An Architectural History of Harford County, Maryland - Tapa dura

"An architectural history of the county named for Henry Harford, the last Lord Baltimore's illegitimate son. This claim to fame has set the tone for the historically and architecturally wealthy region where examples of Palladian mansions, stone cottages, 19th century mills, Sears design homes, and Bauhaus moderns compete for attention. The people associated with these sites are as diverse in character and include topiary artist Harvey Ladew, baseball magnate Larry McPhail, and Edwin Booth. The volume is chock full of interesting historical tidbits, and includes 600 black and white photographs -- a great value for the list price." -- Reference and Research Book News

""'Epic' is the word for the impressive work on Harford county. It has the rare quality of being both edifying and entertaining, its author being an experienced architectural writer as well as a native of the country... The author's rare knowledge, wit, spicy tidbits of scandal, and 'let me entertain you' approach to history makes this a must-read for anyone interested in Maryland history." -- Maryland Historical Magazine

"Handsomely designed and generously illustrated with modern and period photographs, historic maps, drawings and other graphic material... Weeks vividly resurrects the lives of modest colonial farmers, black slaves, Jefferson-era naval officers, shady investors, politicians of dubious integrity, antiquarians, teachers, gardeners, and a host of other individuals who built and inhabited the buildings and sites described in the book. While the text is heavily laden with anecdotes concerning the wealthy and well connected, the author has not altogether neglected the histories and sites associated with the poor, enslaved, and commonplace." -- Carl Lounsbury, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians

"Readers of this newsletter, who may be practitioners themselves aspiring to similar goals, will do well to take this volume as a model for their own efforts." -- John P. McCarthy, Vernacular Architecture Newsletter

Perched at the head of the Bay--where the Susquehanna River flattens out to form the Chesapeake--Harford County, Maryland, takes in 520-odd square miles of land and water and more than three hundred years of history. Named for Henry Harford, illegitimate son of the last Lord Baltimore, the county is a testament to human and architectural diversity.

In An Architectural History of Harford County, Maryland, Christopher Weeks brings together some six hundred photographs and a richly detailed text to explore one of the truly fascinating regions in America. Architecture in Harford County reflects almost every influence, from the earliest colonial folk styles to Bauhaus modern. It is all here: Palladian mansions, some of the country's earliest and finest Gothic Revival churches, the "romantic" stone cottages of the mid-1800s, Belle Epoch mansions of the wealthy, two of the few extant Freedmen's Bureau buildings remaining in the nation, and, of course, the urban tract housing of the mid-twentieth century. Weeks takes us on an architectural tour that includes the country's industrial heritage--quarries in Cardiff and Whiteford, Victorian-era canning establishments in Lapidum, and some of the finest early-nineteenth-century gristmills in the country.

Weeks also introduces readers to Harford's equally interesting citizens. Harford County was home to baseball magnate Larry MacPhail and the famous topiary artist Harvey Ladew, whose gardens draw visitors to this day. It was from here that four generations of the Rodgers family shaped the history of the American navy, Junius and Edwin Booth made pioneering contributions to American theater, and Dr. Howard Kelly and Dr. John Archer made bold progress in American medicine. Harford resident Robert Smith of Spesutia Island proved himself a good friend of Thomas Jefferson. Four generations later Millard Tydings of Oakington proved himself an equally strong early advocate of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. And if Mary E. W. Risteau, who built her house in Harford, deserves praise for championing women's rights in the 1930s, she had rich inspiration to draw on in fellow Harford native Cupid Paca, who had bravely pioneered the rights of African-Americans a century earlier.

Part architectural record and part vivid history, An Architectural History of Harford County, Maryland offers a splendid portrait of one of the longest-settled localities in eastern America.