The illustrations in Bryant F. Tolles Jr.'s Summer by the Seaside: The Architecture of New England Coastal Resort Hotels, 1820-1950 give a powerful sense of what has been lost. Vintage photographs, etchings, and architecturalplans whisk readers along the New England coast, past one elegant structure after another, some of them veritable Versailles, only in Queen Anne or Second Empire style, with verandas, shingled towers, and rows of top-floor dormers. It's enough to make a preservationist weep, particularly one familiar with what's replaced them.

A profusely illustrated work, including floor plans and photographs from the glory years, Summer by the Seaside is replete with text that examines the origins, evolution, and gradual decline of the resort hotel phenomenon and itsarchitecture on the New England coastline, along with its social, cultural, and economic history.

The illustrations in Bryant F. Tolles Jr.'s Summer by the Seaside: The Architecture of New England Coastal Resort Hotels, 1820-1950 give a powerful sense of what has been lost. Vintage photographs, etchings, and architecturalplans whisk readers along the New England coast, past one elegant structure after another, some of them veritable Versailles, only in Queen Anne or Second Empire style, with verandas, shingled towers, and rows of top-floor dormers. It's enough to make a preservationist weep, particularly one familiar with what's replaced them.

I imagine most readers will buy the book on the basis of its very tangible beauty. It is a lovely picture book, but it is also a solid, readable and first-rate piece of scholarship that will be a standard reference for years . . . the book is big and beautiful, and well done on all levels.