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Thematic Essays
Essays in SAH Archipedia are broadly grouped as either place-based or thematic. Place-based essays include overviews of architecture in specific U.S. states and cities. Thematic essays examine architectural and urban issues within and across state and regional boundaries. Like individual building entries, essays are accompanied by rich subject metadata, so you can browse them by style, type, and period. SAH Archipedia essays are comprised of peer-reviewed scholarship (born-digital and print-based) contributed by architectural historians nationwide.
BEER AND BREWERIES IN WISCONSIN
By: Marsha Weisiger and Contributors
Milwaukee dominated America’s beer-brewing industry in the nineteenth...
Black Travelers On and Off the Road
By: Jennifer Reut
Roadside architecture, which had its heyday from World War II until the late 1960s,...
BLUE RIDGE PARKWAY
By: Anne Carter Lee
The construction of a 469-mile-long linear park, linking Shenandoah National Park and its Skyline Drive...
Born to Build: Theodate Pope Riddle
By: Judith Paine McBrien
Gifted by a sense of spatial design, fascinated by construction, and...
BRANDYWINE PARK
By: W. Barksdale Maynard
Brandywine Creek had long afforded Wilmingtonians with recreation: walks, picnics, bathing, skating....
BRATTLEBORO'S MAIN STREET BUSINESS BLOCKS
By: Glenn M. Andres and Curtis B. Johnson
The three blocks of Brattleboro's Main Street between...
BURLINGTON'S QUEEN ANNE HOUSES
By: Glenn M. Andres and Curtis B. Johnson
The expansion of Burlington's post–Civil War lumber industry...
California Missions
By: Heather N. McMahon
Beginning in the mid-eighteenth century and extending into the early nineteenth century,...
CAMP MEETINGS
By: W. Barksdale Maynard
Lower Delmarva was a center of early Methodism—21 percent of its adults were Methodist by 1810—and...
CHESAPEAKE AND DELAWARE CANAL
By: W. Barksdale Maynard
So potently does the canal divide Delaware into northern and southern cultural zones,...
COBBLESTONE BUILDINGS
By: Marsha Weisiger and Contributors
Cobblestone buildings are rare in the United States. They mostly occur in areas...
COURTHOUSES AND SQUARES
By: Gerald Moorhead et al.
The county courthouse set in its town square is the centerpiece of Texas architecture and urbanism....
DANVILLE'S TOBACCO DISTRICT
By: Anne Carter Lee
Tobacco and Danville grew together. By the mid-nineteenth century, the thin, marginally...
DU PONT COUNTRY ESTATES
By: W. Barksdale Maynard
According to Winterthur Museum historian Margaret Lidz, Delaware's Chateau Country...
Du Pont Highway
By: W. Barksdale Maynard
T. Coleman du Pont will always be remembered for his highway (U.S. 13 and 113) that...
FEDERAL FORT PLANNING IN TEXAS: HISTORY
By: Gerald Moorhead et al.
The frontier forts the U.S. Army built in Texas between 1849 and 1870 helped secure...
Federal Influence in Maryland
By: Lisa Pfueller Davidson and Catherine C. Lavoie
From the moment of its founding in 1790, the District of Columbia...
FLORA AND LANDSCAPE DESIGN
By: Don J. Hibbard
A horticulturist's delight, the flora of Hawaii is as cosmopolitan as its human population. During...
Googie Architecture
By: Bart Bryant-Mole
In the postwar period, with industry in California booming, migrating workers...
GROUT BUILDINGS
By: Marsha Weisiger and Contributors
Grout, a form of poured concrete, was briefly popular as a building material in the mid-...
Gulf Coast Tribes
By: Willa Granger
Scholars often subdivide the study of Native American culture into vast, multistate regions, including the...
Hidden Power: Louise Bethune in Plain Sight
By: Annie Sloan Schentag
Over the last two decades, Louise Blanchard Bethune has increasingly...
Historic Preservation in Savannah
By: Robin B. Williams
Few cities in America enjoy so distinctive an urban identity as Savannah, with its...
KENTMERE PARKWAY AND ROCKFORD PARK
By: W. Barksdale Maynard
Breaking with the city grid, the sinuous Kentmere Parkway was meant to connect the...
Lustron Houses in West Virginia
By: Rhonda L. Reymond
West Virginians have one of the highest rates of home ownership in the United States...
MARYLAND WOOD BOATBUILDING
By: Lisa Pfueller Davidson and Catherine C. Lavoie
Situated along the Chesapeake Bay, the world’s largest estuary...
MILL NEIGHBORHOODS
By: Glenn M. Andres and Curtis B. Johnson
Bennington retains a coherent pattern of nineteenth-century mill neighborhoods, with...
MODERNISM IN DELAWARE
By: W. Barksdale Maynard
As with states farther south, architectural modernism took only shallow root in Delaware and was...
MURALS IN ARKANSAS
By: Cyrus A. Sutherland with Gregory Herman, Claudia Shannon, Jean Sizemore, Jeannie M. Whayne and Contributors
...
New Canaan Modernism
By: Patricia Seto-Weiss
In the late 1940s, Modernism arrived in New Canaan in full force. Architect and Harvard...
OCTAGONAL HOUSES
By: Marsha Weisiger and Contributors
Octagonal houses enjoyed widespread popularity in the mid-nineteenth century, thanks...
POHAKU (STONE)
By: Don J. Hibbard
Pohaku is the Hawaiian word for stone. Deriving from lava and the coral reef, the types of stone locally...
Project 80s and the Reshaping of Anchorage
By: Ian C. Hartman
In the late 1890s and early 1900s, Alaska experienced one of North America’s greatest gold...
Public Housing in California
By: Carolyn Stuart
Public housing in California and, indeed, nationwide, saw its first major...
Residential Architecture in Territorial Hawaii
By: Alison Chiu
Within a small collection of house renderings found in newspapers dating circa...
Roadside Motels
By: Megan Kendrick
In light of California’s cultural associations with the automobile, it is no wonder that the...
ROUND BARNS
By: Marsha Weisiger and Contributors
As Wisconsin’s farmers made the transition from wheat farming to dairying at the turn of the...
SHENANDOAH NATIONAL PARK
By: Anne Carter Lee
Nature, art, and politics came together to create Shenandoah National Park and its signature feature...
TEXAS DANCE HALLS
By: Gerald Moorhead et al.
Often beginning as small outposts surrounded by farms or ranches, towns were established throughout...
TEXAS PARKS AND THE CCC
By: Gerald Moorhead et al.
The familiar 1930s “rustic” buildings and landscapes in national, state, and local parks emerged from...
The Chesapeake House
By: Lisa Pfueller Davidson and Catherine C. Lavoie
The term “Chesapeake” has been applied to a basic house form...
THE DU PONT FAMILY AND ARCHITECTURE
By: W. Barksdale Maynard
This genealogy is limited to the du Ponts mentioned in Buildings of Delaware...
THE FAUX BOIS ART OF DIONICIO RODRÍGUEZ
By: Gerald Moorhead et al.
Mexican artisan Dionicio Rodríguez (1891–1955) is known as the most “...
The Five-Part Palladian House
By: Lisa Pfueller Davidson and Catherine C. Lavoie
Among Maryland’s most distinctive domestic building...
THE HAWAIIAN ROOF
By: Don J. Hibbard
The 1920s and 1930s were a time when consideration of Hawaii's strong sense of place—its environment, local...
THE HONOLULU BOARD OF WATER SUPPLY
By: Don J. Hibbard
A public water supply system was not established for Honolulu until 1848. Prior to that time, people dwelling in the area...
THE KING RANCH
By: Gerald Moorhead et al.
Founded by Captain Richard King in 1853, the ranch originated with his purchase of the Santa Gertrudis land...
The Land-Grant Campus
By: J. Philip Gruen
The land-grant campus is, perhaps, the nation’s vernacular campus. Seemingly lacking...
The Making and Unmaking of the Nation’s Northernmost Black Community
By: David Reamer and Ian C. Hartman
Before the establishment of Anchorage in 1915, what is today the...
Tobacco and Tobacco Barns in Virginia
By: Anne Carter Lee
Tobacco barns, once ubiquitous in Southside and the southern Piedmont, are fast...
Women and Delaware Architecture
By: W. Barksdale Maynard
Greenville socialite Mary Wilson Thompson was proud of having designed her own house...
“FLAME OF FAITH”: RELIGIOUS ARCHITECTURE
By: Steve C. Martens and Ronald H. L. M. Ramsay
North Dakota might be called the “Land of Luther and Leo,” with...