New Spring 2010 Course Offering:

History of the American House, 1550-1950

MUSE 780 - Professor Dennis Domer

“and if we could in some way find a way to understand the significance of artifacts as they were thought of and used by Americans in the past, we might gain new insight into the history of our nation”  (James Deetz, In Small Things Forgotten).

 This course surveys the history of American houses. While various approaches to studying the history of American houses will be encouraged, this course assumes that the architecture of houses is one of many interrelated forms of cultural expression and that the significance of the material culture of houses rests within its complex cultural context. 

 Most of the houses in the United States from 1550 to 1950 are vernacular houses not designed by architects. They are common buildings not made for kings and queens or presidents and senators but rather for ordinary people who always make up the overwhelming majority of the population.  For that reason, the interpretation of most houses in this seminar must reveal their time, place, technological features and details, social conditions, designers, makers, inhabitants, materials, building processes, and uses within the thick culture of everyday life more than their stylistic expressions.  Aesthetic qualities are almost always present in material culture, even in common buildings, and more especially in the elite high style houses that architects designed.  In spite of their obvious differences, vernacular houses and high style houses of America have much in common, and they influence each other significantly.

 Students will become familiar with major literature on American houses, some of the most recent interpretations of the architecture of houses from 1550 to 1950, and the economic, geographic, social, political, and technological forces that merged to form house architecture over the past 400 years.  The course will encourage students to consider broad cultural patterns in their evaluations of individual houses and incorporate these considerations into their essays. 

Specifically, this course will introduce students to:

• Kaw Indian houses and teepees compared to pueblos of New Mexico, including the successful transformation of vernacular traditions into contemporary Santa Fe houses
• Early vernacular houses operating as extensions of European building cultures—especially English, Spanish, German, Dutch, and French—and how they were modified over time based on American contingencies
• African houses, modified by Caribbean and European influences that helped to create a powerful Creole tradition, and how this tradition influenced American building 
• European Neoclassicism and its effects on the facades and interior plans and details of Georgian, Federal, and Vernacular houses  
• Vernacular and high style houses that flourished in the cultural processes of architectural revivalism during the 19th Century
• Modern houses of the 20th century, especially the Prairie School, Bauhaus, the Environmental School, and suburban houses
• Issues of gender, race, and ethnicity and their intersections with the architecture of American houses