Stanford White, Architect Book

Stanford White gets the coffee table book treatment, complete with massive photos and reverential written descriptions. The authors, who are ancestors of White's, want you to think he is the greatest artist who walked the Earth. My opinion of White's designs actually declined after reading this. I love his Shingle style buildings with McKim and Mead, but found many of his other buildings gaudy and too similar in appearance to its particular European inspiration.

It would be nice to see more of the criticism of some of the projects, because every design probably was not as well received as the authors want you to believe. It would also be nice to know more about the life of the designer and how it reflected on his creations, because we certainly know he was living a fascinating existence based on how he died. Very little of that here. And I always am interested in the current status of buildings and how they have evolved over the years, but found that lacking.

This may be a fun book to have laying around and pick up once in a while when bored, but it's a chore to read cover to cover as I did.