New Book Releases

Name: Lost Gas Stations of San Mateo County
Brand: Bruce C. Cumming
SKU: 9781467161794
Price: 24.99 USD
Availability: InStock

We’re always on the hunt for the next great American history book. When we find it, you’ll see about it here, with our new book releases. We release new history books each month in a variety of subjects and series. Browse through all of our newest titles below, and discover your next favorite history book at Arcadia Publishing! [View all New Book Releases]

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Lost Gas Stations of San Mateo County

$24.99

Long Beach Art Deco

$24.99

Downtown Pasadena's Early Architecture

San Francisco Art Deco

$24.99

Los Angeles Art Deco

$24.99

The Dams of Western San Diego County

$24.99

Stone Architecture in Santa Barbara

$24.99

San Luis Obispo

$24.99

Lost Gas Stations of San Mateo County

9781467161794

$24.99

Discover the history San Mateo County's gas stations through this collection of historic photographs.

The years following the 1906 earthquake saw a migration from the city to the suburbs, farms, and orchards of the San Francisco Peninsula’s San Mateo County. Mobility on the peninsula came in the form of streetcars, trains, and buses but was soon dominated by the automobile. Beginning in the late 1920s through the 1990s, the peninsula was inundated with automobile service stations, or gas stations, where smartly dressed station attendants practically ran to one’s car to fill the tank, check oil and tire pressure levels, and clean the windshield. At the peak, the small city of San Carlos had 23 stations. Today, it has only five.

Bruce C. Cumming enjoyed a 42-year-long career in California law enforcement, serving as police chief of Menlo Park and Morgan Hill. Cumming has had an interest in all things automotive and currently owns several vintage autos and collects petroleum memorabilia. Nicholas A. Veronico is the author or coauthor of more than 45 books on art history, aviation, military, and transportation subjects. Together, they have sourced many rare, never-before-seen photographs from various county archives and private collections to document how car culture on the peninsula has changed over the years.

Long Beach Art Deco

9780738546704

$24.99

At 5:55 p.m. on March 10, 1933, Southern California was rocked by a massive earthquake. Wood-frame bungalows lost their chimneys, and engineered concrete buildings suffered minimal damage. But unreinforced masonry buildings near the epicenter failed catastrophically, and Long Beach was particularly hard hit. Nearly three-quarters of the school buildings, as well as many other structures, were rendered unusable until repaired or rebuilt. The Art Deco style, in addition to being fashionably modern in 1933, met the criteria of earthquake safety, and many new structures showed its influence. Both the Zigzag Moderne style of the 1920s, which boasted many structures that survived the earthquake, and the Streamline Moderne style that came into vogue in the 1930s relied on sleek lines with decoration incorporated into the design. This volume celebrates, in both word and image, the Long Beach that rose from the rubble to become a premier Art Deco city.

Downtown Pasadena's Early Architecture

9780738530246

$24.99

At sunset, the San Gabriel Mountains form a rosy sculptural backdrop for Pasadena, a city of stately street trees and lush gardens. Attracted by a paradisiacal climate, health seekers and wealthy Easterners flocked to its resort hotels--the Green, the Maryland, the Huntington, the Painter, the Raymond--and built grand residences along Orange Grove and Grand Avenues. Scores of commercial and industrial buildings rose downtown, punctuated by public works, civic buildings, schools, and churches that doubled as works of art, like the Colorado Street Bridge, the Christian Science Church, and the California Mediterranean-style city hall. Preservation efforts have succeeded in putting Old Pasadena and the Pasadena Civic Center on the National Register of Historic Places, and continued restoration has made the city's unique architectural treasures a major attraction in Southern California.

Petaluma

9780738530048

$24.99

Petaluma's past is uniquely reflected in its historic architecture. The town's earliest commercial buildings tightly lined the waterfront of the Petaluma River, at one time the busiest transportation corridor in the North Bay. After the railroad arrived, an already thriving dairy and manufacturing city became the nation's largest poultry and egg producer. A vital economy brought factories like the impressive Sunset Line & Twine plant, hatcheries, vast warehouses, and grain elevators that have become defining Petaluma landmarks. Its handsome downtown, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is noted for its Italianate cast iron-front commercial buildings, and a variety of pre-World War II residential styles surround it in charming neighborhoods. A favorite of moviemakers, its classic main streets played a
central role in the film American Graffiti.

Carmel

9780738547053

$24.99

Carmel is a microcosm of California's architectural heritage, sited at one of the most scenic meetings of land and sea in the world. Mission San Carlos Borromeo became a root building for California's first regional building style, the Mission Revival. "Carmel City," as it was called in the 1880s, was marketed as a seaside resort for Catholics. Its pine-studded sand dunes survived the imposition of a standard American gridiron street pattern, with a Western, false-front main street, to become "Carmel-by-the-Sea." Artists, academics, and writers embraced the arts-and-crafts aesthetic of handcrafted homes built from native materials, informally sited in the landscape. In the mid-1920s, Tudor Revival and Spanish Romantic Revival styles enhanced the storybook quality of the community. Carmel's architectural character is primarily the product of working builders. Its design traditions have been interpreted and modified for modern times by noted architects, building designers, and craftsmen. Individual expression continues as an ongoing aesthetic theme.

San Francisco Art Deco

9780738547343

$24.99

The famed period of architecture, design, and style known as Art Deco began in the mid1920s and lasted for a good 20 years. The movement left an indelible stamp all around the Bay Area but nowhere more so than in styleconscious San Francisco. The city's 1925 Diamond Jubilee, coinciding with the Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes in France, ushered in the Art Deco age to the city by the bay. The Roaring Twenties created a need for thousands of new commercial and residential buildings, and many of these, such as Timothy Pflueger's Pacific Telephone and Telegraph building, were Art Deco masterpieces that embodied the new "moderne" styling sweeping the country. Using a variety of building materials, including terracotta, Vitrolux, and neon, many of the city's graceful and dramatic buildings turned heads 70 years ago just as they do today.

Los Angeles Art Deco

9780738530277

$24.99

Art Deco made its formal appearance in Paris at the 1925 L'Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes, a showcase for art, architecture, and design that promoted progress, modernity, and the present. The greatest export from this exhibition was a style that has since been recognized as one of the great design movements of the 20th century. Art Deco's growing recognition coincided with the growth of Los Angeles as the entertainment capital. Between world wars, the city's architecture sprouted characteristic signs of Art Deco: the interplay of vertical and horizontal features, geometric shapes, use of exotic and modern materials, as well as simplified streamlined forms. This volume's marvelous collection of images celebrates Los Angeles's Art Deco heritage, showcasing such structures as Bullock's Wilshire, Sunset Tower, the Oviatt Penthouse, the Wiltern and Pantages Theatres, and many, many more.

The Dams of Western San Diego County

9781467127219

$24.99

The unreliability of the San Diego River compelled the Franciscan fathers to construct the area's first dam in 1813 to conserve drinking and irrigation water for the Mission San Diego de Alcalá. This water-driven circumstance continued and expanded in the ensuing American era. Lacking a reliable water source at the turn of the 20th century, San Diego County was destined to experience modest growth. The region's semiarid conditions, cyclical droughts, and existing river systems determined that the only effective way to maintain a ready water supply was to conserve runoff and river floodwaters behind dam-created reservoirs. Between 1888 and 1934, private and municipal interests constructed a series of massive structures that made San Diego County the dam-building center of the world. The county featured some of America's first multiple arch dams and earliest hydraulic fill dams. Into the mid-1940s, dammed reservoirs remained the principle water source for county consumers and made the municipal expansion of the city of San Diego possible.

Stone Architecture in Santa Barbara

9780738569680

$24.99

Building with stone requires a commitment to permanence, like the extraordinary, almost citywide conviction of builders in Santa Barbara from the 1870s through the 1930s. As Santa Barbara was evolving from a dusty little port and outlying resort into a vibrant and growing city, there occurred an extraordinary era of stone construction. This was made possible by a fortuitous conjunction of factors: abundant material, a cadre of expert artisans, and almost unlimited financing. This period provided an atmosphere not only conducive to the building of public spaces, homes, bridges, walls, and an assortment of other stonework, but encouraged some exceptional expressions of the stoneworkers' art. Many of these artistic fabrications remain a testimony to the skills and tastes of their creators and add a distinctive element to the particular ambiance that makes Santa Barbara the special place that it is.

San Luis Obispo

9780738529271

$24.99

San Luis Obispo was founded in 1772 as a mission in the foothills of the Santa Lucia Mountains on California's Central Coast. The city that grew from a rustic pueblo, with its scattering of adobe buildings, today has a wealth of architectural styles. From the simple barns of the outlying farm community, to the grand hotels and lively saloons kept busy by the Southern Pacific Railroad depot, and back full circle to the Mission Revival style edifices of California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo's architecture has echoed its history. Motor travel brought the world's first motel to this half-way point on California's historic Highway 101, and the famously zany tourist attraction, the Madonna Inn.