In this essay, it is my intent to examine the history of architectural history's intersection with the profession of architecture in the United States.1 A common lens for viewing this evolving relationship is that of academia—that is, how architectural history has figured within architectural education. Instead, I will take a more arcane object of investigation: the architectural licensing exam. Since its inception in the 1920s, architectural history has been a constituent element of the tests that individuals must pass in order to call themselves architects. Thus, the licensing exam is the profession's deliberated and institutionalized statement of the status of architectural history, and an examination of the exam reveals the history of architectural history in relation to the profession of architecture.
It is my argument that the mutable nature of this relationship demonstrates architectural history's sensitive tracking of the profession's status in the American political economy and, in turn,...
University of California Press