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
AMST 333
House and Home in America
Roger Williams University
Fall, 2013 M, W, F:  1:00-1:50
GHH 208
For Friday, September 20
Download, and read,
Town and Country Roads, by Robert Copeland
The volume in which this article is located is part of the Making of America Project at the University of Michigan.  In its original form it is a little awkward to use, as the only way to find it is by volume of the journal from which it was taken, followed by looking page by page.  I've converted it into a .pdf file which may be a little easier to use.

In the western country where the land is level or gently rolling it seems as if convenience and economy alike dictate that all roads should be made straight and at right angles, and that if the streets of a new town are wide enough to give good circulation to the air, no further thought need be given to reserving space for health or pleasure. While all would admit the advantage of varying the roads from straight lines in a hilly country, and the dullest person can be persuaded that it is no farther around than over a hill, but few will understand the expediency of curving roads where the surface is as open to travel in one place as another. This is a serious mistake and stamps all the new towns of the west with such a stereotyped resemblance that a traveler might be excused if, landed on a dark night at the wrong depot, he should go up the main street, turn to right or left, and try his door-key in the same number which marks his own house in his native town.

Robert Copeland, attacking the grid plan
For Wednesday, September 18
Today, we'll finish up the video we looked at on Monday, and then do a little prowling around with Google Maps to see what we can see.  The video was released in 1986, and as you can imagine things have changed considerably in some of the suburbs visited--Some of them, however, still reflect the version of the American Dream of the era in which they were designed.  What I'd like you to do between now and Friday is see if there's a dream house for you in any of the suburbs featured.  If so, which one?  You might put a link to it in the Clog.

View Larger Map
For Monday, September 16
It seems a little weird to write this in past tense, but as we are all aware, problems with books and that sort of thing, together with my Friday the Thirteenth series of small disasters, managed to make the syllabus for the week skewed.  I decided it would be better to make the syllabus more historically accurate, here is a revised description of what we did do, and what hopefully we will do in an hour or two.  We watched the video a session early.  I hope you enjoyed it.  We didn't quite get finished with it, and I'd like to take care of the five or so minues we didn't get to on Wednesday.  I'll see if I can get the equipment working.  The question Robert Stern asks at the end is a good one.  Is it smart to build a new "suburbia" in the center of a densely built city?  Why or why not?  What do you think?
Note, too, that as late as 1872 Copeland (p. 58) can complain about suburbs using language which would have been appropriate in Roman times: “Instead of these pleasing combinations, this blending of town and country, we enter every town between stiff houses, without a vine to decorate or a tree to shade, through the suburbs given up to squalid inhabitants, redolent with bad smells, the pathway disputed by rampant pigs or predacious cows.”