Page:Architectural Record 1920-08 Vol 48 Iss 2.djvu/90



THE

tion and ideas; which, after all, is what one wants. This can be done and still keep within the rules of evidence. In Professor Warren's work there is little that the most critical scholarship could question. Joun TAyior Boyp, JR.

More SMALL ITALIAN VILLAS AND I ARM-

HousEs. By Guy Lowell. New York:

The Architectural Book Publishing

Company.

The present volume carries on the good work started by Mr. Lowell in a preceding volume of a similar subject. During the war the author, as an officer in the American Red Cross, spent much of his time in Palladio’s country around Vicenza and was afforded unusual op- portunities to visit and photograph many of the lesser known buildings of the Palladian tradition. In the short intro- ductory text the descent of much of our American Colonial architecture is traced back through Inigo Jones and his suc- cessors in England directly to Palladio, whose architectural principles for the adaptation of classic motives to con- temporary architecture formed the basis for Georgian architecture in England and for our own Georgian Colonial and Early Federal architecture. A study of the photographs is interesting and il- luminating with regard to the first sources of our Colonial work, and the fact that Palladio’s book was used in this country in the actual design of cer- tain buildings, notably by Thomas Jefferson who did not hesitate to repro- duce almost exactly some of the designs of the sixteenth century architect, gives us in our later eighteenth and nimeteenth century architecture a direct contact with this Palladian work without reference to English translations of the form. These examples also show the flexibility in handling which, althcugh possible, is so frequently ignored in our modern build- ing along Colonial lines.

In addition to this close connection with the strongest architectural traditioa in America, the book revivifies for us the country house life of sixteenth and seventeenth century Italy, when the

yearly exodus from the city to the coun- try

was as marked a characteristic in

ARCHITECTURAL

168

RECORD.

that day as it is Although the this simi-

calendar of the present.

social in that of villas themselves emphasize larity of extravagant country pleasures

the

on the part of the rich, the farmhouses present an equally sharp contrast be-

tween the positions of the peasant farmer of now. The many views of the buildings in-

tensify our desire that it might be pos- sible to study their planning with sg ease. Numerous delightful sketches by Edgar I. Williams and Harold R. Shurtleff illustrate points of the text.

ae eS ee

THE CoLoNIAL ARCHITECTURE OF SALEM.

By Frank Cousins and Phil M. Riley. Boston: Little, Brown & Co. The architectural photographs otf

colonial details by Frank Cousins are so well known as to need no introduction to readers of this magazine, and to many the fact that this recent book is copiously illustrated by Mr. Cousins will recom- mend it at once to consideration.

The text, written in a discursive stvle, contains much information with regard to early building in Salem. It follows the development of domestic building through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and into the first decades of the nineteenth, when much of the most distinguished and distinctive building was done. The earlier peaked roof houses come in first for consideration, followed by those with gambrels of vari- ous forms. The tall, square, box-like three-story houses next are taken up; and the latter half of the book is devoted to the exterior and interior details, which are so markedly of high quality in

Salem. The text and _ illustrations synchronize throughout the book and their coordination is of assistance in reference. Much of the text is occupied with references and historical data of greater interest to the antiquarian than to the architect, who might be inclined to demand a more definitely constructive criticism of the fine old material ; but this he can supply for himself, through familarity with the eminently pleasing buildings illustrated in the hundred odd

plates. . 2 <.