Great Houses of New Orleans

From Front Jacket: "In 200 fine black-and-white photographs accompanied by a lively and informative introductory test, this book celebrates the historic old houses...of New Orleans. Situated deep in the South, founded by the French, dominated for a time by the Spanish, New Orleans has a foreign, almost exotic flavor that is everywhere reflected in its architecture. Curt Bruce's richly textured photographs lavishly demonstrate the extraordinary variety of the city's 18th and 19th century buildings. Here are the great New Orleans houses--the grand and the simple, the enormous and the small. ...Creole plantation houses, walled townhouses, and storefronts crowd together in these pages with French cottages, long-halled Shotgun Houses, Greek Revival mansions, and the extravagantly ornate and curlicued houses of the Victorian era. And here, too, are the details and settings so particular to New Orleans--seen in beautifully evocative pictures of treeshaded gardens enclosed by wrought-iron fences and of elegant balconies overlooking walled courtyards, in close-ups of cut-glass doors, curved overhanging eaves, eyebrow windows, louvered shutters, and fanciful cast-iron statues. Curt Bruce's text places the various architectural styles in historical perspective, and makes the city's past come alive with stories, both legendary and true, of the benevolent and scandalous governors, the quadroon balls and duels, the luxurious theaters, sumptuous hotels, and outrageous personalities for which New Orleans is famous. Together, Curt Bruce's words and photographs pay tribute to the architectural delight that is New Orleans, to the converging cultures that produced it.."