Playhouses and the architecture of childhood.

Between the 1850s and 1930s, before playhouses for children reached the mainstream, they were often fully functional cottages designed by well-known architects for British royalty, American industrialists, and Hollywood stars. Recognizing the playhouse in this era as a stage for the purposeful performance of upper-class identity, Abigail A. Van Slyck illuminates their role as carefully planned architectural manifestations of adult concerns, from Queen Victoria and Prince Albert’s Swiss Cottage (1853) to the children’s cottage on the grounds of Cornelius Vanderbilt’s Newport mansion (1886) to the glass-block playhouse given to Shirley Temple in 1936, and many more in between. Here, Van Slyck is joined in conversation with Annmarie Adams, Marta Gutman, and Kate Solomonson.

Abigail A. Van Slyck is the Dayton Professor Emeritus of Art History at Connecticut College and author of Playhouses and Privilege: The Architecture of Elite Childhood; A Manufactured Wilderness: Summer Camps and the Shaping of American Youth, 1890-1960; and Free to All: Carnegie Libraries and American Culture, 1890-1920.

Annmarie Adams is an architectural historian at McGill University in Montreal. Adams is author of Medicine by Design: The Architect and the Modern Hospital, 1893-1943; Architecture in the Family Way: Doctors, Houses, and Women, 1870-1900; and coauthor of Designing Women: Gender and the Architectural Profession.

Marta Gutman is dean and professor in the Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture at the City College of New York. Gutman is author of A City for Children: Women, Architecture, and the Charitable Landscapes of Oakland, 1850-1950.

Kate Solomonson is architectural historian and professor emeritus in the Department of Architecture at the University of Minnesota. Solomonson is coeditor, with Van Slyck, of the Architecture, Landscape, and American Culture series with University of Minnesota Press.

EPISODE REFERENCES:

-Hanover estate: Osborne (Swiss Cottage), Isle of Wight, UK. For Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.

-Vanderbilt estate: The Breakers, Newport, Rhode Island. For Cornelius Vanderbilt II and Alice Claypoole Gwynne Vanderbilt.

-Dow estate: Foxhollow Farm (Fallsburgh), Rhinebeck, New York. For Tracy Dows and Alice Olin Dows.

-Whitney estate: Greentree, Manhasset, Long Island. For Payne Whitney and Helen Hay Whitney.

-Dodge estate: Meadow Brook Hall (since 1929, Knole Cottage; before 1929, Hilltop Lodge), Rochester, Michigan. For Alfred Wilson and Matilda Dodge Wilson.

-Ford estate: Gaukler Pointe, Grosse Pointe, Michigan. For Edsel Ford and Eleanor Clay Ford.

Designing the Creative Child / Amy F. Ogata

Pastoral Capitalism / Louise Mozingo

The research of Barbara Penner (Bartlett School of Architecture, London)

Praise for the book:

"Beautifully written, impeccably researched, and profusely illustrated, Playhouses and Privilege is a must-read for anyone interested in the study of children, architecture, privilege, and play."
—Marta Gutman, dean, Spitzer School of Architecture, CUNY

"Small spaces can host big stories. In charting the spatial components of social prestige, Abigail A. Van Slyck delineates shifting conceptions of childhood, modulating gender politics, charged interactions between parents and children, and popular representations of youthful celebrity. This is a riveting read—focused and yet expansive, innovative, and insightful at every turn."
—Simon Sleight, coeditor of A Cultural History of Youth in the Modern Age

Playhouses and Privilege: The Architecture of Elite Childhood by Abigail A. Van Slyck is available from University of Minnesota Press.