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Journal of American Folklore 116.459 (2003) 116-117



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Architecture in the United States. By Dell Upton. (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Pp. 335, introduction, b&w and color photographs, bibliographical references, bibliographic essay, index, map, illustrations, floorplans.)

As its title suggests, Architecture in the United States is an ambitious work, and there are few scholars as qualified to undertake such a project as Dell Upton, a distinguished scholar of American architectural history who, having a background in American studies, is as knowledgeable in vernacular architecture as high style. The book is structured into five themes: Community, Nature, Technology, Money, and Art. The usefulness of this technique becomes apparent as one progresses through the book and realizes that Upton discusses not only houses and farm and commercial buildings but also landscape architecture, gardens, bridges, public sculpture, and whole cities. His thematic structure is also well coordinated with his intention to examine architecture not primarily as a form of art but as an integral part of social and economic history.

The first chapter, "An American Icon," is devoted to the house. Upton's discussion of this elemental unit of architecture and its importance per the primary social structure of the family is an effective introduction to the broad topic of architecture in relationship to society. While much of the chapter focuses on examples of elite houses, in particular Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, Upton incorporates much essential information about folk houses into his interpretations. This chapter, like the succeeding five, follows a loose chronological orientation in its analysis of several examples of homes from the seventeenth to twentieth centuries, while integrating discussion of form and style with social and economic processes.

Chapter 2, "Community," examines monumental architecture ranging from Native American earthworks and courthouse square models to state and federal capitols, memorials, and other public buildings, connecting them to issues such as the metaphor of the ancestral homeland, the Colonial Revival, planned communities, and other architectural definitions of community. In chapter 3, "Nature," Upton posits a theological role for nature with respect to American architecture because of the enormous influence of the wilderness on the identity of the country. From first settlement onwards, architecture "was an ally against nature" (p. 107). He contrasts this attitude, and its reflection in architecture, with that of Native Americans and their built environment. By the nineteenth century, the dynamic relationship between nature and culture was expressed in the creation of urban parks, suburban homes and movements such as the Picturesque, Primitivism, and Arts and Crafts, whose most notable product was the ubiquitous bungalow.

Chapter 4, "Technology," begins with a description of traditional timber framing and its evolution in the nineteenth century into balloon framing and prefabrication. Upton neglects those muddy realms of interest to the folk architecture scholar, such as why many farmers still built heavy, timber-frame, pegged barns well into the twentieth century. He moves quickly to discussion of industrial buildings and bridges, connecting Americans' fascination with technology to the aesthetic category of the Sublime. Finally, Upton analyzes Utopianism and Consumerism in architecture and their connection to industrial design and notable architects such as Buckminster Fuller. Chapter 5, "Money," segues naturally from the previous chapter: after an elaborate discussion of Pueblo Indian towns and their relationship to their society and economy, Upton describes the growth of major American cities and the role of commerce in that growth. This "cultural construction of economic life" (p. 207) culminated in the skyscraper and is intricately connected to what Upton calls "the moral authority of Capitalism" [End Page 116] (p. 223). From there he moves to an architectural interpretation of shopping malls and markets.

The concluding chapter, "Art," begins by examining the historical conception of architecture. American architecture as a profession began in the nineteenth century and, as the century progressed, the architect's role became increasingly divorced from that of the builder. Upton connects this progression to "the growing separation of head-work from handwork in all segments of the American economy" (p. 254). However, architecture as a profession had inherited a special status, like...

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