ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Sunday, March 10, 1996                 TAG: 9603110128
SECTION: BOOKS                    PAGE: F-4  EDITION: METRO 
                                             TYPE: BOOK REVIEW 
SOURCE: REVIEWED BY PEGGY C. DAVIS 

BOOKMARKS

VIRGINIA'S HISTORIC COURTHOUSES. By John O. and Margaret T. Peters. Photographs by John O. Peters. University Press of Virginia. $39.95.

This is a coffee-table book that isn't just for looks. Every household in Virginia should have a copy. Open to any page and you're in for a history lesson in architecture, courts, preservation and local politics as they relate to decisions regarding local courthouses.

What caught my attention were the variety of windows in courthouses all over Virginia, such as the Tiffany stained-glass window in the Abingdon courthouse and the long, Second Empire-style rounded windows in Alexandria City Hall.

The courthouses are presented in chapters according to historical periods: Colonial, National, Antebellum, Recovery and Growth and the New Century. This results in the juxtaposition of the Caroline County courthouse with the Scott County courthouse all the way across the state.

Order this one now.

Peggy Davis lives in Fincastle.

Alyson Hagy and Michael Chitwood, both graduates of Franklin County High School, will read from their works at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Dorothy Phelps Fine Arts Building on the Franklin County High School campus.

Hagy currently teaches writing at the University of Michigan and Chitwood is a free-lance writer in Chapel Hill, N.C., and commentator for WUNC-FM.

The reading is free and open to the public.

Bookmarks is a regular feature of the book page that will focus on books, writers and literary events of local and regional interest and importance.

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