Professor Emeritus Barbara Miller Lane’s new book Houses for a New World: Builders and Buyers in American Suburbs 1945-1965 (Princeton University Press, October, 2015) has won the 2016 Book Prize, awarded by the Department of Historic Preservation at University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Va.
From the announcement:
Houses for a New World is a timely volume. It anticipates the issues that the field of historic preservation will address in a housing type that extended to more than13 million structures in the postwar period. It is precisely their commonality that has made them vulnerable. Historically significant, these merchant-built houses will expand the definition of vernacular architecture. However over the decades these houses and developments have never been static, so assessing their integrity will be a key issue in the future. The laying out of these communities translates the historic precedents of community development into the midcentury period, relating changes in transportation, education, building practices, and so on. Lane’s narrative foreshadows both the development of larger houses and McMansions, as well as the recent tiny house movement. The book anticipates a new appreciation – even affection – for these houses, developments and communities. It will be a resource for the wider preservation community in the contemporary world.
Houses for a New World has also received the Athenaeum Literary Award (for art and architecture) and the 2016 PROSE award in architecture and urban planning.
Lane is Mellon Professor Emeritus in the Humanities at Bryn Mawr College, and Research Professor in the Growth and Structure of Cities department.