Southern Comfort: The Garden District of New OrleansRevised and Updated Edition (THE FLORA LEVY HUMANITIES SERIES)

Southern Comfort details the magnificent architecture and planning of the Garden District of New Orleans. Through the histories of the developers, owners, architects, laborers, and craftspeople who shaped this district, the book creates a picture of the uniquely cosmopolitan city in the American South. "This book is a valuable contribution to Southern history and to the history of both American architecture and American cities....Southern Comfort is a landmark piece of scholarship on the area." Anne Rice, New York Times Book Review "There's no part of New Orleans so steeped in architectural history as the Garden District. Southern Comfort: The Garden District of New Orleans tells the story in words and rich photos." Hemispheres Daniel Urban Kiley is generally considered to be America's foremost postwar landscape architect. Yet the work from the first two decades of his career is little known, despite both its inherent interest and its importance as a testing ground for his well-known later work. This book focuses on Kiley's most provocative projects from 1940 to 1960. Contributors present analytical investigations of Kiley's rarely studied early housing projects and garden prototypes, his garden plans for the Hollin Hills subdivision in Washington, and, in new ways, his best-known work, the "Irwin Miller Garden Front Matter....Pages i-viii Introduction: City and Suburb....Pages 1-11 Uptown and the Americanization of New Orleans....Pages 13-31 The Patrons....Pages 33-55 Antebellum Style....Pages 57-83 James Robb, Magnate and Patron....Pages 85-99 Architects and Builders....Pages 101-123 Architects of Opulence....Pages 125-147 The Culture of Comfort....Pages 149-167 Slaves, Servants, and Retainers....Pages 169-183 A Neighborhood War, 1861–1865....Pages 185-195 Men and Mansions of the Postwar Bubble....Pages 197-215 End of An Era....Pages 217-241 Back Matter....Pages 242-265 Details the magnificent architecture and planning of the Garden District of New Orleans. Through the histories of the developers, owners, architects, laborers, and craftspeople who shaped this district, this book creates a picture of the uniquely cosmopolitan city in the American South. IN THE HISTORY of modern cities, nineteenth-century America achieved distinction in two areas.