Identities in Brick and Stone: Society and the Built Environment on the Mississippi

FAIN: GE-50086-09

Winona County Historical Society, Inc. (Winona, MN 55987-3434)
Mark Peterson (Project Director: August 2008 to November 2010)

Planning for a long-term exhibition, audio walking tours, and a website on the built environment in Winona County, Minnesota.

The Winona County Historical Society will use NEH funding to plan and develop the content and interpretive approach of an exhibit on the built environment of Winona County which will anchor its expanded exhibit space. The exhibit will include "soundseeing" tours and a wiki site capturing user generated memories of specific places. By focusing on the creation of the built environment in the decades after the Civil War, it will illustrate major themes in the history of American expansion. Drawing on scholarship which explores how social relations are imbedded in the built environment, the exhibit will examine how diverse citizens expressed their individual and collective identities through the creation of the urban landscape of the city of Winona and the rural farmsteads of the county. The exhibit will also survey the ways in which attitudes towards buildings change, leading to contemporary conflicts about whether they should be preserved or destroyed.