Daniel Abramson

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Daniel M. Abramson’s scholarship focuses on issues of architecture, society, economics, and government, from the eighteenth through twentieth centuries with a specialization in American and British topics.  His primary PhD advising has covered these areas, plus South Asian modernism.     

Abramson is the author of three books: Obsolescence: An Architectural History (University of Chicago Press, 2016); Building the Bank of England: Money, Architecture, Society, 1694–1942 (Yale University Press, 2005); and Skyscraper Rivals: The AIG Building and the Architecture of Wall Street (Princeton Architectural Press, 2001); as well as being co-editor with the Aggregate Architectural History Collaborative of Writing Architectural History: Evidence and Narrative in the Twenty-First Century (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021) and of Governing By Design: Architecture, Economy, and Politics in the Twentieth Century (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012).  

Current work focuses on architecture and citizenship in American government building complexes since 1900 with articles in Grey Room 78 and 101, the Journal of Society of Architectural Historians, and the Aggregate website.

Before coming to Boston University in 2016, Abramson taught at Tufts University and Connecticut College. He received his Ph.D. in art history from Harvard University  and his B.A. in English and American literature from Princeton University.

To book an appointment to meet with Professor Abramson- visit https://danielabramson.youcanbook.me/ or email directly for alternate times.

Curriculum Vitae

Selected Publications

	Civic Business: Mies’s Chicago Federal Center in Context. (co-authored with Daniel Bluestone), Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (March 2026).
	Albany at the Crossroads of a Strategic Region. Aggregate 14 (April 2026).
	Effects, Fictions, and Contradictions of American Government Architecture. Grey Room 101 (Fall 2025)
	Obsolescence. Harvard Design Magazine 53 (2025)
	Writing Architectural History: Evidence and Narrative in the Twenty-First Century. Pittsburgh University Press, 2021.
	Obsolescence: An Architectural History.University of Chicago Press, 2016.
	Building the Bank of England: Money, Architecture, Society, 1694–1942.Yale University Press, 2005.