The New England Village

Book cover of The New England Village

Book description

The New England village, with its white-painted, black-shuttered, classical-revival buildings surrounding a tree-shaded green, is one of the enduring icons of the American historical imagination. Associated in the popular mind with a time of strong community values, discipline, and economic stability, the village of New England is for many the…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The New England Village as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Mary Babson Fuhrer

Author

Joseph Wood creatively uses landscape, settlement patterns, and the built environment to challenge a fabled view of the Currier and Ives New England village. The compact village center, with a steepled church, tidy white homes, and quaint shops surrounding the village green has too long colored our historical imaginings about an idealized New England past. But these forms, Wood convincingly argues, do not describe our colonial past. They are a 19th c invention that both romanticizes and obscures the actual colonial landscape of scattered farmsteads, meadows, and pastures. Early New England was shaped by a land-hungry people who sought…

From Mary's list on everyday life in Village New England.