Daniel Bluestone

Professor Bluestone is a specialist in nineteenth century American architecture and urbanism. He has served as the director of the Preservation Studies Program. His Buildings, Landscapes, and Memory: Case Studies in Historic Preservation (W.W. Norton, 2011) received the Society of Architectural Historians 2013 Antoinette Forrester Downing Book Award for “the most outstanding publication devoted to historical topics in the preservation field that enhances the understanding and protection of the built environment.”  The book surveys the changing history, nature, and politics of historic preservation in the United States between the early nineteenth century and today. Professor Bluestone’s book Constructing Chicago (1991) was awarded the American Institute of Architects International Book Award and the National Historic Preservation book prize.

Research Areas: American architectural, urban, and landscape history; history, theory, and politics of public memory and historic preservation; race and space in American urbanism.

Selected Publications:
Buildings, Landscapes and Memory: Case Studies in Historic Preservation (W. W. Norton, 2011).
[Winner of the Society of Architectural Historians 2013 Antoinette Forrester Downing Book Award.]

“Charlottesville’s Landscape of Prostitution, 1880-1950,” Buildings and Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum 22 (Fall 2015).

“A.J. Davis’s Belmead: Picturesque Aesthetics in the Land of Slavery,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 71 (June 2012): 145-167.

“Chicago’s Mecca Flat Blues,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 57 (December 1998): 382-403; republished in Max Page and Randall Mason, editors, Giving Preservation a History: Histories of Historic Preservation in the United States (New York and London: Routledge, 2004), 201-256.

For a detailed academic bio and CV, please see Professor Bluestone’s Department Profile, as well as recent profiles in BU Today and Boston University’s Arts & Sciences.