Great American Treasures

Great American Treasures by Carol Cadou is a Architecture Hardback Book. America's historic sites, homes, and public buildings are a living record of thediverse ethnicities that, over four centuries, helped to build a growing nation. Since1891, the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America (NSCDA) has activelypromoted our national heritage through historic preservation, restoration, andthe interpretation of historic sites across the United States. In conjunction withNSCDA, in 2025 The Artist Book Foundation (TABF) will publish Great AmericanTreasures, a comprehensive survey of the architecture, furnishings, and gardensthat epitomize the nation's diverse material culture over more than 400 years.The publication will feature the NSCDA's collection of historic places, whichspan the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries, and will highlight the residences ofthose who established themselves in America during this time. It will feature anarray of buildings that speak to the diversity of traditions, people, and architecturein a growing nation-from English Georgian houses on the eastern seaboard toa French Colonial dwelling in Missouri and mission houses in Hawai'i. This surveyilluminates the stories and material traditions of the wide range of individuals whocontributed to the founding of the United States and to the development of Ameri-ca as a dynamic multicultural nation.Many of the sites tell the stories of familiar historic figures like George andMartha Washington, John Adams, James and Dolley Madison, John Quincy Ad-ams, Benjamin Franklin, and George Mason. Other sites offer the narratives of fig-ures who contributed to America's artistic heritage, such as John James Audubonand John Smibert, or those who helped to shape the country's mercantile system,like Frederick Van Cortlandt and James Logan. Some places were designed bywell-known architects such as Robert Mills or McKim, Mead & White, while mostwere the work of unknown or little-known architects, builders, joiners, and slave la-borers. The classic architecture of these sites, their exquisite furnishings and lushgardens, and even the headstones in historic cemeteries all provide a window intothe rich diversity of men, women, and children-free, indentured, and enslaved-who came together to build America.