Architecture and Rural Life in Central Delaware, 1700-1900

Book excerpt: "A pioneering account of mid-Atlantic folk architecture and of the nineteenth-century transformation of traditional agriculture. . . . A major study of American vernacular architecture."--Dell Upton, University of California, Berkeley "Bernard L. Herman has provided us with a model study in the interdisciplinary interpretation of a common landscape."--Robert Blair St. George, Journal of American Folklore "An impressive study that adds an important dimension to our understanding of the built environment."--Clifford E. Clark Jr., American Historical Review "A wide range of reader expectations will be met by this book. Herman provides a focused community study as well as an interpretation of vernacular architecture in the Mid-Atlantic region."--John Michael Vlach, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians "Scholars will be impressed by Herman's ability to marshal different kinds of evidence to buttress his contention that architecture reveals not just how people materially ordered their lives but helped 'to create and maintain order, to project images of self and community, and to control meaning in social discourse.'"--Choice The Author: Bernard L. Herman teaches at the University of Delaware, where is a professor of art history and senior research fellow at the Center for Historic Architecture and Design. Among his many publications are Everyday Architecture of the Mid-Atlantic: Looking at Buildings and Landscapes (co-author with Gabrielle M. Lanier) and Historical Architectural and the Study of American Culture (co-editor with Lu Ann De Cunzo).