Below are the SAH regional chapter news updates received by the liaison during the month of January 2024.
NESAH – 1/16 Lecture Reminder (register today!) LECTURE REMINDER!Don’t forget to register online (link below) and join us next Tuesday, 1/16, for our first event of 2024:“The Contract, the Contractor, and the Capitalization of American Building, 1870-1930”Chelsea Spencer2022 John Coolidge Fellowship RecipientTuesday, January 16, 2024 7:00pmPresented via ZoomAttendance is free, but preregistration 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 she 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 traces the rise of general contracting in the United States.NESAH website
LAST CHANCE for Havana Modern This Sunday!
AUTHORS ON ARCHITECTURE:Gallo/Caballero on Havana ModernZoom PresentationSunday, January 28th, 1:00 PM PSTJoin authors and editor Ruben Gallo and MIguel Caballero as they explore the legacy of Modern architecture in Havana, Cuba. Read more…Have a conflict for Sunday? Buy a ticket and we will send you a link to the recorded program you can watch at your leisure…Purchase $5 ticket!.Read more Connect with u
SAHSCC | Box 491952, Los Angeles, CA 90049
Dear NCCSAH members – I am writing to let you know that the City of San Francisco has embarked on a program of Upzoning and Height Increases (which they call Housing Choice). You can read it here:
As I begin my first year as president, I write with gratitude for all that you do to make SESAH (pronounced seesaw) a welcoming, fun, and engaged professional society. Our members make SESAH a success. Whether you attend or present at the annual meeting, serve on a committee, task force, or the board, submit articles to ARRIS or updates to the newsletter, or just participate from afar and pay your dues, you are important to SESAH.
In 2022 we finalized our Strategic Plan (2022-2032); thanks to all who contributed to its development. We have already made progress in the four strategic areas of Membership, Education, Advocacy and Awareness, and Funding. I urge you to read the plan and see where you can help us move SESAH forward to achieve our mission of promoting the study, interpretation, and preservation of architecture and the built environment worldwide, with a focus on the American South. Over the next several months, I will highlight some of our accomplishments and ask for your help as we begin new initiatives.
Thanks also to everyone who made end-of-year contributions to our annual campaign. Your generosity supports our educational programs including student fellowships, conference registrations, and travel grants as well as our emerging professional conference grants. It is important to get our junior colleagues, students, and friends involved, and these financial incentives provide the necessary support and encouragement for the next generation to ensure that SESAH is relevant, dynamic, and welcoming. Your gifts are investments in the future of SESAH and our disciplines.
With great appreciation,
Leslie N. Sharp
Save the Date: 2024 SESAH Conference!
SESAH will hold its annual meeting and conference in Marietta, Georgia, October 2-5, 2024. Marietta is a vibrant, historic city about twenty miles north of downtown Atlanta. The sessions and other events will be hosted at the Department of Architecture at Kennesaw State University, Marietta Campus. Formerly the home of Southern Polytechnic State University that merged with KSU in 2015, the Marietta campus is a mid-to-late 20th century campus with award-winning architecture, including the 2002 Architecture Building designed by Heery International.
The SESAH Board Meeting and dinner will be held on Wednesday, October 2. Paper sessions will begin Thursday morning and continue through Friday afternoon. Mark C. McDonald, former president and CEO of the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation and editor of The Architecture of the Last Colony: Georgia’s Historic Places, 1733-2000 (2023), will give the keynote address on Thursday evening. The study tour on Saturday, October 5 will include historic and architecturally significant places around the Atlanta area. There will be a SESAH block of rooms for $189.00/night at the nearby Marietta Hilton with regular shuttles to campus. More details to follow soon.
2025 Annual Campaign
SESAH has launched our 2024 Annual Campaign! Last year, we raised $3,200 to support students and young professionals.
For the 2024 Annual Campaign, we set a goal of raising $3,000. All donations—big and small—will enable us to assist students and young professionals by:
Waiving registration fees for students from across the U.S. to attend the 2024 conference in Marietta, Georgia.
Awarding $2,000 for two students to travel to the 2024 conference.
Awarding $1,000 for a young professional to travel to the 2024 conference.
Awarding a $1,500 fellowship for graduate student research
As we look forward to the new year, we hope that you will contribute to help us continue to support students and young professionals. We are also offering the opportunity to make your donation in honor of friends, colleagues, and loved ones.
Remember that SESAH is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization so all contributions made by December 31, 2024, are tax deductible. If you need a receipt or more donation information, including a mailing address for sending a check, please contact the treasurer at treasurer@sesah.org
Thank you for supporting SESAH!
Call for Editors of Arris, the Journal of SESAH
Deadline March 1, 2024
SESAH (Southeast Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians) seeks an Editor or Co-editors (2024-26) for two issues of its peer-reviewed journal, Arris (issues #36 and #37). Scholars and researchers are invited to respond to this call by March 1, 2024. Editorial positions are unpaid and would begin with work on volume 36 (2025) during the spring of 2024 under the current editors and end with the completion of volume 37 (2026). One of these issues may be based on a theme, chosen by the Editors and approved by the Arris Editorial Committee, that addresses particular theories, methodologies, or perspectives in the history and/or preservation of the built environment.
Founded in 1989, Arris publishes original scholarship on all aspects of the history and preservation of architecture, urbanism, and landscape. It has a particular interest in new perspectives on the American South; at the same time articles are not limited geographically or temporally. The journal consists of research articles, field notes, and book reviews. Since 2019, Arris has been published in partnership with the University of North Carolina Press (UNC Press).
Issues of Arris are typically produced by a single Editor or two Co-editors who are responsible for soliciting, reviewing, and editing manuscripts, and a Book Review Editor who selects books for review and reviewers. The Editors work in collaboration to establish the content for each issue, which goes to UNC Press for production and publication. Other matters that arise in creating the journal—e.g. administrative and financial—are addressed by the Arris Editorial Committee (which includes the Editors). Communication among the Editors, UNC Press, and the Committee occurs regularly in order to facilitate the process of creating the journal. The Editor (or, in the case of Co-editors, one of the Co-editors) sits on SESAH’s Board of Directors as an ex officio voting member.
Editors must maintain SESAH membership. They may reside outside its twelve-state territory. They may be academic or independent scholars, researchers, preservationists, or curators, and may be early in their professional careers as long as they have publication experience. Editors may not simultaneously hold an editorship position for another journal.
Applicants should send a CV, a Letter of Interest, and names of two references to Kathy Wheeler (kwheel24@utk.edu), chair of the Arris Editorial Committee, by March 1, 2024. The letter should state the position being applied for (Editor or Co-editors). It should include information on publication and/or editorial experience, a brief proposal for a themed issue (optional), and thoughts concerning future directions of Arris. Any questions may be directed to Prof. Wheeler. See the website for further information on Arris and SESAH.
San Gemini Preservation Studies 2024 Summer Field School accepting applications.
San Gemini Preservation Studies is a summer field school located in Central Italy that organizes lectures, research, fieldwork, workshops and field trips in the disciplines of historic preservation, restoration and conservation. They are now accepting applications for summer 2024.
These courses focus on the study of: historic buildings preservation, traditional forms of painting, conservation of archaeological ceramics, the restoration of books and paper in archival material. The various field projects include: documentation and restoration of medieval public buildings in San Gemini, the archaeological excavation in the ancient Roman city of Carsulae, as well as conservation work on the local historic archives. The SGPS program is a collaboration between scholars from various universities and local preservation groups, fostering a multidisciplinary approach to historic preservation. All academic activities are held in English.
An academic relationship has been established with West Virginia University that offers students the opportunity to apply for and receive credits through the WVU Art History Department. Applications are due March 15th. Find more information here.
Arris, the journal of the Southeast Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians, is accepting submissions for articles and field notes to be published in upcoming issues.
Articles generally run from 5,000-7,000 words and are blind peer-reviewed. They should demonstrate a rigorous mastery over the scholarly literature, research methods, field work (if applicable), and available primary sources of the subject. Articles should proceed beyond a descriptive approach to draw new conclusions or present new theoretical paradigms.
Field notes are shorter contributions, approximately 2,500 words in length, and are blind peer-reviewed. These notes discuss significant ongoing field work or other research of interest to SESAH members.
Only original work neither published previously nor under review for publication elsewhere will be considered.
There is no specific deadline for submissions, which are accepted on a rolling basis. If an article or field notes is accepted, but the issue in progress already has a sufficient number of them, it will be published in the next issue.
SESAH members Joseph Watson and Nathaniel Robert Walker are putting together a session for the 2024 Docomomo conference in Santiago, Chile. Their session “Radical Roof Gardens: Dream Spaces of Social Cohesion and Private Retreat” invites abstracts for research papers on modern roof gardens, with a particular focus on the twentieth century. See their panel proposal below:
Of Le Corbusier’s famous “Five Points” for the creation of a modern architecture, perhaps the most suggestive of utopian possibility was the roof garden terrace. Whether serving as the largest communal space of the Unité d’Habitation in Marseilles or providing expansive vistas over an urban park at the Casa Curutchet in La Plata, roof gardens asserted modernism’s technological exuberance and commitment to new perspectives and liberating reforms in cities and landscapes. Ironically, perhaps, roof gardens were also the least novel of Le Corbusier’s modern elements. They have a deep and well-known antiquity stretching back, to cite two examples, to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and the palace walks of King David in Jerusalem—spaces of imperial power, luxury, and sensuality. Roof gardens became a fixture of utopian visions from the Renaissance onwards; Filarete included them in Sforzinda, while Frank Lloyd Wright imagined filling a landscape with villas topped by gardens for both leisure and the landing of private aircraft. Roof gardens even flourished in reality during the 1800s and early 1900s, particularly in great cities like New York and London, where they were often discussed as ideal fusions of the urban and the rural. In these years, rooftop terraces had a dualistic existence as hedonistic pleasure grounds atop hotels, department stores, and theaters for the rich, while also serving as women-led refuges of charity for the poor on model tenements and public libraries. The international reputation of these roof gardens, now largely forgotten, is attested to in the English-language name of a magnificent cabaret and restaurant that crowned the Cerro San Cristóbal in Santiago de Chile in the 1930s: “Roof Garden.”
This session invites abstracts for research papers on modern roof gardens, with a particular focus on the twentieth century. We do not limit our call to examples in Latin America, but these are very welcome. Scholars such as Luis E. Carranza and Fernando Luiz Lara, in Modern Architecture in Latin America, and Valerie Fraser, in “Cannibalizing Le Corbusier,” have discussed roof gardens in these contexts, and we aim to build upon their work. What promises did rooftop terraces make as spaces of social elevation and/or private retreat and which have they kept or broken? How have they performed and endured in different climates, with varying degrees of maintenance, as the viability of different plant species (native and non-native), structural integrity, and the potential for leaks have been persistent problems for centuries? How did roof gardens carry forward older dreams and aspirations—including, potentially, Indigenous or Aboriginal traditions—into the Modern Movement? What new meanings and objectives did they acquire? What might have been lost? How did they strengthen and/or problematize modernism’s historically complex relationships with energy and ecology? How did the radical potential of roof gardens help to resist, reinforce, or propose alternatives to pre-existing social, economic, and racial divisions? What, ultimately, were the outcomes of Le Corbusier’s dream of roof gardens as radical spaces of utopian potential for the Modern Movement in architecture?
Does your institution subscribe to Arris?
If not, encourage them to subscribe in one of 3 ways:
Print subscription for $50 annually (1 issue) through UNC Press’s subscription fulfillment partners at Duke University Press. Contact:
Phone toll-free in the US and Canada (888) 651-0122
Phone (919) 688-5134
Digital subscriptions for $50 to Arris’s full catalog are available through ProjectMUSE. Arris is on their Hosted platform, so they will need to get a single title subscription through ProjectMUSE.
For both print and digital subscriptions for $60/year, reach out to Duke University Press at the contact info above.
Save the Date: Annual Meeting!Hi Amanda,Please mark your calendar for this year’s Annual Meeting of the New England Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians:Saturday, March 9, 2024We have some very exciting plans in the works and will be sharing more information soon via email and our website. Please stay tuned for further details! If you are not a current member but are interested in joining or renewing your membership with NESAH, please visit our Membership tab! You can also renew your chapter membership through SAH National.All the best,The NESAH Board
Free Symposium on Housing Red Vienna In-person in Silver Lake! In-Person SymposiumHousing Vienna: Lessons For LASaturday, January 27th, 9:00 AM PSTThis event is free and open to the public, but space is limited.This event is hosted by the Neutra Institute for Survival Through Design and Friends of Residential Treasures (FORT:LA). It features speakers including John Ellis, AIA; Frances Anderton; and Anthony Fontenot…Read more! Reserve a space now!. Connect with u SAHSCC | Box 491952, Los Angeles, CA 90049
Jan – March, Quarterly E-newsletter 2024 | Download the .pdf nowIn This IssueUnion Station TourHavana ModernWhen Eero Met His MatchBunshaftPeter J. Weber TourQuick LinksSAH/SCC Book ReviewsBrochures from Past EventsAbout UsBecome a MemberFull Printable Newsletter HerePresident’s LetterOur AdvertisersAD&D MuseumUnion Station: Behind the ScenesSAH/SCC On-Site Tour, DTLAFriday, January 19, 2024, 11 AM-1 PMSAH/SCC Life and Patron Members will join us for a very special, behind-the-scenes tour of Union Station from longtime SAH/SCC member George Meyer, Vice President/General Manager at Morlin Asset Management, the property and project management firm for the complex. Union Station (Parkinson and Parkinson, 1939) is nationally recognized as the last major train station built in the 20th century, is LA Historic-Cultural Monument #101, and has won numerous preservation awards. Read More…Photo: Courtesy of Tom BonnerGallo/Caballero on Havana ModernSAH/SCC Zoom ProgramSunday, January 28, 2024, 1-2:30 PM Pacific In the decades after World War II, from just prior to the revolution and into the mid-1980s, modernist architecture blossomed in Cuba, attracting both native talent and leading international architects. Havana Modern: Critical Readings in Cuban Architecture (Arquine, 2023) examines Cuban modernism’s highlights with a wealth of archival materials, photos, and new scholarship. Read More… Authors on Architecture: Hagberg on Aline & EeroSAH/SCC Zoom ProgramSunday, February 11, 2024, 1-2:30 PM PacificCelebrate an architectural love story for the ages when Eva Hagberg discusses her book When Eero Met His Match: Aline Louchheim Saarinen and the Making of an Architect (Princeton University Press, 2022). Read More…Photo: Courtesy of Eva Hagberg. Authors on Architecture: Adams on BunshaftSAH/SCC Zoom ProgramSunday, March 17, 2024, 1-2:30 PM PacificJoin author Nicholas Adams as he shares his book Gordon Bunshaft and SOM: Building Corporate Modernism (Yale University Press, 2019). Adams explores the contested line between Bunshaft’s ambition for acclaim as a singular artistic genius and the collaborative structure of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill’s (SOM) architectural partnership. Read More…Photo: Bunshaft Book coverPeter J. Weber: Architect & CraftsmanSAH/SCC On-Site Tour, RiversideSaturday, March 3, 2024, 10 AM-1 PM SAH/SCC goes to the Inland Empire to learn about the life and work of Peter J. Weber (1893-1983). We’ll get a special tour of the architect’s work on the Mission Inn (Arthur B. Benton, 1903 and 1910; Myron Hunt and Elmer Grey, 1914; G. Stanley Wilson, 1932) in Riverside as well as a tour of the home Weber built for himself (1932-1938). Read More…Photo: Courtesy of Davestolt
LECTURE REMINDER!Don’t forget to register online (link below) and join us next Tuesday, 1/16, for our first event of 2024:“The Contract, the Contractor, and the Capitalization of American Building, 1870-1930”Chelsea Spencer2022 John Coolidge Fellowship RecipientTuesday, January 16, 2024
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 she 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 traces the rise of general contracting in the United States.NESAH website
AUTHORS ON ARCHITECTURE:Gallo/Caballero on Havana ModernZoom PresentationSunday, January 28th, 1:00 PM PSTJoin authors and editor Ruben Gallo and MIguel Caballero as they explore the legacy of Modern architecture in Havana, Cuba. Read more…Have a conflict for Sunday? Buy a ticket and we will send you a link to the recorded program you can watch at your leisure…Purchase $5 ticket!.Read more Connect with u
Save the Date: Annual Meeting!Hi Amanda,Please mark your calendar for this year’s Annual Meeting of the New England Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians:Saturday, March 9, 2024We have some very exciting plans in the works and will be sharing more information soon via email and our website. Please stay tuned for further details! If you are not a current member but are interested in joining or renewing your membership with NESAH, please visit our Membership tab! You can also renew your chapter membership through SAH National.All the best,The NESAH Board
In-Person SymposiumHousing Vienna: Lessons For LASaturday, January 27th, 9:00 AM PSTThis event is free and open to the public, but space is limited.This event is hosted by the Neutra Institute for Survival Through Design and Friends of Residential Treasures (FORT:LA). It features speakers including John Ellis, AIA; Frances Anderton; and Anthony Fontenot…Read more! Reserve a space now!. Connect with u SAHSCC | Box 491952, Los Angeles, CA 90049
SAH/SCC Life and Patron Members will join us for a very special, behind-the-scenes tour of Union Station from longtime SAH/SCC member George Meyer, Vice President/General Manager at Morlin Asset Management, the property and project management firm for the complex. Union Station (Parkinson and Parkinson, 1939) is nationally recognized as the last major train station built in the 20th century, is LA Historic-Cultural Monument #101, and has won numerous preservation awards. Read More…Photo: Courtesy of Tom BonnerGallo/Caballero on Havana ModernSAH/SCC Zoom ProgramSunday, January 28, 2024, 1-2:30 PM Pacific
In the decades after World War II, from just prior to the revolution and into the mid-1980s, modernist architecture blossomed in Cuba, attracting both native talent and leading international architects. Havana Modern: Critical Readings in Cuban Architecture (Arquine, 2023) examines Cuban modernism’s highlights with a wealth of archival materials, photos, and new scholarship. Read More… Authors on Architecture: Hagberg on Aline & EeroSAH/SCC Zoom ProgramSunday, February 11, 2024, 1-2:30 PM PacificCelebrate an architectural love story for the ages when Eva Hagberg discusses her book When Eero Met His Match: Aline Louchheim Saarinen and the Making of an Architect (Princeton University Press, 2022). Read More…Photo: Courtesy of Eva Hagberg. Authors on Architecture: Adams on BunshaftSAH/SCC Zoom ProgramSunday, March 17, 2024, 1-2:30 PM PacificJoin author Nicholas Adams as he shares his book Gordon Bunshaft and SOM: Building Corporate Modernism (Yale University Press, 2019). Adams explores the contested line between Bunshaft’s ambition for acclaim as a singular artistic genius and the collaborative structure of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill’s (SOM) architectural partnership. Read More…Photo: Bunshaft Book coverPeter J. Weber: Architect & CraftsmanSAH/SCC On-Site Tour, RiversideSaturday, March 3, 2024, 10 AM-1 PM
SAH/SCC goes to the Inland Empire to learn about the life and work of Peter J. Weber (1893-1983). We’ll get a special tour of the architect’s work on the Mission Inn (Arthur B. Benton, 1903 and 1910; Myron Hunt and Elmer Grey, 1914; G. Stanley Wilson, 1932) in Riverside as well as a tour of the home Weber built for himself (1932-1938). Read More…Photo: Courtesy of Davestolt