Join SAH/SCC as Abigail A. Van Slyck discusses her book, Playhouses and Privilege: The Architecture of Elite Childhood (University of Minnesota Press, 2025). The book explores children’s playhouses built on British and American estates between the 1850s and the mid-1930s. Different from the prefabricated structures that later populated suburban backyards, these playhouses were often fully functional cottages designed by well-known architects for British royalty, American industrialists, and Hollywood stars. As Van Slyck shows, these buildings were more than extravagant spaces to cultivate children’s imaginations and fantasy lives.
Van Slyck is the Dayton Professor Emeritus of Art History at Connecticut College and author of A Manufactured Wilderness: Summer Camps and the Shaping of American Youth, 1890–1960 (University of Minnesota Press, 2006) and Free to All: Carnegie Libraries and American Culture, 1890–1920 (University of Chicago Press, 1998). She won the 2025 Fred B. Kniffen Book Award from the International Society for Landscape, Place, & Material Culture for the book on playhouses.
Authors on Architecture: Van Slyck on Playhouses—Sunday, April 12, 2026; 1-2:30 PM Pacific. Tickets required, $5. Pay via PayPal; or mail in order form with check. Zoom link sent upon registration.
