Students in Professor Lucy Maulsby’s class, “Architecture and the City in the Nineteenth Century” spent time this fall learning through site visits in Boston.

The first of these took students around Beacon Hill where they visited the State House and the Abiel Smith School before heading to Quincy Market.  Students had the opportunity to consider first-hand the ways in which city leaders used architecture to assert the prestige of the state, the material evidence of the city’s thriving African American community, and the ways in which global commerce transformed Boston Harbor in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Subsequent field trips focused on changing land use and development in the nineteenth century.  Students explored what is today Back Bay and looked closely at the material and formal pallet of buildings designed by architect Henry Hobson Richardson.  Students also spent time walking through Frederick Law Olmsted’s Emerald Necklace and discussed its creation as a response to environmental problems and as part of sustained effort to incorporate green spaces into rapidly growing urban areas in the late nineteenth century.

To record their experiences students took photos, sketched, and submitted short written reflections.