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Learning New Jersey…One Building at a Time

In NJ, from pre-European settlement to post-industrial reinvention, from lighthouses to diners, we are surrounded by unique and historically significant landscapes. Speaker: Dr. Gabrielle Esperdy.

In this program, while examining images of NJ buildings, patrons will look at different aspects – aesthetics, cultural and economic perspectives, and values and meaning – to develop skills for reading everyday landscapes in order to better understand community and place and why they matter.

In the Garden State, ranging across 21 counties and five centuries, from pre-European settlement to post-industrial reinvention, from log cabins and lighthouses, to highways, diners, and tract houses, we are literally surrounded by unique and historically significant landscapes.

This program will be presented by Dr. Gabrielle Esperdy, Ph.D, who is a historian and critic and whose work focuses on architecture, consumerism and modernism in the U.S. metropolitan landscape, especially everyday buildings and how social, economic and political issues shape cities and suburbs. She has lectured and published widely;her books include "Modernizing Main Street" (2008) and "American Autopia" (forthcoming). She is founding editor of SAH Archipedia, to which she is contributing 100+ entries on the history of significant buildings of New Jersey. She teaches at NJIT.

This program is funded by the New Jersey Council for the Humanities. 

The Somerset County Library System of New Jersey Common Heritage initiative has been made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the human endeavor. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in these Library programs do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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