Gabrielle M. Lanier and Bernard L. Herman. Everyday Architecture of the Mid-Atlantic. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press 1997.
The primary intent of this book is to serve as a field guide to common buildings and landscapes extending from southern New Jersey to the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay on Virginia’s Eastern Shore. The area of concentration is pre-1940 domestic and agricultural architecture in towns and rural landscapes. Dense urban areas, such as Baltimore and Philadelphia, are not included. The authors employ an archaeological approach to their study of buildings, by treating them as above ground archaeological sites with layers of historical changes. Lanier and Herman adopt the concepts of stratigraphy, horizon, and terminus post quem in their analysis. They recognize that all buildings exhibit layers of change that must be peeled back to trace their sequence, much like the concept of stratigraphy in archaeology, which peels back layers of soil to understand the chronology of a site. The concept of horizon, which is a chronological and geographic distribution of certain cultural traits, is used to trace similarities in the broader landscape over time. Terminus post quem is used to identify the time after which certain changes were made to a structure. Themes covered in this volume include house forms and house lots; construction: underpinnings, walling, and roofing; popular architectural styles; farm outbuildings and plans; commercial, industrial, and institutional architecture; landscape ensembles; and recording historic buildings. Lanier and Herman intend to not only provide a field guide, but also a method of understanding the architectural history of buildings. Their landscape ensembles chapter uses Port Penn, Delaware as an example to illustrate their method. The final chapter provides the reader with a sound set of field techniques that can be used to record historic buildings and landscapes. [J. Stabler]