Creating and Preserving the American Home
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Space is limited. For more information about the 12th Annual Conference on
Cultural and Historic Preservation, to register or request registration materials,
please call 1-866-841-2348

Throughout the nineteenth century, designers, tastemakers, owners and occupants began to explore the definition of the American home.  During this period, new house forms, innovative methods of construction and improvements in technology provided alternative ways of conceptualizing and expressing what was distinctly “American” about the home.  Early definitions of the American home stretched previous boundaries in various ways.  Writers and architects like Andrew Jackson Downing and Alexander Jackson Davis turned to the American landscape as the antidote to urban and rural conditions. Catherine Beecher and others projected new models of household organization. Immigrants and newcomers established their own understanding of the American home, often by blending Old World and New World values.  By the end of the nineteenth century, early preservation efforts had embarked on a process of selection in an effort to codify the image of the American home.  The resulting American house thus represented a wide spectrum of ideas that had meaning to various groups and classes of individuals.  Salve Regina’s 12th Annual Conference on Cultural and Historic Preservation will examine all aspects of the American home, its construction, its meaning and its preservation.