Two New Jersey efforts win Awards for Advocacy 2014

The  winners of  2014 Awards for Advocacy are the Bayshore Center at Bivalve for an organization for restoring the A. J. Meerwald and subsequent eco-historical preservation efforts; and Patricia Anne (Annie) and Joseph E. Salvatore for individuals for preserving and interpreting New Jersey’s architectural and cultural heritage at Historic Cold Spring Village. 

In 1988, Meghan Wren began organizing group meetings to establish a non-profit preservation initiative to restore the 1928 Delaware Bay Oyster Schooner A.J. Meerwald.  The group’s intent was not just to rehabilitate a historic artifact, but to use its restoration and preservation as a vehicle to examine the most pressing environmental, historical, and cultural issues confronting Delaware Bay communities, the Delaware Estuary, and the State of New Jersey.  Upon its restoration and re-launching in 1994/1995, Meerwald immediately established itself as one of the region’s most compelling outlets for advancing environmentalism, cultural conservation, and historic preservation for the many people—young and old—who came in contact with it, as well as the many communities it visited.  The ensuing momentum allowed the Bayshore Center to acquire and restore a section of the 1904 Oyster Shipping Sheds at Bivalve, providing an unparalleled interpretive center for understanding the Delaware Bay oyster industry and its wider ecological and historic context.  For these reasons that VAF proudly confers a 2014 Award for Advocacy to the Bayshore Center at Bivalve, located in Port Norris, New Jersey.

Tuckahoe Shop, Historic Cold Spring Village

Anne and Joseph Salvatore’s commitment to vernacular architecture dates back to 1973 when they founded Historic Cold Spring Village in Cape May, New Jersey.  Since then, the couple has collected 18^th- and 19^th-century buildings from across the county, moved them to their 30-acre living history museum, and arranged, restored, and interpreted them.  Maintaining a large number of aging wooden buildings has been a challenge.  That the Salvatores have accomplished this while devising interesting and insightful programs that attract a wide array of visitors is a testament to their dedication, fundraising abilities, and creativity.  Nor have they limited the scope of their efforts to traditional buildings.  After Dr. Joseph Salvatore retired from medical practice in the mid-1990s, he decided to take on the restoration of the dilapidated, 92,000 sq. ft. Hangar No. 1 (another all-wood structure) at the former WWII Naval Air Station, Wildwood.  Through several important grants, he has managed to open a successful aviation museum there.  VAF is delighted to recognize the tireless preservation efforts of this couple with a 2014 Award for Advocacy.

Award For Advocacy Committee
Aaron Wunsch, chair
Michael Chiarappa
Jeroen van den Hurk

Deep Analysis of Dunbar High School awarded Catherine W. Bishir Prize 2014

Washington-Star News cartoon from 1974

Amber Wiley, author of “The Dunbar High School Dilemma: Architecture, Power, and African-American Cultural Heritage,” is awarded the Catherine W. Bishir Prize for her excellent contextualization of an important site: the first African-American public high school in the US. Combining architectural and African-American history with preservation debates, Wiley portrays Dunbar as a crystallization of the social, economic, and political processes that have shaped black experience and education throughout the twentieth century. Following the 1970s debates between old Dunbar alumni, the Washington DC School Board, and teachers and students, when the school faced demolition, Wiley reveals how the building itself reflected and mediated blacks’ understandings of themselves, shaping debates about difference and discord within the black community.  Rebuilt in the 1960s and 70s, but again demolished in 2008, Wiley concludes “the grandiosity of the new design proposed for the school reveals an insecurity about the academic and cultural climate of the institution today, and rests on the belief that architecture has the power to redirect the course of a school that has a depleted and fractured institutional memory.” This article demonstrates the wide range of scholarship celebrated by the VAF, from close analysis of building form to highly contextual synthesis of a building’s meaning.  

Catherine W. Bishir Prize Committee
Sarah Lopez, chair
Michael Chiarappa
Allison Hoagland

Comments by 2014 Bishir Prize winner: Amber Wiley

My formal introduction to Dunbar High School was in 2006.  I had an interest in visiting this prestigious institution, one of the many black institutions in Washington, D.C. that my grandfather would talk about when I visited him at his home in LeDroit Park, simply to soak up the history of its hallowed halls.  Upon arrival to the address listed on the school’s webpage, I was greeted by a stark, ominous 1970s school building, one that in no way resembled the image of Dunbar that I had fashioned in my mind – red brick, white trim.  I was immediately pushed by questions to understand what I was seeing:  “What is this?  When did this happen?  Who thought this was a good idea?”  My research was also pushed by early assumptions: “Clearly this was not something the community wanted, this was forced upon the community by an outside agent.”  When I set upon the task of answering the questions and buoying my assumptions, I discovered that not only was I wrong about the agents of change, but that in a particular time and place – post-riot Washington D.C. – the design of the 1970s Dunbar school represented a new form of Black power.  This new form appropriated the leading avant-garde designs promoted by architecture and educational journals, while espousing a rhetoric of change and egalitarianism that was very important in the transitioning politics of Home Rule in the nation’s capital.  I was overwhelmed and fascinated by the conversations about the meaning of design that were happening in the African American community.  This was the type of dialogue that I longed to hear about, but rarely was exposed to in my formal architectural education.

VAF Chicago 2015

The Vernacular Architecture Forum's 35th Annual Conference heads to Chicago from June 3-7, 2015.

Our theme is "Out of the Loop," and we will venture beyond downtown to explore Chicago's bungalows and bascule bridges, settlement houses and slaughterhouses, corner bars and commercial centers, factories and fencing all beckon analysis.  We invite you to take a closer look at the city's building forms to see the effects of constant change and neighborhoods relentlessly in flux.  The influences of immigration, segregation, gentrification, and de-industrialization are readily apparent on the city's landscape.

Please visit our VAF Chicago 2015 Conference Website for more details on the dramatic venues, off-the-beaten path tours, and engaging lectures in store.

On Saturday, June 6, the conference will include a day of paper sessions.  The Call for Papers is available on the conference website and also in included here in the newsletter.

Roosevelt University will serve as conference headquarters, and they are offering affordable private dorm rooms to keep costs surprisingly affordable.

We look forward to seeing you in Chicago in June 2015!

Call for Papers: VAF Chicago 2015

The Vernacular Architecture Forum (VAF) invites paper proposals for its Annual Meeting in Chicago, Illinois, June 3-7, 2015.

Iconic tall buildings are Chicago’s hallmark, yet it is the bungalow belts, bascule bridges, and “L” train lines that beckon vernacular analysis. Chicago is a network of neighborhoods with ubiquitous building forms, but a closer analysis reveals constant change and a diverse tapestry of communities frayed by the legacies of segregation. For the 2015 conference, the theme Neighborhoods in Transition will guide VAF as we go “Out of the Loop” and into the city’s vast grid to reflect on the regeneration or dissolution of community. Buildings, streetscapes, and neighborhoods will be VAF’s point of departure for its investigation of Chicago’s spatial and social patterns, material evidence and existential boundaries, and communal and cultural identities.

Papers for VAF Chicago may address vernacular and everyday buildings, sites, or cultural landscapes worldwide. Submissions on all vernacular topics are welcome, and for the 2015 Conference, we encourage papers that ask questions of the built environment and engineered ecologies for which Chicago represents a seminal model or serves as case study for trends occurring nationally and internationally. Trends include those in the architectural and building trades, in industrial and commercial sectors and for the workers in those arenas, in urban and city planning, and in models for societal restructuring that include urban renewal, relocation, and public housing.

Submitting an Abstract

Papers should be analytical rather than descriptive, and no more than twenty-minutes in length.  Proposals for complete sessions, roundtable discussions or other innovative means that facilitate scholarly discourse are especially encouraged. Proposals must be one-page, fewer than 400 words, and include the paper title, author’s name, and email address. You may include up to two images with your submission. Please clearly state the argument of the paper and explain the methodology and content. Attach a one-page CV to your proposal submission.

Presenters must deliver their papers in person and be VAF members at the time of the conference. Speakers who do not register for the conference by March 1, 2015, will be withdrawn. Please do not submit an abstract if you are not committed to attending the papers session on Saturday, June 6^th. There may be limited financial assistance, in the form of Pamela H. Simpson Presenter’s Fellowships, to offset registration costs to students and recent graduates.

The deadline for proposals is November 1, 2014, and submissions should be emailed to the VAF Papers Committee Chair at papers@vafweb.org. For general information about the Chicago conference, please see www.vafchicago.org.

VAF Bibliography (Summer 2014)

Ahmed, Namir, Michael Carter, and Neal Ferris. “Sustainable Archaeology through Progressive Assembly 3D Digitization.” World Archaeology 46, no. 1 (January 1, 2014): 137–54.

Andres, Glenn M., and Curtis B. Johnson. Buildings of Vermont. Buildings of the United States. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2014.

Babcock, Matthew. “Roots of Independence: Transcultural Trade in the Texas-Louisiana Borderlands.” Ethnohistory 60 (Spring 2013): 245–68.

Barjot, Dominique. “‘Why Was the World Construction Industry Dominated by European Leaders?’ The Development of the Largest European Firms from the Late 19th to the Early 21st Centuries.” Construction History: Journal of the Construction History Society 28, no. 3 (2013): 89–114.

Bartolini, Nadia. “Critical Urban Heritage: From Palimpsest to Brecciation.” International Journal of Heritage Studies 20, no. 5 (May 24, 2013): 519–33.

Becchi, Antonio. “Looking for an Equilibrium Point: Wilson, Machiavelli, and the King of Siam.” Construction History: Journal of the Construction History Society 28, no. 3 (2013): 1–20.

Bennett, Tony, Ben Dibley, and Rodney Harrison. “Introduction: Anthropology, Collecting and Colonial Governmentalities.” History and Anthropology 25, no. 2 (March 3, 2014): 137–49.

Buchanan, Jonathan. “Bethel: Mountain Tobacco Farming in Western North Carolina.” Appalachian Journal 40 (Summer 2013): 232–64.

Burnard, Trevor, and Emma Hart. “Kingston, Jamaica, and Charleston, South Carolina: A New Look at Comparative Urbanization in Plantation Colonial British America.” Journal of Urban History 39 (March 2013): 214–34.

Cameron, Fiona Ruth. “From ‘Dead Things’ to Immutable, Combinable Mobiles: H.D. Skinner, the Otago Museum and University and the Governance of Māori Populations.” History and Anthropology 25, no. 2 (March 3, 2014): 208–26.

Carnevale, Nancy C. “Italian American and African American Encounters in the City and in the Suburb.” Journal of Urban History 40, no. 3 (May 1, 2014): 536–62.

Carroll, Fred. “The Racial Politics of Place: Jim Crow, the New Deal, and Suburban Housing on the Virginia Peninsula.” Journal of Urban History 40, no. 3 (May 1, 2014): 514–35.

Carson, Cary. “Banqueting Houses and the ‘Need of Society’ among Slave-Owning Planters in the Chesapeake Colonies.” William and Mary Quarterly 70 (October 2013): 725–80.

Clausen, Meredith L. “Michael Graves’s Portland Building: Power, Politics, and Postmodernism.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 73, no. 2 (June 2014): 248–69.

Clowney, Stephen. “Landscape Fairness: Removing Discrimination from the Built Environment.” Utah Law Review 2013, no. 1 (2013): 1–62.

Clukey, Ann. “Plantation Modernity: Gone with the Wind and Irish-Southern Culture.” American Literature: A Journal of Literary History 85 (September 2013): 505–30.

Cummins, Light Townsend. “The Southern Spanish Borderlands: Spain’s Colonial History in the American South.” Southern Studies 20 (2013): 1–12.

De Raedt, Kim. “Between ‘true Believers’ and Operational Experts: UNESCO Architects and School Building in Post-Colonial Africa.” The Journal of Architecture 19, no. 1 (January 2, 2014): 19–42.

Depew, Briggs, Price V. Fishback, and Paul W. Rhode. “New Deal or No Deal in the Cotton South: The Effect of the AAA on the Agricultural Labor Structure.” Explorations in Economic History 50 (October 2013): 466–86.

Deyong, Sarah. “An Architectural Theory of Relations: Siegfried Giedion and Team X.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 73, no. 2 (June 2014): 226–47.

Dias, Nélia. “Rivet’s Mission in Colonial Indochina (1931–1932) or the Failure to Create an Ethnographic Museum.” History and Anthropology 25, no. 2 (March 3, 2014): 189–207.

Dills, Randall. “Cracks in the Granite: Paternal Care, the Imperial Façade, and the Limits of Authority in the 1824 St. Petersburg Flood.” Journal of Urban History 40, no. 3 (May 1, 2014): 479–96.

Edwards, Elizabeth. “Photographic Uncertainties: Between Evidence and Reassurance.” History and Anthropology 25, no. 2 (March 3, 2014): 171–88.

Fan, Li. “International Influence and Local Response: Understanding Community Involvement in Urban Heritage Conservation in China.” International Journal of Heritage Studies 20, no. 6 (September 12, 2013): 651–62.

Fletchall, Ann. “Making Sense of the Strip: The Postmodern Pastiche of Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.” Southeastern Geographer 52 (Spring 2013): 102–22.

Force, Pierre. “The House on Bayou Road: Atlantic Creole Networks in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries.” Journal of American History 100 (June 2013): 21–45.

Francesco, Michael G. “Peruvians in Paterson: The Growth and Establishment of a Peruvian American Community within the Multiethnic Immigrant History of Paterson, New Jersey.” Journal of Urban History 40, no. 3 (May 1, 2014): 497–513.

Gissen, David. Manhattan Atmospheres: Architecture, the Interior Environment, and Urban Crisis. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013.

Gray, LaGuana. “’Arkansas’s First Boomtown’: El Dorado and the Emergence of the Poultry Processing Industry.” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 72 (Autumn 2013): 197–221.

Guterl, Matthew Pratt. “The Futures of Transnational History.” American Historical Review 118 (February 2013): 130–39.

Harrison, Rodney. “Observing, Collecting and Governing ‘Ourselves’ and ‘Others’: Mass-Observation’s Fieldwork Agencements.” History and Anthropology 25, no. 2 (March 3, 2014): 227–45.

Hatziprokopiou, Panos, and Venetia Evergeti. “Negotiating Muslim Identity and Diversity in Greek Urban Spaces.” Social & Cultural Geography 15, no. 6 (March 28, 2014): 603–26.

Hell, Maarten. “Trade, Transport, and Storage in Amsterdam Inns (1450–1800).” Journal of Urban History 40, no. 4 (July 1, 2014): 742–61.

Hirsch, Allison Brick. City Choreographer: Lawrence Halprin in Urban Renewal America. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014.

Horst, Jesse. “Shantytown Revolution: Slum Clearance, Rent Control, and the Cuban State, 1937–1955.” Journal of Urban History 40, no. 4 (July 1, 2014): 699–718.

Jung, Sanghoon. “Oswald Nagler, HURPI, and the Formation of Urban Planning and Design in South Korea: The South Seoul Plan by HURPI and the Mok-Dong Plan.” Journal of Urban History 40, no. 3 (May 1, 2014): 585–605.

Kargon, Jeremy. “A Symbolic Landscape for Suburbia: Baltimore Chizuk Amuno’s ‘Hebrew Culture Garden.’” Journal of Urban History 40, no. 4 (July 1, 2014): 762–91.

Karp, Michael. “The St. Louis Rent Strike of 1969: Transforming Black Activism and American Low-Income Housing.” Journal of Urban History 40, no. 4 (July 1, 2014): 648–70.

Karttunen, Marie-Louise. “Repatriates or Refugees? Narrating the Loss of Transnational Community.” History and Anthropology 25, no. 3 (September 26, 2013): 375–94.

Kastrinou, A. Maria A. “Sect and House in Syria: History, Architecture, and Bayt Amongst the Druze in Jaramana.” History and Anthropology 25, no. 3 (January 30, 2014): 313–35.

Klosky, J. Ledlie. “Men of Action: French Influence and the Founding of American Civil and Military Engineering.” Construction History: Journal of the Construction History Society 28, no. 3 (2013): 69–88.

Kropf, K. “Ambiguity in the Definition of Built Form.” Journal of Urban Morphology 18, no. 1 (2014).

Kuppinger, Petra. “Flexible Topographies: Muslim Spaces in a German Cityscape.” Social & Cultural Geography 15, no. 6 (February 28, 2014): 627–44.

Lawrence, Ranald. “The Evolution of the Victorian Art School.” The Journal of Architecture 19, no. 1 (January 2, 2014): 81–107.

Lewis, Quentin. “‘Manure Manufactories’: Materializing the Metabolic Rift in Nineteenth-Century Deerfield, Massachusetts.” International Journal of Historical Archaeology 18, no. 2 (June 1, 2014): 242–58.

Longstreth, Richard, ed. Frank Lloyd Wright: Preservation, Design, and Adding to Iconic Buildings. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2014.

Macpherson, Bradley D., and Mark de Socio. “Gasoline Station Morphology on Virginia’s Eastern Shore.” Southeastern Geographer 53 (Spring 2013): 5–27.

McGuire, Randall H. “Won with Blood: Archaeology and Labor’s Struggle.” International Journal of Historical Archaeology 18, no. 2 (June 1, 2014): 259–71.

Middleton, Robin. “The First History of Construction? A Memoire by Jean Rondelet.” Construction History: Journal of the Construction History Society 28, no. 3 (2013): 47–68.

Mrozowski, StephenA. “Imagining an Archaeology of the Future: Capitalism and Colonialism Past and Present.” International Journal of Historical Archaeology 18, no. 2 (June 1, 2014): 340–60.

Nasiali, Minayo. “Citizens, Squatters, and Asocials: The Right to Housing and the Politics of Difference in Post-Liberation France.” The American Historical Review 119, no. 2 (April 1, 2014): 434–59.

Novaes, André Reyes. “Favelas and the Divided City: Mapping Silences and Calculations in Rio de Janeiro’s Journalistic Cartography.” Social & Cultural Geography 15, no. 2 (January 6, 2014): 201–25.

O’Connell, Christian. “The Color of the Blues: Considering Revisionist Blues Scholarship.” Southern Culture 19 (Spring 2013): 61–81.

Pastore, Christopher L. Between Land and Sea: The Atlantic Coast and the Transformation of New England. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014.

Paynter, Robert. “Building an Historical Landscape, Commemorating W. E. B. Du Bois.” International Journal of Historical Archaeology 18, no. 2 (June 1, 2014): 316–39.

Rego, R.L. “The New Urban Form and the Model City: Town Planning in the Brazilian Hinterland.” Journal of Urban Morphology 18, no. 1 (2014).

Reiss, Steven M. Frank Lloyd Wright’s Pope-Leighey House. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2014.

Reynolds, Aaron. “Inside the Jackson Tract: The Battle over Peonage Labor Camps in Southern Alabama, 1906.” Southern Spaces, no. on-line (January 2013).

Roberts, Charles Kenneth. “New Deal Community Building in the South: The Subsistence Homesteads around Birmingham, Alabama.” Alabama Review: Quarterly Journal of the Alabama History 66 (April 2013): 83–121.

Robey, Ethan. “John Vanderlyn’s View of Versailles: Spectacle, Landscape, and the Visual Demands of Panorama Painting.” Early Popular Visual Culture 12, no. 1 (2014): 1–21.

Sciorra, Joseph. Built with Faith: Italian American Imagination and Catholic Material Culture in New York City. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2015.

Sen, Arijit. “From Curry Mahals to Chaat Cafes: Spatialities of the South Asian Culinary Landscape.” In Curried Cultures, edited by Tulasi Srinivasan and Krishnendu Ray. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012.

———. “Transcultural Place-Making: Intertwined Spaces of Sacred and Secular on Devon Avenue, Chicago.” In Transcultural Cities: Border‐crossing & Placemaking, edited by Jeff Hou. New York: Routledge, 2012.

Sen, Arijit, and Lisa Silverman, eds. Making Place: Space and Embodiment in the City. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2014.

Sevilla-Buitrago, Alvaro. “Central Park against the Streets: The Enclosure of Public Space Cultures in Mid-Nineteenth Century New York.” Social & Cultural Geography 15, no. 2 (December 12, 2013): 151–71.

Sinn, Elizabeth. “Pacific Ocean: Highway to Gold Mountain, 1850–1900.” Pacific Historical Review 83, no. 2 (May 1, 2014): 220–37.

Skelton, Kimberly. “The Malleable Early Modern Reader: Display and Discipline in the Open Reading Room.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 73, no. 2 (June 2014): 182–203.

Stephens, John. “‘Fifty-Two Doors’: Identifying Cultural Significance through Narrative and Nostalgia in Lakhnu Village.” International Journal of Heritage Studies 20, no. 4 (January 16, 2013): 415–31

Walter, Nigel. “From Values to Narrative: A New Foundation for the Conservation of Historic Buildings.” International Journal of Heritage Studies 20, no. 6 (September 1, 2013): 634–50.

Wang, Cangbai. “How Does a House Remember? Heritage-Ising Return Migration in an Indonesian-Chinese House Museum in Guangdong, PRC.” International Journal of Heritage Studies 20, no. 4 (February 27, 2013): 454–74.

Webster, Susan Verde. “The Secret Lives of Buildings in Colonial Quito.” Construction History: Journal of the Construction History Society 28, no. 3 (2013): 21–46.

Winter, Tim. “Heritage Studies and the Privileging of Theory.” International Journal of Heritage Studies 20, no. 5 (May 22, 2013): 556–72.

Wood, Margaret C. “One Hundred Percent Americanism: Material Culture and Nationalism, Then and Now.” International Journal of Historical Archaeology 18, no. 2 (June 1, 2014): 272–83.

Wurst, LouAnn, and Christine Ridarsky. “The Second Time as a Farce: Archaeological Reflections on the New New Deal.” International Journal of Historical Archaeology 18 (2014): 224–41.

Yegül, Fikret K. “A Victor’s Message: The Talking Column of the Temple of Artemis at Sardis.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 73, no. 2 (June 2014): 204–25.

Yun, Jieheerah. “Rethinking Vernacular Architecture: The Case of Hanoks in South Korea.” The Journal of Architecture 19, no. 1 (January 2, 2014): 108–27. doi:10.1080/13602365.2014.885555.

Zimmerman, Claire. Photographic Architecture in the Twentieth Century. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014.

Call for Nominations: Serve on the VAF BOARD

VAF’s nominating committee is seeking nominations for individuals to serve as members of the Board of Directors and as officers for the organization.

 Board members serve three-year terms. Individuals nominated this year will begin service in May 2015.

The Vernacular Architecture Forum is administered by an all-volunteer Board of Directors made up of dedicated professionals and scholars from diverse disciplines who live and work in all parts of the United States and Canada. The Board meets twice a year, once during our annual conference in the Spring and again in the Fall. Each Board member is expected to attend Board meetings and participate in committee work.

Nominations for Board membership should be sent to Claire Dempsey at nominations@vafweb.org. Please include a short letter (not exceeding one page) indicating the qualifications of the person being nominated and a short vita/resume (not exceeding two pages). Self-nominations are encouraged. Nominees must be members of the Vernacular Architecture Forum. A list of VAF Board members and officers (both current and recent past) is available here.

Deadline for Nominations:  August 1, 2014.

—Claire Dempsey, 1st Vice President