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Ralph Adams Cram and the Americanization of the Middle Ages

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

Michael D. Clark
Michael D. Clark
Affiliation:
Michael D. Clark is Professor of History of the University of New Orleans, Lakefront, New Orleans, Louisiana 70148, USA.
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Extract

“The true democracy of St. Louis, Edward I and Washington is forgotten,” lamented the American architect Ralph Adams Cram in 1917, “and a false democracy has taken its place.…” The assertion was no aberration of wartime hysteria, and was less eccentric in the early twentieth century than it would have been before or since. It gave pointed expression to a set of attitudes which had strong appeal to a significant number of Cram's countrymen, and which casts light on the perennial efforts of Americans to define their place in history and to balance the competing claims of tradition and innovation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , August 1989 , pp. 195 - 213
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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References

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