Excellent history! I am very impressed with this book. It is long and detailed but it is chock full of incredibly interesting facts and details of the intertwinings of the gay community, the Anglo-Catholic movement in Boston, architecture and Boston history. I believe this book should be a "cannon" of gay literature and history but it seems to be overlooked. The author's research is incredibly detailed and and exhaustive.
Worth the read if you can get through it This sprawling study, which combines elements of cultural history, architecture criticism, gay gossip, and religious iconography, explores a wide range of the poets, art lovers, and fashionable people living in Boston at the end of the 19th century. The central figure, church architect Ralph Adams Cram, a devout Anglo-Catholic and apostle of Gothic Revivalism, launched an assault on Massachusetts Puritanism that resonates in our own times. Shand-Tucci provides an intersting backdrop for Adams--the rarefied atmosphere of Harvard-dominated Boston and the entrenched gay subculture of Boston's North End. Forgotten artists such as poet Louise Imogen Guiney and better-known figures such as George Santayana make important appearances here. Cram's romance/partnership with architect Bertram Goodhue is explored (albeit rather obliquely). Shand-Tucci is at his best when exploring the roots of Cram's religious fervor and when profiling eccentric art patrons such as Isabella Stewart Gardner.
I do wish Shand-Tucci's prose were less effusive. The rib-nudging, campy asides to the reader are wearying, and the profusion of exclamation points must break all records. I finally got through it all, however, and I look forward to Volume Two.
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