It began as the hobby of a lifelong Chicagoan. Twenty-five years and more than three hundred freehand church sketches later, it acts as an archive for centuries of architectural and religious history. The pen-and-ink drawings meticulously capture the details of each individual church down to the bullet holes Al Capone's hit men put in the façade of Holy Name Cathedral. The comprehensive collection also includes structures that were razed or repurposed, their memories lost save for the loyal parishioners who remember their roots. From St. Adalbert to St. Willibrord, Harrison Fillmore traces the unmistakable profiles of Chicago's Catholic churches into a single gallery of heartfelt art.

John Lewis Krimmel was the first professional artist in the United States to base his reputation on the genre subject. The author's study documents the artist's career from three points of view: Krimmel's life in Europe and the United States from his birth in 1786 to his drowning in 1821; an analysis of his surviving works; and an interpretation of his relationship to contemporary American esthetic and intellectual movements. American Art Series. Illustrated.

In 1984, Giovanni Chiaramonte photographed Álvaro Siza's building in Berlin, on whose façade some young people had written Bonjour Tristesse. The image was published on the cover of the magazine Lotus International. The following year, Siza and Chiaramonte met in Évora, on the occasion of a new series by the Italian photographer featuring the buildings of the great Portuguese architect. It marked the beginning of a long friendship and a shared reflection on architecture, photography, and urban life. The Measure of the West presents a selection of sixty drawings by Siza and forty photographs taken by Chiaramonte in cities around the world. They make up two parallel routes that lead to the discovery of the shape of the modern city – always hanging in the balance between proportion, in which civilization can develop, and disproportion, in which civilization can go astray. Although animated by different intentions, these sketches and photographs appear as coherent traces of the same design, guided by the same desire to see, discover, understand, and learn. The differences between the black and white strokes of the drawings and the colour of the photographs disappear. Short texts, including thoughts on architecture, photography, drawing, representation, and nature, enrich a "poem of change" taking place in an era of globalization.

In 1858, Cyprian Clamorgan wrote a brief but immensely readable book entitled The Colored Aristocracy of St. Louis. The grandson of a white voyageur and a mulatto woman, he was himself a member of the "colored aristocracy." In a setting where the vast majority of African Americans were slaves, and where those who were free generally lived in abject poverty, Clamorgan's "aristocrats" were exceptional people. Wealthy, educated, and articulate, these men and women occupied a "middle ground." Their material advantages removed them from the mass of African Americans, but their race barred them from membership in white society. The Colored Aristocracy of St. Louis is both a serious analysis of the social and legal disabilities under which African Americans of all classes labored and a settling of old scores. Somewhat malicious, Clamorgan enjoyed pointing out the foibles of his friends and enemies, but his book had a serious message as well. "He endeavored to convince white Americans that race was not an absolute, that the black community was not a monolith, that class, education, and especially wealth, should count for something." Despite its fascinating insights into antebellum St. Louis, Clamorgan's book has been virtually ignored since its initial publication. Using deeds, church records, court cases, and other primary sources, Winch reacquaints readers with this important book and establishes its place in the context of African American history. This annotated edition of The Colored Aristocracy of St. Louis includes an introductory essay on African Americans in St. Louis before the Civil War, as well as an account of the lives of the author and the members of his remarkable family—a family that was truly at the heart of the city's "colored aristocracy" for four generations. A witty and perceptive commentary on race and class, The Colored Aristocracy of St. Louis is a remarkable story about a largely forgotten segment of nineteenth-century society. Scholars and general readers alike will appreciate Clamorgan's insights into one of antebellum America's most important communities.

The Damning, Absurd, and Revelatory History of Race in America Told through the History of a Single Family Historian Julie Winch uses her sweeping, multigenerational history of the unforgettable Clamorgans to chronicle how one family navigated race in America from the 1780s through the 1950s. What she discovers overturns decades of received academic wisdom. Far from an impermeable wall fixed by whites, race opened up a moral gray zone that enterprising blacks manipulated to whatever advantage they could obtain. The Clamorgan clan traces to the family patriarch Jacques Clamorgan, a French adventurer of questionable ethics who bought up, or at least claimed to have bought up, huge tracts of land around St. Louis. On his death, he bequeathed his holdings to his mixed-race, illegitimate heirs, setting off nearly two centuries of litigation. The result is a window on a remarkable family that by the early twentieth century variously claimed to be black, Creole, French, Spanish, Brazilian, Jewish, and white. The Clamorgans is a remarkable counterpoint to the central claim of whiteness studies, namely that race as a social construct was manipulated by whites to justify discrimination. Winch finds in the Clamorgans generations upon generations of men and women who studiously negotiated the very fluid notion of race to further their own interests. Winch's remarkable achievement is to capture in the vivid lives of this unforgettable family the degree to which race was open to manipulation by Americans on both sides of the racial divide.