Editors Note

Since our first issue, we at Early American Studies have prided ourselves on the illustrations that adorn our covers. We have sought out images to catch our readers' attention, give a hint of what lies inside, and draw readers' minds to a study of the past. But no image gives us more pride than this issue's cover: the newly completed home of the McNeil Center for Early American Studies. Indeed, this image is a deviation from our past covers. They have drawn our attention to the past; looking at the new building, we cannot help but think about the future.

The building was officially dedicated on December 2, 2005. University of Pennsylvania President Amy Gutmann joined the Center's benefactor, Robert L. McNeil, in the official ribbon cutting, held during the "Faces and Places in Early America" conference organized for the occasion by Margaretta M. Lovell of the University of California, Berkeley, and this journal's editor. While the new facility is incredibly spacious, we taxed its spaces to the limit during that conference, showing that the field of interdisciplinary early American studies is very much alive and well. We are now planning a volume of papers drawn from that conference.

The building is a magnificent structure to behold. Designed by Robert A. M. Stern and Associates, the first floor has a classroom/seminar room with the latest in audiovisual technologies; kitchen facilities for the Center's regular social hours; and spacious offices for the Center's director, associate director, and office staff. These rooms surround a central entrance hall of lovely late-Georgian proportions, elegant columns, and comfortable seating areas for Center fellows and guests. Portraits of Robert L. McNeil, Jr., and Richard S. Dunn, by artist Rita Natarova, flank the entrance to the Stephanie Grauman Wolf Room, a seventy-seat space for the regular meetings of the McNeil Center seminars. The room, named in honor of one of the Center's "founding mothers" is a fantastic space for discussion and debate at the McNeil Center's signature Friday afternoon seminars.

The second floor of the $6 million, 12,000 square foot building includes private offices for seventeen fellows (including—at last—an editorial office for this journal). Additional offices provide scholarly work space for up to four researchers. These offices surround a spacious library, finally providing a permanent home for the Center's previously scattered collection of books. Library shelves are being filled by donations to the Center, and additional volumes will be purchased through contributions to the Richard S. Dunn Book Fund.

Funding for the building was provided by Robert L. McNeil, Jr., the Barra Foundation, the University of Pennsylvania, and Penn's School of Arts and Sciences.