The Hand of the Small-Town Builder:
Vernacular Summer Architecture in New England, 1870–1935

by W. Tad Pfeffer
David R. Godine, Publisher

Like many books on the Godine list, this one was a labor of love for its author. Tad Pfeffer wandered the back roads of New England for the better part of a decade, searching out examples of summer houses that had been built by unsung builder-architects during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, often chasing absent owners for years before obtaining permission to photograph their houses. Pfeffer’s photographs capture these charming – but rarely glamorous – houses vivdly, imparting a distinct sense of place and mood, but avoiding the pretention and abstraction that makes so many architectural books so uninviting. To balance the type with the density of the photographs and capture some of the houses’ sense of craft I set the text in Monotype Columbus with a set of capitals and ornaments by E. R. Weiss for the display type.

Hardcover with jacket, 8 × 11"