Re-creating the American Past: Essays on the Colonial Revival

by Richard Guy Wilson (Editor), Shaun Eyring (Editor)

Overview

Although individually and collectively Americans have many histories, the dominant view of our national past focuses on the colonial era. The reasons for this are many and complex, touching on stories of the country's origins and of the founding fathers, the privileged position in history granted the thirteen original colonies, and the ways in which the nation has adjusted to change and modernity. But no matter the cause, the result is obvious: images and forms derived from and related to America's colonial past are the single most popular form of cultural expression.

Often conceived solely in architectural terms, from the red-brick and white-trimmed buildings that recall eighteenth-century James River estates to the clapboarded saltboxes that recall early New England, Colonial Revival is in fact better understood as a process of remembering. In Re-creating the American Past, architectural historian Richard Guy Wilson and a host of other scholars examine how and why Colonial Revival has persisted in modern times. The volume contains essays that explore Colonial Revival expressions in architecture, landscape architecture, historic preservation, decorative arts, and painting and sculpture, as well as the social, intellectual, and cultural background of the phenomena.

Based on the University of Virginia's landmark 2000 conference "The Colonial Revival in America," Re-creating the American Past is a comprehensive and handsome volume that recovers the origins, characteristics, diversity, and significance of the Colonial Revival, situating it within the broader history of American design, culture, and society.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813923482
Publisher:	University of Virginia Press
Publication date:	02/16/2006
Pages:	432
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.25(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Richard Guy Wilson is Commonwealth Professor of Architectural History at the University of Virginia and author of The Colonial Revival House among other books. Shaun Eyring is Manager, Resource Planning and Compliance, Northeast Region, National Park Service. Kenny Marotta is a writer and editor living in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Table of Contents

	Introduction: What Is the Colonial Revival?	1
	The Persistence of the Colonial Revival
1	The Long and Unsuccessful Effort to Kill Off the Colonial Revival	13
	Colonial Revivalists
2	Consumed by the Past: Wallace Nutting and the Invention of Old America	29
3	Candace Wheeler and the New Old-Fashioned Home	40
4	Jens Fredrick Larson and Colonial Revival	53
5	Ellen Biddle Shipman's Colonial Revival Garden Style	67
	The Role of the Federal Government
6	The Architecture of Efficiency: The U.S. Army and the Colonial Revival Style in the West	83
7	A "Portrait of a Nation": The Role of the Historic American Buildings Survey in the Colonial Revival	99
8	The Mills Connection: Colonial Revival and Institutional Survival in the 1930s	118
9	The American Parkway as Colonial Revival Landscape	140
	Preservation Practices and the Colonial Revival
10	Reviving Colonials and Reviving as Colonial	167
11	Colonial Georgetown: The Power of Myth	180
12	"One of the Fairest Spots on the Atlantic Coast": The Colonial Revival and Long Island's Modernization, 1880-1942	200
13	George Washington Birthplace National Monument: Provenance of a Colonial Revival Commemorative Landscape	216
	Replicas
14	Virginia House: The Reconstruction of Social and Historical Narratives	237
15	The Marie Zimmermann House: Engaging Dutch Colonial History in Situ	255
16	Creating a "Dignified Home": Richard Henry Dana Jr. and the New York Headquarters of the National Society of Colonial Dames, 1928-1930	269
17	"For the Children Out Here": Re-creating the Gardens of Mount Vernon on the Bluffs of the Missouri River in Omaha, Nebraska	284
18	Louis Bromfield's Big House at Malabar Farm: Form Follows Fiction	303
	Interiors
19	The Concept of Hand Production in Colonial Revival Interiors	321
20	Advertising Gentility: Ovals and Mass Market Women's Magazines, 1910-1960	336
21	"To Keep Up the Delusion": Henry W. Longfellow's House and Furnishings and the Colonial Revival	351
	Translations of the Colonial Revival
22	Sunny Spain or Our Algeria: The Other Colonial Revival	367
23	American Colonial Homes Migrate to France	390
	Notes on the Contributors	407
	Index	413

What People are Saying About This

""This important volume identifies the Colonial Revival as the most widespread and persistent (and perhaps the most mischaracterized and underappreciated) cultural impulse in the history of American art and design. These essays address the pressing need for more scholarship on this varied and durable expression, and they explore the role of Colonial Revival in the construction and preservation of American history and identity. Wilson and Eyring have made a substantial contribution to our understanding of twentieth-century American design that will be of particular interest to those in the field of historic preservation." -- Ethan CarrUniversity of Massachusetts, author of Wilderness by Design

Ethan CarrUniversity of Massachusetts

"This important volume identifies the Colonial Revival as the most widespread and persistent (and perhaps the most mischaracterized and underappreciated) cultural impulse in the history of American art and design. These essays address the pressing need for more scholarship on this varied and durable expression, and they explore the role of Colonial Revival in the construction and preservation of American history and identity. Wilson and Eyring have made a substantial contribution to our understanding of twentieth-century American design that will be of particular interest to those in the field of historic preservation.

Michael Kammen

Re-creating the American Past, a genuinely major achievement, provides a rich and fresh look at the diversity, complexity, and pervasive appeal of the Colonial revival in American cultural life. These essays and well-documented case studies offer us a kaleidoscopic vision of the multifaceted phenomenon. This volume is an invaluable resource that will be admired and mined for decades to come.

Editorial Reviews

"This important volume identifies the Colonial Revival as the most widespread and persistent (and perhaps the most mischaracterized and underappreciated) cultural impulse in the history of American art and design. These essays address the pressing need for more scholarship on this varied and durable expression, and they explore the role of Colonial Revival in the construction and preservation of American history and identity. Wilson and Eyring have made a substantial contribution to our understanding of twentieth-century American design that will be of particular interest to those in the field of historic preservation.

Ethan CarrUniversity of Massachusetts

Re-creating the American Past, a genuinely major achievement, provides a rich and fresh look at the diversity, complexity, and pervasive appeal of the Colonial revival in American cultural life. These essays and well-documented case studies offer us a kaleidoscopic vision of the multifaceted phenomenon. This volume is an invaluable resource that will be admired and mined for decades to come.

Michael Kammen

"Re-creating the American Past, a genuinely major achievement, provides a rich and fresh look at the diversity, complexity, and pervasive appeal of the Colonial revival in American cultural life. These essays and well-documented case studies offer us a kaleidoscopic vision of the multifaceted phenomenon. This volume is an invaluable resource that will be admired and mined for decades to come. "—Michael Kammen, Cornell University, past president of the Organization of American Historians

From the Publisher