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David King Gleason provides a grand tour of Virginia's distinctive plantation homes. As the architectural historian Calder Loth states in his prefatory note, ""Gleason's elegant photographs provide a seductive image of life in 'Old Virginia.' He presents one inviting house after another, complete with handsome interiors, and spacious grounds dotted with boxwoods and venerable trees.""Unlike those in the Deep South, most of Virginia's plantation homes were built before the antebellum period and mainly reflect colonial, English Georgian, and Jeffersonian styles of architecture. Gleason has photographed the homes in all seasons, framing some in the pink blossoms of springtime dogwoods, showing others surrounded by the golden hues of autumn, and presenting still others blanketed in January snows. Many of the photographs provide aerial perspectives that encompass not only the homes themselves but outbuildings and dependencies, great lawns and terraced gardens.The book begins with homes in the Tidewater region, where Bacon's Castle, built in 1665 on the south bank of the James River, still stands. It is the oldest surviving house not only in Virginia but in all of English-settled North America. Other houses from the Tidewater region include Westover, considered one of the most beautiful Georgian residences in the United States; Brandon, at one time the home of Benjamin Harrison; Appomattox Manor, where Ulysses S. Grant headquartered for a period during the Civil War; and Carter's Grove, near Williamsburg. In northern Virginia and the Shenandoah valley are Gunston Hall, near Alexandria; Woodlawn, in Fairfax County; Washington's Mount Vernon; and Melrose, a castellated manor inspired by the romantic literature of Sir Walter Scott. In the Piedmont, Gleason photographed such houses as Ash Lawn, the home of James Monroe; Edgemont, an exquisitely proportioned house showing Thomas Jefferson's influence; and Estouteville, whose great center hall opens onto identical Tuscan porticos framing magnificent views of the Virginia countryside. Gleason's photographs of a mist-shrouded Monticello are among the most beautiful in the book. In all, Gleason has photographed more than eighty of Virginia's finest plantation homes. Extensive captions provide concise histories of each house, including its original builder and subsequent owners, and its occupants, either friendly or hostile, during the Revolutionary or Civil wars.

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From the stately Gothic Revival and Regency-style houses of Savannah to the majestic, multicolumned plantation homes that punctuate rolling farmlands throughout the state, David King Gleason presents a splendid pictorial record of Georgia's fines pre-Civil War residences. The book begins with the town houses of Savannah, which include such landmark residences as the Andrew Low House, built in 1848 in the style of an early Victorian Renaissance villa, and the imposing Gree-Heldrim House, a Gothic Revival mansion that was the most expensive house built in Savannah prior to the Civil War. Wild Heron, located just south of Savannah on the Little Ogeechee River, is the oldest plantation house still standing in Georgia. A one-and-a-half story farmhouse built in the style of a West India cottage, it is being restored to reflect the period of the early 1800s. Farther to the interior, in the area around Augusta, are such homes as Fruitlands, now the clubhouse of the Augusta national Golf Club; Meadow Garden; Ware's Folly; and Montrose, built in 1849 and one of the Loveliest Greek Revival houses in the area. Houses photographed along the Plantation Trail, from Athens to Macon, include the white-columned President's House, home since 1949 to the presidents of the University of Georgia; the Howell Cobb House, in Athens; Whitehall, in Covington; Glan Mary, in Sparta; and the Woodruff House, in Macon. Gleason devotes considerable attention to the homes of the western side of the state, from Chickamauga to Thomasville. The Gordon-Lee House, constructed in 1847, was headquarters fro the Union army during the battle of chickamauga. Other houses in this part of Georgia are valley View, which overlooks the Etowah River, west of Cartersville; the Archibald Howell House, near downtown Marietta; Lovejoy, in Clayton Country; The oaks, in the vicinity of LaGrange; and Greenwood and Pebble Hill, near Thomasville. In all, Gleason captures more than one hundred of Georgia's most beautiful antebellum homes, including many lesser-known houses. In addition to exterior photographs, Antebellum Homes of Georgia contains a number of interior views as well as aerial photographs that show the relationship between the houses and their environs: outbuildings, formal gardens, and recd clay fields that were once white with cotton. Captions provide brief histories of the houses and their owners as weel as notes on construction and outstanding architectural details.

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