Description: A critical reassessment of nineteenth-century American architecture that uncovers how race, settler colonialism, and contested national identities shaped the built environment and its historiography.
Review Quotes:
Beautifully organizing twenty expertly researched case studies, these editors deftly dismiss stale histories of nineteenth-century American architecture that embrace an uncontested arc of historical progress and American success and, in deference to professional architects, uncomfortably frame their subject as 'protomodern.' Rather, these essays center buildings and places in thick contexts of local and regional identities and racial politics, and they understand users as agents, expanding the horizon of architectural makers. Understanding buildings as evidence of contested and competing visions of the making of nineteenth-century America, this refreshing collection helps us see architecture in real historical time and will define the field for years to come.
--Louis P. Nelson, University of Virginia, author of Architecture and Empire in Jamaica