Building Detectives: A Practical Seminar On Researching Historic American Architecture in St. Louis

3 units

The purpose of this seminar is to both acquaint students with and give them practical experience in the methods of researching historic architecture, both in archives of primary documents and in the field. Initial course sessions are aimed at giving students necessary background in understanding both the formal (stylistic, technological, and material) and spatial content of historic buildings. Reading buildings for what they reveal about the social and material aspects of everyday life will be emphasized. Then students will learn how to use the documentary record to both uncover the history of individual buildings, as well as their urban and social contexts, by visiting local archival repositories. The remainder of the course sessions will be spent in a group collaborative project, recording and documenting a particular building or set of buildings in a St. Louis neighborhood and uncovering the hidden histories encoded in structure, space, and the historical record. It is anticipated that aournd one-half to two-thirds of the class will be spent in archives and in the field. Given the collaborative nature of the final project of this course, students will be expected to be diligent in their attendance and to pull their own weight in helping to complete the final project. The site and the product of the course will depend to some extent on enrollment--the more people in the class, clearly the more ambitious the project will be. At the very least, a visual (photographic and drawn) record of a historic building will be produced, and a documentary record will be established for it, and these will be assembled in a form appropriate for public presentation. This documentation will be intended to aid local St. Louis heritage/preservation/civic efforts.