Benjamin, Asher:

$10,000 · Offered by William Reese Company

THE COUNTRY BUILDER'S ASSISTANT, FULLY EXPLAINING, THE BEST METHODS FOR STRIKING REGULAR AND QUIRKED MOULDINGS: FOR DRAWING AND WORKING THE TUSCAN, DORIC, IONIC AND CORINTHIAN ORDERS...CORRECTLY ... Second edition, after the exceedingly rare and virtually unprocurable Greenfield first edition printed the previous year, of the first original American book of architecture. Earlier architectural works printed in the United States were simply compilations or reprintings of British material (e.g. John Norman's Town and Country Builder's Assistant of 1786). A classic and important American architectural treatise by the man who was most responsible for disseminating Roman and Greek stylistic details found in New England architecture of the period. The book is beautifully illustrated with engravings of colonial buildings, elevations of churches and homes, ornaments, cornices, etc. that all reflect the influences of the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian orders. "[T]here is scarcely a village which in moulding profiles, cornice details, church spire, or farm-house does not reflect his influence" - DAB. Benjamin was a prolific architectural writer who published The American Builder's Companion (1806), The Rudiments of Architecture (1814), and the very popular PRACTICAL HOUSE CARPENTER (1830). "The career of our first American architectural writer, Asher Benjamin (1773-1845), covered several decades of the early nineteenth century. Both the books he wrote and the buildings he designed had an

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.