Learning from Pevsner
Professor Damie Stillman, Editor of the Buildings of the United States
Damie Stillman first encountered Pevsner when carrying out his own research on English architecture. Much later he became involved with the Buildings of the United States, outcome of Pevsner’s 1976 challenge to the Society of Architectural Historians to do for the United States what he had dome for England. There are similarities and differences between the two series. On the level of format, the American volumes, Buildings of the United States (BUS), have many more maps and illustrations, and both are inserted right in the text where they are most relevant. But, even more significant are the differences in convent, engendered by the different composition of American society, as well as the different nature of American geography. Thus, cathedrals and churches, for example, do not bulk nearly so large in the BUS volumes as in the Buildings of England, and the diverse ethnic backgrounds of Americans have produced far more varied examples of buildings and building types. And even though most of the buildings date from the last two- or three-hundred years, there are major examples of native American structures from at least the thirteenth century.
