{"id":14587,"date":"2023-10-06T14:31:08","date_gmt":"2023-10-06T18:31:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/preservation\/?post_type=profile&p=14587"},"modified":"2024-05-10T12:49:33","modified_gmt":"2024-05-10T16:49:33","slug":"margaret-supplee-smith","status":"publish","type":"profile","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/preservation\/profile\/margaret-supplee-smith\/","title":{"rendered":"Margaret Supplee Smith"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Credit headshot: Jackson Smith)<\/sub><\/em><\/p>\n

Origins of BU’s Preservation Studies Program<\/strong><\/p>\n

Margaret Supplee Smith served as the founding director of Boston University\u2019s Graduate Program in Preservation Studies (1976\u201379).\u00a0 <\/span>The 1966 National Historic Preservation Act had created a demand for trained preservation professionals, which David D. Hall, the director of the American and New England Studies Program, believed the new degree-granting program could address. Having started as a lecture series at Old Sturbridge Village, the BU program developed a curriculum and staff utilizing Boston\u2019s significant resources in historic preservation, conservation, adaptive reuse, art, architecture, and material culture.<\/p>\n

The successful adaptive reuse of the 1865 Boston City Hall by Anderson Notter Associates in 1971, along with other high-profile projects of commercial and industrial buildings, focused national attention on Boston as a city where old and new approaches to historic preservation coexisted.\u00a0 <\/span>Initial classes were limited to twenty students, ten mostly local, somewhat older, men and women who had worked for years in the trenches of historic preservation without credentials and ten recent graduates from across the country eager to make their mark.<\/p>\n

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The Preservation Program in 1978 at the Moon Gate at Chateau-sur-Mer, Newport, Rhode Island (Source: Margaret Supplee Smith).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Smith was a newly minted Brown University Ph. D. who had studied with William H. Jordy and wrote her 1976 thesis, \u201cBetween City and Suburb: Architecture and Planning in Boston\u2019s South End,\u201d on her neighborhood where she and her husband, photographer Jackson Smith,<\/span> had renovated a rowhouse using a federal loan. \u00a0<\/span>The South End was America\u2019s largest intact Victorian rowhouse neighborhood, and in the 1970s, it was a huge urban renewal project whose objective was to preserve existing housing rather than to demolish it.<\/p>\n

Since 1973, Smith had taught courses on American architectural history and painting in BU\u2019s Department of Art, but the historic preservation program was a good fit.\u00a0 <\/span>She liked academic research serving the public good, such as her writing the South End National Register nomination, leading walking tours for the newly emergent Victorian Society in Boston, serving on the new Boston Landmarks Commission, co-directing (with archaeologist David Starbuck) the Canterbury Shaker Village Research Project, and crafting proposals for the Boston Jubilee 350 Exhibition, \u201cPlace Over Time: The Autobiography of Boston\u201d and Boston University\u2019s Summer Program for the Victorian Society.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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A 1978 field trip to a New York Shaker village (Source: Margaret Supplee Smith).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Wake Forest University and Research Areas<\/strong><\/p>\n

After Boston\u2019s 1978 Blizzard, Smith, her husband, and teenage daughter moved to the South.\u00a0 <\/span>She accepted a position in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, in the Department of Art<\/a> at Wake Forest University, a traditionally male (until World War II) liberal arts school which had just built a modern fine arts center and whose administration was committed to raising the profile of both the arts and women on campus. As a longtime art department chair and initiator of the women\u2019s studies program, she did both\u2014and indeed, the arts and women have thrived at Wake Forest. In 2014, she received Wake Forest University\u2019s Medallion of Merit, its highest award.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

She also inculcated an appreciation for the University\u2019s historic architecture in three exhibitions (with publications): \u201cReynolda: An American Country House,\u201d at Reynolda House Museum of American Art (1981\u201382); \u201cWake Forest University: The First 150 Years, 1834\u20131984\u201d (1984); and \u201cMorven House to Worrell House, 1875-1987, A Social and Architectural History\u201d highlighting Wake Forest\u2019s London property (1987). \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

From 1987\u201399, Smith coordinated the statewide, 100-county, multi-pronged North Carolina Women\u2019s History Project and curated the first major exhibition on women\u2019s history for the North Carolina Museum of History (1994). Her award-winning books include North Carolina Women Making History (<\/em>co-author with Emily Herring Wilson) (UNC, 1999); American Ski Resort: Architecture, Style, Experience<\/em> (OU, 2013) and Great Houses and Their Stories, Winston-Salem\u2019s \u201cEra of Success<\/em>,\u201d 1912\u20131940<\/em> (Preservation NC, 2022).<\/p>\n

She has served on various boards, including the National Register Advisory Committee (1979\u201387, 2000\u201307) and the North Carolina Historical Commission (2000\u201307). In 2010, she consulted with the city of Aspen and Aspen\u2019s preservation officer (BU Preservation Studies \u201993 graduate) Amy Simon on its endangered modern architecture, resulting in a 48-page report and a National Trust for Historic Preservation (NTHP) publication, Aspen Modern: America\u2019s International Resort<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Smith, who retired from teaching in 2011, currently lives several blocks from Old Salem Museum & Gardens and is researching the restored Moravian village\u2019s origins and donor base in the context of postwar urban renewal in Winston-Salem.<\/p>\n

Selected Publications<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

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\n
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Great Houses and Their Stories: Winston-Salem’s “Era of Success,” 1912\u20131940<\/em><\/a> (University of North Carolina Press, 2022).<\/p>\n

American Ski Resort: Architecture, Style, and Experience<\/a> (<\/em>University of Oklahoma Press, 2013).<\/span><\/p>\n

“Charles Barton Keen, 1868\u20131931,<\/a>” NC Architects & Builders\u00a0(<\/em>2013).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Aspen\u2019s Twentieth-Century Architecture: Modernism: 1945\u20131975 <\/em><\/span><\/a>(City of Aspen, 2010).<\/span><\/p>\n

North Carolina Women: Making History<\/em><\/a>\u00a0(University of North Carolina Press, 1999).<\/p>\n

For a detailed academic bio and CV, please see Professor Supplee Smith’s Department Profile<\/a> at Wake Forest University.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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