Everyday Architecture of the Mid-Atlantic: Looking at Buildings and Landscapes

Creating the North American Landscape

by Gabrielle M. Lanier, Bernard L. Herman

From the eighteenth-century single-room "mansions" of Delaware's Cypress Swamp district to the early twentieth-century suburban housing around Philadelphia and Wilmington, the architectural landscape of the mid-Atlantic region is both rich and varied. In this pioneering field guide to the region's historic vernacular architecture, Gabrielle Lanier and Bernard Herman describe the remarkably diverse building traditions that have overlapped and influenced one another for generations.

With more than 300 illustrations and photographs, Everyday Architecture of the Mid-Atlantic explores the character of pre-1940 domestic and agricultural buildings in the towns and rural landscapes of southern New Jersey, Delaware, and coastal Maryland and Virginia. Approaching their subject "archaeologically," the authors examine the "layers" of a structure's past to show how it has changed over time and to reveal telling details about its occupants and the community in which they lived. The book provides architectural information as well as a working methodology for anyone wanting to explore and learn from traditional architecture and landscapes.

The authors conclude that, as a vital cultural artifact, the distinctive architecture of the mid-Atlantic needs to be identified, recorded, and preserved. Everyday Architecture of the Mid-Atlantic gives proof to the insights architecture offers into who we are culturally as a community, a region, and a nation.

Genres: Architecture

424 pages, Paperback

First published June 19, 1997

Reviews

[Justinian]

2008-12 - Everyday Architecture of the Mid-Atlantic: Looking at Buildings and Landscapes. Authors: Gabrielle M. Lanier, Bernard L. Herman. 424 pages. 1997

I picked up this book at the library as part of my self guided education for being a guide at Waynesborough. The book is hefty and has the look and feel of a textbook. While the text claims to focus on the Mid-Atlantic, most of the focus is in Delaware and Delmarva.

The text reads easily for the first 65%. After this initial phase it starts to bog down in academic technical prose as it probes deeply into a few structures. It does this probe as a way to teach the reader how to apply archaeological techniques to building and site evaluation. The evaluation is a bit more rambling because it attempts to be as holistic as possible. This can cause the untrained to readily throw up their hands or to get bogged down in pet areas of interest. A more simplified checklist type of approach followed by a more in depth methodology for those points on the checklist would be helpful.

The initial section is interesting and does provide quite a bit of information due to its approach. This book does more than try to identify a house and its era and show how this was done. The approach starts with function and location. It tries to show how the landscape or lot influences the function and design as well. To this end it does an adequate job of providing the reader with context for a building rather than looking at a structure in isolation.

Once the readers has gotten a grasp of the context of the building the text move son to various varieties and evolutions of construction material and technique and how they influenced the structure it self. The book does not limit itself to houses. In the process of providing context through lot surveys the book deals with the various varieties of both urban and rural outbuilding. The study of outbuildings covers the evolution and typical location of the buildings. This aspect of the text proved most interesting because so much f the e history of these common outbuildings has been lost due to technological innovations such as indoor plumbing, electric refrigeration and other advances.

Besides houses and their attendant outbuildings the text address barns, sheds, factories, and commercial buildings as well. This type of architecture is often reserved to serious students as most casual readers are enamored of houses. The eras portrayed begin in the earliest days of settlement and proceed forward to near the mid-20th Century.

The book is well provided with photographs to illustrate ideas and structures as well as line drawings. The later proved especially useful in describing and providing understanding to how structures are built and where they are located.

[Samuel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book for the general public—lots of illustrations and easy read for those unfamiliar with building preservation. 350 pages on colonial mansions, barns, muskrat-skinning sheds, etc. in this book about a “region of regions”—the Delaware Valley. Delaware-centric, as the two contributors worked their at the Center for Historic Architecture and Design (in collaboration with HABS), but it does include regional examples from NJ, PA, MD, and VA as well. This is not style-obsessed but instead focuses on change over time in looks and use (an archaeological approach): not looking for purity but dissecting alterations. It argues for the study of buildings to better understand people: “how they saw themselves, their neighbors, and their workday world in all its complexity—and how they projected that sense of self and society into the substance of their environment" (350).

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had to read it for a class on American vernacular architecture, but come back to it time and again: aside from the student, it's a great work for anyone interested in vernacular architecture of the mid-Atlantic region and the various building typologies found in rural architecture in this area. The detail and explanation offered here is very helpful and illustrations abound.

[Benjamin Sigrist · Rating 3 out of 5]

Admittedly didn't read this all the way through since it is written more as a reference text - but it is an interesting book. Many examples from the Eastern Shore and ESVA that I recognized. Perhaps one day we'll use it to help us find an interesting home to call our own.