Pierce Lewis’ article, “The Monument and the Bungalow”, offers the reader an insight on how to digest information gathered from observing one’s environment. He tells us of the different modalities one should become versed in to successfully read the landscape of his/her environment: the first being literature or historical documentation, the next being structures such as monuments and homes built within a given area, and to investigate the significance of architectural styles in detail to fix a timeline that can be used as a marker to take note of the growth and changes of the area.
He focuses first on the monument, which, when analyzed, gave him a wealth of information as to the possible ethnicities of people who lived in the town at the time of its construction, and it also told of ethnic groups that were not there during the construction of the monument. It also shows that the town offered many of its citizens to the military, being as the monument’s construction is meant to mark the veterans of the Revolution, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, the Philippine Insurrection, World War I, World War II, Korea, and Vietnam.
He then focused on the bungalows, noting that the peaceful tranquility of these structures held stark contrast to the symbol of the monument, as these bungalows were in the style celebrating craftsmanship and the spirit of handmade quality as opposed to machine made, like the instruments of war.
By comparing just these two aspects in his given area of Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, he was able to derive a great deal of information concerning the vernacular landscape of the area. Further, by describing the manner by which he arrived at these conclusions, he also is passing the knowledge of this skill set to us, the reader, immersing us in a skill to practice and prove, for as the author has relayed in the article, that this doesn’t seem to be a common skill for Americans to possess.
Works Cited
Lewis, Pierce. “The Monument and the Bungalow.” The Geographical Review (October, 1998). 17, January 2009.
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