Celebration, Florida, is perhaps the most successful planned community in the country, having recently won a coveted Florida state civic award. What many people don't know is that Walt Disney's original concept for what later became Epcot® at Walt Disney World was exactly what Celebration is today-a thriving town where people live, work, go to school, attend to their health-care needs, shop, dine out, bank, and have myriad recreational opportunities. The richly illustrated Celebration: The Story of a Town explores the history of planned communities in America; the original concepts for Celebration complete with input from architects, social historians, and perhaps most important, local residents; and the ups and downs of this unique community as it establishes itself as one of Florida's most desired addresses.

Gilbert (1859-1934) was a believer in the benefits that architecture could bestow on the environment and culture of American life; as a leading exemplar of the City Beautiful movement he helped shape a civic architecture that was dedicated to the social and artistic reform of the nation's urban life. This collection of perspectives from architectural historians, practicing architects, and specialists outside the profession traces Gilbert's career from its origins in St Paul, where he built his masterpiece in the Minnesota State Capitol, to his civic designs in New York, including the US Custom House, the Woolworth Building, and many other significant projects. Plentifully illustrated in b&w. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

This is the fourth volume in architect and historian Robert A. M. Stern's monumental series of documentary studies of New York City architecture and urbanism. The three previous books in the series, New York 1900, New York 1930, and New York 1960, have comprehensively covered the architects and urban planners who defined New York over the course of the twentieth century.

In this volume, Stern turns back to 1880 -- the end of the Civil War, the beginning of European modernism -- to trace the earlier history of the city. This dynamic era saw the technological advances and acts of civic and private will that formed the identity of New York City as we know it today. The installation of water, telephone, and electricity infrastructures as well as the advent of electric lighting, the elevator, and mass transit allowed the city to grow both out and up. The office building and apartment house types were envisioned and defined, changing the ways that New Yorkers worked and lived. Such massive public projects as the Brooklyn Bridge and Central Park became realities, along with such private efforts as Grand Central Station.

Like the other three volumes, New York 1880 is an in-depth presentation of the buildings and plans that transformed New York from a harbor town into a world-class metropolis. A broad range of primary sources -- critics and writers, architects, planners, city officials -- brings the time period to life and allows the city to tell its own complex story. The book is generously illustrated with over 1,200 archival photographs, which show the city as it was, and as some parts of it still are.