Common Places: Readings in American Vernacular Architecture by Dell Upton; John MichaelVlachReview by: Sally McMurryPennsylvania History, Vol. 54, No. 1 (January, 1987), pp. 73-74Published by: Penn State University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27773161 .

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BOOK REVIEWS

Common Places: Readings in American Vernacular Architecture. Edited by Dell Upton and John Michael Vlach. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986. Pp. xxiv, 529. $50.00 cloth, $24.95 paper.)

This book is a compelling reminder of how narrowly limited is the historian's reliance upon written documents. Common Places demonstrates convincingly how vernacular landscapes, buildings, artifacts, and even (apparently) empty spaces carry information critical to a better understanding of the past. Among historians, this collection will be of special interest to academics, particularly social and cultural historians; and to public historians, especially museum

workers and preservationists. If you wish to own one book on the subject, this is

probably the one to choose.

Just what is vernacular architecture? In their fine introductory essay, editors Dell Upton and John Vlach have managed to put together a sensible, coherent, balanced summary of the field of vernacular architecture studies?not an easy task given the extraordinary variety of content and approaches in the discipline.

They admit that "a straightforward, convincing, authoritative definition has not

been offered" (p. xv), but enumerate several key qualities of the vernacular.

Common buildings integral to the everyday experience of ordinary people are

vernacular structures. Rural, pre-twentieth-century vernacular buildings

usually have not been architect-designed; Manhattan skyscrapers and McDon

ald's burger stands, although professionally designed, can qualify as vernacular

by virtue of their ubiquity in their respective contexts. Vlach and Upton

particularly stress a quality they describe as "intensity of social representation"

(p. xvii). Ethnicity, social class, or status can form the basis of "communal

sanction," and result in identifiable, collectively agreed-upon forms (Pennsylva nia German barn, bourgeois bungalow). Finally, the editors assert, "change is in

the nature of the vernacular" (p. xx). This is important to recognize: too often, whether as scholars or as nostalgic tourists, we tend to attribute to old objects a

static quality they never possessed. The collection which follows consists of twenty-three essays (all previously

published), arranged under five headings: "Definitions and Demonstrations,"

"Construction," "Function," "History," and "Design and Intention." Their

subject matter ranges from early Rhode Island houses to Victorian hall

furnishings to alley life in Washington, D.C. The multi-disciplinary nature of

vernacular architecture studies is evident: among the fields represented are

architectural history, geography, anthropology, American studies, and folklore.

Some of these essays, for instance Stewart McHenry's on eighteenth-century Vermont field patterns and Theodore Prudon's on the Dutch barn, are

spectacular accomplishments of description and documentation. They demon

strate ways of reconstructing past physical forms, and in turn their findings stimulate more questions. McHenry's fascinating categorization of Yankee,

French-Canadian, and Dutch field patterns makes use of aerial photography,

maps, and on-site observation to establish that the three cultural groups have

distinctive patterns of field arrangement: Dutch fields hugged the river, while

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74 PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY

Yankees tended to extend their fields up into the hillsides. These conclusions

prompt this historian to wonder why these patterns developed the way they did, and how they changed over time. Similarly, Clay Lancaster's essay traces the

intriguing aesthetic history of the bungalow, in solid art-historical style. His

work raises the question of why the bungalow became a middle-class fad when it did. Other essays, like Upton's on colonial Virginia or Robert St. George's on

"The Domestication of the Yeomanry in seventeenth-century New England," adhere to the same high standards of recording, and also attempt to understand

patterns of culture and of cultural change. These essays integrate cultural

history and material history in challenging and revealing ways. St. George, for

example, shows how New England building patterns reflect a continuing refinement in the yeoman's division of space for different social and agricultural functions. For the historian, the key issue at the center of this diverse collection is this: How did the "communal consensus" evolve which in turn sanctioned the creation of vernacular forms? How should researchers go about identifying it?

How does it change? Some of the essays in Common Places address these

questions more directly than do others. Regardless of how deeply they analyze the implications of their findings, each represents a model of a particular approach. They also collectively reinforce the importance of cross-disciplinary cooperation in which skills of observation and analysis are shared.

Fine as this collection is, missing (because they do not yet exist) are essays on an enormous range of important topics hardly studied at all: industrial, commercial, urban vernacular; twentieth-century structures; the role of women in shaping vernacular forms. Even historic forms common to Pennsylvania, such as traditional Scots-Irish housing, have been but little examined. Much work remains. In the meantime, Common Places demonstrates that vernacular architecture studies has moved far beyond the unsophisticated antiquarianism with which many historians still associate it; vernacular objects, sensitively interpreted, as primary sources from which exciting history may be written.

Pennsylvania State University Sally McMurry

A Vigorous Spirit of Enterprise: Merchants and Economic Development in

Revolutionary Philadelphia. By Thomas M. Doerflinger. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, for the Institute of Early American

History and Culture, 1986. Pp. xvi, 413. $32.00.)

Doerflinger's outstanding study of the Philadelphia merchants (1750-1791) sheds much needed light on this often discussed but seldom studied body of men.

He offers three distinct and provocative theses. First, his detailed study of the social-economic characteristics and the day-to-day business activities of these

men challenges many of our standard images of them. He argues that merchants made up no more than half of Philadelphia's elite, while some eighty-five percent of the city's merchants did not qualify for elite status. Nor did merchants constitute a socio-economic class or a tight-knit community. Differences in

wealth, in ethnicity, and in religion divided them while transience, individualis tic and aggressive work modes, and a lack of institutional vehicles for coopera tion did nothing to bridge the gaps.

Functional differences also separated them. Some imported dry goods; other

exported provisions; few did both. Most specialized in a narrow range of

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