Taking a material culture approach, Herman examines urban domestic buildings from Charleston, South Carolina, to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, as well as those in English cities and towns, to better understand why people built the houses they did and how their homes informed everyday city life. Working with buildings and documentary sources as diverse as court cases and recipes, Herman interprets town houses as lived experience. Chapters consider an array of domestic spaces, including the merchant family's house, the servant's quarter, and the widow's dower. Herman demonstrates that city houses served as sites of power as well as complex and often conflicted artifacts mapping the everyday negotiations of social identity and the display of sociability.
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Book Description
In this abundantly illustrated volume, Bernard Herman provides a history of urban dwellings and the people who built and lived in them in early America. In the eighteenth century, cities were constant objects of idealization, often viewed as the outward manifestations of an organized, civil society. As the physical objects that composed the largest portion of urban settings, town houses contained and signified different aspects of city life, argues Herman.
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"Herman's work, as it captures and restores to modern readers the ambiguity and lyricism of an earlier built environment, continues to show us how valuable such studies are, and makes that scholarship especially accessible, exciting, and inviting."
— Journal of the Early Republic
"[A] wide-ranging and amply illustrated work. . . . The book abounds in insights."
— American Historical Review
"Town House is the first study to bring the methods of the new vernacular architectural history to the American city. Bernard Herman ranges far beyond architecture to people these houses, fill them with goods, set them next to their neighbors on the street, and link them to transatlantic predecessors and contemporaries. He shows us not only how these buildings were used, but what they meant to their residents. Town House is a tour de force of architectural and urban history. (Dell Upton, University of Virginia)"
— Journal of the Early Republic
"[A] wide-ranging and amply illustrated work. . . . The book abounds in insights."
— American Historical Review
"Town House is the first study to bring the methods of the new vernacular architectural history to the American city. Bernard Herman ranges far beyond architecture to people these houses, fill them with goods, set them next to their neighbors on the street, and link them to transatlantic predecessors and contemporaries. He shows us not only how these buildings were used, but what they meant to their residents. Town House is a tour de force of architectural and urban history. (Dell Upton, University of Virginia)"
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This abundantly illustrated volume provides an architectural and social history of urban dwellings and the people who built and lived in them in early America. With chapters on living spaces such as the merchant family's house, the servant's quarter, and the widow's dower, Herman demonstrates how town houses served as a medium for the assertion of social identity, as settings for the display of gentility and its applications, and as sites of power and its negotiation.
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This review is from: Town House: Architecture and Material Life in the Early American City, 1780-1830 (Hardcover)
As a reenactor/interpreter of life in America in the late 18th/early 19th Centuries at various historic sights/events, I was very excited by this book. It has provided in depth understandings in ways I had never found before. Definitely one of my new favorite and most valuable resources.
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Front Cover | Front Flap | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
This is a study about urban dwellings and the people who built and lived in them, from roughly 1780 to 1830. Read the first page Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Jeff Klee, Myers House, North Square, Hannah Rand, Billy Robinson, Broad Street, New England, Fells Point, Pleasant Street, Revere House, First-Floor Plan, Elizabeth Myers, North Atlantic, South Carolina, Elliott Street, Pierce-Hichborn House, New Hampshire, Middle Street, Elizabeth Petrie, Samuel Rand, South End, Caroline Burgwin, East Bay Street, King Street, Lombard Street New!
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Front Cover | Front Flap | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
This is a study about urban dwellings and the people who built and lived in them, from roughly 1780 to 1830. Read the first page Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Jeff Klee, Myers House, North Square, Hannah Rand, Billy Robinson, Broad Street, New England, Fells Point, Pleasant Street, Revere House, First-Floor Plan, Elizabeth Myers, North Atlantic, South Carolina, Elliott Street, Pierce-Hichborn House, New Hampshire, Middle Street, Elizabeth Petrie, Samuel Rand, South End, Caroline Burgwin, East Bay Street, King Street, Lombard Street New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Front Flap | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 100
books:
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- The English Town: A History of Urban Life by Mr. Mark Girouard on 4 pages
- Life in the Georgian City by Dan Cruickshank on 4 pages
- Parades and Power: Street Theatre in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia by Susan G. Davis in Back Matter (1), Back Matter (2), and Back Matter (3)
- Exploring Everyday Landscapes: Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture VII (Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture) by Sally Mcmurry in Back Matter (1), Back Matter (2), and Back Matter (3)
- Civil Tongues and Polite Letters in British America (Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American Hist) by David S. Shields in Back Matter (1), Back Matter (2), and Back Matter (3)
See all 100 books this book cites
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