In the Memory House

"Mr. Mansfield gets beneath the patina of the tangible and intangible relics of our history to locate the emotional core of our past. Through the intensity of his language, his pace, and wit, the predisposed reader can take the leap into collective memory and even catch that damp, sweet scent of the past. [A] wise and beautiful book." —The New York Times Book Review

In the Memory House recalls what American society has forgotten--the land, its people, and its ideals. 

“Memory is a defining characteristic of New England—this great desire to mark the landscape with historical monuments, to crowd little museums full of small acts of homage, and to tell certain stories,” writes Mansfield. Each essay in the book is about a moment of commemoration — or the failure to commemorate. “At such moments, our aspirations are on full view. When we seek to honor something, we are staking a claim: This is us. In history, unlike heredity, we choose our ancestors.”

Mansfield visited many small museums and local historical societies which he calls “memory houses.” He examined the changes in Town Meeting and the changes in our local landscape: the loss of the elms, and the bulldozing of an entire neighborhood, Boston’s West End. He explored the histories of Franklin Pierce, Thoreau, Johnny Appleseed and Jack Kerouac.

“We have journeyed a long way, once ever so optimistically, and find ourselves far removed from the one-room schoolhouse and the swimming hole, from the horsecar and elm-lined Main Street,” says Mansfield. “We try nostalgia, elegy, jeremiad. All our efforts at the recollection, and somewhere the past itself, are in the memory house.”

By examining what we choose to remember, this important book reveals how progress has created absences in our landscapes and in our lives.


 

Howard Mansfield writes about architecture and American history. He is the author of Cosmopolis: Yesterday's Cities of the Future. He has written for national publications including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, American Heritage and Historic Preservation. He lives in Hancock, New Hampshire.