Review: The Chicago Schoolhouse: High School Architecture and Educational Reform, 1856–2006 by Dale Allen Gyure; Das Klassenzimmer vom Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts bis heute / The Classroom: From the Late 19th Century until the Present Day by Thomas Müller and Romana Schneider; Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory by Jonathan Zimmerman

All of a sudden, architectural historians are thinking about schools. I hope this is evidence of a new trend to document educational landscapes, because for too long, far too long, places made for children to learn (and live and play) have received short shrift from our scholarly community. The encouraging evidence of interest includes a new history of children’s spaces in Denmark, several of open-air schools in Europe, and one study of British schools.¹ In the United States, architectural historians have started to consider spaces for children, including in this journal.² But the absence of book-length works on school design in the U.S. is puzzling, because schooling is the central experience of modern children and schools the central site where modern childhood is lived. For many reasons, the social construction of childhood changed in the nineteenth century, prompting parents to treasure children for their emotional contribution to family...