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(More customer reviews)This well-researched and informative book about the grand resort hotels of the White Mountains is simply one of those books which you add with pride to your library collection. It shows the hotel's importance in the architectural and social historical realm of New England and American history. It is full of andedotes on the hotel industry and is a vastly entertaining social picture. The book is full of many illustrations of present and long-gone hotels, 200 b&w and a number of color plates. I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in the hospitality history of this country, and the importance in the realm of things that the hotel places. Dr. Tolles have expertly brought this subject to life and I commend him for it.
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This is the first book to fully explore the architecture, as well as the related economic, social, and cultural history, of the grand resort hotels of New Hampshire s scenic White Mountains. These beautiful buildings, situated in one of America s oldest and most heavily visited vacation and recreation locales, were the first structures in America designed exclusively for the tourist industry. This carefully researched, profusely illustrated volume identifies and explores some thirty outstanding complexes, explaining their architectural details, their social histories, and the often surprising stories behind their lovely wooden facades. The book also presents the dramatic evolution of building types, from the first rural highway inns of the Rosebrooks, Crawfords, and Fabyans in the 1820s to the initial railroad hostelries and the grand hotels of the 1850s, an era culminating in the great resort complexes at the end of the nineteenth century.Bryant Tolles conducted over three years of research for this book, culling valuable information, reflections and visual materials from libraries, archives, and private collections throughout New England and elsewhere. He places the buildings in broad national and historical context, explains the origins and development of this highly specialized industry, and discusses the symbiotic relationship between the railroads and the hotels. The concluding sections of the book offer an exhaustive bibliography, a comprehensive index, and appendices, plus listings of the major White Mountains hotels, including ones now long disappeared.Fully illustrated with over 200 black-and-white and twenty color illustrations, this is the first comprehensive treatment of these singular and jeopardized structures. A visual delight and a vastly entertaining social document, it also presents scholarship and detective work of the first order.
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