Directors' Night 2026 will feature three lectures by three current and past board members on their recent and ongoing research: Virginia Raguin, C. Ian Stevenson, and Jonathan Duval. Presented virtually via Zoom, the event will take place on Wednesday, March 18 at 7 PM. The three talks will be followed by a live Q&A with the speakers. 

Virginia Raguin, "The Illuminated Window: Stories Across Time": Virginia Raguin's 2023 book The Illuminated Window: Stories Across Time (Reaktion Books) offers a series of vignettes of stained glass environments across patronage, countries, and time frames that enables an in-depth discussion of production as well as diversity of representation. In multiple instances, from the twelfth through the twenty-first centuries, we find conflict, commemoration, celebration, and innovation. The architecture is a frame, not only for the windows but for our own bodies as they move through space. Including windows from the cathedrals of Chartres, Canterbury, and Cologne, Paris’ Sainte Chapelle, Swiss guild-halls, the Pink Mosque, Iran, to Tiffany’s chapel for the World Columbian Exposition and Frank Lloyd Wright’s California homes, the text describes the site-specific decisions of production. This art results not from a single maker, but through the collaborative tension between the architect and stained glass artist and the concern of the patrons to address their audience.

Virginia Raguin is Emeritus Professor, College of the Holy Cross. She has also served on the NESAH board and has published widely on religion, stained glass and architecture ranging from medieval to contemporary times Her book Artistic Integration in Gothic Buildings (Toronto University Press, 1995) united major scholars. Stained Glass from its Origins to the Present (Thames & Hudson 2003) is a chronological survey. Her on-line book Style, Status, and Religion: America’s Pictorial Windows 1840-1950 presents a broad overview of the American experience and offers 450 downloadable images.  

C. Ian Stevenson, "Destination 'Magic Town’: Selling Rumford, Maine, in the Nineteenth Century": In 1890, paper magnate Hugh Chisholm finished purchasing 1100 acres along the Androscoggin River at Rumford Falls, Maine, a waterpower source so profound it was nicknamed "New England’s Niagara." The falls offered more power than Chisholm needed for his own manufacturing and so it provided him the opportunity to transform this so-called wilderness into a thriving urban oasis. By 1906, one Boston newspaper dubbed Rumford Falls “Magic Town,” indicating the fulfillment of Chisholm's vision and the apex of capitalism. In this talk historian C. Ian Stevenson explains how Chisholm used visual media to sell his idea through a combination of printed promotional materials, such as illustrated pamphlets and postcards, and physical infrastructure, such as repeating railroad station architecture, to convince investors to purchase lots and build there.

C. Ian Stevenson is a Lecturer in the Preservation Studies Program at Boston University. Ian holds a PhD in American & New England Studies and an MA in Preservation Studies from Boston University. Ian’s research and publications include such topics as historic dams, railroad station architecture, Civil War veterans’ vacation homes, historic preservation photography, the creation of national parks, and river rewilding. Ian is working on a book manuscript titled Summer Homes of the Survivors: Buildings and Landscapes of the Civil War Vacation, 1878-1918, under contract with the University of Virginia Press. In addition to his academic work, Ian was the Director of Advocacy for Greater Portland Landmarks, a non-profit historic preservation organization in Portland, Maine, and an independent preservation consultant. Ian has served as a board member for the Vernacular Architecture Forum and the New England Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians, where he was also secretary. 

Jonathan Duval, "Frank Chouteau Brown's Letters and Lettering (1902)": Frank Chouteau Brown's Letters and Lettering (1902) distilled for a generation of architects the history and practice of lettering in architecture. For decades, lettering on drawings by architects and engineers had begun to diverge, and Brown, like others, took the opportunity to argue for a distinct type lettering for architects. By collecting diverse samples from prominent contemporaneous designers, Brown promoted a style that emphasized an individual artistic identity. He pointedly distinguished this practice from lettering in engineering, which he portrayed as being purely mechanical and devoid of aesthetic sensibility. Brown’s work helped solidify lettering as a site of professional self-definition and the expression of artistic authority. Ultimately, the movement toward a unique graphic style allowed architects to signal their creative expertise at a glance, even in highly technical working drawings.

Jonathan Duval is the Assistant Curator of Architecture & Design at the MIT Museum. His research focuses on the history of architectural practice and pedagogy, architectural representation and graphics, and the bureaucratic intersections of architecture and technology. In addition to the MIT Museum, Jon has held curatorial positions, internships, and fellowships at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Sir John Soane’s Museum, and the RISD Museum. He studied architectural history at Tufts University and Brown University and is on the Board of Directors of the New England chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians.

On March 10, 2026 at 7 PM, authors Jay Wickersham, Chris Milford, and Hope Mayo will present a lecture on their new book Henry Hobson Richardson: Drawings from the Houghton Library, Harvard University, published by Monacelli Press/Phaidon. 

The book is the first in-depth publication of drawings by H. H. Richardson, the greatest American architect of the nineteenth century. The trove of over 4,000 drawings, preserved since Richardson’s death in the Houghton Rare Book Library at Harvard, have been largely unpublished until now. The book presents full-color reproductions of 450 sketches and renderings by the Boston-based architect and his talented assistants, who included Charles McKim and Stanford White. It includes more than 50 projects, including such masterpieces as Boston’s Trinity Church; Sever and Austin Halls at Harvard; the Stoughton House in Cambridge; the Allegheny County Courthouse and Jail in Pittsburgh; the Marshall Field Store and Glessner House in Chicago; and five small public libraries.

The authors will discuss the Richardson drawings and what they reveal about collaboration in Richardson’s studio, with a focus on the design process that produced Trinity Church. Martin Filler, in the New York Review of Books, called this “An instructive, handsomely produced volume... From Richardson’s lightning-bolt conceptual sketches to seductive presentation drawings by his talented assistants, we are led, project by project and step by step, through the prolific master’s output.” Michael J. Lewis, in the New Criterion, writes that, “Like a silent movie, the images themselves telling a story, we watch Richardson gradually find his way, year by year, page by page... At a time when architectural practice has effectively abolished drawing by hand, this book will come as a revelation.”

The book has received the 2025 Book Prize from the Victorian Society in America and the 2025 Honor Book Award from Historic New England, and is available to purchase on Phaidon's website.

Jay Wickersham, an architect and lawyer, taught for fifteen years at the Harvard Graduate. School of Design, where he was an associate professor of architecture in practice. Chris Milford is a partner in the architectural firm of Milford & Ford Associates, specializing in historic preservation and restoration. Hope Mayo, a renowned expert in rare books, drawings, prints, and manuscripts, was the former Philip Hofer Curator of Printing and Graphic Arts (retired) at Houghton Library, where she oversaw the Richardson drawings collection. 

On November 12 at 7 PM, Mark Wright will present his talk "Richardson’s House on Sippican Harbor, Revisited: Notes since 2010."

In his article "H. H. Richardson’s House for Rev’d Browne, Rediscovered" (Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, March 2010), Wright presented one of Richardson’s most enigmatic and consequential works. His graphic reconstruction of the house as it was originally built was grounded in then-newly-identified 19th- and early 20th-century photographs, archival research, and close examination and measurement of the surviving, altered building. To fill the house in mind’s eye with the family for whom it was created, he explored the lives of Richardson’s clients and their neighbors. This perspective engendered a lively picture of the house’s place in the physical and social landscape, and led to a fuller understanding of how the commission's design influenced the architect’s rivals and followers, and – perhaps most importantly – their clients. Consideration of the house in the context of some of H. H. Richardson’s better-known work of the period between 1879 and 1882 showed that this tiny commission was central to the architect’s development as a mature artist.

It is a fitting time for an update. At the time of the article's publication, the house had recently changed hands and its future was uncertain. In 2019 a hastily mounted but successful social media and letter-writing campaign convinced the owners to withdraw their application for a permit to demolish the house outright, and to look instead for an institutionally supportable use for the cultural asset of which they’d discovered themselves to be stewards. The town has become more engaged in an ongoing effort to assure the building’s preservation. It has been nominated to the Preservation Massachusetts Most Endangered Historic Resources Program. And, over the last 15 years, Mr. Wright has enriched his own understanding both of the process of its design – including fruitful improvisation based on input from the owner and contractor – and of how the unique shingle detailing with which H. H. Richardson treated this house (and no other) behaved in changing sunshine. The talk is based on one Wright recently delivered to a lay audience in Marion, Massachusetts, sponsored by the Sippican Historical Society.

Mark Wright is an architect in private practice. He was educated at the Rice University School of Architecture (BA '80, BArch '82), then had the good fortune to spend his first professional decade with Kliment & Halsband. Since 2003, Wright & Robinson Architects has worked to bring 21st century families and their 19th century houses into happy mutual accommodation. Wright's technical understanding of the Queen Anne and Shingle Style architecture of the towns along the Watchung Ridge undergirds his work on Richardson's Percy Browne house and his ongoing research into houses by Charles Follen McKim, John Charles Olmsted, and Frederick B. White. 

The deadline to submit abstracts for the 46th Annual Student Symposium has been pushed to Friday, September 26.

The New England Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians is pleased to announce its upcoming 46th Annual Student Symposium. The Student Symposium features presentations by outstanding students from programs across New England in the history, theory, and criticism of architecture, art history, urban studies, historic preservation, and related fields. This year's event will take place on Saturday, November 8, 2025 at Brown University. Student presenters must present in-person, though the event will be held in a hybrid format for remote viewing.

Student symposium presenters are typically engaged in producing a thesis or dissertation, or are interested in developing work done in connection with a seminar or lecture course. Symposium paper topics may concern the architecture of any era or place. Presenters should be current students at an academic institution in the New England region. Paper presentations should be 20 minutes in length and accompanied by slides; presentations will be followed by a brief Q&A.

If you are interested in presenting your work at the symposium, please submit an abstract and short biographical note by September 26. Student abstracts should include the student’s name, the name of their faculty advisor, their field of study, and their institutional affiliation. Abstracts should be less than 300 words in length and should be followed by a short biography of less than 100 words. Please submit as a single pdf document to nesah.president@gmail.com. 

We will notify students of acceptance decisions shortly after the deadline.

Please do not hesitate to contact us at nesah.president@gmail.com with any questions that you may have. Thank you for your participation!

On October 30 at 7 PM, 2024 Cooldige Fellowship winner Olivia Wynne Houck of MIT will present her talk, "Far-Flung Frontier: American Basing Negotiations with Iceland, 1945-1947" on Zoom. Register here!

Throughout the Second World War, the United States established temporary military bases on islands in the North Atlantic Ocean – spanning from Iceland and Greenland down to the Azores – as a means to protect the Western Hemisphere and facilitate the movement of materiel to Europe. However, after the war ended it became apparent that the strategic need for these bases remained vital to U.S. security, and the Americans embarked on a series of negotiations with the Icelanders in order to secure longer leases and maintain their presence on the island. These negotiations were eventually successful, but the contours of public debate around overseas U.S. basing, particularly in relation to the developing tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, reveal not just a more expansive understanding of American security, but also the valence that “bases” took on in diplomatic venues and public messaging. In these contexts, the “base” had three meanings – it was an instrument of power projection, or a way of enabling operational capacity; it was an object of negotiation, or a focal point from which to argue about larger tensions of intention and presence; and it was a tool for navigating and facilitating bilateral and multilateral security arrangements and guarantees. Not only were “bases” crucial nodes in the development of a growing global infrastructure, but they also were political and symbolic, evidencing larger accusations of “aggression” or “expansion.” By interrogating American negotiations to secure bases on the northern edge of the North Atlantic region, we can see how politics, diplomacy, and technology coalesced, laying the groundwork for the infrastructure that would comprise the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Olivia Wynne Houck is a a doctoral candidate in the History, Theory and Criticism of Architecture program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she focuses on the intersection of the built environment, diplomacy, and geopolitics during the early Cold War. She is particularly interested in the interplay between NATO, American foreign policy, technology, and infrastructure in relation to the European and North American Arctic regions. Her work considers American foreign policy and NATO from their coldest edges. Entitled “Concrete Security: Constructing and Defending the North Atlantic Region, 1940-1950” her dissertation centers the built environment as a means to investigate how the North Atlantic region became a strategic territory, in large part through the American desire for, and fear of, military bases on the islands of Greenland and Iceland during the Second World War and postwar period. Houck holds a B.A. in Art History from the College of William and Mary, an M.A. in Architectural History from the University of Virginia, and a Postgraduate Diploma in ‘Small States Studies’ from the University of Iceland. She is a Research Associate at The Arctic Institute and a Research Fellow with the North American and Arctic Defense and Security Network and has held visiting researcher positions and fellowships with the Fridtjof Nansen Institute in Oslo and the Arctic Institute.

On May 22 at 7 PM, Ukrainian architects Mariana Kaplinska and Ihor Bokalo will present their talk “Wooden Churches in Wartime Ukraine: Conservation Challenges,” which later this month will be presented at the American Institute for Conservation’s 53rd Annual Meeting in Minneapolis. Register here!

The use of wood is an integral part of Ukrainian culture, and the tradition of wooden building technology goes through the whole history of Ukraine. Wooden churches are the quintessence of Ukrainian wooden building tradition; there are thousands of historic wooden churches in Ukraine. Many of them are understudied or introduced into scientific discourse in very general terms, the vast majority are completely unknown in the world, and all of them are endangered today, as the most vulnerable and fragile structures under the threat of Russian attacks.

Since Russia's brutal 2022 invasion, conservation in Ukraine has faced many additional challenges on top of the normal difficulties of preserving wooden architecture. The long-term conservation of heritage buildings requires immediate action, cooperation with emergency services, documentation of damages, and the prioritization of sites according to their past and potential conservation. Kaplinska and Bokalo will present their ongoing project to digitally document valuable and endangered wooden churches in Ukraine. Their work defines the heritage value, architectural typology, threat level and accessibility (proximity to the frontline and to the border with the enemy, artillery strike risk, and the liberation of occupied territories) as criteria for directing conservation efforts. Their presentation will recount their three expeditions undertaken between November 2023 and February 2024 to document the 11 oldest wooden churches in Central, Northern, and Eastern Ukraine, which were 3D-scanned and photo-documented to preserve their appearance in the face of direct shelling threats, and their ongoing work to document another 25 churches in case of their damage or loss.

Kaplinska and Bokalo’s project uses 3D scanning along with photogrammetric surveying to accurately and efficiently document threatened wooden structures in close detail. Their project also represents an initial step towards the further study of Ukrainian wooden churches.

More information about Kaplinska and Bokalo’s work can be read in Karolina Świder’s article, “More Than Buildings,” published by Red Arch Cultural Heritage Law & Policy Research with support from the Knights of Columbus, and linked here.

Mariana Kaplinska is a licensed architect and urban planning professional who has been practicing architecture since 2008. She is an Associate Professor at Uzhhorod National University and also teaches practical classes and lectures on architectural and interior design, historic preservation, architectural conservation, and wooden built heritage conservation at Lviv Polytechnic National University. She has additionally worked as a consultant for Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates (London) and as the Head of the Architecture Section at the Klymentiy Sheptytsky Museum of Folk Architecture and Rural Life in Lviv.  In 2016, Kaplinska defended her PhD thesis, “The Principles of Regeneration for the Market Squares in the Historic Towns and Cities of the Western Region of Ukraine.” Kaplinska is additionally a member of the Ukrainian International Center for the Study of Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM) committee, with a particular focus on the science, theory, and history of architect and issues of cultural heritage preservation.

Ihor Bokalo is also a licensed architect and urban planning professional who began his career as an architect in 2002. Since defending his PhD thesis, Architecture of the Lost Churches in the City of Lviv, in 2010, Bokalo has been Associate Professor at the Department of Architecture and Conservation at Lviv Polytechnic National University. His experience spans a wide range of projects, including architectural conservation, the design of new constructions, major renovations, and urban reconstruction. Beyond conservation projects – including at St. Casimir Church in Lviv and the Holy Spirit Church in Potelych – Ihor has served as the chief architect and main contractor for several large-scale industrial plants; he has participated in numerous grants and programs; and is a member of the Ukranian International Center for the Study of Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM) committee. His primary areas of scientific research include traditional wooden architecture, particularly in the Carpathian region of Ukraine, heritage preservation legislation, and the training and education of heritage preservation professionals.

NESAH's 2025 annual meeting will be held at the Peerless Lofts in Providence, RI.

The annual meeting will be held at Peerless Lofts (150 Union Street) and begin at 1 PM. Programming will include a walking tour of residential adaptive reuse in Providence led by NESAH Director Jason Bouchard and a keynote talk by Marisa Angell Brown, Executive Director of the Providence Preservation Society.

The program will also include a brief business meeting comprising board elections and chapter updates. Light refreshments will be served. Both in-person and virtual registration are available for the annual meeting.

NESAH membership and event registration is required to attend. To become a member, or to renew your membership, please visit the membership page on our website.

Full program:

1 PM - Event begins. Remarks and NESAH business meeting. 

1:45 PM - Walking tour of residential adaptive reuse in Providence led by Jason Bouchard.

2:30 PM - Break for refreshments and programming discussion.

2:45 PM - Keynote talk by Marisa Angell Brown.

3:30 PM - Q&A with Marisa, further discussion.

4 PM - Event concludes.

Parking: Street parking is possible in downtown Providence, and several parking garages are within walking distance of Peerless Lofts.

Getting to Providence: Providence is easily accessible from Boston on the Providence/Stoughton line of the MBTA, and by Amtrak. The Providence train station is a 10 minute walk from Peerless Lofts.

Please direct any questions to Sophie Higgerson at nesah.president@gmail.com

Photo: NatRea, Cornish Associates

The Fellowship Committee of NESAH is pleased to announce Yannick Etoundi as the recipient of the 2025 John Coolidge Research Fellowship.

Yannick is a doctoral candidate at the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at Brown University and the 2024-25 Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellow at the Ruth J. Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice. His main area of focus is on the colonial built environments of the African continent and the African diaspora, with a special emphasis on racial slavery, abolition, and colonialism. His dissertation explores the relationship between colonial architecture and emancipation in the French vieilles colonies (Martinique, Guadeloupe, Reunion, French Guiana) between 1848 and 1900. Trained as an architect, he has worked in architectural firms based in Yukon (Canada) and Tokyo (Japan) and holds experience in curation and public humanities.

The Coolidge Fellowship will support Yannick's research for his dissertation, entitled "Abolishing Racial Slavery, Building a French Colonial Utopia:  Architecture and Emancipation in the "Vieilles Colonies," 1848-1900,". Racial slavery was officially abolished for a second time in the French colonial empire in 1848. Yet, immediately, the discontinuities between the promises of freedom advanced by French Republicanism and the restrictions on Black life that ensued were made visible in the built environment of the vieilles colonies of Martinique, Guadeloupe, French Guiana, and Reunion. This dissertation project investigates how emancipation reshaped the colonial built environment of France's former slave colonies. Importantly, through this unfolding, it aims to understand how freedpeople rebuild their lives in this post-emancipation colonial landscape. Here, the historical experience of emancipation is positioned as a major force shaping the development of French colonial architecture and urbanism during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Congratulations, Yannick!

The Fellowship Committee of NESAH is pleased to announce Charlotte Leib as the recipient of the 2025 Robert Rettig Annual Meeting Fellowship.

Charlotte is a sixth-year PhD Candidate in History at Yale University, where she primarily researches, teaches, and writes about American energy history and histories of the built environment. Originally trained in architecture and landscape architecture, she holds a Bachelor of Arts in Architecture from Princeton University and dual Masters Degrees in Landscape Architecture and in the History & Philosophy of Design from Harvard University. Her dissertation examines how meadow plants, technologies, and ideologies shaped larger patterns of colonization, climate change, and urbanization along the Northeastern Atlantic seaboard during the transition from the organic to fossil economies, using the Meadowlands of New Jersey / Lenapehoking as a central case study. She has forthcoming work in the Journal of Energy History and the edited volume New Jersey's Natures: Environmental Histories of the Garden State (Rutgers University Press, 2026).

The Rettig Fellowship will support Charlotte's attendance at the annual SAH conference in Atlanta this April, where she will share some of her dissertation research on the panel "Dividing Lines: The Legacy of the Interstate in the American City". Her paper at the conference will demonstrate how the ubiquitous use of sand drain technology in the construction highway infrastructure over marshlands ecologically transformed the Meadowlands and how artists and engineers conceptualized and constructed solid ground in the 1930's through 1960's.

Congratulations, Charlotte!

The deadline for NESAH's John Coolidge Research Fellowship has been extended to February 15, 2025 at 11:59 PM. The annual fellowship supports a graduate student at a New England college or university working on topics related to architectural history, the built environment, and related fields with a grant of $1000. The research grant is distributed in two parts, the first half upon the awarding of the grant and the second half after the winner completes a lecture to NESAH members describing their research and the way the Coolidge Fellowship supported their work. For more information, please see the Fellowships and Awards section of the NESAH website. Questions and completed applications should be sent to Sophie Higgerson, Chapter President, at nesah.president@gmail.com.