Although vernacular architecture scholarship has expanded beyond its core fascination with common buildings and places, its attention remains fixed on the social function of building. Consistent with this expansion of interests, Constructing Image, Identity, and Place includes essays on a wide variety of American building types and landscapes drawn from a broad geographic and chronological spectrum. Subjects range from examinations of the houses, hotels and churches of America’s colonial and Republican elite to analyses of the humble cottages of Southern sharecroppers and mill workers, Mississippi juke joints, and the ephemeral rustic arbors and bowers erected by Civil War soldiers. Other contributors examine or reexamine the form of early synagogues in Georgia, colonial construction technologies in the Chesapeake, the appropriation and use of storefront windows by San Francisco suffragists, and the evolution of the modern factory tour. Other decidedly twentieth-century topics include the impact of the automobile on American building forms and landscapes, including parkways, drive-in movie theaters, and shopping malls.

Drawn from the Vernacular Architecture Forum conferences of 1998 and 1999, these seventeen essays represent the broad range of topics and methodologies current in the field today. The volume will introduce newcomers to the breadth and depth of vernacular architecture while also bringing established scholars up to date on the field’s continued growth and maturation.

The Editors: Alison K. Hoagland is associate professor of history and historic preservation at Michigan Technological University. Kenneth A. Breisch is director of Programs in Historic Preservation at the University of Southern California. He is author of Henry Hobson Richardson and the Small Public Library in America.

The Contributors: Shannon Bell, Robert W. Blythe, Timothy Davis, Stephanie Dyer, Willie Graham, Kathleen LaFrank, William Littmann, Carl Lounsbury, Al Luckenbach, Sherri M. Marsh, Maurie McInnis, Steven H. Moffson, Jason D. Moser, Jennifer Nardone, Martin C. Perdue, Mark Reinberger, Andrew K. Sandoval-Strausz, Jessica Sewell, Donna Ware, and Camille Wells.