Sloan's Homestead Architecture, Containing Forty Designs for Villas, Cottages, and Farm Houses, with Essays on Style, Construction, Landscape Gardening, Furniture, Etc, Etc, Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1861; First Edition. Hardcover. Very good. 8vo, pp xii, 13-355, extensively illustrated with engravings, one chromolithograph plate of encaustic flooring tile (some copies apparently issued with two). Very good. Sloan began his career as a carpenter, taught himself the principles of architecture. By the 1850s, he had become "the chosen architect of Philadelphia's rising industrial and entrepreneurial elite. For them he built mansions, commercial buildings, speculative housing, even entire resort communities". This is one of the rarest of several successful pattern books Sloan authored, each containing detailed architectural drawings (floor plans, elevations, perspectives, etc) and descriptions of the designs and chapters on style, site selection, construction, joinery, furniture, heating and ventilation, interior finishes, grounds, terra cotta, and furniture in addition to the many house designs in all the popular styles of the mid-19th century & carriage house and stable designs. Illustrated with wood engravings.