HST-296 Building Urban America: City Design and Architecture From 1700-1880
From the ancient cliff dwellings of the Pueblo people to the neoclassical forms of temples and monuments to the iconic nineteenth-century street grid, Americans have built cities distinguished by architectural creativity and international influence. This course explores the design history of the buildings and landscapes of America’s early cities from the pre-contact period through the 1850s. Each week students will study a different American city and its global design influences to learn about the environmental, architectural, social, and political forces that shaped these places. We’ll consider how scholars in the fields of vernacular architecture, the Atlantic World, the Broader Caribbean, and the Global South approach the study of the built environment. Students will practice the techniques used by historians, preservationists, and urban planners to examine the built environment and to find traces of this history in today’s cities.