The owners of the houses had chosen to rescue and restore, to pour their time, energy, and money into the imaginative conversion of buildings into homes, and whose aim, aside from the creation of desired living spaces, was to insure the preservation of many an unusual building and thereby add to the architectural flavor of the community - they are praised as environmental engineers. The book depicts conversions of a chicken coop, a barn, a mews house, carriage house, firehouse, creamery, icehouse, water tower, powerhouse, an armorer's workshop, a doll factory, industrial buildings in Paris and San Francisco, a cannery, factories, a bakery, boats and barges, a caboose, a Pullman car, railroad stations, a bank, a schoolhouse, a church and more.