Big House, Little House, Back House, Barn 

“Big house, little house, back house, barn”―this rhythmic cadence was sung by nineteenth-century children as they played. It also portrays the four essential components of the farms where many of them lived. Join Thomas Hubka, author of Big House, Little House, Back House, Barn: The Connected Farm Buildings of New England for a closer look at the stately and beautiful connected farm buildings made by nineteenth-century New Englanders that stand today as a living expression of a rural culture and the people who made them. This progam will also examine Portland’s urban housing and its similarities and differences to rural house farms.

About the presenter: Thomas Hubka is a Professor Emeritus from the Department of Architecture, University of Wisconsin−Milwaukee. He has published widely on topics of popular, vernacular architecture including theoretical works and detailed studies of common buildings such as New England farms, bungalows, ranch houses, and workers' cottages.  He is the author of Resplendent Synagogue: Architecture and Worship in an 18th Century Polish Community (University Press of New England and Brandeis University Press) for which he received the Vernacular Architecture Forum's, Henry Glassie Award, 2006; Big House, Little House, Back House, Barn: The Connected Farm Buildings of New England (University Press of New England) for which he received the Abbott Lowell Cummings Award in 1985; How the Working-Class Home Became Modern, 1900-1940. (University of Minnesota Press, 2021); and Houses without Names: Architecture Nomenclature and the Classification of America's Common Houses (University of Tennessee Press, 2013). He lives in Portland, Oregon where he has taught at the University of Oregon, Portland State University, and Portland Community College and continues to study the housing and neighborhoods of Portland and Oregon.