Product Description

The photographs in this calendar were selected from Philadelphia Architecture. Philadelphia is a city of Colonial and ghostly architecture with narrow historic streets that open up onto vistas of bold, towering skyscrapers. It is a city of Greek Revival banks, Italian Renaissance, and Second Empire buildings, a city of Beaux-Arts hotels, Byzantine and Gothic churches, and International-style high-rises. A hybrid of gritty Chicago and pristine Boston, Philadelphia stands alone, an aristocrat in bib overalls, as a livable, intimate city of neighborhoods and luxurious townhouses, of hidden treasures and spectacular surprises. Philadelphia Architecture, a walk through Philadelphia streets past and present, highlights the richness and diversity of the city’s architectural history. Thom Nickels is a journalist, poet, and author of eight books, including Gay and Lesbian Philadelphia and Manayunk. The lifelong Philadelphia resident is a contributing editor for the Weekly Press and is the architecture writer for the Philadelphia Bulletin. He won the 2005 Philadelphia AIA Lewis Mumford Award

for architectural journalism.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1742161 in Books
• Published on: 2008-10-01
• Released on: 2008-10-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Calendar
• 12 pages

About the Author
Thom Nickels is a journalist, poet, and author of eight books, including Gay and Lesbian Philadelphia and Manayunk. The lifelong Philadelphia resident is a contributing editor for the Weekly Press and is the architecture critic for Philadelphia’s Metro.

Customer Reviews

I loved it
This is a great book, very inclusive of Philadelphia architecture both old and new. I liked the inclusion of "pop" architecture like the Best Buy building in the Northeast. After all, this is a book that covers more than just historic architecture. It was refreshing to see that the writing was not stodgy or academic (yawn). The writing tends towards the clever and poetic; check out the caption headlines under the photographs. This is easily, I think, the best book on Philadelphia architecture to appear in the last 15 years.

Only some good photos.
Images of America books depend on their photos for their quality. About half of this book is nice historical photos. But much of it is illustrated with mediocre contemporary snaps. Also, given Philadelphia's high level of architectural splendor, it includes lots of unimpressive modern buildings. Finally, a fair number of mistakes. Worst goof was a photo & caption for one house (Drexel mansion I believe) was completely repeated about 50 pages away from its first appearance.

Better to look than to read.
This book has some very nice pictures of buildings and streetscapes around the city, covering a broad swath of the city's history. The focus is on the photos, with a short essay introducing the book and captions accompanying each shot. The photographs are good, as is the quality of the book's construction.

The downfall of this work is the writing. Captions read as though they haven't seen even the cursory glance of an editor. Spelling and factual errors plague the short captions. The mistakes were so glaring, frequent and distracting as to detract from the experience of the book.