsett State Park was born.

An interesting collection of images traces the history of the Grand Traverse Lighthouse.

The Grand Traverse Lighthouse sits majestically at the entrance of Grand Traverse Bay, guiding vessels between Chicago and the Straits of Mackinac. For over 150 years, it has been an important beacon for all who have plied the waters of Lake Michigan. The original 1852 lighthouse was used for six years before being torn down. In 1858, a larger lighthouse with an attached nine-sided tower was erected on a site farther west. Over the course of its history, 66 lighthouse keepers, assistant keepers, and U.S. Coast Guard personnel have maintained the light. Today visitors tour the restored lighthouse, which is now a living museum filled with displays and exhibits depicting a simpler way of life. A climb to the tower where keepers once stood watch now provides an inspiring panorama.

Cleveland's Lake View Cemetery reveals the profound effects the cemetery and the City of Cleveland had on one another.

Founded in 1869, this garden cemetery served as an escape and a model for Cleveland parks and suburbs, such as University Circle, Little Italy, East Cleveland, and Cleveland Heights. Lake View is home to cultural, economic, and political leaders and thousands of others from all classes, races, and religions. This rich diversity is manifested in the natural and man-made landscape, which features the President James Garfield Monument, the Wade Chapel, and the John D. Rockefeller obelisk.

Explore the once quaint farming town of Historic Monte NE. With images throughout the centuries, witness its transformation into a tourism hotspot during the 1920s.

Situated in a lush, spring-fed valley, the town of Silver Springs in Northwest Arkansas was once home to a small community of people who farmed, enjoyed the riches of rural life, and gathered at the local auditorium, gristmill, or tavern. Their world was forever changed in 1900 with the arrival of William Hope Coin Harvey. A fervent supporter of the free silver movement in the 1890s, Harvey had become disgruntled with the American financial system. Retreating to the pastoral valley, Harvey purchased 320 acres, renamed the community Monte Ne, and began to build a grand resort. It attracted visitors from across the country with its fertile landscape, large hotels, and private rail line. By the 1920s, Harvey had turned his attention to building a large time capsule pyramid, of which only the foyer, or amphitheater, was completed.

Visit historic Sag Harbor on Long Island, through whaling village to homes in the National Register and home to writers and artists.

A prosperous deepwater shipping port on the south shore of Long Island, Sag Harbor was in its heyday as a whaling village in the early 1800s. By 1850, whaling was unprofitable, petroleum had been discovered, and the 1849 Gold Rush led to an exodus. As Sag Harbor fell into economic decline, the arrival of the railroad helped reinvigorate it as a factory town, bringing Fahys Watchcase, Alvin Silver, Bliss torpedo testing, and Bulova, until those industries shuttered. The silver lining to Sag Harbor's boom and bust has been the preservation of its heritage. The grand homes of captains and whaleship owners, tradesmen's cottages, and factory houses were untouched for years, attracting a wave of artists, writers, and weekenders. This fine collection of 18th- and 19th-century homes and public buildings placed the village in the National Register of Historic Places, drawing tourists to walk in the footsteps of Native Americans, colonists, whalers, and resident-writers James Fenimore Cooper and John Steinbeck and to visit the village's war monuments and museums and charming Main Street.

Discover the history of Rangeley through historic photographs and how the town continues to draw thousands of visitors annually.

Rangeley, Maine, was settled in 1817 when Luther Hoar brought his family from Madrid to a log cabin he had built on the shore of Rangeley Lake. Several others families soon arrived, cleared land, and began farming. It was a small farming community only until the 1850s though. Lumber barons had arrived in the late 1840s, built dams, and started logging the vast timberlands. Soon after, fishermen from Boston, Philadelphia, New York, and Washington arrived to fish the multitude of lakes, ponds, and streams. By 1900, Rangeley was a bustling town with several hotels and two railroad lines. The big hotel era ended after World War II, and secondary residences began to dominate the scene.

Gary Priest has been recording the history of the Rangeley region for over 25 years. He has served on the board of directors of the Rangeley Lakes Region Historical Society (RLRHS) since 1999 and is currently its treasurer. This is his fifth book on Rangeley’s history. His other works include History of Rangeley Hotels & Camps, Mingo Springs Hotel: The Early Days, The Gilded Age of Rangeley Maine, and Rangeley through Time.

In 1822, the White Church, designed by Isaac Damon, was constructed to house the Congregationalist worshippers in Blandford.

Blandford, Massachusetts, was initially referred to as Glasgow Lands due to the European colonists of Scots descent who arrived in 1735. These Scots founded a Presbyterian church; indeed, the reason for their remove from Hopkinton, Massachusetts, was that Hopkinton sought to adopt a Congregational form of worship. The White Church remained active long into the 20th century before its physical decline and eventual purchase by the Blandford Historical Society in 2006. While the congregants have another church nearby to call home, the White Church, listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1985 and affixed as part of the town seal, has long been cemented in the minds of residents of the area, regardless of religious affiliation.

Working in conjunction with the Blandford Historical Society, historian Nicholas J. Aieta of Westfield State University has pulled images from the Library of Congress and the society’s archives. The writings of Blandford residents, past and present, have helped develop the story of the church’s birth, physical decline, and eventual resurrection as a community center.

Lake Shore Cemetery evolved as a burial ground of necessity rather than intention.

The cemetery’s first interments were French fur trappers and Native Americans, but as migrating settlers began populating Lake Erie’s shore and a community emerged, the need for a recognized burial site arose. The diminutive graveyard, also known as Avon Lake Cemetery, claims less than one-third of an acre abutting the shoreline cliff. It holds the remains of a Revolutionary War soldier, sailors wounded in the Battle of Put-in-Bay during the War of 1812, Civil War and World War I soldiers, and a World War II Flying Tigers crewman .Within this cemetery, pillars of the community and successful farmers share sod with a court-adjudicated drunkard, an alleged lunatic, and several who spent their last days in the county’s poorhouse. Recognized as a historic landmark by the Avon Lake Historic Preservation Commission in 2013, all burial sites within Lake Shore Cemetery’s grounds are claimed. The colorful stories of its permanent residents reveal the diverse nature of the community in which they lived and died.

Sherry Newman Spenzer is a retired magistrate, local historian, and vice president of Heritage Avon Lake, the city’s historical society, which has contributed many of the images in this book. Other images are the original work of photographer Andrew S. Fowkes, and various private donors have supplied vintage photographs.

As Florida Southern College embarked upon an ambitious building program in the 1930s, the serendipitous arrival of Frank Lloyd Wright transformed the future of the school.

Pres. Ludd Myrl Spivey was a leader with limitless imagination, and he realized the virtue in bringing an architect of Wright's renown to Lakeland. Wright's first visit to the lakeside campus was in 1938. He envisioned a grand 18-unit Child of the Sun campus, where buildings would grow from the Florida sand into the light. The buildings are especially suited to the landscape and are connected thematically by a series of covered walkways Wright called the Esplanade. Over the next 20 years, 12 of these unique structures were constructed at Florida Southern, and today they comprise the world's largest single-site collection of Frank Lloyd Wright's work. The campus attracts thousands of visitors annually, and preservation and restoration projects are ongoing. The Florida Southern College Architectural District was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975.

The beacon of the historic Cape St. George Lighthouse still guides mariners into Apalachicola Bay more than 150 years after it was built.

Founded in 1831, the town of Apalachicola took its name from Creek Indians, to whom it signified a land of friendly people. Sheltered from the Gulf of Mexico by a string of barrier islands, the port flourished as the only site in Florida on a river that is navigable for over 300 miles to the fall line at Columbus, Georgia, Apalachicola's sister city. Generations of lighthouse keepers were bound to St. George Island and its great bay by an intense sense of duty to sustain seagoing commerce and a love for a place where they could raise their families in freedom. When the foundation washed away in 2005 after a very active hurricane season and a final surge from Hurricane Wilma, residents took action to salvage and rebuild the historic lighthouse. Visitors may still climb the lighthouse tower, surrounded by bricks that were first laid in 1852.

Seattle is situated in a region of outstanding scenic beauty, but the forested hills and numerous bodies of water that characterize the city were formidable obstacles to connecting its communities as it grew out from the historic center.

Between 1896 and 1930, the city undertook massive landscape regrades, landfills, and waterway cuts to ease movement by land and water.The completion of these efforts allowed for the construction of Seattle’s first permanent steel bridges beginning in 1910.Nine bridges included in this book are listed in the National Register of Historic Places.They include Washington’s oldest steel arch bridge, the 1911 Twelfth Avenue South Bridge; the 1913 Ravenna Park Bridge; all four of the Lake Washington Ship Canal bascules, constructed between 1917 and 1924; and the Depression-era Aurora, Cowen Park, and Schmitz Park bridges.Bridges of Seattle explores the history of the spans that are a quintessential part of the Seattle experience.

In 1818, Illinois became America's 21st state, and over those 200 years, Illinoisans have been prominent in every war that the United States has been involved in.

From the French and Indian War to the current War on Terror, Illinoisans, Illinois Militia, and National Guard units have been called upon to act. Throughout Illinois there are monuments dedicated to national figures as well as lesser known heroes. For example, Abraham Lincoln moved to Illinois as a young man, and during the Black Hawk Wars, he served in the Illinois Militia as a captain; on April 11, 1930, the State of Illinois dedicated a monument in Dixon in honor of his service. On Memorial Day and Veterans Day, ceremonies are held throughout Illinois at these monuments in honor of those who have served our state and nation.

Explore the history, architecture, and people, from the very rich to the very poor, who have chosen Woodmere Cemeteryto be their final resting place.

In 1867, a roomful of men gathered in the office of a noted attorney to discuss Detroit's need for a rural cemetery. They decided to form an association and invested their own money to purchase a plot of land that had once been occupied by Native Americans and then French settlers, a few miles from the heart of the city.

They chose this heavily wooded area because it offered many acres of land that could accommodate the growing need for more burial space, and it became the cornerstone of one of the city's oldest and most historic cemeteries, Woodmere Cemetery. Cemetery acreage has been bought and sold, and buildings on the grounds have been raised and later razed. Funeral procedures have changed, as well as cemetery ownership. Still, Woodmerehas remained one of Detroit's most beautiful treasures, where visitors can take a historical step back into time.

Through archival images, Detroit's Woodmere Cemeterytakes a look at the movers and shakers of Detroit found in these bucolic grounds and glimpses the ordinary citizens who have lived and died through extraordinary circumstances.

Chicago’s Luxury Apartment Buildings presents a history of the city’s residential buildings constructed during the Gilded Age of the 19th century. These buildings redefined the city’s architectural landscape and transformed urban living. Beginning with the first structure, erected in 1876, and continuing through the close of the 19th century, many were masterpieces designed by some of the era’s most influential architects. Burnham & Root, Treat & Foltz, Patton & Fisher, and Holabird & Roche, aided by technological advances such as fireproof structural steel frames, deeper foundations, modern plumbing, steam heat, electric lighting, and passenger elevators, built luxury apartments throughout Chicago. These buildings included a variety of amenities such as on-site restaurants, room service, ballrooms, barbershops, retail stores, billiard rooms, bowling alleys, formal gardens, terraces, and ornate lobbies, and many featured views of parks and Lake Michigan. There were approximately 150 constructed in Chicago during the 19th century, and this book contains photographs of nearly every one of these structures.

John Graf is an attorney and Chicago historian who is the author of other books in Arcadia Publishing’s Images of America series, including Chicago’s ParksandChicago’s Mansions. Perry Casalino is a real estate developer and Chicago historian who has authored various books about Chicago. 

Cleveland's Ohio City Neighborhood is a testament to unity and resilience, and the ability of neighbors to come together and live in harmony despite their differences, creating a thriving urban melting pot.

Ohio City’s story begins with conflict. The 1836 “Battle of the Bridge” pitted neighbor against neighbor, yet the story evolved into one of connection, symbolized by the grand bridges that would later unite Cleveland’s east and west sides. Following its 1854 annexation to Cleveland, Ohio City developed into a remarkable urban tapestry where immigrant workers’ homes and mansions shared the same neighborhood. The iconic West Side Market has anchored a vibrant commercial district through generations, its clock tower standing sentinel over a neighborhood shaped by breweries like Leisy and Schlather that reflected the area’s strong German heritage. Franklin Boulevard emerged as the west side’s “Millionaire’s Row,” home to industrialists and civic leaders, including the Rhodes family and Marcus Hanna. Through decades of change—from urban renewal to today’s thriving craft brewery scene—Ohio City’s historic architecture and cultural landmarks have endured.

Thomas Kaschalk, founder of My Cleveland History and volunteer researcher for the Cuyahoga County Archives, brings Ohio City’s rich heritage to life through vintage photographs. Drawing from the Cleveland Public Library Photograph Collection, the Cleveland Memory Project, and various historical archives, this visual history captures the spirit of one of Cleveland’s most distinctive neighborhoods.

Albuquerque's response to Modernism—the architectural avant-garde of the first half of the 20th century—was complex and varied.

The growing city looked to the new as well as the mythic past characterized by the Santa Fe style. The result was rarely restricted to one cultural tradition. Influences include forms and motifs from a variety of intermixed cultural and social collisions. The result can be sophisticated, as with the Albuquerque Indian Hospital, or homespun, like the Shaffer Hotel in Mountainair. This book celebrates the cultural mixing of various Native American, Hispanic, and 19th- and 20th-century Anglo American forms and motifs unique to Albuquerque during the first half of the 20th century.

Take the best seat in the house for this thrilling history that's so much more than the story of a building: discover the triumphs, the tears, and the tenacity of North Carolina sports and its legends.

For more than half a century, William Neal Reynolds Coliseum was at the forefront of college basketball. When filled to capacity, 12,000 fans joined together to create the noise and heat that defined game night. Indeed, Reynolds Coliseum brought big-time basketball to the South. Most area residents know Reynolds as home to the popular Dixie Classic basketball tournament and the North Carolina State University's Wolfpack championship sports teams. Surprisingly, this building was not constructed specifically for basketball. Like the state of North Carolina, the coliseum's origins grew from agriculture, and it was significantly shaped by the impact of World War II. As home to the long-standing Friends of the College series, the coliseum helped extend cultural events to the general public by promoting ""seven shows for seven dollars."" It has hosted presidents and protesters, circuses and symphonies, tractor demonstrations and rock concerts. And yes, for one ten-year stretch, more people watched college basketball games in Reynolds Coliseum than in any other campus arena in America. This volume captures more than 50 years of North Carolina history from the best seat in the house, highlighting the people and events that shaped the building as much as any architect's pencil.

Beginning with the birth of the original club on Woodward Avenue in 1887, this book chronicles the history of the DAC up to the present, in over 200 vintage photographs-many never before seen outside of the club. Images gathered from the club's archives cover the formative years at the first club, the building and opening of the new club, the DAC's great athletic traditions, its membership and staff, social activities, the art of the DAC and its magnificent restoration at the end of the 20th century.

Hundreds of ornately decorated rooms, gardens and greenery and more--Walk through the history of the Biltmore Estate, one of America's many displays of personal wealth and decadence.

In the spring of 1888, George Washington Vanderbilt returned to New York after spending weeks exploring the countryside near Asheville, North Carolina. Thinking it was the perfect place to build his home, Vanderbilt promptly sent his agent to begin quietly buying contiguous tracts of land until he had several thousand acres. Soon, he began constructing what would become America's largest private residence. He commissioned two of America's preeminent designers, architect Richard Morris Hunt and landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, to collaborate with him in planning his estate, which he named Biltmore. To complement the 250-room French Renaissance-style chateau, Olmsted worked closely with Hunt to create a vast landscape of pleasure gardens and grounds with miles of scenic drives through parklands, productive farms, and the country's first scientifically managed forest. Today, Biltmore is a National Historic Landmark privately owned by Vanderbilt's descendants.

Downtown Cleveland is home to many architectural landmarks that define this proud city on Lake Erie.

Most famous is Terminal Tower, the “grand dame” of Cleveland skyscrapers, which was also the tallest office building outside of New York City from 1930 until 1967. Other notable high-rises such as the BP building, Key Tower, and the new Federal Courthouse with its distinctive lighted cornice also dominate the city’s beautiful skyline. Almost more than the buildings themselves, Cleveland’s architectural prowess lies in the details—the terracotta “starburst” motif on the exterior of the Standard Building, the extensive metal decorative work inside the gargoyle-encircled atrium of the Arcade, and the immense stained-glass dome of the Cleveland Trust Rotunda.

The Hampton National Historic Site in Towson, Maryland, was established in 1948 to preserve the surviving 63 acres of the vast empire built by the Ridgely family beginning in the 18th century.

In its heyday, the estate covered 25,000 non contiguous acres and included agricultural fields, orchards, livestock, quarries, mills, and ironworks. Today visitors flock to the magnificent Georgian mansion, farm manager's house, slave quarters, dairy, agricultural buildings, formal gardens, and family cemetery. The story of Hampton National Historic Site extends beyond its buildings and setting to the people who lived and worked on the estate during the 200 plus years of Ridgely ownership, including the indentured servants, the enslaved, and the paid workforce. The legacy of Hampton National Historic Site is illustrated here through rich primary source material that was generated and provided by the Ridgelys, including written documentation, historic images, and physical artifacts.

To learn about a community's storied past, the city cemetery is the place to visit.

As Atlanta's oldest permanent landmark, Oakland Cemetery holds the past, present, and future history of the Gateway to the South. Established in 1850 as a small municipal cemetery on the southeastern edge of town, Historic Oakland has evolved into 88 acres of art, history, architecture, gardens, and peaceful green space in the heart of downtown Atlanta. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976 as a significant example of an historic Victorian-era cemetery, Oakland is the final resting place of more than 70,000 deceased. People of both statewide and national importance have been buried throughout the cemetery's grounds in the past 150 years, including author Margaret Mitchell, golfing legend Bobby Jones, Confederate generals and soldiers, Georgia governors, Atlanta mayors, and ordinary people known only to their families. Historic Oakland Cemetery explores the history of both the cemetery and the people who were laid to rest there. From the famous to the infamous, the legendary to the ordinary, every person buried in the cemetery has a story to tell. For all of its emphasis on the past, Oakland remains an active cemetery, a public park, and an educational resource in which to study lush landscapes and Georgia history.

Cleveland's Ohio City Neighborhood is a testament to unity and resilience, and the ability of neighbors to come together and live in harmony despite their differences, creating a thriving urban melting pot.

Ohio City’s story begins with conflict. The 1836 “Battle of the Bridge” pitted neighbor against neighbor, yet the story evolved into one of connection, symbolized by the grand bridges that would later unite Cleveland’s east and west sides. Following its 1854 annexation to Cleveland, Ohio City developed into a remarkable urban tapestry where immigrant workers’ homes and mansions shared the same neighborhood. The iconic West Side Market has anchored a vibrant commercial district through generations, its clock tower standing sentinel over a neighborhood shaped by breweries like Leisy and Schlather that reflected the area’s strong German heritage. Franklin Boulevard emerged as the west side’s “Millionaire’s Row,” home to industrialists and civic leaders, including the Rhodes family and Marcus Hanna. Through decades of change—from urban renewal to today’s thriving craft brewery scene—Ohio City’s historic architecture and cultural landmarks have endured.

Thomas Kaschalk, founder of My Cleveland History and volunteer researcher for the Cuyahoga County Archives, brings Ohio City’s rich heritage to life through vintage photographs. Drawing from the Cleveland Public Library Photograph Collection, the Cleveland Memory Project, and various historical archives, this visual history captures the spirit of one of Cleveland’s most distinctive neighborhoods.

Fans of Abraham Lincoln will delight in this photographic account of the President's early years and his humble roots. Before he became an extraordinary president, Abraham Lincoln was a husband, father, neighbor, and friend. For 17 years—from 1844 to 1861—he lived in a modest house at the northeast corner of Eighth and Jackson Streets in Springfield, Illinois. During that time, people met with Lincoln and his family within these walls, enjoying conversation, a meal, tea, or a party. When he ran for president in 1860, Republicans from around the country came to discuss the issues or lobby for patronage. Since his assassination in 1865, schoolchildren, politicians, world leaders, and ordinary citizens have eagerly stepped through the front door with the “A. Lincoln” nameplate to stand in the rooms once occupied by the future president. Since 1972, the home has been administered by the National Park Service as the Lincoln Home National Historic Site. Tourists to this special place encounter the personal side of the man who saved the Union and issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Through historic photographs and portraits, Lincoln Home tells the stories of the generations of visitors who have encountered Lincoln here.

Jonathan W. White is the Patrick C. Oxford Professor in the School of Civic Leadership at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author or editor of 22 books on Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War, including New York City in the Civil War.