The problem for the study of Corcoran Joint Union High School can be stated in its simplest form with three closely related questions: Why did the students drop out? Where are they living now? What are they doing now? Until these questions can be answered, until the various causes of drop-outs can be determined, little or beneficial changes can be made either in or out of schools to solve the problem or, at least, alleviate the tendency for students to leave high school before graduation. The problem which this particular study has attempted to solve is to determine why high school students dropped out of Corcoran Joint Union High School last year. This study attempts to answer what these drop-out students are doing now, where they are now living, and if school helped them in their present work.

Washington D.C., along with similar historically significant cities, boasts architectural treasures. Understanding how our above-ground archeology, which represents the passage of time and suggests urban development, will continue to influence our architecture today, is the essential core of this thesis. 14th Street is one of the crucial entrance corridors of the city, existing as a vertical way-finder for modern day travelers coming in and out of the District. Brick rowhouses line this valuable street, providing multi-use functions that have evolved over the past century. Unfortunately, most of these urban gems have lost their place to the City's superblock high rises. The program of this thesis serves the Corcoran School of Art + Design with a new central campus location in D.C. while reusing an existing block of parti walls, excavated from rowhouses of the past. The modern need of maximizing space is thoughtfully merged with the intentional reuse of historic structures. / Master of Architecture

During the American Civil War, an approximate 200,000 Irish-born soldiers, and an even greater number of subsequent generation descended soldiers, fought for the Union and Confederate causes. Their experience, opinions, military actions and attitudes of their families were the subject of American Civil War songs, with songwriters penning numerous ballads about them. The conflict witnessed the mass production of wartime ballad culture, with over 11,000 pieces written and composed between 1861 and 1865 alone. An estimated 150 were by and about the Irish American wartime experience specifically. This thesis focuses on these Irish American Civil War songs and analyses the sentiments they expressed. Overall, the main topic written onto songsheet pages and in songbooks was the battlefield actions of Irish-born and descended soldiers. This study explores how military history was reported through song, following traditional oral practice patterns of using balladry to sing war reports. In particular, attention will be drawn to the proliferation of lyrical dedication and focus on specific Irish-dominated units such as the Union Army's Irish Brigade and 69th New York State Militia, and how their actions, along with other Irish soldiering units, came to dominate Irish American Civil War articulations and history. Within this lyrical attention the figures of Irish-born commanding officers, namely Generals Michael Corcoran and Thomas Francis Meagher, come to the fore. This study also analyses how their own wartime experiences and articulations corresponded with song lyrics. Beyond the battlefield focus, this thesis explores the way in which song lyrics sang about Irish loyalty and devotion to the American Union - and in a few examples Confederate nation - and particularly adopted symbols of the American nation, such as the Star Spangled Banner, as embodiments of the causes and ideals fought for by soldiers. Alongside this were lyrics that referred to symbols of Irish cultural heritage, language and a history of foreign military service. Irish identity can be seen on the surface of some songs, including references to Irish nationalism and the desire to gain Irish independence one day. Yet, as this thesis will argue, Irish American Civil War song lyrics reveal complicated support and sympathy for the Irish nationalist cause in the United States during the 1860s. Running through the songs of this study is a pervading sense and sentiment of American identity - that the Irish fighting and living through the war were stressing to society through song that they were committed to the United States as Americans first and foremost. In addition to assessing wartime views of Civil War politics and military actions, this thesis will also explore the way Irish song played a critical part in the formation of American musical culture, with traditional Irish music forming the foundation for American tunes, and blending Irish culture into the American wartime zeitgeist. This thesis will demonstrate the way in which Irish songs were written, published and disseminated through American society and crucially circulated beyond the confines of the Irish diaspora. Traditional and wartime Irish songs became a fundamental part of American culture because they were American cultural outputs. Thus this thesis will demonstrate the important evidential role Irish American Civil War songs play in singing an unexplored areas of mid-nineteenth century Irish American transnational history.