Preserving Historic New England: Preservation, Progressivism, and the Remaking of Memory

James M. Lindgren

ISBN 10: 0195093631 / ISBN 13: 9780195093636

Published by Oxford University Press, 1995

About this Item

Hardcover. Fine. No dustjacket. Otherwise fine. All orders shipped securely in a bubble envelope or box/hard mailer.

Seller Inventory # 00033249

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Preserving Historic New England: Preservation, Progressivism, and the Remaking of Memory
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication Date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0195093631
• ISBN 13: 9780195093636
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Fine

About this title

Synopsis

By the first years of the twentieth century the memory of old-time New England was in danger. What had once been a land of small towns populated by tradition-minded Yankees was now becoming almost unrecognizable with a floodtide of immigrants and the constant change of a modernizing society. At the same time, cities such as Boston, Portsmouth, and Salem were bursting at the seams with factories, high-rises, and uncontrollable growth. During a period when the Colonial Revival and progressive movements held sway, Yankees asserted their influence through campaigns to redefine the meaning of their Anglo-American forebears. As part of the reaction, the modern preservation movement was founded by William Sumner Appleton, Jr., a privileged, old-blooded Bostonian. Resisting not simply this avalanche of change but the amateurish romanticism of fellow antiquaries, Appleton founded the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities in 1910. While examining SPNEA in the context of progressivism, Preserving Historic New England focuses on its redefinition of preservation to fit the methodology of science, the economy of capitalism, and the aestheticism of architecture. In so doing, preservation not only became a profession defined by those male worlds, but remade Yankee memory to accord with the modern corporate order.

About the Author

James Michael Lindgren is at State University of New York, Plattsburgh.