The University of Mary Washington’s Center for Historic Preservation has awarded the 2015 Historic Preservation Book Prize to A City for Children; Women, Architecture, and the Charitable Landscapes of Oakland, 1850-1950 by Marta Gutman.
According to the book prize jury, “Gutman effectively combines nuanced social history, vernacular architecture and urban planning with issues of landscape and gender studies that resonate with modern historic preservation.”
The center awards the Historic Preservation Book Prize annually to a book that a jury deems has made the most significant contribution to the intellectual vitality of historic preservation in America.
Gutman is a professor of architectural and urban history at the City College of New York and The Graduate Center – CUNY. Published by The University of Chicago Press in 2014, the study addresses the use and reuse of everyday buildings in Oakland, California, by enterprising women who sought to improve urban living conditions for children of working-class families.
“Gutman made a strong case for how urban landscapes can be understood as reflecting gender and race, particularly by placing women as active agents in the built environment,” said a member of the jury. “While members of Oakland’s upper and middle class, these women operated publicly as social reformers and political advocates for disadvantaged children.”
This year, the jury for the $500 prize also included Steven Hoffman, professor and coordinator for the Historic Preservation Program in the Department of History at Southeast Missouri State University; Megan Rosengrant, undergraduate major in Historic Preservation at UMW; Rebecca J. Shepherd, director of the Masters in Historic Preservation Program at the University of Delaware; Andrea Livi Smith, associate professor and chair of the Department of Historic Preservation at UMW; Aubrey Von Lindern, architectural historian with the Virginia Department of Historic Resources; and Douglas Sanford, jury chair and professor and Prince B. Woodard chair of Historic Preservation at UMW.
To nominate a book for the 2016 prize, a book must be first available in the United States between Jan. 1, 2015, and Dec. 31, 2015. Letters of nomination from any source and six copies of the nominated book must be postmarked by Feb. 15, 2016, and sent to Michael Spencer, director of the Center for Historic Preservation at the University of Mary Washington, 1301 College Avenue, Combs 131, Fredericksburg, VA 22401-5300.
For more information, contact the Center for Historic Preservation at (540) 654-1041.
