Pub Date : 2023-09-01DOI: 10.1353/bdl.2023.a911891
Jennifer Nardone
Reviewed by: Dreaming the Present: Time, Aesthetics, and the Black Cooperative Movement by Irvin J. Hunt, and: Freedom Farmers: Agricultural Resistance and the Black Freedom Movement by Monica M. White Jennifer Nardone (bio) Irvin J. Hunt Dreaming the Present: Time, Aesthetics, and the Black Cooperative Movement Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2022 288 pages, 21 black-and-white illustrations, 1 map ISBN: 9781469667942, $23.99 EB ISBN: 9781469667928, $95.00 HB ISBN: 9781469667935, $29.95 PB Monica M. White Freedom Farmers: Agricultural Resistance and the Black Freedom Movement Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press xiii + 208 pages, 11 black-and-white illustrations ISBN: 9781469643700, $14.99 EB (2018) ISBN: 9781469663890, $19.95 PB (2021) Over the last two decades, researchers and scholars have begun the complicated process of untangling the colonial landscape. These efforts are not confined to the colonial landscape of seventeenth-century wood-frame houses in greater Boston or the eighteenth-century plantation fields along the James River, many of which have been preserved over centuries and are now open for public tours and events. Those sites, even when there is no remaining structure visible—a plantation, a church, a cemetery—are forged in the settler-colonial imagination. Much like vernacularism encouraged architectural historians to look beyond monumental structures, settler colonialism as a methodology demands accountability for the White supremacy embedded in both vernacular and monumental spaces. “The vernacular” certainly expands our understanding of how space and place are defined by diverse groups of people. Settler colonialism, however, rejects the presumption that everyone envisions a landscape as a defined—or even liminal—space. What if disorder and impermanence are the only meaningful acts of resistance against ubiquitous White supremacy? Are those legible spaces in the vernacular landscape? As Irvin J. Hunt asks in his new book, when talking about spaces, places, and race, can we “unravel Blackness from property?” (95). Two recent books—neither one written by historians, architectural or otherwise—grapple with what it means to interpret [End Page 148] architecture and landscapes intended to be indecipherable to anyone who is initially viewing or scrutinizing such sites. In his book Dreaming the Present: Time, Aesthetics, and the Black Cooperative Movement, Irvin J. Hunt, an assistant professor of English and African American Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, considers architecture as temporal rather than spatial. Hunt focuses on Black cooperatives and other efforts to build systems of mutual aid as anti-places rather than as ephemeral, vernacular spaces. To that end, Hunt focuses his study upon three cooperative efforts: the Negro Cooperative, founded by W. E. B. Du Bois in 1918; the Young Negroes’ Cooperative League (YNCL), organized by George Schuyler and Ella Baker in the earl
书评:欧文·j·亨特的《梦想现在:时间、美学和黑人合作运动》和莫妮卡·m·怀特的《自由农民:农业抵抗和黑人自由运动》(作者:Jennifer Nardone)《欧文·j·亨特的梦想现在:时间、美学和黑人合作运动》教堂山:北卡罗来纳大学出版社，2022年，288页，21幅黑白插图，1幅地图ISBN: 9781469667942, 23.99美元EB ISBN: 9781469667928, 95.00美元HB ISBN:莫妮卡M.白人自由农民:农业抵抗和黑人自由运动教堂山:北卡罗来纳大学出版社十三+ 208页，11张黑白插图ISBN: 9781469643700, 14.99 EB (2018) ISBN: 9781469663890, 19.95 PB(2021)在过去的二十年里，研究人员和学者已经开始了解开殖民景观的复杂过程。这些努力并不局限于大波士顿地区17世纪木结构房屋的殖民景观或詹姆斯河沿岸18世纪的种植园，其中许多已经保存了几个世纪，现在向公众开放参观和活动。这些地方，即使没有现存的建筑——一个种植园，一个教堂，一个墓地——都是在定居者-殖民者的想象中形成的。就像本土主义鼓励建筑历史学家超越纪念性建筑一样，定居者殖民主义作为一种方法论，要求对本土和纪念性空间中嵌入的白人至上主义负责。“方言”当然扩展了我们对不同人群如何定义空间和地点的理解。然而，定居者殖民主义反对这样一种假设，即每个人都把景观想象成一个确定的——甚至是有限的——空间。如果无序和无常是抵抗无处不在的白人至上主义的唯一有意义的行为呢?在当地的景观中，这些空间是否清晰可辨?正如欧文·j·亨特(Irvin J. Hunt)在他的新书中提出的那样，在谈论空间、地点和种族时，我们能否“从财产中解开黑人?””(95)。最近有两本书——都不是由历史学家、建筑学家或其他学者写的——试图解释建筑和景观的含义，目的是让那些最初观看或仔细观察这些遗址的人无法理解。伊利诺伊大学厄巴纳-香槟分校英语和非裔美国人研究助理教授欧文·j·亨特(Irvin J. Hunt)在他的著作《梦想现在:时间、美学和黑人合作运动》(Dreaming the Present: Time, Aesthetics, and the Black Cooperative Movement)中，将建筑视为时间而非空间。亨特关注的是黑人合作社和其他建立互助系统的努力，这些系统是反场所，而不是短暂的地方空间。为此，亨特将他的研究重点放在三个合作社上:杜波依斯于1918年创立的黑人合作社;由乔治·斯凯勒和埃拉·贝克在大萧条初期组织的青年黑人合作联盟(YNCL);以及房利美·卢·哈默的自由农场，从1969年到1976年运营。合作社旨在破坏资本主义经济，包括地方经济(即，谁拥有合作社?)亨特认为，杜波依斯、贝克、哈默和他们的盟友将合作社视为一个短暂的时刻，而不是资本主义经济永久替代品的基础。毕竟，这需要编纂一种不同的(可持续的)经济——一种历史化概念的变体，即某些制度可以“属于但不属于”主导的经济体系。黑人合作运动“没有兴趣去任何地方，只是发生，”亨特推测。“他们确实有一个目的地:在一个前所未见的现在的新地点”(5)。因此，杜波依斯、贝克和哈默从未打算建立永久性，只是坚持现在。虽然白话主义通常包括对时间和无常空间的考虑，但亨特的书却鼓励对空间进行完全不同的解读。学者们经常在种族化的景观中看到“颠覆空间”。非裔美国人可能会在短暂的生命中找到安全和意义，在那里他们能够对抗白人的监视和暴力。在白人看来，这些地方通常是无害的:教堂、家庭聚会、游行、小酒馆;这些空间来来去去，它们从来就不是永久的非裔美国人找到了颠覆种族隔离和白人至上的方法，通过无常和概念性空间的编纂，而不是通过建筑规划。将黑人本土景观定义为…
{"title":"Dreaming the Present: Time, Aesthetics, and the Black Cooperative Movement by Irvin J. Hunt, and: Freedom Farmers: Agricultural Resistance and the Black Freedom Movement by Monica M. White (review)","authors":"Jennifer Nardone","doi":"10.1353/bdl.2023.a911891","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/bdl.2023.a911891","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Dreaming the Present: Time, Aesthetics, and the Black Cooperative Movement by Irvin J. Hunt, and: Freedom Farmers: Agricultural Resistance and the Black Freedom Movement by Monica M. White Jennifer Nardone (bio) Irvin J. Hunt Dreaming the Present: Time, Aesthetics, and the Black Cooperative Movement Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2022 288 pages, 21 black-and-white illustrations, 1 map ISBN: 9781469667942, $23.99 EB ISBN: 9781469667928, $95.00 HB ISBN: 9781469667935, $29.95 PB Monica M. White Freedom Farmers: Agricultural Resistance and the Black Freedom Movement Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press xiii + 208 pages, 11 black-and-white illustrations ISBN: 9781469643700, $14.99 EB (2018) ISBN: 9781469663890, $19.95 PB (2021) Over the last two decades, researchers and scholars have begun the complicated process of untangling the colonial landscape. These efforts are not confined to the colonial landscape of seventeenth-century wood-frame houses in greater Boston or the eighteenth-century plantation fields along the James River, many of which have been preserved over centuries and are now open for public tours and events. Those sites, even when there is no remaining structure visible—a plantation, a church, a cemetery—are forged in the settler-colonial imagination. Much like vernacularism encouraged architectural historians to look beyond monumental structures, settler colonialism as a methodology demands accountability for the White supremacy embedded in both vernacular and monumental spaces. “The vernacular” certainly expands our understanding of how space and place are defined by diverse groups of people. Settler colonialism, however, rejects the presumption that everyone envisions a landscape as a defined—or even liminal—space. What if disorder and impermanence are the only meaningful acts of resistance against ubiquitous White supremacy? Are those legible spaces in the vernacular landscape? As Irvin J. Hunt asks in his new book, when talking about spaces, places, and race, can we “unravel Blackness from property?” (95). Two recent books—neither one written by historians, architectural or otherwise—grapple with what it means to interpret [End Page 148] architecture and landscapes intended to be indecipherable to anyone who is initially viewing or scrutinizing such sites. In his book Dreaming the Present: Time, Aesthetics, and the Black Cooperative Movement, Irvin J. Hunt, an assistant professor of English and African American Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, considers architecture as temporal rather than spatial. Hunt focuses on Black cooperatives and other efforts to build systems of mutual aid as anti-places rather than as ephemeral, vernacular spaces. To that end, Hunt focuses his study upon three cooperative efforts: the Negro Cooperative, founded by W. E. B. Du Bois in 1918; the Young Negroes’ Cooperative League (YNCL), organized by George Schuyler and Ella Baker in the earl","PeriodicalId":41826,"journal":{"name":"Buildings & Landscapes-Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum","volume":"84 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135782318","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-01DOI: 10.1353/bdl.2023.a911884
Alex Ander Wood
abstract: This article examines the life and work of New York City’s ironworkers, who erected the city’s first tall buildings, factory lofts, and other iron-framed structures. It chronicles the development of iron construction and the fortunes of the trade; analyzes the skills, tools, and machinery ironworkers used on the job; and describes their efforts to improve their lot in solidarity with other workers. Using project records, newspapers, and labor publications, this article reconstructs the history of a new building trade in a period of momentous change in the building industry.
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Pub Date : 2023-09-01DOI: 10.1353/bdl.2023.a911883
Tania Gutiérrez-Monroy
abstract: This article examines the ephemeral architectures and the place-making practices of the women in charge of building the mobile dwellings of military columns during the early twentieth-century Mexican Revolution. During this decade-long civil war, federal and rebel armies mobilized throughout Mexico and were heavily dependent on the services provided by the crowds of working-class women who traveled with them. Better known as soldaderas , these camp followers cared for the daily necessities of cooking, laundry, and health care for soldiers, while also creating ephemeral dwellings for the military columns. These domestic settings developed cyclically in a process of building, using, dismantling, transporting, and building anew. Two different artifacts remained constant and central to the building and rebuilding work of soldaderas: the train car and the shawl. This article analyzes how they worked in tandem with the bodies of soldaderas to produce a domestic architecture in need of constant rebuilding, a domestic architecture whose contingent transformation meaningfully fused the fabrication process and its material malleability. Losing its unity and fixity, this architecture unfolded in a series of domestic and material practices that were no longer contained in a single site and moment.
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Pub Date : 2023-09-01DOI: 10.1353/bdl.2023.a911881
Michael J. Chiarappa
Editor’s Note Michael J. Chiarappa As most readers of Buildings and Landscapes (B&L) know, the Vernacular Architecture Forum (VAF) emerged in 1980 from a cohort of researchers committed to liberating the compelling stories of buildings that were not being given adequate attention, or in some cases were simply being ignored. So, in no small way, while VAF is about buildings, it is also, in equal measure, about building a paradigm that democratizes our considerations regarding what is experienced and meaningful in the widely conceived realms of architectural tradition and cultural landscape. This double issue of B&L reflects these aspirations—both in its content and in the diversity of approaches taken by its authors. Throughout his career, longtime VAF member Joseph Sciorra has dedicated his energy to interpreting Italian American expressive culture, particularly as it has taken shape in the materiality of the group’s vibrant devotional displays of vernacular religiosity. While some Italian American street feasts (feste) honoring the Madonna and other Catholic saints are recognized through their sheer cultural endurance or historical imprint in a community’s collective memory, in other cases, they have gained wider public recognition through depictions in popular culture and cultural revitalization. But it is the “ephemeral constructions,” what Sciorra describes as “decorative illuminations, elaborate sidewalk altars, freestanding multistoried chapels, and various ambulatory structures,” that shape the contours of these ritualistic cultural landscapes. In the first exploration of its kind, Sciorra examines these fleeting material expressions and how they artistically imbue depth in devotions rooted in the Italian immigrant experience. Similarly, the theme of ephemerality is paramount in Tania Gutiérrez-Monroy’s article. She inverts the paradigm of architectural fixity, and instead, looks at place-making as a transient process inextricably connected to the bodies of women—soldaderas—who, while following soldiers, created fleeting domestic settings for them during the early twentieth-century Mexican Revolution. Central in constructing these settings were the improvised use of shawls that covered these women and the train cars that moved the troops. Shawls secured domestic items to women’s bodies and then transitioned to being temporary walls or tents when needed in settings where soldiers camped or were temporarily housed in train cars. The essays by Catherine Bishir and Alexander Wood take us into areas that have been a bedrock of vernacular architecture studies in the United States: the experience and occupational cultures of building artisans. Bishir’s work on enslaved building artisans in antebellum North Carolina has been central in wider national conversations concerning the roles African Americans played in constructing some of the country’s most well-known built environments. Along with illuminating the overlooked skill of enslaved artisans,
{"title":"Editor’s Note","authors":"Michael J. Chiarappa","doi":"10.1353/bdl.2023.a911881","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/bdl.2023.a911881","url":null,"abstract":"Editor’s Note Michael J. Chiarappa As most readers of Buildings and Landscapes (B&L) know, the Vernacular Architecture Forum (VAF) emerged in 1980 from a cohort of researchers committed to liberating the compelling stories of buildings that were not being given adequate attention, or in some cases were simply being ignored. So, in no small way, while VAF is about buildings, it is also, in equal measure, about building a paradigm that democratizes our considerations regarding what is experienced and meaningful in the widely conceived realms of architectural tradition and cultural landscape. This double issue of B&L reflects these aspirations—both in its content and in the diversity of approaches taken by its authors. Throughout his career, longtime VAF member Joseph Sciorra has dedicated his energy to interpreting Italian American expressive culture, particularly as it has taken shape in the materiality of the group’s vibrant devotional displays of vernacular religiosity. While some Italian American street feasts (feste) honoring the Madonna and other Catholic saints are recognized through their sheer cultural endurance or historical imprint in a community’s collective memory, in other cases, they have gained wider public recognition through depictions in popular culture and cultural revitalization. But it is the “ephemeral constructions,” what Sciorra describes as “decorative illuminations, elaborate sidewalk altars, freestanding multistoried chapels, and various ambulatory structures,” that shape the contours of these ritualistic cultural landscapes. In the first exploration of its kind, Sciorra examines these fleeting material expressions and how they artistically imbue depth in devotions rooted in the Italian immigrant experience. Similarly, the theme of ephemerality is paramount in Tania Gutiérrez-Monroy’s article. She inverts the paradigm of architectural fixity, and instead, looks at place-making as a transient process inextricably connected to the bodies of women—soldaderas—who, while following soldiers, created fleeting domestic settings for them during the early twentieth-century Mexican Revolution. Central in constructing these settings were the improvised use of shawls that covered these women and the train cars that moved the troops. Shawls secured domestic items to women’s bodies and then transitioned to being temporary walls or tents when needed in settings where soldiers camped or were temporarily housed in train cars. The essays by Catherine Bishir and Alexander Wood take us into areas that have been a bedrock of vernacular architecture studies in the United States: the experience and occupational cultures of building artisans. Bishir’s work on enslaved building artisans in antebellum North Carolina has been central in wider national conversations concerning the roles African Americans played in constructing some of the country’s most well-known built environments. Along with illuminating the overlooked skill of enslaved artisans,","PeriodicalId":41826,"journal":{"name":"Buildings & Landscapes-Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum","volume":"7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135782506","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-01DOI: 10.1353/bdl.2023.a911887
Robert W. Craig
abstract: One of the largest bodies of descriptive information about the American built environment lies hidden in fire insurance records, especially those from the late eighteenth through the early twentieth centuries. Insurance companies faced a universal need to describe the properties they insured for reasons related to the proper management of their businesses, recording these “risks” in written volumes called policy registers and daily reports and in graphic documents known as insurance surveys. Local insurance agents also kept their own policy registers and sometimes copies of the surveys they produced for the insurance companies. As this case study of research from New Jersey indicates, architectural historians who actively search for surviving collections of fire insurance records will find tremendous reward for their efforts, especially in the discovery of vernacular buildings and landscapes.
{"title":"Fire Insurance Records and the Architectural Historian","authors":"Robert W. Craig","doi":"10.1353/bdl.2023.a911887","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/bdl.2023.a911887","url":null,"abstract":"abstract: One of the largest bodies of descriptive information about the American built environment lies hidden in fire insurance records, especially those from the late eighteenth through the early twentieth centuries. Insurance companies faced a universal need to describe the properties they insured for reasons related to the proper management of their businesses, recording these “risks” in written volumes called policy registers and daily reports and in graphic documents known as insurance surveys. Local insurance agents also kept their own policy registers and sometimes copies of the surveys they produced for the insurance companies. As this case study of research from New Jersey indicates, architectural historians who actively search for surviving collections of fire insurance records will find tremendous reward for their efforts, especially in the discovery of vernacular buildings and landscapes.","PeriodicalId":41826,"journal":{"name":"Buildings & Landscapes-Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum","volume":"36 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135782511","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-01DOI: 10.1353/bdl.2023.a911882
Joseph Sciorra
abstract: During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Italian working-class immigrants in the United States staged religious feste (street feasts) in honor of the Madonna and other Catholic saints to express their beliefs in a socially acceptable, aesthetically pleasing, and recognizable manner. Impermanent edifices and other ephemeral constructions were integral parts of these cultural-religious extravaganzas. Hanging decorative illuminations, elaborate sidewalk altars, freestanding multistoried chapels, and various ambulatory structures were architectural wonders that boldly transformed, sacralized, and claimed American urban landscapes. A vernacular baroque aesthetic permeated the occupation and sacralization of the streets that engendered hallowed and convivial topographies that would have lasting ramifications for how people imagined their lives and neighborhoods. This article examines how these transient objects of devotion, predominantly in East Coast cities, enacted and proclaimed a diasporic community of believers that challenged hegemonic notions of artistry, religion, the built environment, and the public sphere. Ephemeral festival architecture captivated the attention of outsiders, including photographers, journalists, and visual artists, who depicted them in words and imagery. The article also contextualizes this source material as part of the Progressive era’s xenophobic climate and, in particular, the picturesque gaze that racialized and othered Italian immigrants.
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Pub Date : 2023-09-01DOI: 10.1353/bdl.2023.a911886
Catherine W. Bishir
abstract: Central to the construction of much of the architecture of the antebellum South were enslaved artisans in every building trade. A large proportion of these men were hired out as part of an economic system that operated in most slaveholding states, but their importance has seldom been addressed. Using North Carolina as an example, this article explores their work and their experiences.
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Pub Date : 2023-09-01DOI: 10.1353/bdl.2023.a911885
James I. Kelleher
abstract: End-chimney houses were a common form in early New England. This article examines the ways in which these houses were used, based on physical and documentary evidence from southeastern Massachusetts and adjacent regions. Especially in their double-pile variety, these houses accommodated several different types of interior organization, each suggesting a different relation of the occupants to early modern conceptions of space, privacy, and refinement. Work functions such as cooking could be placed “forward” in the house, continuing an essentially medieval conception of the hall as a multipurpose space, or could be removed to the rear of houses. Private spaces such as bedrooms or parlors were often situated beyond or above this hall. Occasionally, concepts of material refinement and privacy were spatially linked, but often they were split, with expensive showpieces like beds appearing in halls, with less refined but more private spaces beyond. The architecture determined the ways in which these houses were used only to a limited extent; the flexibility of the house form was likely a factor in its continuing popularity into the eighteenth century.
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Pub Date : 2023-09-01DOI: 10.1353/bdl.2023.a911892
Germán Pallares-Avitia
Reviewed by: Border Land, Border Water: A History of Construction on the US-Mexico Divide by C. J. Alvarez Germán Pallares-Avitia (bio) C. J. Alvarez Border Land, Border Water: A History of Construction on the US-Mexico Divide Austin: University of Texas Press, 2019 301 pages, 34 black-and-white illustrations, 21 maps ISBN: 9781477319000, $54.00 HB ISBN: 9781477319024, $35.94 PB ISBN: 9781477319031, $29.95 EB During the past few years, a proliferation of publications around border issues were inspired by the racist, anti-immigrant discourse surrounding the United States’ border with México. Scholars, designers, planners, and architects focused on finding solutions to the “border problem”; these solutions typically simplified the México/U.S. border into a line, and the border problems into the figure of the immigrant. Revisions of a border history that focused on the political delineation of the borderline supported the design solution proposed for the border. Although social, political, and anthropological histories of the México/U.S. border have been produced, few books focusing on the history of its built environment have been published. Border Land, Border Water: A History of Construction on the US-Mexico Divide by C. J. Alvarez, an associate professor of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, offers one of the first approaches to the history of construction along the border, emphasizing the infrastructure that helped to define, transform, and secure it. Alvarez’s book, winner of the Vernacular Architecture Forum’s Abbott Lowell Cummings Award in 2020 for the book that made the most significant contribution to the study of vernacular architecture and cultural landscapes, examines the American and Mexican governments’ efforts to build infrastructure along the border, with a primary focus on the American side. These projects, intended to control and modify nature, were seen as modernizing agents. Controlling the unruly and unpredictable nature of rivers, deserts, plains, and mountains symbolized dominance of the colonialist nation-state over the uncivilized natural environment. Over time, these projects led to the development of infrastructure that varied from divisive to transformative and connective. Border Land, Border Water brings into perspective the politics of the binational negotiations that these projects demanded. It explores how, in the construction of the borderline, both countries constructed infrastructure that reflected the different foreign policies of the historical periods when they were built. Alvarez especially focuses on bringing to light the American political apparatus behind the infrastructural projects for water works, dams, bridges, and highways that delineated the border. By acknowledging the borderline as a capitalist colonial structure that is anchored in land grabbing, private property, and control, Alvarez historicizes its mechanisms for controlling the flow of nature, people, a
{"title":"Border Land, Border Water: A History of Construction on the US-Mexico Divide by C. J. Alvarez (review)","authors":"Germán Pallares-Avitia","doi":"10.1353/bdl.2023.a911892","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/bdl.2023.a911892","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Border Land, Border Water: A History of Construction on the US-Mexico Divide by C. J. Alvarez Germán Pallares-Avitia (bio) C. J. Alvarez Border Land, Border Water: A History of Construction on the US-Mexico Divide Austin: University of Texas Press, 2019 301 pages, 34 black-and-white illustrations, 21 maps ISBN: 9781477319000, $54.00 HB ISBN: 9781477319024, $35.94 PB ISBN: 9781477319031, $29.95 EB During the past few years, a proliferation of publications around border issues were inspired by the racist, anti-immigrant discourse surrounding the United States’ border with México. Scholars, designers, planners, and architects focused on finding solutions to the “border problem”; these solutions typically simplified the México/U.S. border into a line, and the border problems into the figure of the immigrant. Revisions of a border history that focused on the political delineation of the borderline supported the design solution proposed for the border. Although social, political, and anthropological histories of the México/U.S. border have been produced, few books focusing on the history of its built environment have been published. Border Land, Border Water: A History of Construction on the US-Mexico Divide by C. J. Alvarez, an associate professor of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, offers one of the first approaches to the history of construction along the border, emphasizing the infrastructure that helped to define, transform, and secure it. Alvarez’s book, winner of the Vernacular Architecture Forum’s Abbott Lowell Cummings Award in 2020 for the book that made the most significant contribution to the study of vernacular architecture and cultural landscapes, examines the American and Mexican governments’ efforts to build infrastructure along the border, with a primary focus on the American side. These projects, intended to control and modify nature, were seen as modernizing agents. Controlling the unruly and unpredictable nature of rivers, deserts, plains, and mountains symbolized dominance of the colonialist nation-state over the uncivilized natural environment. Over time, these projects led to the development of infrastructure that varied from divisive to transformative and connective. Border Land, Border Water brings into perspective the politics of the binational negotiations that these projects demanded. It explores how, in the construction of the borderline, both countries constructed infrastructure that reflected the different foreign policies of the historical periods when they were built. Alvarez especially focuses on bringing to light the American political apparatus behind the infrastructural projects for water works, dams, bridges, and highways that delineated the border. By acknowledging the borderline as a capitalist colonial structure that is anchored in land grabbing, private property, and control, Alvarez historicizes its mechanisms for controlling the flow of nature, people, a","PeriodicalId":41826,"journal":{"name":"Buildings & Landscapes-Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135782510","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-01DOI: 10.1353/bdl.2023.a911893
Robin B. Williams
Reviewed by: Modern Mobility Aloft: Elevated Highways, Architecture, and Urban Change in Pre-Interstate America by Amy D. Finstein Robin B. Williams (bio) Amy D. Finstein Modern Mobility Aloft: Elevated Highways, Architecture, and Urban Change in Pre-Interstate America Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2020 xi + 289 pages, 114 black-and-white illustrations ISBN: 9781439919187, $29.95 PB ISBN: 9781439919170, $115.50 HB ISBN: 9781439919194, $29.95 EB Amy D. Finstein’s Modern Mobility Aloft: Elevated Highways, Architecture, and Urban Change in Pre-Interstate America is a welcome addition to the growing body of literature on the impact of automobiles on the American built environment that includes suburbanization and large-scale highway systems.1 Instead of the broad national scope of most studies, Finstein offers a doubly focused approach, analyzing a specific type of automobile infrastructure—the elevated urban highway—through three early examples: Wacker Drive in Chicago, the West Side (or Miller) [End Page 153] Highway in New York, and the Central Artery in Boston. Her sharper focus allows her to unpack the complexities of urban highway construction at the local level. Yet, by exploring the topic across three different cities spanning roughly sixty years, she adeptly reveals the diversity of challenges and responses to accommodating the automobile. Most refreshing is her analysis of the highways as built form and their relationship to contemporaneous trends in architecture. Finstein draws on the methodology employed by Leo Marx in The Machine in the Garden, which analyzed how the intrusion of the railroad onto the American frontier served as an expression of modernity that shaped the public’s view and use of the American landscape. As she notes, “This book builds on Marx’s pivotal model by positioning the rise of the automobile and its representation of machined progress as the twentieth-century equivalent of his paradigm” (11). Her study enriches the understanding of elevated urban highways as more than engineering projects to address their civic and social objectives and ramifications. Organized into three sections, the book achieves a successful balance between surveying the broader context of the emerging technologies reshaping cities, including automobiles, and providing a focused analysis of the three elevated highway case studies. The first section involves a thorough discussion of “three innovations that radically and successively altered the basis of urban life and urban form”—the railroad, the skyscraper, and the automobile—and that responded to the growing desire for technology, speed, and privatization (15). Finstein insightfully connects the desire for speed in nineteenth-century rail-based transit systems to the rapid evolution of technologies relating to business recordkeeping, telecommunications, and commerce that drove demand for office buildings. Facilitating their upward growth and more rapid internal movement, the elevato
{"title":"Modern Mobility Aloft: Elevated Highways, Architecture, and Urban Change in Pre-Interstate America by Amy D. Finstein (review)","authors":"Robin B. Williams","doi":"10.1353/bdl.2023.a911893","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/bdl.2023.a911893","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Modern Mobility Aloft: Elevated Highways, Architecture, and Urban Change in Pre-Interstate America by Amy D. Finstein Robin B. Williams (bio) Amy D. Finstein Modern Mobility Aloft: Elevated Highways, Architecture, and Urban Change in Pre-Interstate America Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2020 xi + 289 pages, 114 black-and-white illustrations ISBN: 9781439919187, $29.95 PB ISBN: 9781439919170, $115.50 HB ISBN: 9781439919194, $29.95 EB Amy D. Finstein’s Modern Mobility Aloft: Elevated Highways, Architecture, and Urban Change in Pre-Interstate America is a welcome addition to the growing body of literature on the impact of automobiles on the American built environment that includes suburbanization and large-scale highway systems.1 Instead of the broad national scope of most studies, Finstein offers a doubly focused approach, analyzing a specific type of automobile infrastructure—the elevated urban highway—through three early examples: Wacker Drive in Chicago, the West Side (or Miller) [End Page 153] Highway in New York, and the Central Artery in Boston. Her sharper focus allows her to unpack the complexities of urban highway construction at the local level. Yet, by exploring the topic across three different cities spanning roughly sixty years, she adeptly reveals the diversity of challenges and responses to accommodating the automobile. Most refreshing is her analysis of the highways as built form and their relationship to contemporaneous trends in architecture. Finstein draws on the methodology employed by Leo Marx in The Machine in the Garden, which analyzed how the intrusion of the railroad onto the American frontier served as an expression of modernity that shaped the public’s view and use of the American landscape. As she notes, “This book builds on Marx’s pivotal model by positioning the rise of the automobile and its representation of machined progress as the twentieth-century equivalent of his paradigm” (11). Her study enriches the understanding of elevated urban highways as more than engineering projects to address their civic and social objectives and ramifications. Organized into three sections, the book achieves a successful balance between surveying the broader context of the emerging technologies reshaping cities, including automobiles, and providing a focused analysis of the three elevated highway case studies. The first section involves a thorough discussion of “three innovations that radically and successively altered the basis of urban life and urban form”—the railroad, the skyscraper, and the automobile—and that responded to the growing desire for technology, speed, and privatization (15). Finstein insightfully connects the desire for speed in nineteenth-century rail-based transit systems to the rapid evolution of technologies relating to business recordkeeping, telecommunications, and commerce that drove demand for office buildings. Facilitating their upward growth and more rapid internal movement, the elevato","PeriodicalId":41826,"journal":{"name":"Buildings & Landscapes-Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135782513","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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