Architecture in The Books Store

Housebuilding has always been the book of choice for prospective home builders—and with this extensive, thoughtful revision, it becomes a resource readers will continue to depend on for years to come. In addition to showcasing 800 exciting new full-color illustrations and more than 50 color photographs, an improved two-column design makes the text easier to follow. Photo captions—not in previous editions—allow readers to browse through quickly. Also included for the first time: a chapter on environmentally friendly building alternatives; increased emphasis on safety; information on modern cordless tools; updated techniques, materials, and standards; energy-efficient options, from structural insulated panels to radiant floor heating; a current appendix of major manufacturers, resources, and websites; and much, much more.

Creative Homeowner's lead title in its tremendously successful, ground-breaking home plan series, The Ultimate Book of Home Plans offers readers 728 of the best-selling designs from leading architects and designers. Over 550 gorgeous, full-color photographs allow readers to experience homes actually built from the designs, plus some interiors. Virtually every home style is offered, including farmhouses, country cottages, contemporaries, luxury estates, vacation retreats, and regional specialties. In addition to these designs, The Ultimate Book of Home Plans offers practical tips and advice on everything from selecting a site and hiring a contractor to adding such finishing touches as trimwork and landscaping.

Once the world’s tallest skyscraper, the Woolworth Building is noted for its striking but incongruous synthesis of Beaux-Arts architecture, fanciful Gothic ornamentation, and audacious steel-framed engineering. Here, in the first history of this great urban landmark, Gail Fenske argues that its design serves as a compelling lens through which to view the distinctive urban culture of Progressive-era New York.
             Fenske shows here that the building’s multiplicity of meanings reflected the cultural contradictions that defined New York City’s modernity. For Frank Woolworth—founder of the famous five-and-dime store chain—the building served as a towering trademark, for advocates of the City Beautiful movement it suggested a majestic hotel de ville, for technological enthusiasts it represented the boldest of experiments in vertical construction, and for tenants it provided an evocative setting for high-style consumption. Tourists, meanwhile, experienced a spectacular sightseeing destination and avant-garde artists discovered a twentieth-century future. In emphasizing this faceted significance, Fenske illuminates the process of conceiving, financing, and constructing skyscrapers as well as the mass phenomena of consumerism, marketing, news media, and urban spectatorship that surround them.
            As the representative example of the skyscraper as a “cathedral of commerce,” the Woolworth Building remains a commanding presence in the skyline of lower Manhattan, and the generously illustrated Skyscraper and the City is a worthy testament to its importance in American culture.