The long list of apartment buildings and hotels designed by Emery Roth in the 1920s and 1930s includes names that will be familiar to any aficionado of Manhattan real estate: the Ritz Tower, the Beresford, the San Remo, the Ardsley. Roth's buildings, which ranged across Beaux Arts, Art Deco, and historical revival styles, shaped the ideal of residential luxury that is still called to mind by the phrase "prewar building."

Emery Roth's New York Apartment Buildings, the first book to be published on this essential architect in nearly forty years, has two parts. The first is a meticulously researched catalogue raisonné of Roth's work (including unbuilt and demolished projects), illustrated with new color photography. The second is a facsimile reproduction of Steven Ruttenbaum's long out-of-print monograph on Roth, Mansions in the Clouds, whose invaluable text is illustrated with copious black-and-white photography of the architect's interiors and exteriors.