The "iron lace" that graces the businesses, homes, squares, and cemeteries of Mobile, Alabama, is as vital a part of that southern port city as it is of New Orleans, Charleston, and Savannah. Until now, its story has never been fully told. In this attractive volume, John S. Sledge's rich narrative, combined with evocative historic images and Sheila Hagler's stunning contemporary photographs, eloquently conveys as never before how ornamental cast iron defines Mobile's heart and soul. Cast iron was the wonder of the Victorian age, according to Sledge. In Mobile, the material's diverse applications were on display in hulking locomotives and boilers, flamboyant fountains, imposing fences, and endless other forms and structures. The city's ornate iron balconies, dozens of which still remain, elicited the greatest wonder, then as now. Local publications have long extolled Mobile's enchanting ironwork. Only now, however, has the subject been situated within national trends in design, industry, and consumer tastes. It is a colorful saga featuring rawboned iron founders, artisan slaves, hustling salesmen, conniving architects, willful plunderers, romantic artists, and dedicated preservationists. Drawing on rare surviving business records and other archival sources, Sledge skillfully reconstructs how the local iron industry developed and then fiercely competed with big northern foundries. As a working preservationist, Sledge pays particular attention to how many of Mobile's most splendid ornamental iron pieces have weathered hard times, natural disasters, and misguided development to remain a delight for tourists and residents alike. Hagler's beautiful photographs provide a powerful and sometimes moody visual accompaniment to this fascinating tale.

Situated on the southwest coast of modern Turkey, Miletos stood for centuries as one of the paramount cities in the Hellenic world, a gateway between the East and West. It became especially famous as the most prolific mother city in Greek history, sending out at least forty-five known primary and secondary settlements into the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea, while at home developing into an intellectual and artistic center and one of the birthplaces of Western science and philosophy. A history of Miletos is long overdue. Despite the significance of this city in antiquity and the important results of ongoing excavations there, the last full-scale discussion of Miletos was written in 1915. In Miletos, the Ornament of Ionia, Vanessa B. Gorman provides the first and only modern, integrated history of the city, collecting and scrutinizing sources about Miletos for the period stretching from the first signs of habitation until 400 B.C.E. This book reviews the archaeological evidence for the physical city, demonstrates the likelihood of both Minoan and Mycenaean settlements there, and substantiates the fact of the Persian destruction and refoundation of Miletos along orthogonal lines. With insight and diligence, Gorman surveys the cults known to have existed during this period; traces the political progress of the city through monarchy, oligarchy, tyranny, and democracy; and sketches the terms of its subjugation under the Persians and later the Athenians. Providing a detailed and up-to-date account of the development of one of the major urban centers of Asia Minor, Gorman's book will engage classicists, historians, and Near Eastern specialists. Vanessa B. Gorman is Associate Professor of History, University of Nebraska, Lincoln.

Embellishment is a basic human need. Why was it banished from modern architecture?

A controversial manifesto on the role of classical principles in architecture critically examined for relevance today. First published in 1959, The Golden City is a seminal, critical document that developed one of the earliest and most compelling arguments against the then-dominant hegemony of modernism by reawakening interest in the value of our country's built patrimony, particularly with respect to its notable classical architecture, classical sculpture, and ornament in the built environment. The book's argument remains valuable today. The Golden City can be credited with building the constituency for the preservation movement in the United States in general, and in New York City in particular. That constituency coalesced around Reed's powerful polemic, eventually contributing to the formulation in 1965 of New York City's groundbreaking Landmark Law, one of the most important milestones in the preservation movement in the United States.

Through fire, flood and war, bolstered by the wealth of its natural resources, Fairmont began as a town of wooden houses and progressed to a city of skyscrapers. Over 150 structures in the historic downtown of Fairmont, West Virginia are documented in this volume, the first-ever researched work of the city's architectural history. Highlighted are those structures from Fairmont's period of astronomical growth, 1890 to 1930.

A delightful collection of quirky faces, figures, and creatures that adorn New York City buildings. This gift-sized and attractively priced book for architecture buffs features more than two hundred imaginative sculptural details, from the domestic to the fantastic, with a brief introduction and contextual photos to show the building on which each ornament appears, the addresses, and transportation information. Contains the complete contents of King’s Faces in Stone and Animals in Stone, available for the first time in one decisive volume.

An unprecedented homage to modernist architecture from the 1920s up to the present day Ornament Is Crime is a celebration and a thought-provoking reappraisal of modernist architecture. The book proposes that modernism need no longer be confined by traditional definitions, and can be seen in both the iconic works of the modernist canon by Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, and Walter Gropius, as well as in the work of some of the best contemporary architects of the twenty-first century. This book is a visual manifesto and a celebration of the most important architectural movement in modern history.