Book Description
Houses and schools, Ferris wheels and carousels, stores and factories, temples and theatres, gas stations and bridges, banks and garages, an ice rink and a bowling alley, Grant's Tomb and the Chicago Water Tower, the early structures of Queens NY, and churches in beautiful great number - the buildings of real or envisioned communities were rendered by largely anonymous persons from the late 19th century until about 1950. A remarkably unexplored area of our material culture, American folk art buildings reveal much about history, architecture, imagination, and clever craftsmanship. Hundreds of examples from the nation's largest collection show a remarkably rich range of structures. A first-ever explication of this American artifact conveys reasons, provenance, actual building referents, and apparent delight over decades of making even small a place of one's own.
