No description available.

This is a history of Wilson College, Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, from 1868 until 1981. It attempts to discover why Wilson, a small, private liberal arts college for women, managed to survive despite financial and enrolment problems which forced many other institutions to close in the 1960s and 1970s. / This thesis locates Wilson historically among institutions of higher learning in the United States; traces the development of the College in terms of its founding, governance, curriculum, and campus life; and examines events leading up to Wilson's near demise in 1979. Wilson's small size, its practice of encouraging congenial interaction between students and faculty, its commitment to teaching, its long term affiliation with the Presbyterian Church, and its close ties with the community of Chambersburg are cited as factors contributing to Wilson's renaissance. / What makes Wilson more interesting than other small women's colleges of its class was the fact that its alumnae, students, and faculty successfully fought the Trustees' decision to close the College because of financial pressures and dwindling enrolment. In 1979 Wilson became the only college in the United States ever ordered to remain open by a court of law.

This thesis examines aspects of the work of American writer and social critic, Lewis Mumford, and the domestic buildings of architect William Wurster. It reveals parallels in their careers, particularly evident in an Arts and Crafts influence and the regional emphasis both men combined with an otherwise overtly Modernist outlook. Several chapters are devoted to the background of, and influences on, Mumford???s regionalism and Wurster???s architecture. Mumford, a spiritual descendent of John Ruskin, admired Wurster???s work for its reflection of his own regionalist ideas, which are traced to Arts and Crafts figures Patrick Geddes, William Morris, William Lethaby and Ruskin. These figures are important to this study, firstly because the influence of their philosophical perspective allowed Mumford, almost uniquely, to position himself as a spokesman for both Romanticism and Modernism with equal validity, and secondly because of their influence upon early Californian architects such as Bernard Maybeck, and subsequently upon Wurster and his colleagues. Throughout the thesis, an important architectural distinction is highlighted between regional Modernism and the International Style. This distinction polarised the American architectural community after Mumford published an article in 1947 suggesting that the ???Bay Region Style??? represented a regionally appropriate alternative to the abstract formulas of International Style architecture and nominated Wurster as its most significant representative. Wurster???s regional Modernism was distinct from the bulk of American Modernism because of its regional influences and its indebtedness to vernacular forms, apparent in buildings such as his Gregory Farmhouse. In 1948, Henry-Russel Hitchcock organised a symposium at New York???s Museum of Modern Art to refute Mumford???s article. Its participants acrimoniously rejected a regionalist alternative to the International Style, and architectural historians have suggested that authentic regional development in the Bay Region largely ceased because of such adverse theoretical and academic scrutiny. After examining the influences on Mumford and Wurster, the thesis concludes that twentieth century regional architectural development in the San Francisco Bay Region has influenced subsequent Western domestic architecture. Wurster suggested that architects should employ the regional and vernacular rather than emulate historical styles or follow theoretical models in their buildings and Mumford, upon whose work Critical Regionalism was later founded, is central to any understanding of the importance of the vernacular, regional and historical in modern architecture.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of North Carolina Wilmington, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references ( Leaves: 87-96)

Thèse (Ph.D.) - Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, 2000. / Bibliogr.: f. 292-299.

Thesis--University of Florida. / Description based on print version record. Typescript. Vita. Bibliography: leaves 192-197.

Thesis (M.A.)--Florida State University, 2004. / Advisor: Dr. Jonathan Grant, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Dept. of History. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed Jan. 12, 2005). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2002. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI Company.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of North Carolina at Wilmington, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves: [40]-41)

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Louisville, 2003. / Department of History. Vita. "December 2003." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 178-182).