David King Gleason

From its beginnings as a tiny rail-line settlement in 1837 to its emergence as the designated host city for the 1996 Summer Olympic Games, Atlanta has been on the move. Its dramatic and ever-changing skyline attests to the fact that it is one of America's most dynamic cities, the epitome of what has come to be known as the ""New South."" Yet for all its striking modern architecture, Atlanta is much more than a collection of soaring skyscrapers, as David King Gleason makes clear in this beautiful new book, featuring some 150 colour photographs of Georgia's capital city in all its splendid variety. Here are Atlanta's impressive business towers, familiar to travelers from all over the world, but here too are its bucolic neighborhoods and parks, its decades-old landmarks and educational institutions, its sporting and entertainment facilities, its museums and theaters.With his camera Gleason roams from downtown, where the nineteenth-century ornateness of the gold-domed State Capitol contrasts with the ultramodern designs of recently built skyscrapers, to the outskirts of this sprawling city, were the winding Chattachoochee River and the mammoth carved granite dome of Stone Mountain attract visitors year-round. He discloses the diversity of Atlanta's many neighborhoods in shots of the rejuvenated Midtown section, whose well-established residential enclaves now sit almost cheek by jowl with new office buildings, and farther to the north, in photographs of the thriving Buckhead area, the site of some of the city's most impressive mansions of the past as well as of more recent vintage.Reflecting Atlanta's importance as an educational center, Gleason includes photographs of such institutions as Emory University, Georgia Tech, and the various colleges (Morehouse, Spelman, and others) that make up the Atlanta University Center. Photographs of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthplace and of the Carter Presidential Center are just two reminders that Georgians have often been at the forefront of political progress in America. The city's interest in culture and recreation is represented in images of the High Museums of Art, the Atlanta Botanical Garden, Underground Atlanta, and the many sporting venues where both college and professional teams compete.An introduction by the Atlanta poet and physician John Stone and captions by newspaper journalist Don O'Briant complement Gleason's evocative photographs. Anyone, longtime resident, newcomer, and visitor alike, will find this a book to keep and treasure.

David King Gleason provides a grand tour of Virginia's distinctive plantation homes. As the architectural historian Calder Loth states in his prefatory note, ""Gleason's elegant photographs provide a seductive image of life in 'Old Virginia.' He presents one inviting house after another, complete with handsome interiors, and spacious grounds dotted with boxwoods and venerable trees.""Unlike those in the Deep South, most of Virginia's plantation homes were built before the antebellum period and mainly reflect colonial, English Georgian, and Jeffersonian styles of architecture. Gleason has photographed the homes in all seasons, framing some in the pink blossoms of springtime dogwoods, showing others surrounded by the golden hues of autumn, and presenting still others blanketed in January snows. Many of the photographs provide aerial perspectives that encompass not only the homes themselves but outbuildings and dependencies, great lawns and terraced gardens.The book begins with homes in the Tidewater region, where Bacon's Castle, built in 1665 on the south bank of the James River, still stands. It is the oldest surviving house not only in Virginia but in all of English-settled North America. Other houses from the Tidewater region include Westover, considered one of the most beautiful Georgian residences in the United States; Brandon, at one time the home of Benjamin Harrison; Appomattox Manor, where Ulysses S. Grant headquartered for a period during the Civil War; and Carter's Grove, near Williamsburg. In northern Virginia and the Shenandoah valley are Gunston Hall, near Alexandria; Woodlawn, in Fairfax County; Washington's Mount Vernon; and Melrose, a castellated manor inspired by the romantic literature of Sir Walter Scott. In the Piedmont, Gleason photographed such houses as Ash Lawn, the home of James Monroe; Edgemont, an exquisitely proportioned house showing Thomas Jefferson's influence; and Estouteville, whose great center hall opens onto identical Tuscan porticos framing magnificent views of the Virginia countryside. Gleason's photographs of a mist-shrouded Monticello are among the most beautiful in the book. In all, Gleason has photographed more than eighty of Virginia's finest plantation homes. Extensive captions provide concise histories of each house, including its original builder and subsequent owners, and its occupants, either friendly or hostile, during the Revolutionary or Civil wars.

From the stately Gothic Revival and Regency-style houses of Savannah to the majestic, multicolumned plantation homes that punctuate rolling farmlands throughout the state, David King Gleason presents a splendid pictorial record of Georgia's fines pre-Civil War residences. The book begins with the town houses of Savannah, which include such landmark residences as the Andrew Low House, built in 1848 in the style of an early Victorian Renaissance villa, and the imposing Gree-Heldrim House, a Gothic Revival mansion that was the most expensive house built in Savannah prior to the Civil War. Wild Heron, located just south of Savannah on the Little Ogeechee River, is the oldest plantation house still standing in Georgia. A one-and-a-half story farmhouse built in the style of a West India cottage, it is being restored to reflect the period of the early 1800s. Farther to the interior, in the area around Augusta, are such homes as Fruitlands, now the clubhouse of the Augusta national Golf Club; Meadow Garden; Ware's Folly; and Montrose, built in 1849 and one of the Loveliest Greek Revival houses in the area. Houses photographed along the Plantation Trail, from Athens to Macon, include the white-columned President's House, home since 1949 to the presidents of the University of Georgia; the Howell Cobb House, in Athens; Whitehall, in Covington; Glan Mary, in Sparta; and the Woodruff House, in Macon. Gleason devotes considerable attention to the homes of the western side of the state, from Chickamauga to Thomasville. The Gordon-Lee House, constructed in 1847, was headquarters fro the Union army during the battle of chickamauga. Other houses in this part of Georgia are valley View, which overlooks the Etowah River, west of Cartersville; the Archibald Howell House, near downtown Marietta; Lovejoy, in Clayton Country; The oaks, in the vicinity of LaGrange; and Greenwood and Pebble Hill, near Thomasville. In all, Gleason captures more than one hundred of Georgia's most beautiful antebellum homes, including many lesser-known houses. In addition to exterior photographs, Antebellum Homes of Georgia contains a number of interior views as well as aerial photographs that show the relationship between the houses and their environs: outbuildings, formal gardens, and recd clay fields that were once white with cotton. Captions provide brief histories of the houses and their owners as weel as notes on construction and outstanding architectural details.

Briefly recounts the history of the city and shows its hotels, office buildings, historic homes, parks, cemeteries, markets, piers, gardens, marinas, colleges, bridges and riverboats