Interim Director, Preservation Studies Program Alumni, M.A. 2013; Alumni AMNESP, Ph.D. 2019

C. Ian Stevenson is the Interim Director of 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 The 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 and is a current board member of the Fifth Maine Museum on Peaks Island, Maine.

Selected Publications: 

“Restoration’s Dark Side: Gentrification and Daylighting the Saw Mill River in Yonkers, New York,” in Greg Gordon, ed., Rewilding the Urban Frontier: River Conservation in the Anthropocene (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2024)
 
“Introducing Environmental History into Vernacular Architecture: Considerations from New England’s Historic Dams,”Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum 24, no. 2 (Fall 2017): 1-21
 
“Vacationing with the Civil War: Maine’s Regimental Summer Cottages,” Civil War History 63, no. 2 (June 2017): 151-180
 
“Proving Preservation: Boston Subway Construction Photography, 1894-1897,” Future Anterior 10, no. 2 (Winter 2013): 16-31
 

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