This pioneering study of the opulent Garden District of New Orleans is a fascinating and entertaining account of how immigrant merchants and craftsmen from throughout the United States and abroad combined efforts to create one of America's first and most elegant suburbs, a lavish and enduring symbol of southern comfort in the Victorian era. Southern Comfort is the first study of New Orleans to relate economic and social movements to the architectural face of the city, unveiling the process by which a predominantly Yankee suburb became a profoundly southern community Using New Orleans' unique notarial archive - a detailed written record of issues relating to real estate and architecture there - Starr skillfully creates an active interchange with the people who built the District. Starr introduces the architects, builders, craftsmen, servants, and retainers and recounts the colorful details of their lives. He provides a highly readable portrait of the intertwined careers of two gifted architects who worked in the Garden District - Henry Howard and Lewis Reynolds - the former among the shrewdest practitioners of the architecture of flattery. And his portrayal of the career and clientage of Thomas Sully presents a series of important discoveries. Southern Comfort shows how Anglo Saxon newcomers to the Crescent City capitalized on the boom of "King Cotton' and the possibilities posed by improved urban transportation to create a semirural village within the teeming Mississippi River metropolis. The text includes evocative photographs by Robert Brantley, as well as documentary illustrations from the rich archives of the Historic New Orleans Collection that are published here for the first time. S. Frederick Starr is President of Oberlin College. From 1982 to 1984 he was Scholar in Residence at The Historic New Orleans Collection, and he is the author of New Orleans Unmasqued. He has also written numerous books in the field of Soviet affairs and on topics ranging from art and architecture to jazz.

Southern Comfort: The Garden District of New Orleans, 1800-1900

History

Starr, S. Frederick

Brantley, Robert S.

Americas

Mit Pr

Few nineteenth-century architects ventured far from the pattern-book styles of their time. One architect not constrained by tradition was the Irish-born American Henry Howard, who started as a carpenter and stair builder in 1836 New York and arrived in New Orleans the following year, soon establishing a reputation for distinctive designs that blended American and European trends. His career gained momentum as he went on to design an extraordinarily diverse portfolio of magnificent residences and civic buildings in New Orleans and its environs. Henry Howard is a lavishly produced clothbound volume featuring hundreds of contemporary and archival images and a comprehensive analysis of his built work. The first book to examine the forty-year career of the architect, Henry Howard establishes a clear lineage of his aesthetic contributions to the urban and rural environments of the South. Princeton Architectural Press co-publishes Henry Howard with The Historic New Orleans Collection: a museum, research center, and publisher dedicated to the study and preservation of the history and culture of New Orleans and the Gulf South.

Henry Howard: Louisiana's Architect

Princeton Architectural Press

Sacred Ground is a sumptuous photographic portrait of New Orleans's legendary cemeteries. Robert S. Brantley celebrates the otherworldly landscapes, intricate ironwork, evocative memorials, and stately monuments as vibrant sites of remembrance. New Orleans history is further revealed through biographies of twenty individuals whose grave sites are among those featured, including entrepreneurs, celebrated musicians, a world-class violin maker, an ex-slave turned minister, a ship's captain, and a young soldier felled by Spanish flu while in basic training for World War I. The rich duotone photographs, organized by cemetery, are followed by an index identifying the tombs and their iconography; an introduction by S. Frederick Starr provides background on New Orleans cemetery history, culture, and burial customs. Sacred Ground provides a stunning exploration of the traditions born of New Orleans's unique religious, cultural, and ethnic diversity.

Sacred Ground: The Cemeteries of New Orleans (stunning duotone photographs of New Orleans legendary cemeteries)

Arts & Photography

History & Criticism

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Books by Brantley, Robert S.