Volume 37, Number 20 · December 20, 1990
Getting Away from It All
By Witold Rybczynski
The Villa: Form and Ideology of Country Houses
by James S. Ackerman
Princeton University Press, 304 pp., $45.00
The Architect and the American Country House, 1890–1940
by Mark Alan Hewitt, architectural photographs by Richard Cheek
Yale University Press, 312 pp., $55.00
The American Country House
by Roger W. Moss
Holt, 243 pp., $44.50
The American Country House
by Clive Aslet
Yale University Press, 302 pp., $45.00
Wheel Estate: The Rise and Decline of Mobile Homes
by Allan D. Wallis
Oxford University Press, 288 pp., $24.95
Every American city is surrounded by a curious mirror image of itself: cottage country. Each Friday evening people make their way to their rustic retreats; on Sunday, the exodus is reversed. The precise magnitude of this periodic emigration remains undocumented, but if one includes not only beach houses, mountain lodges, lakeside cabins, and ski chalets, but also trailer parks, permanent campgrounds, hunting camps, ice-fishing houses, marinas, and houseboats, the number of second, country places is vast. The well-to-do go to Bar Harbor, the Hamptons, the Cape, the less affluent make do with less scenic, or merely less desirable, locations. The destinations vary, but the aim is the same: take a break, get away, get out of the city.
Review, 4466 words
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