Book Talk with Heli Meltsner: The Arts and Crafts Houses of Massachusetts

Meticulously researched and with abundant color photos, Arts and Crafts Houses of Massachusetts focuses on the state’s Arts and Crafts domestic architecture and is the only book to include an illustrated field guide. In this talk, Heli Meltsner will help us identify qualities of this difficult-to-describe movement. At least two of the state’s most prominent architects chose to build Arts and Crafts houses for their own families in Cambridge, although it was in a tough competition with other popular architectural styles at the time. At the turn of the twentieth century, Cambridge residents commissioned architects to build excellent examples of the new style. Most of these houses will be used to illustrate how to recognize this style.

Heli Meltsner, a historic preservation expert, has served on the Cambridge Historical Society Council since 2010 and, until 2019, was the Society's Curator. Meltsner has written the book The Poorhouses of Massachusetts: A Cultural and Architectural History (2012) and contributed to the Society’s Rediscovering the Hooper-Lee-Nichols House (2010) and Saving Cambridge: Historic Preservation in America’s Innovation City (2013).

Light refreshments will be served.