This volume is available as a Dover reprint under the title Victorian Domestic Architectural Plans and Details. As to the “New Series,” after publishing six issues (each with a text page, a photographic page, six plates of drawings, and an occasional “sketch” illustration), the volumes were then bound in hardcover. (The three volumes used for this reprint of the “New Series” were such a set).
These popular “Downing-type” pattern books included his own Architecture of Country Houses (1850, reprinted through 1866); Cleaveland, Backus and Backus. Villas and Farm Cottages (1856, reprinted through 1869); Calvert Vaux, Villas and Cottages (1857, with the second edition reprinted through 1874); H. H. Holly, Holly’s Country Seats (1863, reprinted 1866); and George E. Woodward. Woodward’s Country Homes (1867, with later editions through 1870.
For the domestic building boom of 1865-70 see Allan Nevins and Henry Steele Commager. A Short History of the United States, 6th ed. (New York. 1976), p. 282.
In the issue of June 8. 1878, p. 199, the AABN editors noted that “the vast majority of readers...derive their impressions of a book (on architectural design] not from reading it, but from turning over the pages merely for the sake of the prints.” A dozen years later, in discussing their system of saving their AABN illustrations, the Hartford architectural firm of Cook, Hapgood & Co. was disarmingly frank about this: “Long ago we gave up the idea of preserving the text, for we found it was never read.” (Issue of Dec. 12, 1891, p. 172.)
The first (1865) edition of Architecture: Designs for Street Fronts, Suburban Houses, and Cottages was published in Troy, New York. as were the 2nd (1866) though the 7th (1870). The 4th through the 8th editions also list A. J. Bicknell as publisher. Marcus F. Cummings and Charles C. Miller claimed that “this work differs in its design from any, heretofore issued.” Actually, however, it resembles the carpenter’s manuals of a couple generations before, such as those by Asher Benjamin and Minard Lafever.
The title page says that it was “published under the direction of A. J. Bicknell,” and also lists some of its wondrous contents: “Showing a great variety of Designs for Cornices. Brackets. Windows, Window Caps. Doors. Piazzas. Porches, Bay and Dormer Windows, Observatories, Towers. Chimney Tops. Balconies. Canopies. Scrolls. Gable and Sawed Ornaments, Fences, Stairs, Newels, Architraves, Mantels, Plaster Finish, etc. etc.”
His list also included architraves, balconies, balusters, brackets, chair rails, cresting, finials. fireplaces, framing plans, gables, gates and fences, latticework, newels, pediments, porches, posts, rafters, shelves, shingles, transoms, verge boards, wainscoting, and window boxes.
Bicknell is listed as the “General Agent” for the 1867 3rd edition of Cummings and Miller’s Architecture.
Just how long William Thompkins Comstock lived has not yet been ascertained, but he was still alive in 1908 when his company published the first edition of Bungalows, Camps and Mountain Houses, which he compiled, and wrote the introduction to. When this book was enlarged and republished in 1915, the new compiler (who also wrote the new preface) was William Phillips Comstock (the editor of Architecture and Building)—presumably his son. The address of the company was still at 23 Warren Street. Books published by the William T. Comstock Co. as late as 1919 were recorded.
The first volume (of 1881) depicted work by the following architects: Cabot & Chandler. Boston: Howe & Dodd, Boston; Gould & Angell, Providence; Lamb & Wheeler; William G. Preston, Boston: J. B. Putnam, Boston; Rossiter & Wright, New York City: W. B. Tuthill. New York City; and William R. Walker & Son, Providence. Some reappear in the subsequent volumes.
See the AABN issues of May 13, 1882, p. 226, and February 14, 1885. p. 82. A. J. Bicknell had not been so lucky with his Specimen Book of 1878; the AABN editors called it “a disjoined and illiterate collection of wood-cuts mostly blurred by long usage,” with the house designs depicted “fairly kept to the dead level.” (July 6, 1878, p. 5.)
That volume I was indeed used by craftsmen is born out by the notes and penciled changes to plates which are found in the vintage—and well-used—copy of that volume in my own collection. In the original printing the verso of each plate is blank; in my copy several plates have details sketched in modified form on the facing blank page: arithmetic calculations appear on others; and the verso facing plate 17 is covered with calculations, as well as three sketchy floor plans that apparently were to be variations of one of the facing designs. One of the designs was even sketched over: the cottage in the middle of plate 17 had a few modifications to both the elevation and the plan penciled in. And on a loose sheet of paper found elsewhere in the book are two additional penciled plans—one quite detailed—clearly prepared by some practical builder.
The volume ends with other items (not included in the Dover reprint) intended for the builder or contractor: ten pages of ads (for furnaces, ventilators, dumbwaiters, asphalt roofing, pumps, gas works, wood and marble mantels, hardware, woodworking machines, etc.) and a page of 32 color chips (for “H. W. Jones’ Liquid Asbestos Paints”) inside the back cover.
The following books mentioned in this Introduction are available as Dover reprints:
—Cottage Residences (reprinted under the title Victorian Cottage Residences)
—Architecture: Designs for Street Fronts, Suburban Houses, and Cottages, including Details, for both Exterior and Interior (reprinted under the title Designs for Street Fronts, Suburban Houses, and Cottages)
—Architecture of Country Houses
—Villas and Cottages (reprinted under the title Villa and Cottage Architecture)
—Detail, Cottage and Constructive Architecture containing 75 Large Lithographic Plates... showing a Great Variety of Designs (reprinted under the title Victorian Architectural Details)
—American Cottages (reprinted under the title Country Houses and Seaside Cottages of the Victorian Era)