The New England Society of Architectural Historians is headed to Provincetown, Massachusetts on October 12, 2024 for a day of tours, discussions, and adventure!

Located at the northerly tip of Cape Cod, Provincetown is the site of the initial landing of the Mayflower in 1620 and where the Mayflower Compact was drafted and declared.

From the landmarks of Provincetown's West End, to the legendary artist dune shacks in the Cape Cod National Seashore, we are excited to experience these opportunities. 
The cost for members is $75 and does not include lodging. 
To Register, go to A Day in Provincetown 
For more information or questions, please email nesah.president@gmail.com

NE/SAH is pleased to host a lecture from our 2023 John Coolidge Fellowship recipient, Carter Jackson of Boston University. 

Thursday, September 12
7:00 pm

Presented via Zoom. Pre-registration for this free event is required. Please register here!

In the 1890s, the British Empire covered nearly one quarter of the globe, but it faced growing dissent in its colonies and challenges to its hegemony. In response to these concerns, a massive building complex called the Imperial Institute opened in London in 1893. Its program included conference rooms, emigration and intelligence offices, as well as galleries of natural resources from the colonies—all of which were intended to serve as a “permanent binding force” for the Empire. However, the Imperial Institute never achieved its unifying purpose, and it has long been deemed an ill-conceived one-off and a failure. 

The 2023 John Coolidge Research Fellowship supported archival research for Carter’s doctoral dissertation, which includes an investigation of the Imperial Institute and similar institutional buildings. His lecture aims to situate the Imperial Institute within the longer, largely overlooked history of similar institutional buildings in Britain and its colonies. It will also explore the ambitions and assumptions that underpinned the Institute’s design and how they ironically thwarted its mission.

Carter Jackson is a PhD candidate in the History of Art and Architecture at Boston University. His dissertation, entitled “The Architecture of Britain’s Imperial Institutes and the Misgivings of Empire,” explores the privately funded institutional buildings that once served as the scientific, social, and economic centers that helped make Britain’s Empire tangible and facilitated its development. Carter has worked with architecture in the context of museums and historic preservation through internships and fellowships at Historic New England, the Library of Congress, the Massachusetts Historical Commission, the MIT Museum, and the Victoria and Albert Museum.

The Fellowship Committee of the New England chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians (NESAH) is pleased to announce Olivia Wynne Houck as the recipient of the 2024 John Coolidge Research Fellowship.

Olivia Wynne Houck is a PHD candidate in the History of Architecture program at MIT, where she focuses on the intersection of the built environment, diplomacy, and geopolitics during the Cold War. She is particularly interested in the interplay between NATO, American and Nordic foreign policies, technology, and infrastructure in the European and North American Arctics. Entitled “Concrete Security: NATO as a Territorial Project, 1940-1960,” she employs the methodologies and considerations of the built environment to interrogate diplomatic exchanges between the United States and other NATO member nations, particularly Iceland, Norway, and Denmark, within the venue of NATO. She considers how structures related to militarization, especially the military base, caused friction between NATO members, and how this necessitated the alliance’s interrogation of larger questions about policy, politics, sovereignty, and territory.She also explores how a historical focus on the built environment can be used to contribute to current policy analysis, especially with regards to national security. She holds a B.A. in Art History from the College of William and Mary, a M.A. in Architectural History from the University of Virginia. The John Coolidge Research Fellowship will allow her to consult the NATO Archives in Brussels. 

Olivia will give a lecture for NESAH upon completion of her research.

Congratulations Olivia!

The Fellowship Committee of the New England chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians (NESAH) is pleased to announce Phoebe Springstubb as the recipient of the 2024 Robert Rettig Student Annual Meeting Fellowship.

Phoebe Springstubb is a PhD candidate in the History, Theory, and Criticism of Architecture at MIT. Her dissertation examines the role of ephemeral architecture, infrastructure-building, and politics of time in conceptualizing the North American Arctic’s deep past. More broadly, she researches the built and natural environments of the nineteenth and twentieth-century Circumpolar North, with a particular interest in connections between Alaska and Siberia. Before beginning her studies at MIT, she was a curatorial assistant in the Department of Architecture and Design at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Her writing has appeared in Architectural Theory Review, Journal of Architectural Education, a Canadian Centre for Architecture web issue, and elsewhere.

At the SAH Conference, Phoebe will present one of her dissertation chapters on a panel called “Institutions of Life: Architecture and the Life Sciences.” Phoebe's paper, “‘They builde with whale bones’: Whaling and the Construction of a Useable Past in the North American Arctic,” will contribute research on a geography that is still little studied by architectural history—Alaska and the Arctic.

Congratulations Phoebe!

Saturday, March 9, 2024
1:00 - 4:00 pm

First Church in Roxbury
10 Putnam Street, Boston, MA 02119

REGISTER HERE

Please save the date of Saturday, March 9, 2024, for the 2024 Annual Meeting! We have some very exciting plans in the works and will be announcing the details shortly.

Please note: If you are not a current member but are interested in joining or renewing your membership with NESAH, please visit our Membership tab!

NE/SAH is pleased to host a lecture from our 2022 John Coolidge Fellowship recipient, Chelsea Spencer of MIT. 

Tuesday, January 16
7:00 pm

Presented via Zoom. Pre-registration for this free event is required. Please register here!

The 2022 John Coolidge Research Fellowship supported Chelsea’s archival fieldwork, sending her to Pittsburgh to study the construction records of the Frick Building, a twenty-story office building still standing in Downtown Pittsburgh.

Managed by the George A. Fuller Company, construction of the Frick Building began in 1901 and was completed by 1903, leaving behind an unusually voluminous archive and an acrid dispute between the Fuller Company and its client, the wealthy industrialist Henry Clay Frick. Chelsea used this archive as a window onto the operations of what was then the largest, most well-capitalized construction company in the United States at a pivotal moment in the firm’s history. On January 16th, Chelsea will give a virtual talk to share more about what she found in the archive and how it will contribute to her dissertation project.

Chelsea Spencer is a PhD candidate in the History, Theory, and Criticism of Architecture and Art at MIT. Her dissertation, titled “The Contract, the Contractor, and the Capitalization of American Building, 1873–1930,” traces the rise of general contracting in the United States. Her research more generally concerns the histories of information, capitalism, and the built environment. Chelsea received an MDes in History and Philosophy of Design from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where she cofounded the zine Open Letters, and a BA in art and architectural history from Emory University. Before beginning her studies at MIT, she was the managing editor of Log.

The New England Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians is pleased to share information on the 44th Annual Student Symposium, which will be a hybrid conference taking place on April 8, 2023. Attendees can choose to join in person at Yale University or on Zoom. Please see the poster below for more details.

To register to attend the symposium, please click here: registration.

For any questions about the symposium, please email nesah.symposium2023@gmail.com.

Monday, February 27
7:00pm

A brief business meeting will precede the presentation of papers.
Presented via Zoom; Pre-registration required.

REGISTER HERE:
https://www.nesah.org/event-5160899

Dennis De Witt
Brookline's Mount Vernon Portico Houses

Three tall columned houses in Brookline’s Green Hill neighborhood, dating from 1794 to 1806, have been identified with the label “Jamaica Planter.”  Two are associated with well known later occupants — architect Henry Hobson Richardson and Boston Grand Dame, Isabella Stewart Gardner. Exploring the  genesis of “Jamaica Planter” revealed only a casually generated term that offered a convenient explanation for some unusual houses.  However, it did not comport with the first of these houses, Senator George Cabot’s “Old Green Hill.”  Its inspiration may have been George Washington’s Mount Vernon portico.

Dennis De Witt holds Masters degrees in architecture from Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania. He is a Past-President of S.A.H./New England, a former Vice-Chair of the Brookline Preservation Commission, a Director and Past-President of Boston’s Metropolitan Waterworks Museum, and a Commissioner of the Massachusetts Historical Commission. He has been involved with historic preservation for over 50 years. His book-length publications include Modern Architecture in Europe: A Guide to Buildings Since the Industrial Revolution and various studies related to Boston’s 19th century water system, its architects and technology.

Diana Martinez
The Olmsteds and the Imperial Prospect

In March of 1901 the U.S. Secretary of War wrote to the Olmsted firm requesting advice on improvements to Manila. Though Olmsted Jr. declined the job, he deeply influenced Daniel Burnham’s eventual plans. This paper will consider the legibility of U.S. Empire insofar as it is expressed in Olmsted’s work and influence.   

Diana Martinez is an assistant professor of architectural history and the director of architectural studies at Tufts University. She is completing a book manuscript, Concrete Colonialism: Architecture, Infrastructure, Urbanism and the American Colonial Project in the Philippines.

Robert Cowherd
Doing History in the Anthropocene

Teaching history to undergraduates as they inherit the multiple intertwined crises of the 21st century compels a critical reexamination of what we teach and how. Facing a torrent of information, how do they construct a dependable foundation for collective action? The challenge is to replace conventional teaching and learning mindsets to mobilize a more confident generation of history practitioners. Instead of studying history, college students can get a jump on a lifetime of doing history.

Robert Cowherd, PhD, is a Professor at Wentworth Institute of Technology. His research and publications focus on the history and theory of architecture and urbanism in Southeast Asia and Latin America. He is the author most recently of "Batavian Apartheid: Mapping Bodies, Constructing Identities" in Southeast of Now and "Decolonizing Bamboo" in Dialectic IX. He is former President of the New England Society of Architectural Historians.