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This title focuses on a classic southern port city seen through its
architecture. In ""The Pillared City"", John S. Sledge presents a
richly illustrated overview of the Greek Revival period in Mobile,
Alabama (1825-70), when high style and vernacular columned
buildings were erected on the city's streets. Using a wealth of
resources such as deeds and diaries, Sledge reveals the
architectural accomplishments that helped Mobile emerge from its
position as a rustic backwater to become a prominent international
seaport. Sledge explains how these buildings reflect coastal and
national trends and details the surprisingly advanced construction
techniques required of the architects and builders. Sledge offers
more than an architectural history, incorporating stories such as
how the triple blows of bankruptcy, yellow fever, and fire nearly
obliterated Mobile in 1839. The eventful histories behind prominent
landmarks such as Barton Academy, Government Street Presbyterian
Church, Christ Episcopal Church, Oakleigh, Stewartfield, Georgia
Cottage, and the Bragg-Mitchell Mansion are detailed, as are the
lives of historical figures like Henry Hitchcock, James and Charles
Dakin, James Gallier, Signor Vito Viti, John Trenier Sr., and
Augusta Jane Evans. Featuring sixty contemporary black-and-white
photographs by Sheila Hagler and a rich array of historical images,
""The Pillared City"" captures the grace and allure of Mobile's
antebellum style.
The Mobile River presents the first-ever narrative history of this
important American watercourse. Inspired by the venerable Rivers of
America series, John S. Sledge weaves chronological and thematic
elements with personal experiences and more than sixty color and
black-and-white images for a rich and rewarding read. The Mobile
River appears on the map full and wide at Nannahubba, fifty miles
from the coast, where the Alabama and the Tombigbee rivers meet,
but because it empties their waters into Mobile Bay and
subsequently the Gulf of Mexico, it usurps them and their
multitudinous tributaries. If all of the rivers, creeks, streams,
bayous, bogues, branches, swamps, sloughs, rivulets, and trickles
that ultimately pour into Mobile Bay are factored into the
equation, the Mobile assumes awesome importance and becomes the
outlet for the sixth largest river basin in the United States and
the largest emptying into the Gulf east of the Mississippi River.
Previous historians have paid copious attention to the other rivers
that make up the Mobile's basin, but the namesake stream along with
its majestic delta and beautiful bay have been strangely neglected.
In an attempt to redress the imbalance, Sledge launches this book
with a first-person river tour by "haul-ass boat." Along the way he
highlights the four diverse personalities of this short
stream-upland hardwood forest, upper swamp, lower swamp, and
harbor. In the historical saga that follows, readers learn about
colonial forts, international treaties, bloody massacres, and
thundering naval battles, as well as what the Mobile River's
inhabitants ate and how they dressed through time. A barge load of
colorful characters is introduced, including Indian warriors,
French diplomats, British cartographers, Spanish tavern keepers,
Creole women, steamboat captains, African slaves, Civil War
generals and admirals, Apache prisoners, hydraulic engineers,
stevedores, banana importers, Rosie Riveters, and even a few river
rats subsisting off the grid-all of them actors in a uniquely
American pageant of conflict, struggle, and endless opportunity
along a river that gave a city its name.
The Gulf of Mexico: A Maritime History presents the first such
narrative of the earth's tenth largest body of water. In this
beautifully written and illustrated volume, John S. Sledge explores
the people, ships, and cities that have made the Gulf's human
history and culture so rich. Many famous figures who sailed the
Gulf's viridian waters are highlighted, including Ponce de Leon,
Robert Cavelier de La Salle, Francis Drake, Jean Laffite, Tyrone
Power, Richard Henry Dana, Libbie Custer, Elizabeth Agassiz, Ernest
Hemingway, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, as well as Charles Dwight
Sigsbee, at the helm of the doomed Maine. But Sledge also
introduces a fascinating and diverse array of people connected to
maritime life in the Gulf, including Mesoamerican pyramid builders,
Spanish conquistadores, French pirates, Creole women, Cajun
fishermen, African American stevedores, British jack-tars, and
Greek sponge divers.Gulf events of global historical importance are
detailed, such as the only defeat of armed and armored steamships
by wooden sailing vessels, the first accurate deep-sea survey and
bathymetric map of any ocean basin, the development of shipping
containers by a former truck driver frustrated with antiquated
loading practices, and the worst environmental disaster in American
annals. Occasionally shifting focus ashore, Sledge explains how
people representing a gumbo of ethnicities built some of the
world's most exotic cities--Havana, way station for conquistadores
and treasure-filled galleons; New Orleans, the Big Easy, famous for
its beautiful French Quarter, Mardi Gras, and relaxed morals; and
oft-besieged Veracruz, Mexico's oldest city, founded in 1519 by
Hernan Cortes. Throughout history the residents of these cities and
their neighbors along the littoral have struggled with challenges
both natural and human-induced--devastating hurricanes, frightening
epidemics, catastrophic oil spills, and conflicts ranging from
dockside brawls to pirate raids, foreign invasion, civil war, and
revolution. In the modern era the Gulf has become critical to
energy Production, fisheries, tourism, and international trade,
even as it is threatened by pollution and climate change. The Gulf
of Mexico: A Maritime History is a work of verve and sweep that
illuminates both the risks of life on the water and the riches that
come from its bounty.
The Mobile River presents the first-ever narrative history of this
important American watercourse. Inspired by the venerable Rivers of
America series, John S. Sledge weaves chronological and thematic
elements with personal experiences and more than sixty color and
black-and-white images for a rich and rewarding read. The Mobile
River appears on the map full and wide at Nannahubba, fifty miles
from the coast, where the Alabama and the Tombigbee rivers meet,
but because it empties their waters into Mobile Bay and
subsequently the Gulf of Mexico, it usurps them and their
multitudinous tributaries. If all of the rivers, creeks, streams,
bayous, bogues, branches, swamps, sloughs, rivulets, and trickles
that ultimately pour into Mobile Bay are factored into the
equation, the Mobile assumes awesome importance and becomes the
outlet for the sixth largest river basin in the United States and
the largest emptying into the Gulf east of the Mississippi River.
Previous historians have paid copious attention to the other rivers
that make up the Mobile's basin, but the namesake stream along with
its majestic delta and beautiful bay have been strangely neglected.
In an attempt to redress the imbalance, Sledge launches this book
with a first-person river tour by "haul-ass boat." Along the way he
highlights the four diverse personalities of this short
stream-upland hardwood forest, upper swamp, lower swamp, and
harbor. In the historical saga that follows, readers learn about
colonial forts, international treaties, bloody massacres, and
thundering naval battles, as well as what the Mobile River's
inhabitants ate and how they dressed through time. A barge load of
colorful characters is introduced, including Indian warriors,
French diplomats, British cartographers, Spanish tavern keepers,
Creole women, steamboat captains, African slaves, Civil War
generals and admirals, Apache prisoners, hydraulic engineers,
stevedores, banana importers, Rosie Riveters, and even a few river
rats subsisting off the grid-all of them actors in a uniquely
American pageant of conflict, struggle, and endless opportunity
along a river that gave a city its name.
The ""iron lace"" that graces the businesses, homes, squares, and
cemeteries of Mobile, Alabama, is as vital a part of that southern
port city as it is of New Orleans, Charleston, and Savannah. Until
now, its story has never been fully told. In this attractive
volume, John S. Sledge's rich narrative, combined with evocative
historic images and Sheila Hagler's stunning contemporary
photographs, eloquently conveys as never before how ornamental cast
iron defines Mobile's heart and soul. Cast iron was the wonder of
the Victorian age, according to Sledge. In Mobile, the material's
diverse applications were on display in hulking locomotives and
boilers, flamboyant fountains, imposing fences, and endless other
forms and structures. The city's ornate iron balconies, dozens of
which still remain, elicited the greatest wonder, then as now.
Local publications have long extolled Mobile's enchanting ironwork.
Only now, however, has the subject been situated within national
trends in design, industry, and consumer tastes. It is a colorful
saga featuring rawboned iron founders, artisan slaves, hustling
salesmen, conniving architects, willful plunderers, romantic
artists, and dedicated preservationists. Drawing on rare surviving
business records and other archival sources, Sledge skillfully
reconstructs how the local iron industry developed and then
fiercely competed with big northern foundries. As a working
preservationist, Sledge pays particular attention to how many of
Mobile's most splendid ornamental iron pieces have weathered hard
times, natural disasters, and misguided development to remain a
delight for tourists and residents alike. Hagler's beautiful
photographs provide a powerful and sometimes moody visual
accompaniment to this fascinating tale.
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