The author using the insights gained from his earlier studies as an architectural and urban historian, analyzes the city and paints a meticulously crafted portrait, neighborhood by neighborhood. This book creates a context for Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater and 750 other buildings that constitute one of the greatest assemblages of architectural masterpieces in America. With 246 new photographs and 27 annotated maps, it is a detailed guidebook to these architectural riches that goes further to explore the economic, social, and intellectual life of a notoriously tirbulent and expansive city.

Pittsburgh: An urban portrait

Arts & Photography

Franklin Toker

Architecture

Pennsylvania State University

Buildings of Pennsylvania: Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania considers the architecture, landscape, and town plans of thirty-one counties west of Blue Mountain and north to Lake Erie, including cities and communities big and small, from Pittsburgh, Beaver Falls, Johnstown, and Altoona to Bellefonte, State College, Lock Haven, Clarion, and Erie, and scores of places in between. The first comprehensive look at the built environment in this large and varied territory, the volume spans the years from the late eighteenth century through to the first decade of the new millennium and reveals a range of architectural surprises. The authors discuss exemplary and everyday buildings and places―Harmonist villages, Carnegie libraries, river communities, amusement parks, farms and barns, the crossroads of Breezewood, and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater among them―and canvass the scores of bridges, railroads, and inclines that cross the region’s rivers, hills, and mountains. Descriptions of close to 150 of the commonwealth’s small settlements, from coal patches to pike towns, capture the intense dialogue between industry and agriculture that typifies western Pennsylvania. Close to 400 illustrations, including photographs, maps, and drawings, bring the nearly 800 entries to life. Intended to complement the forthcoming companion volume―Buildings of Pennsylvania: Philadelphia and Eastern Pennsylvania―in the Buildings of the United States series, this book will pique the interest and curiosity of architectural historians and general readers alike.
A volume in the Buildings of the United States series of the Society of Architectural Historians

Buildings of Pennsylvania: Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania (Buildings of the United States)

History

Lu Donnelly

H. David Brumble IV

Americas

University of Virginia Press

This volume asks just one question: had the Florence Duomo never been excavated, what could we have known of the legendary cathedral of S. Reparata below it? The answer comes through the transcription of two key texts: one, never published until now, was written for the cathedral clergy around 1190; the other was composed around 1230, and printed just once, in the eighteenth century. English translations bring to life the liturgical year in medieval Florence, from the gorgeous pageantry of Christmas to the plaintive rites of Easter. The archaeological finds now make sense of the chapels, altars, and hallowed tombs that are cited in the texts. The volume then reconstructs the canonry (torn down around 1840), where the officiating priests lived, and the neighboring buildings on the cathedral square: a hospital, a school, and a prominent city gate that long ago disappeared, and a Baptistery, bishop's palace, and confraternity headquarters that are still standing. One chapter is devoted to the religious processions that ventured forth from S. Reparata to wind through the streets of Florence. Here the old texts are brought to life by the towers, bridges, churches, and monuments that survive from medieval Florence. The processional routes are examined for their social, political, and economic importance to the cathedral clergy, and the way the routes delineated the main lines of Roman Florence. The final chapter explores the food that poured onto the tables of the cathedral clergy from the farms and villages of the Florentine countryside. Altogether, the volume provides an exceptional look at the physical and spiritual impact of Florence's thousand-year-old cathedral in the age of Dante.

On Holy Ground: Liturgy, Architecture and Urbanism in the Cathedral and the Streets of Medieval Florence (FLORENCE DUOMO PROJECT)

History & Criticism

Harvey Miller Publishers

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Books by Franklin Toker