Daniel Bluestone

BA, Harvard College (1975);
Ph.D., University of Chicago(1984)

Associate Professor and Director of Preservation Certificate

Mr. Bluestone is a specialist in nineteenth century American architecture and urbanism. His book Constructing Chicago (1991) was awarded the American Institute of Architects International Book Award and the National Historic Preservation book prize. In 1998 Mr. Bluestone participated in the Getty Conservation Institute’s Agora project, a small international panel charged with formulating new approaches to cultural heritage preservation, education, and economics to complement international programs in material conservation. Mr. Bluestone has published important essays that survey the history and politics of historic preservation in the United States.

Mr. Bluestone teaches American architecture and urbanism in courses that survey the methods of site-specific architectural and landscape history and preservation. He also teaches the history and theory of historic preservation. A highly regarded advocate of community preservation and public history, Mr. Bluestone has worked on numerous building and neighborhood revitalization projects. Working as part of the Historic Chicago Bungalow Initiative he developed the thematic nomination for the listing up to 80,000 Chicago bungalows on the National Register of Historic Places, an effort directed at interpreting, preserving, and revitalizing Chicago bungalow neighborhoods. In 2005, working with students from the University of Virginia, he took the lead in the National Register designation the 5000 building Pilsen Historic District in Chicago; built in the late 19th and early 20th century by Chicago’s Bohemian immigrants, Pilsen is now the center of a vital Mexican American community. In 2006 Mr. Bluestone was honored with a listing among the “C-Ville 20” for his leadership in historic preservation in the Charlottesville community. http://www.c-ville.com/index.php?cat=121304062461064&ShowArticle_ID=1331906063742135
He was recognized in particular for his leadership in the effort by Charlottesville’s Legal Aid Justice Center to preserve and adapt the Charles B. Holt Rock House for use as a pro bono legal aid clinic.


During the 2001-2002 academic year, students in Mr. Bluestone’s community history, planning and design workshop undertook a major preservation project on the site of the Blue Ridge Tuberculosis Sanatorium, opened in 1920 as Virginia’s premier tuberculosis sanatorium. The project chronicled the innovative architectural and landscape setting, designed by leading Virginia architects, where patients followed a strict regimen of bed rest, fresh air, and good nutrition. The project’s guidebook, website, oral history account, exhibition, secondary school curriculum, has contributed to the on-going deliberations over the use of the site’s abandoned historic buildings and landscape. http://www.faculty.virginia.edu/blueridgesanatorium/

In the 2002-2003 academic year Professor Bluestone and Bargmann collaborated with students on a community history and design project that explored ways in which the buildings, landscape and history on an EPA industrial superfund site in Hagerstown, Maryland could provide the foundation for re-development as well as for a politics of place and environmental stewardship.

In the 2004-2005 academic year students in the community history project analyzed the changing forms, patterns, and culture of student housing in Charlottesville from the 1820s to the present. Popular venues for diffusing this research have included a web site, an exhibition at the Albemarle County Historical Society and at the Pratt Institute in New York, walking tour brochures, public lectures, and an article in Virginia Magazine.
http://www.arch.virginia.edu/housinghistory
http://www.alumni.virginia.edu/alumninews/issues/0502/LivingOfftheLawn.asp


Mr. Bluestone directs the School’s historic preservation program that offers courses encouraging both specialized work in a student’s field of study and scrutiny of the general principles and ethics of historic preservation. The interdisciplinary program involves students and faculty from architectural history, architecture, landscape architecture and planning.