Stone Houses: Colonial to Contemporary

This book is just as at home on your coffee table as in your collected works on masonry. Goff provides a wonderful pictorial tour of stone buildings, from simple country cottages to splendid manors. The pictures are of excellent quality, and done by someone who knows a thing or two about how to compose with light and shadow. He provides some interior views as well, which give an added perspective to the house you've seen from the outside. But a weak spot is a distinct shortage of interior stonework photos, save for fireplaces. The text is relatively sparse; Goff clearly lets the pictures speak for themselves while providing some historical perspective. This isn't a book you pick up to learn about the evolution or science of masonry, it's something you use for inspiration and ideas before you start to incorporate stone into your own design. Well worth the price.

Full of beautiful photo's of exteriors and interiors of 43 different Stone Houses built in America from prehistoric times through the twenty-first century, along with descriptions of each house and discussions on each time period. This is a great book for anyone interested in stone work of any kind.

Stone Houses is a splendid survey which focuses exclusively on residential architecture in the USA. The book begins with several breathtaking photographs of historical sites in the Southwest where the Anasazi built beguiling settlements out of local stone over one thousand years ago. It then proceeds to document numerous stone structures of interest from colonial times right through to the present. Moreover, in addition to his commentary on the buildings presented within the pages of this beautifully realized volume, Lee Goff provides a thoughtful discussion of the qualities of stone itself which makes for such a superb, durable building material in the first instance as well as an inspirational source for imaginative residential design. To quote briefly from the introduction: "Stone has different moods. It can be warm or cold, protective or inhospitable. Before all else, however, stone evokes an image of power, strength, impregnability and endurance. Even more subliminally it conveys a sense of the primordial...Instinctively, we feel the millions of years ago the stones were formed. Thus, the materials of nature become the material of shelter, and the form the shelter takes in turn reflects the origin of the stone and the house's setting, connecting the dwelling and its inhabitants to the most permanent world of all-the natural world."Stone was the first material used for shelter. It can be (and has been) assembled in any number of creative, aesthetically pleasing ways. Stone Houses takes us on a wondrous tour of many of the possibilities inherent to this medium of construction. "Whether cottage or château, cabin or castle, stone houses embody feelings of romance and the picturesque. Their walls speak of permanence and history; their stones give whispered accounts of their prehistoric creation. They are an ongoing part of what Tennyson referred to as 'the eternal landscape of the past.' "