Leland M. Roth and Amanda C. Roth Clark, American Architecture: A History, 2nd ed. (Routledge, 2016), chaps. 2–3.
Reading not yet attached. Chapter claims, examples, dates, and page citations will be added from the text.
ENGINEthe workshop behind Preservation, Inc.Preservation · Deepwell · Modernism · Historic · Jeffery Holley
CAA 3800C · 10 SEPTEMBER 2026 · JEFFERY’S LIVING CLASS NOTES
What traveled—and what changed—across the Atlantic?
Class 3 examines European colonization from 1600 to 1785. Its central problem is translation: transplanted traditions met different climates, materials, labor systems, cultures, and regions, producing architecture that was neither simply European nor uniformly “colonial.”
Assigned reading · syllabus record
Texts for Class 3
Marc Treib, “Church Design and Construction in Spanish New Mexico,” in Keith L. Eggener, ed., American Architectural History: A Contemporary Reader (Routledge, 2004).
Reading not yet attached. The page will later record the article’s people, places, materials, and argument.
Dell Upton, “Parish Churches, Courthouses, and Dwellings in Colonial Virginia,” in Keith L. Eggener, ed., American Architectural History: A Contemporary Reader (Routledge, 2004).
Reading not yet attached. The page will later connect Upton’s building types to power, society, and regional form.
Pre-class framework
Five lines of inquiry
Transfer
Which forms, plans, construction methods, and ideas did colonists attempt to reproduce?
Adaptation
How did climate, materials, skill, distance, and local conditions change imported traditions?
Region
Why did Spanish New Mexico and colonial Virginia produce different buildings and settlement patterns?
Power
How did churches, courthouses, houses, and landscapes organize religious, civic, racial, and economic authority?
Labor
Whose hands and knowledge made the built environment, and how might familiar style labels obscure coerced or uncredited work?
Encounter
How did European, Indigenous, African, and creole practices meet, conflict, and combine?
Chronological scaffold
Period and evidence to be filled
The syllabus defines the lecture’s period as 1600–1785. Specific events and examples will enter this ledger only after the assigned texts or lecture supply evidence.
1600–1785 · Colonial manifestations and regional influences
- Period markerLecture frame beginsSyllabus
Start of the broad period stated in the syllabus; not a claim that colonial building began everywhere at the same moment.
- Comparative frameSpanish New Mexico and colonial VirginiaPages pending
Two assigned essays provide regional cases for comparing church, civic, and domestic architecture.
- Period markerLecture frame endsSyllabus
The next class turns toward efforts to create an architectural identity for the new nation.
Working vocabulary · provisional
Terms to test against the readings
A local expression of colonial rule, settlement, culture, or building practice. The term asks what became visible in form.
Syllabus title · interpretation pendingThe effect of climate, materials, labor, culture, trade, governance, and inherited practice on buildings in a particular area.
Syllabus title · reading citations pendingA building practice or idea carried from one place to another, where it may be copied, altered, or combined with other knowledge.
Syllabus descriptionA change made in response to local conditions, use, materials, labor, culture, or power.
Syllabus description · examples pendingA category based chiefly on shared use or organization, such as church, courthouse, or dwelling.
Upton title · pages pendingA possible lens for forms produced through cultural contact and local change. Confirm whether and how the assigned authors use it.
Working term · verify before citationAuthor of the assigned study of church design and construction in Spanish New Mexico.
Reader citationAuthor of the assigned comparison of parish churches, courthouses, and dwellings in colonial Virginia.
Reader citationInterpretive cautions
How to read “colonial” closely
These are Jeffery Holley’s pre-class questions. They are prompts for testing the lecture and readings, not summaries of Roth and Clark, Treib, or Upton.
After class · space held open
Lecture, discussion, and evidence
Places and comparisons
Add the buildings, landscapes, regions, people, and dates discussed on September 10.
Arguments and page citations
Record what each author claims, which evidence supports it, and where the accounts agree or diverge.
Question to develop
When does adaptation become a new regional tradition rather than a lesser copy of a European source?