BookHistoric Real Estate: Market Morality and the Politics of Preservation in the Early United StatesHistoric Real Estate is the first book-length study of historic preservation in the early United States. It traces how men and women debated whether, and how, Americans should preserve historic sites, such as Indigenous earthworks, colonial houses of worship, old houses, and ancestral estates. These debates shaped not only the historic landscape of the new nation but also the contours of its economy and society.
Reviews
"With skill and great insight, Whitney Martinko reveals the centrality of the architectural past to the nation's capitalist future. By steering the forces of creative destruction away from select structures, nineteenth-century Americans ultimately made it easier to shroud real estate development in the mantle of a public-spirited idealism that persists to the present day. The strength of Martinko's analysis is matched only by the production value of this lavishly illustrated volume."—Seth Rockman, Brown University "Whitney Martinko's Historic Real Estate provides a new framework for examining the history of historic preservation in America, one that considers the methods and motivations of different individuals and interest groups as they contended with the value of historic properties in an expanding and modernizing republic.... Martinko forces us to recognize that the types of buildings and spaces eligible for historic preservation varied widely, as did individual and group motivations for preserving, altering, or even demolishing historic structures."—William and Mary Quarterly |
EssaysOnline
"Two Centuries Ago, Pennsylvania Almost Razed Independence Hall to Make Way for Private Development" in Smithsonian.
"What's Missing from the Frank Rizzo Statue Debate? A History of Where It Stands," in Hindsights.
"On Monuments and Public Lands," in Hindsights.
" 'A Natural Representation of Market-Street, in Philadelphia': An Attribution, a Story, and Some Thoughts on Further Study," in Common-place.
In Print
“The History of History in Early Marietta and the Origins of David McCullough’s The Pioneers,” in the Journal of the Early Republic.
“Byles versus Boston: Historic Houses, Urban Development, and the Public Good in an Improving City,” in the Massachusetts Historical Review.
“ ‘Worthy of Being Thus Preserved’: American Daguerreotype Views and the Preservation of History,” in Nineteenth-Century Photographs of Architecture: Documenting History, Charting Progress, Exploring the World, edited by Micheline Nilsen.
“Progress and Preservation: Representing History in Boston’s Landscape of Urban Reform, 1820-1860,” in New England Quarterly.
“ ‘So Majestic a Monument of Antiquity’: Landscape, Knowledge, and Authority in the Early National West,” in Buildings and Landscapes.
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