Examples of American Domestic Architecture

New York: William T. Comstock, 1889. First edition. Oblong 4to. 59 plates after drawings by Stevens, numerous illustrations in text. 40 pp. Publisher's blue-green cloth, front cover and spine stamped in gilt; spine ends repaired, hinges reinforced and now sturdy, some repairs to endsheets, covers scuffed and extremities worn, moderate soiling and scuffing, final paragraph of Preface effaced Scarce first edition of this important treatise on the Shingle Style of architecture. Stevens (1855-1940), who supplied the plans and drawings illustrated here, was a major innovator of the Shingle Style. He was prolific, completing some 1,000 commissions, mostly along the Maine coast, including approximately 300 homes on the Portland peninsula. In 1888 he formed a partnership with Albert Winslow Cobb, who had previously worked at the Boston office of William Ralph Emerson, another major innovator of the Shingle Style. Cobb, who provides the text, argues for the Shingle Style as a necessary reform to produce a more democratic, straightforward and uniquely American style of domestic architecture. "Examples of American Domestic Architecture was nothing short of an impassioned clarion call for a new form of architecture that was aesthetically beautiful and purposely engineered to reduce the widespread social inequalities of the period. While the strident and occasionally ponderous idealism on evidence in Examples is widely considered to be Cobbs doing, the books lyrical prose and innovative Shingle Style illustrations won international recognition and acclaim for the two architects" (Stephen Abbott, "John Calvin Stevens: The Early Years" in Maine Home + Design)REFERENCE: Hitchcock 1240; Vincent Scully, The Shingle Style, pp. 113-120; Sprague, The Mirror of Maine 32