John Tschirch
"America’s Eden: Newport Landscapes Through the Ages"
Lecture
Wednesday, March 1, 2023 | 6:00PM | ARCH 132 DF Pray Lecture Theatre
Newport, Rhode Island has been often referred to as “The Eden of America.” This richly illustrated lecture explores over three centuries of landscape design, literature, and art that have been created in this verdant place. With garden shovel, pen, brush, paint, and camera, generations of gardeners, nursery owners, writers, and artists have literally and figuratively shaped the land. Among them were renowned figures such as landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted and his sons, writers Harriet Beecher Stowe and Henry James, the painter Childe Hassam, and pioneering photographer Frances Benjamin Johnston. The result of their work is an extraordinary heritage, a vision of human-made Eden through the ages.
John Tschirch is an architectural historian, writer, and teacher. His latest books include America’s Eden: Newport Landscapes through the Ages (2022) and Newport: The Artful City (2020), which received the Victorian Society of America Book Award in 2021. He received his M.A. (1986) in Architectural History and Historic Preservation from the School of Architecture at the University of Virginia. His thirty-year career in the preservation and study of historic landmarks and landscapes across the globe has led him on treks to French chateaux, English castles, Italian villas, Austrian palaces, Croatian fortresses, Argentinian mansions and the Gilded Age houses of America. Currently, he teaches the theory and history of design at RISD, historic preservation courses at the Cummings School of Architecture at RWU, advises on historic preservation projects, and has entered the world of historical fiction writing, inspired by his travels, with the publication of Gods and Girls: Tales of Art, Seduction and Obsession (2019).
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