The Courthouse and the Depot: The Architecture of Hope in an Age of Despair

By Wilber W. Caldwell

Subjects: Architecture, Public architecture, Railroads, History

Description: "The Courthouse and the Depot is a narrative catalogue of Georgia's 19th century public architecture and a complete history of the hundreds of tiny railroad lines that covered the state in this period. The book contains more than 300 photographs, 33 maps, 3 appendixes and an extensive index. The history of the Deep South in the years between 1833 and 1910 is revealed in eloquent and stunning images of hundreds of public buildings. These structures sing rhythms of hope and pride and sweat; dirges of ruin and dashed dreams; anthems of triumph; broken waltzes of irony. Their songs insist that the arrival of the railroad and the appearance of the tiny depot often created such hope that it inspired the construction of the architectural extravaganzas that were the courthouses of the era. In these buildings the distorted myth of the Old South collided head-on with the equally deformed myth of the New South.". "Strictly speaking, this is not an architectural history. Rather, it is history narrated by architecture. This is a book about small towns because the history of the South before 1910 is about small towns. It is a book about courthouses because the courthouse, more than any other building of the era, symbolized the collective self-image of the people of these towns. It is a book about depots because the depot is the architecture of the railroad, and in this period, for these people, in these places, the railroad brought with it the all-consuming and often disappointing promise of the future."--BOOK JACKET.