Ethnicity, Class, and Regional Building Styles: The Foundation of Immigrant Architecture

Abstract:In November 2021, Miranda Moen began an eight-month Fulbright research project titled “Ethnicity, Class, and Regional Building Styles: The Foundation of Immigrant Architecture.” Past material culture studies have rarely addressed regional influences and the effects that socioeconomic status had on the development of immigrant-built vernacular architecture. Through a transnational comparative analysis of nineteenth-century dwellings, her project investigates the transference of cultural influences on vernacular architecture from Norway to Minnesota. The rural Norwegian and second-generation Norwegian-American dwellings of the Vik and Traaen families, who emigrated from Eastern Norway in the mid-1800s, serve as primary case studies.As an introduction to the project, this article summarizes research progress thus far and outlines four characteristics that are consistently found across case-study buildings in Norway and Minnesota: the Akershus floor plan, number of building stories, wood panel partition wall, and interior decoration. Each is examined through a transnational lens of regional and class-based influences from Norway to Minnesota. Findings thus far indicate a lack of data on crofter dwellings in Norway. Future architectural documentation of crofter dwellings in the case-study region will support comparative analyses between Norwegian and Norwegian-American dwellings.