Sticks and Stokes by Lewis Mumford — Read

CHAPTER I

In the course of this survey we have seen how architecture and civilization develop hand in hand: the characteristic buildings of each period are the memorials to their dearest institutions. The essential structure of the community -- the home, meeting-place, the workplace -- remains; but the covering changes and passes, like the civilization itself, when new materials, new methods of work, new ideas and habits and ways of feeling, come into their own.