[PW] Re: ? Numidian architecture

[Kevin O'Kelly]

I was thinking along similar lines. The question really isn't so much "what was Numidian architecture like?" but "What had Thoreau read about Numidian architecture?" Maybe it's just me, but doesn't that detail about using an upturned boat for shelter sound like something that would have appeared in a cursory sketch of a foreign people by an ancient historian? I can imagine Herodotus throwing in an odd detail like that--although I haven't read Herodotus since high school.

What classical authors would have been likely to discuss the Numidians? Sallust (Jugurtha)?

Patricia Price <patricia.price at allangreenberg.com> wrote: I'd also be careful to determine what exactly Thoreau (or anyone else
for that matter) knew at that time about Numidian architecture.  There
was a great deal of interest in the 19th century, especially in France,
about the origins of the house.  Viollet-le-Duc wrote a history of the
house that was translated into English (after Thoreau had recently died,
I believe) that was incredibly influential in American architectural
theory and house design.  There were many interpretations floating
around about the architecture of "primitive" societies, as a way of
discovering the origins of our own.

 

On 11/21/06, Cramer, Jeff  wrote:

> 

>> I came across a reference to Numidian architecture in which the
author, in

>> this case Thoreau, compares using an upturned boat for shelter in a

>> rainstorm to the possible origin of Numidian architecture. I can't
seem to

>> find a definition as to what are the features or characteristics of
Numidian

>> architecture.

 

Patricia Price 
Librarian 
Allan Greenberg, Architect, L.L.C. 
1050 Thomas Jefferson St. NW  Suite 2100 
Washington, D.C.  20007 
202-337-0010 
202-337-9222  (fax) 

 

Perhaps the two most valuable and satisfactory products of American
civilization are the librarian on the one hand and the cocktail in the
other.

-- Louis Stanley Jast

 

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