The Railroad Station; An Architectural History

The format is approximately 6.375 inches by 9.25 inches. xxvi, 203, [1] pages. Footnotes. Illustrations [231 listed]. Appendix [Comparative Table of Train-sheds and Bibliographical Essay] Index. Illustrated front cover has small crease in lower open corner. This Dover Edition is an unabridged, slightly corrected reproduction of the work originally published in 1956 by Yale University Press. The "Notes to the Second Printing" have been added to this edition. For reasons of pagination, the present edition begins with pave vii (the title page) but nothing has been omitted. Carroll L. V. Meeks (1907-1966) was a professor of architecture and art history at Yale University. Professor Meeks, spent his entire teaching career at Yale, joined the faculty as an assistant in architecture two years after receiving a bachelor's degree from Yale in 1928. He later received a master's degree at Yale and a Ph.D. from Harvard University. He became an assistant professor of art in 1937, an associate professor of architecture and the history of art in 1946 and a full professor in 1958. He was a past president and a director of the Society of Architectural Historians and was chairman of the American Institute of Architects' committee on the preservation of historic buildings. While at Yale, Professor Meeks helped develop the university's School of Art and Architecture into a major institution. Professor Meeks wrote articles for professional and scholarly journals and was the author of two books, ?Italian Architecture, 1750-1914,? and "The Railroad Station." The contents are The Nineteenth Century Style: Picturesque Eclecticism; Functional Pioneering (1830-1845); Standardization (the 1850's) The Middle Phase: Sophistication (1860-1890); The Third Phase: Megalomania (1890-1914) and The Twentieth Century Style (1914-1956). "An engrossing book. A rich and extraordinary interesting account of the buildings themselves and of one aspect of the interaction of culture and technology. The many illustrations are a joy." ? Scientific American. This profusely illustrated book chronicles the evolution of the architecture of the railroad station in both Europe and America from the 1930s and 1950s. It begins with the earliest train-sheds and follows the progress of station design to the great structures erected in the Victorian Era ? London's Charing Cross Station (1862?64) and Berlin's Anhalter Bahnhof (1872?80) among them. Landmarks such as New York's Pennsylvania Station (1906?10), designed by McKim, Mead & White, begin the panorama of twentieth-century structures. The story ends mid-century, in the gathering twilight of the railroading era, with such conceptions as Cincinnati's Union Station (1926?33) and Rome's Second Stazione Termini (1931?51). This great cavalcade of architecture illustrates year by year how the approach to station design developed along with the perceived power of the railroad to mobilize masses of people, revolutionize trade, influence the course of national and international interests, open frontiers, facilitate the rise of suburbia, and more. Fully examined is the station's role as an essential part of a new system of transportation with tremendous power to effect social, economic, and political change. Throughout the book, Dr. Meeks, late Professor of the History of Architecture at Yale University, follows chronologically the station's progress as architecture serving new functions; as an engineering challenge, especially in the construction of huge roofs in new materials; and as a work of art expressing taste and cultural ambition. More than 230 illustrations ? photographs, illustrations, floor plans, cutaways, and more ? bring vividly to life one of architecture's most fascinating stories. "Carefully documented by all the apparatus of exacting scholarship, and even better by a fascinating collection of more than 230 pictures." ? The New York Times Book Review. Praised for its scholarship in a New York Times review in 1956, "The Railr.…