AMST 333
House and Home in America
Roger Williams University
M-TH 3:30 - 4:50
GHH 108
Michael R. H. Swanson, Ph. D.
Office: GHH 215 Phone:  ext. 3230
Hours:  M, T, Th, F 9:00-10:30
  or by Appointment
mswanson@rwu.edu

The Week's Work
HOME SWEET HOME

Mid Pleasures and palaces though I may roam,
Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home;
A charm from the sky seems to hallow us there,
Which, seek thro' the world, is ne'er met with elsewhere. Home.

Home! Sweet, sweet home!
There's no place like home.
There's no place like home.

An exile from home, spendor dazzles in vain,
Oh, give me my lowly thatched cottage again;
The birds singing gaily, that come at my call;
Give me them, with that peace of mind, dearer than all.

CHORUS

To thee, I'll return, overburdened with care,
The heart's dearest solace will smile on me there.
No more from that cottage again will I roam,
Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home.

Words by John Howard Payne,
music by Henry Rowley Bishop.
IT’S ONLY A SHANTY

It’s only a shanty in old shanty town,
The roof is so slanty, it touches the ground,
But my tumble down shack, by an old railroad track,
Like a millionaire’s mansion, is calling me back,
I’d give up a palace, if I were a king,
It’s more than a palace, it’s my ev’rything,
There’s a queen waiting there with a silvery crown,
In a shanty in old shanty town.
For Monday, February 27
Having left the city and begun to understand suburbs as places, we now begin to introduce ourselves to the American Suburban Home, in many ways the core of the American Dream. We’ve seen that whatever the suburban house was, it was not a farm house, no matter how much we romanticized “Home Sweet Home.” Nor was it the humble log cabin, no matter how much we romanticized that, either. We start working in three books at this point, adding Home, a Short History of an Idea to the mix.
During the six years of my architectural education the subject of comfort was mentioned only once . . . it was a curious omission from an otherwise rigorous curriculum; one would have thought that comfort was a crucial issue in preparing for the architectural profession, like justice in law, or health in medicine

This is not a book about interior decoration. It is not so much the reality of the home that is my subject as the idea of the home, and although history is here, it is the present that concerns me.

Witold Rybczynski, Forward, vii-viii
Read, in Home: A Short History of an Idea, by Witold Rybczynski

Chapter 1, Nostalgia, pp. 1-14
Chapter 2, Intimacy and Privacy, pp. 15 - 50
We make a distinction between the ideas house and home, though both describe the same space. Rybczynski's book is quite remarkable, in that the author explores one of our most basic cultural artifacts to explain its origin. As we'll see the ideas which form the basic American home comes from many different places and appear over a long period of time. The modern Western house usually dated to the invention of the chimney, which happens more recently than one might think: only a generation or so before the Pilgrims and Puritans venture to North America in the early 17th century.

We will need to understand something of Rybczynski's writing technique in order to get the most out of him. Unlike most scholarly authors, he doesn't at all hesitate to use the word I in his writings. He is not at all anonymous, and he shares not only his thoughts, but the processes by which he reaches them, as well. This is a rare privilege. I hope you'll enjoy it.  I hope you will also use it in the writing you do for me.
Chapter I. Nostalgia

Click on the picture to the right to visit Martha Stewart's online catalogue.  The furniture section will give you a good idea of her version of Americanism.  Not every American dotes on her, however.  Satirist Trystan L. Bass asks, "What if Martha Stewart were a Goth? To find the answer, click on the image below...if you dare.
Chapter II. Intimacy and Privacy.

Language is not just a medium, like a water pipe, it is a reflection of how we think.

We can talk about some desires or needs we have as being "ends in themselves," and others as being "means to an end.” This will be the case in considering "privacy" and "intimacy." We usually think of privacy as being such a fundamental human need that it is hard to consider that its absence from early houses was not a problem arising from poverty or ignorance. People didn't seek what they didn't need. This may suggest that privacy isn't so much an "end in itself" as a means invented to achieve something else. This other thing is what Rybczynski calls intimacy, and most particularly, a kind of intimacy called stimmung. Make sure you understand the meaning of this word borrowed from the German. How do you create stimmung in your environment?
Albrecht Deurer's St. Jerome (left) and Antonello da Messina's stimmung-less version of the same saint.  (right).  Do these pictures show the presence or absence of a sort of intimacy?. 


Note, for example each Jerome is pictured reading,  Which Jerome is really involved with his text?  How can you tell?
I want to show us a short video which will demonstrate some of the changes in the house which developed in a desire to create more intimacy and privacy.
Poplar Cottage at the Weald and Downland Museum is contemporary with the settling of New England.  As late as that, English Houses were being built without chimneys.  We'll view a video which will demonstratet the transition from chimney-less to chimneyed houses.

The Weald and Downland Museum, Near Chichester in the south of England, is a wonderful place.  Until you get there in the flesh, you can be a cyber-tourist by clicking on the image to the left
For Thursday, March 1
No new readings for this day.  Review all of readings to date.  I'm close to being ready to give you something to work on, and may hand out your first take-home examination this day.  I'm currently intending to divide the mid-term into two parts and issue each separately.
Don't Forget Tracy Kidder.  How are you coming on it?