Vernacular Architecture Forum VAN Summer 2017

Note from the Editor

Christine R Henry — Sat, 08 Jul 2017 17:10:00 GMT

Welcome to the Summer issue of VAN (click on the bolded title if you prefer to read the entire issue from top to bottom or feel free to click on any of the sections below to access the articles) First I would like to call your attention to the special section we have on tributes to Abbott Lowell Cummings, the founding VAF president who passed away this spring. Included is a link to an online article with remembrances and images as well as a resolution that was passed by the VAF board to officially acknowledge his contributions.

Thanks to the dedication of many people on the local committee, the conference in Salt Lake City in June was spectacular. Included in this issue are essays from the University of Oregon and the University of Virginia ambassadors as well as an article from Access Award recipient Emmanuel Falguières. As is the tradition, all of the 2017 awards were announced at the closing banquet, and you can read the list of recipients in VAN and click on each award to read the recognition that was presented for each awardee.

Also in this issue is an installment of an occasional series called Field Notes. This article comes from the Janet Sheridan who shares some concluding thoughts from the field work that was completed for the New Jersey conference in 2014 and supported by a Ridout Fellowship. There is also an article about the collaboration in recent years between VAF and SAH.

There are some great opportunities this issue, such as a call for new board members to serve the VAF chapters and announcements of conferences in places such as Cleveland and Lynchburg that will be of interest to our members.

The member news section as always is packed with updates on publications, awards and activities that our members are doing to advance the field of vernacular studies. Please send me any updates you want to share for upcoming issues. And of course we have our fantastic bibliography. Happy reading!

Christine Henry, Newsletter Editor

Tributes to Abbott Lowell Cummings

Christine R Henry — Sat, 08 Jul 2017 17:06:00 GMT

As many of you are aware, Abbott Lowell Cummings was the first president of the VAF, and his passing this spring at the age of 94 was a big loss for the organization as well as the field of vernacular studies. There was a tribute published online with some wonderful photographs and remembrances that I encourage you to explore. Also, the VAF board passed a resolution in Salt Lake City that will appear in the meeting minutes to formally recognize his contributions, the full text of which appears below.

May 31, 2017

WHEREAS

Abbott Lowell Cummings (1923-2017) was the founding president of the Vernacular Architecture Forum,

WHEREAS

through his publications, particularly The Framed Houses of Massachusetts Bay (1979), he established a high standard of meticulous research and rigorous fieldwork standard for the field of Vernacular Architecture studies,

WHEREAS

through his professional career as executive director of the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, he transformed an antiquarian organization into a distinguished, nationally significant standard bearer for historic preservation and historical interpretation,

WHEREAS

through the establishment of the American & New England Studies Program at Boston University and in many years of teaching at Yale University, he brought the study of ordinary architecture and landscapes into the academy,

AND WHEREAS

through his generous, patient, enthusiastic and warm mentoring, he inspired and encouraged generations of students, colleagues and fellow VAF travelers,

THEREFORE

be it resolved and spread upon the minutes that the Vernacular Architecture Forum expresses its tremendous gratitude to Abbott and treasures his memory and legacy.

VAF Awards for 2017 Announced at Salt Lake City Conference

Christine R Henry — Sat, 08 Jul 2017 17:00:00 GMT

As has been the tradition at VAF, the 2017 awardees were announced with much fanfare at the banquet on Saturday night. Each awardee was recognized for their contributions to VAF and to the field of vernacular architecture studies. Please click on the links below to read the inspiring stories and view the evocative images of each awardee.

Award for Advocacy: The 2017 Advocacy Award went to the partnership of the MT Preservation Alliance, the MT History Foundation, and author/photographer Charlotte Caldwell for their “Big Sky Schoolhouses Statewide Preservation Project”.

Catherine W. Bisher prize: The winners of the 2017 Catherine W. Bishir Prize are Sarah L. Lopez, Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Texas, Austin and Margaret M. Grubiak, Associate Professor of Architectural History at Villanova University, Pennsylvania.

Paul E. Buchanan Award: The winner of the 2017 Paul E. Buchanan Award is The Newport Restoration Foundation of Newport, RI for their 2016 conference Keeping History Above Water, exhibition, and publication Keeping 74 Bridge Street Above Water: Lessons from the City of Newport and the Point Neighborhood on protecting historic structures and neighborhoods from the impacts of climate change.

Abbott Lowell Cummings: The 2017 Cummings Award was given to Louis Nelson for Architecture and Empire in Jamaica (Yale University Press, 2016) a landmark accomplishment for the study of vernacular architecture.

Henry Glassie Award: This year's recipient for special contributions to the field is Carl Loundsbury.

Orlando Ridout V Fieldwork Fellowships: The five recipients of the Ridout fellowships for 2017 were:

Travis McDonald, Field School Director, Poplar Forest Restoration Field School - $1000

Karen Hudson, Field School Director, Kentucky Field School, University of Kentucky - $1000

Rebecca Fernandez, scholarship to attend Poplar Forest Restoration Field School - $500

Jobie Hill, Preservation architect, Monticello – Thomas Jefferson Foundation. Support of fieldwork to complete field survey of slave housing in Virginia and addition of results to the Slave House Database she created and maintains - $500.

C. Ian Stevenson, PhD candidate, American and New England Studies Program, Boston University. Support of field work related to dissertation “Army Tales Told While the Pot Boiled: The Civil War Vacation in Architecture and Landscape, 1880-1910.” $500.

Funding still available – applications accepted until October 1, 2017

The Plain in the Heart of the Mountains, or How I Got Introduced to Vernacular Architecture Field Trips

Christine R Henry — Sat, 08 Jul 2017 16:40:00 GMT

by Access Awardee Emmanuel Falguières

"So, when do you leave?" my friend asked. As a foreign student who had come to the US just days before Donald Trump's inauguration, the vagueness of the question made me uneasy. Did she refer to the United States, or to Boston? I figured she meant "when do you leave this place?" and that was an easier question to answer. "On the 31st of May. I am going to Salt Lake City." I had never been to Utah, but had all the confidence in the world that it would prove to be a very different place than the well-kept lawns and brick buildings of Harvard Yard. She gave me a blank stare. I was a French student of History working on the cartography of the High Plains of Western Kansas, so when the topic of my geographical interests and actual travel choices were brought up, people around me had come to expect to not make any sense of them, and keep to the polite policy of smiling and nodding. My answer was then processed as odd but aligned with the bizarreness of my fascination for secluded places beyond the 100th meridian.¹ I did not point out how much those two places were radically different, and merely smiled back.

I remember standing on the Kansas-Colorado border, a year ago, looking west to the not yet visible Rockies —a little bit like in the shore of Western France when we casually say that we are looking at the United States. For the past few years, I tried to understand this portion of the Great Plains by focusing on the shift from the visible abstraction of space of the rectangular survey to the elusive organic local sense of place. I sighed, "Thank God I was not working in Utah or some other mountain state. What would I do with a landscape unyielding to geometry?" I could only imagine in dread, the cartographic mess, the impossibility of abstraction, how do you move in space like that? How do you study mental landscapes when every valley has its own set of characteristics? I rejoiced at my choice to work on this seemingly empty, clean, and flat space, this "desert" of sort which matches so well (and so badly) 19th-century aspirations of utopia and surveillance.

For years now, I have not been able to resist the word "vernacular". Of course, the intuitive definition always struck me as a healthy pointer in our archival maze too often shaped by nexuses of powers and knowledge, but I cherish even more its ontological defiance of clear-cut boundaries. It feels like its fundamental failure to propose a sharp, easy-to-use, textbook-like category of analysis is actually a clever reflexive statement of what it is all about. I had never worked on architecture itself. I already had a hard time figuring out social interactions through cartographic traces - I sensed that I would properly get lost if I started to reflect on the type of limestone “my” courthouses had, or the kind of door they would choose, etc. I therefore set out to the VAF with only a very vague idea of what I was getting into. Looking at the program, the format puzzled me: a conference with field trips? And not just one field trip on a Saturday afternoon when no one wants to listen to papers anymore, but field trips scheduled all over the first two days.

Landing late at night in Salt Lake City, after a full day of travels, I discovered a warm clear sky and the dark silhouettes of the mountains. I breathed the air, and felt the tension of the past academic week diminishing. Was that how wealthy Parisians or Londoners felt when they traveled to the Alps at the beginning of the last century? I paused to muse on the fairness of this comparison to Boston but rapidly I shrugged it off. Bostonians were happy with any comparison to Paris, they might not even notice that the association was about pollution and stress.

I did not sleep well. Without being exactly in a bad mood, I had that passive aggressive mind set where you just wait to be convinced. Our bus took off for the Sanpete Valley, the trip was called Town and Temple, Mormon Villages in the Nineteenth Century. Because of the travel and the lack of sleep, I dozed off for a bit. The next time I looked out of the window, my eyes widened and my brain woke up instantly. I did not expect the Valley to be so wide. Sure enough: Left and right mountains had the horizon safely hidden, but the landscaped between these two great walls looked to me like a piece of the plains slammed in the heart of the Rockies. The roads, the pastures, the fields, the grass, the houses, the fences… "Unheimlich, home outside of home," it was uncanny. I was in ‘my’ plains but really, I was not. We stopped and wandered outside. On the map, the familiar grid extended throughout the small town, but I was told that it had its roots in John Smith 1833 vision of the spatial organization of Mormon communities and not in the work of the Federal government through the General Land Office. The same, but different. Wandering in the streets of Spring City was like accessing a slightly bent reality: it felt familiar but then strangeness surged. For example, the division between work and domestic spaces had residences clustered around a "village like" structure with inhabitants cultivating plots they were not living on. I cannot think of a more drastic contrast to the Midwest homesteading model of land occupancy, but nothing would shake my feeling of somehow knowing the space without really knowing it.

We entered the “Monson House”. An old man, sitting in a comfortable chair, welcomed us warmly. He apologized for the mess and we assured him that we were honored to be here and thanked him for letting us inside. He did not ask for names or profession, but inquired where every single one of us was from: Canada, China, Indiana, France, etc. He seemed glad about our international answers and let us wander upstairs where he said they used to have dance parties. We walked upstairs and looked to the surprisingly vast room and unexpected high ceiling. I could see myself dancing here. What archive would ever have led me to this information? Had I worked on this community, how much would I miss not knowing that people would gather in this nice room and dance, filling the extremely quiet night of Spring City with muffled sounds of joy? I looked through the window and thought that maybe the neighbors were not too thrilled about the parties. I smiled and made a mental note: let’s do field trips in Western Kansas.

_________________________________________________________

¹Every time this happened to me, I am reminded of the first line of “Kansas”, an essay by the historian Carl Becker, a student of Frederik Jackson Turner at Harvard, in 1910: “Some years ago, in a New England college town, when I informed one of my New England friends that I was preparing to go to Kansas, he replied rather blankly, "Kansas?! Oh." ” Nothing has changed.

University of Oregon Ambassadors reflect on experiences at VAF in Salt Lake City

Christine R Henry — Sat, 08 Jul 2017 16:30:00 GMT

Dear members of the VAF,

Thanks to a generous award from the Vernacular Architecture Forum, five graduate students from the University of Oregon’s Historic Preservation Program took part in the VAF Two Utahs 2017 conference at Salt Lake City. We are honored to have served as VAF Ambassadors and were so inspired by the remarkable people, projects, tours, and ideas that we encountered during this action-packed week! As any veteran VAF member knows… it’s not your average conference. We are fortunate to have received this invitation to join a pretty special group.

University of Oregon students Allison Geary, Kate Geraghty, Charlotte Helmer, Morgan Albertson, and Hayli Reff kicked-off their VAF experience in Park City, UT. This small mountain city provided a fascinating example of how a significant economic change, such as the transition from mining to tourism and recreation, creates an opportunity to revitalize a historic downtown core. We crawled through old single-wall homes, heard about new projects envisioned by local developers, explored the city’s history museum, and sampled whiskey at the High West distillery. At Deer Valley Resort we got an eye-opening glimpse inside vernacular architecture of the 1%, a new interpretation of “vernacular” that was incredibly thought provoking. This resort town displays several decades of luxury apartments and houses that have fueled the economic revival of Park City. Our first day at VAF wrapped up with aerial ski jumping, cocktail hour, and insightful planning for adaptive reuse at the Utah Olympic Park. On day two we covered a lot of ground in Salt Lake City through a series of self-guided tours. We learned about historic commercial buildings downtown and saw intriguing rehabilitation projects in the Sugar House neighborhood. Throughout our adventures, our hearts were warmed but the generosity of the communities and homeowners that we visited for hosting our curiosities and acquiescing to our desire to look behind every door.

As preservationists we like to explore the built environment around us, but also as students we enjoy a good presentation and roundtable discussion. The Saturday paper sessions offered yet another way to engage with new architectural history and preservation topics as well as interact with our peers and mentors. With so many options throughout the day, the group split up and compared notes afterwards. The session entitled “Field Notes,” was particularly interesting for aspiring professionals to see in-progress projects utilizing emerging technologies and modern platforms [YouTube] to better understand architecture, design, and culture. Another impressive session included “Situating the Urban House” where an interesting juxtaposition of old and new, yet still suburban, brought about a different lens through which to view preservation and residential dwellings. We also particularly enjoyed the “Establishing a Landscape” session, “The Particularity of Institutions” session, and “The Multiple Layers of Preservation” session.

Above all, this experience taught us that the VAF community is a remarkably friendly, bright, and adventuresome group of people. We were motivated to set our goals high in our future careers while embracing the kindness of the community around us. In our capacity as VAF Ambassadors we have been inspired to bring that same energy and enthusiasm back home to the Pacific Northwest region where a fledgling VAF chapter, the Cascadia Chapter, is in the works. We held our first meeting just a few weeks after returning from Salt Lake. With guidance from the New England chapter and friends that we made in Salt Lake we are ready to carry on the VAF’s traditions here in Cascadia-- and we welcome you all to join us. We are delighted to have joined the VAF family and look forward to see you all again next year!

With sincere thanks,

Your UO Ambassadors

University of Virginia Ambassadors Share Essay on Salt Lake City meeting

Christine R Henry — Sat, 08 Jul 2017 16:26:00 GMT

Three University of Virginia graduate students attended the 2017 VAF conference in Salt Lake City in June thanks to the support of the VAF Ambassadors Award program. The group was comprised of two MA Architectural History students and one MA Urban and Environmental Planning student with Louis Nelson serving as the faculty sponsor. The attendees documented the conference through social media posts and will share their experiences during the upcoming semester to help build awareness for the 2018 conference in nearby Alexandria, Virginia to fellow students.

Attending the 2017 VAF Conference was an eye-opening experience. The depth of knowledge and quality of research of the attendees instigated wide-ranging conversations and provided an endless source of learning. Having the opportunity to meet and listen to the leaders in the field was informative for my research and helpful to my professional development. I thoroughly enjoyed the various tours around the region and their accompanying guides, especially the high-quality booklets provided for each. The tour of Temple Square was a highlight for its importance to a uniquely American religion, while the Park City tour allowed for access to private houses and structures not otherwise available to visitors. Beyond the tours of the conference, my classmates and I took the opportunity to explore a western state that was “new” to us. We also visited the city of Ogden and continued north to see Robert Smithson’s 1970 work of land art Spiral Jetty at the edge of the Great Salt Lake. Many thanks to the VAF for their generous support of the Ambassadors Award and I am looking forward to the 2018 conference.

—Andrew Marshall, Masters of Architectural History

The VAF Conference in Salt Lake City, Utah was the first conference I attended not only as a UVa student but also as an international student in the United States. The discussions were effortless with the broad array of attendees and hosts. I met several people with aligned interests and I was relieved to realize that I was not the only planning student interested in preservation and vernacular architecture. The most interesting part for me was the visit to the major Mormon sites around Temple Square, including the Tabernacle, Lion House and Beehive House. The tours to the two houses were excellent and helped us imagine Brigham Young's life with his family. The quality of the tour made me wish that I had more time to explore Temple Square. Other highlights included the Library square's planning and the retrofitted base isolation system of the City—County building's foundation. Overall, it was a very interesting conference and I look forward to attending the next one.

—Haritha Bhairavabhatla, Masters of Urban and Environmental Planning

I am very grateful for the opportunity to attend the 2017 VAF Conference for many reasons. First and foremost, it provided the opportunity to meet professionals, scholars, and students in this field. It was exciting to experience to hear the differing perspectives about architecture and preservation. The VAF Ambassadors award also allowed for my fellow UVa students and I to visit a city that is off of many people's radars. Salt Lake City provided an urban experience that was unique from any other American city that I have visited. This was the first conference I have attended and I look forward to attending many more in the future.

—Kelsey Dootson, Masters of Architectural History

Simpson Fellow Mike Walker publishes essay on experiences at VAF in Salt Lake City

Christine R Henry — Sat, 08 Jul 2017 16:22:00 GMT

SCAD student and Simpson Fellow Mike Walker published article on his experiences in Salt Lake City in the open online platform Medium.

Notes from the Field: Down Jersey English Barns and Wagon Houses

Christine R Henry — Sat, 08 Jul 2017 16:20:00 GMT

by Janet Sheridan

In the Winter 2016 issue of the VAN, I presented some preliminary findings about four farm outbuildings I was studying in Salem County, New Jersey, with the help of an Orlando Ridout V Fieldwork Fellowship and a research grant from the New Jersey Historical Commission. In April, I completed the report, entitled “Salem County Farms Recording Project Vol. II.” Following are some concluding thoughts.

My research revealed an example of a four-bay English barn in which a barn built in 1792 was copied twice more by 1860 as Quaker farmers named Bassett and Allen expanded their capacity to stable livestock and store fodder. Two barns were moved end-to-end and a third was built some 13 feet away, all measuring close to 40x30 feet in plan, and all hewn oak frames with threshing bays. Immigrant Quakers from Bucks County, Pennsylvania named Cadwallader expanded the dairy operation in 1938, further adapting these old barns to their needs by connecting all three together, expanding two of them laterally (to comply with dairy regulations), and using the third for stabling work horses behind a separating sliding door. Though their milking days are over and the horses are gone, the barns continue to house heifers. These barns are a twist on the well-known three-bay English threshing barn, the traditional and ubiquitous Eastern idea having evolved into a taller, four-bay version between 1792 and 1848 and persisting into the late nineteenth century.

Wagon houses seem to have been ubiquitous as English barns on the farmsteads of the county. Typically they are situated closest to the house of any outbuilding, have a gable-end orientation, a central bay with loft and sometimes a cellar, and two flanking side-aisles. They are reminiscent of Dutch, New England, Midwestern or Appalachian barns. But their use is distinctly different. These buildings are not the main barn, that is, the large one that was designed for threshing, animal stalling, and hay storage. They are multi-purpose storage buildings that hold corn, root and orchard crops, grain, sometimes meat, and wagons and implements, but do not house animals. They seem to appear by 1850, perhaps due to the early nineteenth-century expansion of farming and the need for more secure, and observable, storage space. Some are built of a piece (looking very Dutch with continuous roof slopes), and others accrue their side aisles over time with broken roof slopes. The Zerns-Wright wagon house is an example of the former type, built of a piece with a central stone cellar for seed potato storage, corn cribs in the central bay, and a granary loft finished with tight-fitting boards to keep out vermin. A sturdy staircase and floor hatches facilitate loading and unloading of produce to and from loft and cellar.

In contrast, the Stretch-Mulford wagon house grew out of a single-purpose one-story granary (the first I’ve found), originally 15x14 feet in plan, in multiple builds. It first grew upwards a half-story, adding grain bins to the loft (which survive), then it sprouted a side aisle below the main roof. It was converted to a wagon house with a 3-foot front expansion and by lowering the floor to the ground. Another side aisle was added, and both aisle roofs were raised to lay on top of the main roof, creating the distinctive broken slope. Only in the early twentieth-century was a corn crib added in one of the aisles. In several generations, it arrived at the common form that usually begins as a single-bay drive-in crib house versus a granary.

The 16x20-foot plan Stretch-Mulford carriage barn is a diminutive version of a ground barn built as early as the 1840s. Two structural bays accommodated a carriage and horse stalls. Like the wagon house, it is situated prominently in the farmyard, next to the wagon house with matching board-and-batten siding. Its appearance may be more of an urban phenomenon; I’ve seen few farm buildings that resemble this one. Its proximity to the City of Salem (only 800 feet outside its limits) may have influenced its affluent owner to build it.

The report, organized as a New Jersey Cultural Resource Survey, is available for viewing and/or downloading at https://issuu.com/jlsheridan/docs/salem_county_farms_recording_projec (note this is a revised version). Full-size measured drawings are included inside the report. Volume I, a study of three farmsteads, can be accessed at https://issuu.com/jlsheridan/docs/farms_recording_survey_report.

Many thanks to VAF for the fellowship support of this research!

VAF-SAH Collaboration Highlighted in Glasgow in June

Christine R Henry — Sat, 08 Jul 2017 16:15:00 GMT

by Gretchen Buggeln

Since the fall of 2015, the VAF has been an official partner organization of the Society of Architectural Historians. The program at the recent SAH annual meeting in Glasgow, Scotland (June 7-11, 2017), presented ample evidence of this collaboration!

Arijit Sen (VAF member, director of the innovative Buildings-Landscapes-Cultures Field School at the University of Wisconsin) and Iain Anderson (Historic Environment Scotland) co-moderated a lively roundtable, “Reassessing Fieldwork Methods in Architectural History.” Speakers included VAF member Jeff Klee, and many VAFers were present and contributed to the discussion on a topic near and dear to our hearts. A local Historic Environment Scotland project inviting the public to submit images and stories about their favorite places raised interesting questions about “crowdsourcing” building history and the ethics of censorship of architectural history.

The VAF co-sponsored a paper session, “The Global and the Local in Vernacular Architecture Studies,” chaired by Louis Nelson and Gretchen Buggeln. Speakers were Finola O’Kane Crimmins, who compared the landscapes of Co. Carlow, Ireland with those of St. Simon’s Island, Georgia; VAF member Veronica Aplenc, who presented her work on the Slovenian Vernacular in the city of Ljubljana, both before and after the rise of socialism; and VAF member Yuko Nakamura and her collaborator Kosei Hatsuda, who spoke about the temporary black market structures in Japan and the problem of defining the vernacular in a Japanese context.

A highlight of the conference was the Sunday, sold-out, post-conference tour, “Urban and Rural Vernaculars: Burgh, Village and Longhouse.” The VAF initiated and co-sponsored this tour. Our leader was Daniel Maudlin (Professor of Modern History, University of Plymouth), who enthusiastically introduced the participants to Scottish buildings and landscapes he knows well, including the burgh and cathedral center of Dunblane, the Victorian tourist village of Kenmore, and a fabulous preserved longhouse.

In addition to these three programs, VAFers spoke on other panels and persistently asking the questions of context, community, historic fabric, and preservation that mark our work. We also noted that three of the 2017 SAH publication awards went to VAF members: the Downing Award to Richard Longstreth, for Looking beyond the Icons: Midcentury Architecture, Landscape, and Urbanism (Virginia, 2015), and the Kostof Award to two of our members, Marta Gutman, for A City for Children: Women, Architecture, and the Charitable Landscapes of Oakland, 1850-1950 (Chicago, 2014) and Sarah Lopez, for The Remittance Landscape: Spaces of Migration in Rural Mexico and Urban USA (Chicago, 2015). Congratulations to Richard, Marta, and Sarah!

All of the above events, interactions, and awards indicate a warm and productive intellectual collaboration between the members of both organizations, and we look forward to seeing more of the same at the SAH meeting in St. Paul next April.

Opportunities: Upcoming Conferences

Christine R Henry — Sat, 08 Jul 2017 16:12:00 GMT

Here are some upcoming conferences that are of interest to VAF members

SESAH in Lynchburg, VA October 11-14, 2017

SAH Latrobe Chapter in Washington, DC October 28, 2017

SACRPH in Cleveland, OH October 26-29, 2017

Call for Nominations-VAF Board of Directors 2017

Christine R Henry — Sat, 08 Jul 2017 16:11:00 GMT

Opportunities to Serve the VAF

The nominating committee of the Vernacular Architecture Forum (VAF) is seeking nominations for individuals to serve as members of the organization’s Board of Directors. Board members serve three-year terms. Individuals nominated this year, and subsequently elected, will begin service in June 2018.

The VAF is administered by a volunteer board composed of dedicated professionals and scholars from diverse disciplines who live and work in all parts of the United States and Canada. The Board meets twice a year, once during our Annual Conference in the Spring and again in the Fall. Board members are expected to attend these day-long meetings and participate in committee work throughout the year.

The committee also seeks nominations for the position of President-Elect to start in June 2018. In the spring of 2019, the President-Elect will rise to the position of President of the VAF for two years. Candidates for the position of President-Elect should be familiar with the organization’s disparate programs, have a vision for the future of the group, and possess significant leadership skills.

Nominations should be sent to Jennifer A. Cousineau at jennifer.cousineau@pc.gc.ca, preferably before October 15, 2017. Nominees must be members of the Vernacular Architecture Forum. Please include a short letter (not exceeding one page) indicating the position for which the person is being nominated and describing their qualifications as well as a short vita/resume (not exceeding two pages).

Self-nominations are actively encouraged.

Global Architectural History Teaching Collaborative (GAHTC) grant opportunities

Christine R Henry — Sat, 08 Jul 2017 16:10:00 GMT

Project Manager

Eliana Hamdi Murchie

emurchie@mit.edu

GAHTC.org

Announcing the next cycle of the GAHTC, and six new research grant opportunities

The goal of this cycle to promote interdisciplinary exchange amongst scholars of all ranks, the research of emerging scholars, as well as field visits for the production of new and innovative research.

The Global Architectural History Teaching Collaborative announces the launch of its next cycle of funding, research, and collaborative exchange based on its recent award of $1.5 million from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. This cycle includes an annual Member’s Conference, Teacher-to-Teacher Workshops, as well as a new grant program to promote the development of survey course material in the global history of architecture.

GAHTC will dedicate nearly $500,000 in funding to building new content through a multi-pronged plan towards research and professional expansion. To that end, GAHTC2 is pleased to announce six new grant funding opportunities:

• Targeted Acquisition Grants

• Untargeted Field-initiated Grants

• Emerging Scholar Grants

• Global Connections Fellowships

• Research-to-Teaching Grants, in affiliation with SAH

• Field Seminar Travel Grants, in affiliation with SAH

This second phase of the GAHTC will continue to help teachers of architectural history meet the pressing realities of a global perspective by funding teams of scholars to build upon nearly 200 existing lectures in our free online library. GAHTC will continue to expand its library in the next years with the aim to further enhance teaching capacity and collect innovative research.

The GAHTC is funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, with administrative connection to Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the School of Architecture and Planning and its History Theory and Criticism Program.

Questions? Contact Eliana Hamdi Murchie at emurchie@mit.edu

more information at www.GAHTC.org

Member Boyd Pratt publishes book on San Juan Islands

Christine R Henry — Sat, 08 Jul 2017 16:05:00 GMT

Lime: Quarrying and Limemaking in the San Juan Islands (Friday Harbor, WA: Mulno Cove Publishing 2016)

by Boyd Pratt

Formed through eons of geologic time and sculpted by glaciers, the limestone deposits along the islands’ shore provided the essential ingredient for the block and mortar that built and rebuilt the West Coast’s major cities. Read all about the islands’ economic booms and busts, dramatic changes to the landscape, bloody murder, contentious lawsuits, and deadly shipwrecks.

Although only sold locally, you can get your copy for $10 (tax included) by contacting the author at the address below.

Boyd C Pratt

Mulno Cove Creations, LLC

2551 Cattle Point Road

Friday Harbor, WA 98250

(360) 378-7172

Member Michael Windover co-authors exhibit catalogue

Christine R Henry — Sat, 08 Jul 2017 16:04:00 GMT

Seeing, Selling, and Situating Radio in Canada 1922-1956 (Dalhousie Architectural Press, 2017)

co-authored by Michael Windover and Anne F. MacLennan

This book examines the visual, material, and spatial presence of radio as it reshaped Canadian society in the second quarter of the twentieth century. Through an analysis of radio sets and advertisements, the authors explain how marketing and design were crucial to convincing Canadians to adopt this modern technology. They also discuss how a new kind of space was produced by the radio by tracing its intersecting networks of communication and commercialism, public and private places, material and imagined sites.

The exhibition closed at Carleton University (Ottawa) in May and will be moving to York University (Toronto) in the fall.

Member William Keller presents paper at the SAH meeting in Glasgow

Christine R Henry — Sat, 08 Jul 2017 16:03:00 GMT

William Keller discussed the reception of the antique at two central examples of the roofed arena building type. London's Royal Albert Hall (1867) and Stanford White's Madison Square Garden (1888), New York, were featured in his paper "The Ancient Oval and Bowl Enclosed: Modeling the Roofed Arena," given at the Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, Glasgow, on June 8, 2017.

Member Jim Buckley shares update on University of Oregon Historic Preservation Program

Christine R Henry — Sat, 08 Jul 2017 16:02:00 GMT

The University of Oregon Historic Preservation had a busy spring, full of VAF-related activity:

Program Director Jim Buckley announced the formation of a new Northwest Chapter of the Vernacular Architecture Forum, only the second in the organization’s history. More than 60 people throughout Oregon and Washington responded with enthusiasm to the call for interest, about half of whom met for an organizational meeting just after the Salt Lake City conference. We are now planning our first program of tours and presentation for this fall – contact jbuckley@uoregon.edu if interested.
Five UO historic preservation students attended the Salt Lake City Conference though the VAF Ambassador program. Each student was a first timer at the conference and enjoyed the variety of material presented, from Mormon towns to Park City condos! We have some new lifetime VAFers thanks to this excellent program. Please check out the ambassadors' essay on their experiences.
Several UO scholars presented their research at the Salt Lake City conference, including alums Jon Miller (vernacular architecture of the Michigan Upper Peninsula) and Julia Larson (Latino vernacular in Woodburn, OR), current geography Ph.D. student James Miller (Micronesian migrant environments in the US), and program director James Buckley (preservation of African-American heritage).

The UO preservation program will begin its second year at the new Portland campus in September.

Member Susanneh Bieber wins Terra Foundation prize for essay on Donald Judd

Christine R Henry — Sat, 08 Jul 2017 16:01:00 GMT

Susanneh Bieber, Assistant Professor in the Departments of Visualization and Architecture at Texas A&M University was awarded the Terra Foundation International Essay Prize for her essay “Going Back to Kansas City: The Origins of Judd’s Minimal Art.” In her text, Bieber explores an early moment in artist and art critic Donald Judd’s career when his minimalist sculpture and his critical writing both elevated an “ordinariness” connected to vernacular architecture of his hometown, Kansas City. The essay will be published in a forthcoming issue of American Art, the peer-reviewed journal published by the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the University of Chicago Press. For more information see americanart.si.edu/research/awards/terra.

Multiple VAF Members receive recognition from SESAH

Christine R Henry — Sat, 08 Jul 2017 16:01:00 GMT

Many members of VAF are also active in SESAH and have been recognized with publication awards in the past two years. In 2016,

Louis Nelson won the SESAH award for the best essay published on a southern subject for “The Falmouth House and Store: Social Landscapes of Caribbean Commerce in the Eighteenth Century,” in Building the British Atlantic World: Spaces, Places, and Material Culture 1600-1850 edited by Daniel Maudlin and Bernard L. Herman, University of North Carolina Press, 2016.
Dana E. Byrd won the SESAH award for the best journal article on a southern subject for “Motive Power: Fans, Punkahs, and Fly Brushes in the Antebellum South,” in Buildings and Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum (Spring, 2016).
Kenneth Hafertepe won the SESAH award for the best book on a southern subject for The Material Culture of German Towns, Texas A&M University Press, 2016.

and in 2015,

Carrie Dilley won the SESAH award for the best book on a southern subject for Thatched Roofs and Open Sides: The Architecture of Chickees and Their Changing Role in Seminole Society, Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2015.
Andrew Santoval-Strausz won the SESAH award for the best journal article on a southern subject for“Latino Landscapes: Postwar Cities and the Transnational Origins of a New American Urbanism,” Journal of American History 101 (December 2014).
Richard Longstreth won the SESAH award for the best essay on a southern subject for “The Continuous Transformation of Savannah’s Broughton Street” in Looking Beyond the Icons: Midcentury Architecture, Landscape, and Urbanism edited by Richard W. Longstreth, University of Virginia Press, 2015.

Bibliography Summer 2017

Christine R Henry — Sat, 08 Jul 2017 16:00:00 GMT

Compiled by Zachary Violette and Ian Stevenson

Avery-Quinn, Samuel. “At Play in the Gate of Heaven: Methodist Material Discourses of Leisure and the Picturesque at Round Lake, New York.” Material Culture: Journal of the Pioneer Society of America 49, no. 1 (Spring 2017): 1–26.

Beech, Nick. “Social Condensation in the Metropole: Locating the First New Left.” The Journal of Architecture 22, no. 3 (April 3, 2017): 488–511.

Bokov, Anna. “Soviet Workers’ Clubs: Lessons from the Social Condensers.” The Journal of Architecture 22, no. 3 (April 3, 2017): 403–36.

Boucher, Abigail. “The Business Model of the Aristocracy: Class, Consumerism, and Commodification in the Silver Fork Novels.” Nineteenth-Century Contexts 38, no. 3 (May 26, 2016): 171–81..

Boykin, Sarah J., and Susan M. Hunter. Southern Homes and Plan Books: The Architectural Legacy of Leila Ross Wilburn. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2018.

Brehm, Brett. “Soundscapes of Nineteenth-Century Paris: The Cries of Kastner and Mallarm?” Nineteenth-Century Contexts 38, no. 4 (August 7, 2016): 263–74.

Breisch, Kenneth. American Libraries 1730-1950. New York: W.W. Norton, 2017.

Brinkman, Joshua T., and Richard F. Hirsh. “Welcoming Wind Turbines and the PIMBY (‘Please in My Backyard’) Phenomenon: The Culture of the Machine in the Rural American Midwest.” Technology and Culture 58, no. 2 (2017): 335–67.

Bryan D. Orthel. “Preservation and Negotiation of History and Identity in Lexington, Kentucky.” Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum 23, no. 2 (2016): 23.

Buchli, Victor. “The Social Condenser: Again, Again and Again—the Case for the Narkomfin Communal House, Moscow.” The Journal of Architecture 22, no. 3 (April 3, 2017): 387–402.

Cain, Friedrich. “The Occupied City as a Sociological Laboratory: Developing and Applying Social Psychology in Warsaw 1939-1945.” Journal of Urban History 43, no. 4 (July 2017): 587–601.

Cairns, Stephen, and Jane M. Jacobs. Buildings Must Die: A Perverse View of Architecture. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2014.

Campbell, Lindsay K. City of Forests, City of Farms: Sustainability Planning for New York City’s Nature. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017.

Campos Franozo, Mariana de. “‘Inhabitants of Rustic Parts of the World’: John Locke’s Collection of Drawings and the Dutch Empire in Ethnographic Types.” History and Anthropology 28, no. 3 (May 27, 2017): 349–74.

Carlson, Linda. Company Towns in the Pacific Northwest. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2017.

Cowman, Krista. “Play Streets: Women, Children and the Problem of Urban Traffic, 1930?1970.” Social History 42, no. 2 (April 3, 2017): 233–56.

Cummings, Alex Sayf. “‘Brain Magnet’: Research Triangle Park and the Origins of the Creative City, 1953-1965 ¹.” Journal of Urban History 43, no. 3 (May 2017): 470–92.

Cynthia G. Falk, and Anna Vemer Andrzejewski. “Peopling Preservation: A Forum in Honor of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966.” Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum 23, no. 2 (2016): 1.

Davarian L. Baldwin. “‘It’s Not the Location; It’s the Institution’: The New Politics of Historic Preservation within the Heritage Tourism Economy.” Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum 23, no. 2 (2016): 6.

Davis, Amy. Flickering Treasures: Rediscovering Baltimore’s Forgotten Movie Theaters. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017.

Erin Cunningham. “Interiors, Histories, and the Preservation of Chicago’s Hull House Settlement.” Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum 23, no. 2 (2016): 53.

Ernsten, Christian. “Truth as Historical Recapitulation: The Dead of Cape Town’s District One.” International Journal of Heritage Studies 23, no. 6 (July 3, 2017): 575–86.

Foxhall, Lin. “Introduction: Households and Landscapes.” World Archaeology 48, no. 3: Households and Landscapes (April 2017): 325–331.

Gantner, Eszter. “Logos, Industrial Palace, and Urania: The Urban Forms of Knowledge in Budapest, 1873-1914.” Journal of Urban History 43, no. 4 (July 2017): 602–14.

Gantner, Eszter, and Heidi Hein-Kircher. “‘Emerging Cities’: Knowledge and Urbanization in Europe’s Borderlands 1880-1945.” Journal of Urban History 43, no. 4 (July 2017): 575–86.

Graaf, Reinier de. Four Walls and a Roof: The Complex Nature of a Simple Profession. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017.

Grant, Susan-Mary. “When the Fires Burned Too Close to Home: Southern Women and the Dislocations of the Home Front in the American Civil War.” Women’s History Review 26, no. 4 (July 4, 2017): 568–83.

Gwartney, Debra, and Barry Lopez, eds. Home Ground: A Guide to the American Landscape. San Antonio, TX: Trinity University Press, 2013.

Hallas-Murula, Karin. “Diffusion of European Modern City Planning around 1910: Transferring and Implementation of International Knowledge in Tallinn, Estonia.” Journal of Urban History 43, no. 4 (July 2017): 615–24.

Hanson, Royce. Suburb: Planning Politics and the Public Interest. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017.

Huff, Brad. “Ave Maria, FL: A Mixed Methods Material Culture Analysis.” Material Culture: Journal of the Pioneer Society of America 49, no. 1 (Spring 2017): 26–49.

Isenberg, Alison. Designing San Francisco: Art, Land, and Urban Renewal in the City by the Bay. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017.

Jones, P., A. Isakjee, C. Jam, C. Lorne, and S. Warren. “Urban Landscapes and the Atmosphere of Place: Exploring Subjective Experience in the Study of Urban Form.” Urban Morphology 21, no. 1 (2017).

Juravich, Nick. “‘We the Tenants’: Resident Organizing in New York City?s Public Housing, 1964-1978.” Journal of Urban History 43, no. 3 (May 2017): 400–420.

Karlštrēma, Inga. “Knowledge Transfer and Advanced Urban Planning in the Newly Established Ring of Boulevards in Riga: The Case of the First Municipal Gas Factory.” Journal of Urban History 43, no. 4 (July 2017): 639–50.

Lebowitz, Amy, and Dan Trudeau. “Digging in: Lawn Dissidents, Performing Sustainability, and Landscapes of Privilege.” Social & Cultural Geography 18, no. 5 (2017): 706–731..

Leslie, Stuart W., and Emily A. Margolis. “Griffith Observatory: Hollywood’s Celestial Theater.” Early Popular Visual Culture 15, no. 2 (June 2017): 227–246..

Matson, Cathy. “Putting the Lydia to Sea: The Material Economy of Shipping in Colonial Philadelphia.” William and Mary Quarterly 74, no. 2 (April 2017): 303–33.

Mayer, Frederick W. A Setting For Excellence, Part II: The Story of the Planning and Development of the Ann Arbor Campus of the University of Michigan. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2017.

McCoy, Mark D., and Maria C. Codlin. “The Influence of Religious Authority in Everyday Life: A Landscape-Scale Study of Domestic Architecture and Religious Law in Ancient Hawai’i.” World Archaeology 48, no. 3: Households and Landscape (April 2017): 411–430.

Merlino, Kathryn Rogers. Building Reuse: Sustainability, Preservation, and the Value of Design. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2018.

Mike Christenson. “Research Notes: The Photographic Construction of Urban Renewal in Fargo, North Dakota.” Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum 23, no. 2 (2016): 116.

Murawski, Micha? “Introduction: Crystallising the Social Condenser.” The Journal of Architecture 22, no. 3 (April 3, 2017): 372–86.

———. “The Palace Complex: A Stalinist Social Condenser in Warsaw.” The Journal of Architecture 22, no. 3 (April 3, 2017): 458–77.

Murtagh, Brendan, Philip Boland, and Peter Shirlow. “Contested Heritages and Cultural Tourism.” International Journal of Heritage Studies 23, no. 6 (July 3, 2017): 506–20.

Nathaniel Robert Walker. “American Crossroads: General Motors’ Midcentury Campaign to Promote Modernist Urban Design in Hometown U.S.A.” Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum 23, no. 2 (2016): 89.

Pyszka, Kimberly. “Anglican Church Architecture and Religious Identity in Early Colonial South Carolina.” Material Culture: Journal of the Pioneer Society of America 49, no. 1 (Spring 2017): 78–101.

Rinaldi, Thomas E., and Robert J. Yasinsac. Hudson Valley Ruins: Forgotten Landmarks of an American Landscape. Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England, 2017.

Riordan, Timothy. “‘The Science and Misteire of Glazing’: Thoughts on the Use of Marked Window Leads in Archaeological Analysis.” Northeast Historical Archaeology 45, no. 1 (2016).

Salamon, Sonya, and Katherine MacTavish. Singlewide: Chasing the American Dream in a Rural Trailer Park. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017.

Sarah Rovang. “The Grid Comes Home: Wiring and Lighting the American Farmhouse.” Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum 23, no. 2 (2016): 65.

Scholz, Maximilian. “Over Our Dead Bodies: The Fight over Cemetery Construction in Nineteenth-Century London.” Journal of Urban History 43, no. 3 (May 2017): 445–57.

Seals, Sonny, and George S. Hart. Historic Rural Churches of Georgia. Athens. University of Georgia Press: 2016.

Shatkin, Gavin. Cities for Profit: The Real Estate Turn in Asia’s Urban Politics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017.

Shelton, Kyle. “Building a Better Houston: Highways, Neighborhoods, and Infrastructural Citizenship in the 1970s.” Journal of Urban History 43, no. 3 (May 2017): 421–44.

Siber, Kate. “Dance Hall Days: Texas History and Heritage, Set to Music.” Preservation 69, no. 2 (2017): 32–38.

Stanek, Lukasz “Collective Luxury.” The Journal of Architecture 22, no. 3 (April 3, 2017): 478–87.

Törmä, I., S. Griffiths, and L. Vaughan. “High Street Changeability: The Effect of Urban Form on Demolition, Modification and Use Change in Two South London Suburbs.” Urban Morphology 21, no. 1 (2017).

Venturi, Robert, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour. Learning from Las Vegas: Facsimile Edition. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2017.

Whalen, Kevin. “Indian School, Company Town: Outing Workers from Sherman Institute at Fontana Farms Company, 1907–1930.” Pacific Historical Review 86, no. 2 (May 2017): 290–321.

Williams, Daniel. “The Clouds and the Poor: Ruskin, Mayhew, and Ecology.” Nineteenth-Century Contexts 38, no. 5 (October 19, 2016): 319–31.

Williams, Nancy K., and H. Thomas Foster. “An Analysis of Native American/ Colonialist Interaction in the Southeastern United States.” International Journal of Historical Archaeology 21, no. 2 (June 2017): 513–31.