Dover Books on Architecture

This excellent hands-on guide by one of the founders of the Boy Scouts of America contains a wealth of practical instruction and advice on how to build everything from a bark teepee and a tree-top house to a log cabin and a sod house. No professional architects are needed here; and knowing how to use an axe is more important than possessing carpentry skills. More than 300 of the author's own illustrations and a clear, easy-to-follow text enable campers to create such lodgings as half-cave shelters, beaver mat huts, birch bark shacks, over-water camps, a Navajo hogan, and a pole house. Additional chapters provide information on how to use an axe, split and notch logs, make a fireplace, and even build appropriate gateways to log houses, game preserves, ranches, and other open areas. An invaluable book for scouts, campers, hikers, and hunters of all ages, this guide and its fascinating collection of outdoor lore "still has intrinsic value," said Whole Earth Magazine, and will be of keen interest to any modern homesteader.

These 53 magnificent drawings by a distinguished architect recapture landmarks of colonial America. Originally published in 1922, Otto Reinhold Eggers' portfolio of pencil sketches depicts historic structures in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and Baltimore as well as those of smaller towns in Connecticut, Virginia, and elsewhere. Images of churches, municipal structures, homes, and other architectural gems range from the majesty of St. Paul's Chapel, Manhattan's oldest surviving church, and the grandeur of George Washington's Mt. Vernon residence to a Dutch farmhouse in New Jersey and a Newport street lined with quaint eighteenth-century buildings. Otto Reinhold Eggers (1882 – 1964) was one of the architects of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D. C., and his seven-decade career in architecture included a 30-year association with John Russell Pope, first as a draftsman and eventually as a partner. Eggers' meticulously rendered sketches, photographic in their detail and effect, offer fascinating perspectives on some of America's architectural treasures. Extensive captions for each of the illustrations by William H. Crocker, editor of The American Architect, provide fascinating historical background.

Once a seat of government as well as the private residence of its owners, the medieval castle was also a military base and stronghold for the surrounding geographical area. The development of these sturdy fortifications in England during the Middle Ages is carefully examined in this profusely illustrated book. From early chapters dealing with primitive earthworks and Roman stations, the text goes on to explore the construction of the English castle following the Norman Conquest, the beginnings of the stone castle and the Norman keep, bastions of the thirteenth century, military architecture, fortified towns in the later Middle Ages, and more. Students of architecture, military history, and medieval studies-as well as anyone interested in the evolution of castle construction-will find this work a fascinating and valuable reference.