Buildings of Colorado

The fifth in an ongoing series of field guides to the buildings of the United States, commissioned from experts by the Society of Architectural Historians. Companion volumes are available on Alaska, DC, Iowa, Michigan, and Nevada, with another dozen in preparation. It's an invaluable project, the most ambitious of its kind since the WPA State guides of the 1930s, and it maps the terra incognita between the few major cities that have been professionally surveyed.Colorado is more notable for natural wonders than architecture, and had little more to show than Mesa Verde 150 years ago. Noel provides an encyclopedic 600 pages of plans, photos, and commentary on boom towns-from those that have faded to those, like Denver, that have exploded. He is equally sympathetic to the best new work, but stumbles in his appraisal of an Ed Niles house-a controversial cluster of glass cubes in Vail-as he observes: "This eyecatcher revives the International Style in the Postmodern tradition of Richard Meier."

There is much architecture to see in Colorado and Mr. Noel has eloquently documented the variety of buildings one might make a special trip to visit. I especially enjoyed the small town examples. For information on the bigger cities in Colorado, there are more complete guides to Architecture and history... read those too! Keep in mind, that the point of this book was to document those buildings which you could visit or experience; there aren't many examples of private residences or secure buildings. Buy this book and start to plan your road trips through Colorado!