03.18.2026
After the Arts and Crafts movement coalesced in Britain at the end of the nineteenth century, it made its way quickly to the United States. Architects and artisans embraced its values, advocating for handicraft in building design while promoting a respect for nature, simplicity, native materials, and regional culture. Taking the audience on a journey from coast to coast, Maureen Meister presented buildings that reflect Arts and Crafts ideals in distinctive ways and connected them to the movement’s major themes. Beautifully illustrated with 150 images, Arts and Crafts Architecture across America features buildings from Boston to San Diego, highlighting iconic examples by Ralph Adams Cram, Irving J. Gill, Greene and Greene, and Frank Lloyd Wright. The book also brings to the fore many lesser-known figures, including women architects such as Marion Mahony and Cora Cadwallader Tuttle and Black architects such as William A. Hazel and Paul R. Williams. In approachable prose, author Maureen Meister distills key elements of Arts and Crafts architecture, and her broad national perspective reveals new insights, including the close relationships among the movement’s leaders. Sharing an Arts and Crafts philosophy, they worked in multiple building styles to suit a vast yet united country.
About the Speaker
Maureen Meister has published extensively on the relationship between the Arts and Crafts movement and American architecture. She holds a doctorate from Brown University and has spent her career teaching art and architectural history at Boston area universities, including Lesley, Northeastern, and Tufts. She is a member of the Boston Athenaeum and was a regular visitor to 10½ Beacon Street when she was writing this new book.
This talk was presented in partnership with the Institute of Classical Architecture and Art.