Preserving Historic New England: Preservation, Progressivism, and the Remaking of Memory / Edition 1

by James M. Lindgren

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195093636
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	11/09/1995
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	9.52(w) x 6.33(h) x 0.78(d)
Lexile:	1460L (what's this?)

About the Author

State University of New York, Plattsburgh

Editorial Reviews

"Preservationists will profit from this book because they will understand better that their pragmatic, day-to-day activities have a profound collective impact on the communities and the society that they serve."—The Public Historian

"there is much to admire in this book. Many public historians have made the same theoretical claims that Lindgren does, but few have demonstrated the basis for that theoretical position nearly as comprehensivley as Lingren has done."—The Journal of American History

"James Lindgren tells this fascinating story well and in impeccable detail...As a model for emulation it cannot be too highly recommended."—International Journal of Heritage Studies

"James Lindgren has written an important work on the early-twentieth-century New England origins of the modern American historic preservation movement....[he] has skillfully and meticulously portrayed the conflicts, debates, and intentions that shaped an emergent philosophy of historic preservaton and reshaped New England's historical landscape..."—The New England Quarterly

From the Publisher