In the Victorian Style

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In the Victorian Style
San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1991
Text by Randolph Delahanty
Photographs by Richard Sexton
Book design by Herman + Company
Chronicle Books, 1991
180 pages, over 150 contemporary color photographs
ISBN: 0-87701-750-6 (hardcover); $35 retail
ISBN: 0-8118-1796-2 (softcover); $24.95 retail

Out of Print

Synopsis

In the Victorian Style, Richard Sexton’s third book, was the first of two titles created in collaboration with architectural historian Randolph Delehanty. In the Victorian Style was Delehanty’s concept and Sexton’s role centered on the contemporary visual content of the book. This was Sexton’s first title given a major hardcover release by Chronicle Books and represented a transition away from softcover titles, which had focused more on pop culture, than history and architecture.

Prior to In the Victorian Style most titles devoted to San Francisco’s domestic Victorian architecture had been basic picture stories–nice photographs of Victorian street facades painted in polychromatic color schemes. The visual content of In the Victorian Style is dramatically different from the more common picture story approach. There are photographs of such Victorian architectural minutiae as elaborately detailed door hinges and doorknobs along with broad urban vistas of entire Victorian neighborhoods. Every component of the interior of the Victorian household is visually portrayed from parlors to pantries. Even an attic is included. Other components that formed the pattern of Victorian neighborhoods such as public parks, churches and shop fronts are documented visually. In the Victorian Style is a comprehensive photo-essay illustrating a definitive narrative text by Randolph Delehanty.

Reviews

“…far and away the finest book ever published on Victorian architecture in San Francisco.” – Allan Temko, Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic