Searching for Authenticity - by Edward Ford (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Rustic Architecture in America 1887-1940 is a history of a series of misunderstood masterpieces, the log-based architecture that emerged in the Adirondacks and the National Parks between 1890 and 1935.

It is a history of how both form and technology of construction were determined by the tourist industry and the railroads who built the buildings and the social and environmental damage caused by the larger process of which they were a part. Many of these buildings were constructional shams driven by romantic pretenses, but there is also in the best of this architecture something truly original. It is also a history of how the rustic aesthetic transcended glib, mythic romanticism to produce a truly original architecture, how the unique conditions of the West merged craft with the industrial, of how its designers drew on the landscape of the West in combination with the European traditions of the rustic to create an original architecture and a unique way of building.

Forty buildings are examined in detail. The text and the numerous original drawings unfold the story how the work was actually constructed in relation to its many enduring myths.

Review Quotes

"Books this definitive are extremely rare, appearing but once or twice in a generation and leaving their mark on the literature for years to come.... there is nothing else like it for the national parks--some wonderful coffee table books and guides, perhaps, but not a volume this painstakingly detailed." --National Park Traveler

"Frederick Kiesler (1890-1965) submitted this 10-part manuscript shortly after World War II. It was his most ambitious book: a genre-bending, holistic alternate history of architecture spanning from prehistoric caves to the atomic bomb.... Over the last decade, the editors have painstakingly reassembled this book from the archives, supplementing it with introductory essays, notes, and interpretations." --Architectural Record