ABSTRACT
In this section, the influential mid-nineteenth-century architect and theorist Andrew Jackson Downing describes the proper appearance of a farmhouse (Fig. 32), and stresses its importance for American values. Art historian William Barksdale Maynard reinterprets the significance of Thoreau, seeing him as a proponent both of suburbanization and of the wilderness experience, and setting his work in the context of contemporary garden and villa ideals (Fig. 33). Historian Barbara Miller Lane describes the evolution of wilderness retreats in late nineteenth-and early twentieth-century Finland and Sweden, where revivals of folk traditions helped to bolster nationalist feeling while inspiring innovative kinds of ideal dwellings (Figs. 34, 35 and 36). Closely resembling the Finnish works discussed by Lane were the Great Camps of the American Adirondacks, here described by National Parks historian Harvey H. Kaiser (Figs. 37, 38 and 39). Historian of vernacular rural architecture Thomas K. Hubka points to the gradual reorientation of American farm buildings toward the street during the course of the nineteenth century, thus supporting M. J. Daunton’s hypotheses about the effects of urbanization on housing design. Hubka also suggests that farm buildings offered their owners considerable scope for architectural self-expression (Fig. 40). Sociologist Mike Hepworth argues that Victorian garden designs, executed in the suburbs, represented an effort to recapture rural origins in an era of rapid urbanization (Fig. 41). In her oral history of the life of her great aunt and uncle, planning student Dawni Freeman describes the attractions of farm life in the later twentieth century.
