Birmingham: Pevsner City Guide

Pevsner Architectural Guides: City Guides

by Andy Foster

This is a detailed, authoritative, and easy-to-use guide to the architectural wealth of England’s second city, the “workshop of the world.” Birmingham’s major buildings include its splendid English Baroque cathedral, pioneering Neo-Roman town hall, and still controversial Central Library of the 1970s. Streets of rich and varied Victorian and Edwardian architecture bear witness to an earlier era when Birmingham’s civic initiatives were the admiration of the country. More recently, the city has been rejuvenated with architecture on a giant scale, including the iconoclastic Selfridges and the canalside precinct of Brindleyplace, where Modernism and Classical Revival are excitingly juxtaposed.The guide also explores a variety of outer districts and suburbs, among them the famous Jewellery Quarter, the stucco villas of Edgbaston, and Cadbury’s celebrated Garden Suburb at Bournville. A connecting theme is provided by the local Arts and Crafts school, which flourished well into the twentieth century.

Genres: Architecture

320 pages, Paperback

First published August 4, 2005

Reviews

[Sitatunga · Rating 4 out of 5]

Can't fault the content - erudite and clear - but the font size and lack of consistent boldfacing of entries lets it down. Selective - the city centre plus selected suburbs - hence dumbed down from the original Pevsner series on Warwickshire and the other counties that refer. Interesting to see an unapologetic defence of Madin's library - in the face of the Royal personage's obtuse remarks. I could have done with more, if necessarily smaller, illustrations, more detailed mapping and more comprehensive and consistent topic boxes. Also, a timeline.

[Lucy · Rating 3 out of 5]

So my review for this book is going to be pretty short.

I did enjoy this book very much. I live close to Birmingham and so to learn about it in this way was very interesting to me.

There is a lot more to Birmingham than just the Bullring and some of the places featured in this book are absolutely magnificent. Worth a read and a visit! :)