By: Nikolaus Pevsner
The building types covered here are national monuments, government buildings, theatres, libraries, museums, hospitals, prisons, hotels, exchanges and banks, warehouses and offices, railway stations, market halls and exhibition buildings, shops and department stores, and factories. Now available again, this winner of the Wolfson Literary Award in 1976 is an expanded version of the A.W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts delivered at Washington in 1970. It was Pevsner's major preoccupation after the monumental Buildings of England series came to an end. The author is concerned not only with the evolution of each type in response to social and architectural change, but also with differing attitudes toward function, materials, and style.