Like his academic responsibilities, Professor Longstreth's professional interests lie in two, complementary realms. As a scholar, he has written extensively on the history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century architecture in the US. In recent years, his research has focused on retail decentralization in major metropolitan areas, relating economic, design, urbanistic, and cultural factors that have fundamentally reshaped the American landscape since 1920. His City Center to Regional Mall won the Lewis Mumford Prize for the best book in American city and regional planning history, and the Abbott Lowell Cummings prize for the best book in vernacular architecture for 1997. Currently, he is preparing a complementary study, The Department Store Transformed, to be published by Johns Hopkins University Press.

Professor Longstreth has also been involved in the preservation field at the national, state, and local levels in the public and private sectors. Since 1984, he has taken an active role in Washington-area initiatives. Testimony he gave on a few of these cases is being published in a case-study book by the National Park Service and National Council for Preservation Education this year. Much of his other writing on the subject has addressed preserving the recent past. He has figured prominently in successful efforts to save three shopping centers, two department store branches, two department store warehouses, a bus depot, and two garden apartment complexes from he mid-twentieth century.

Professor Longstreth is president of the Society of Architectural Historians, and has served on its executive committee since 1994. He also chairs the Maryland Governor's Consulting Committee on the National Register of Historic Places. He was first vice president of the Vernacular Architecture Forum (1989- 1991), trustee of the National Building Museum (1933-1994), and board member of Preservation Action (1980-1995).

Principal Publications

The Drive-In, the Supermarket, and the Transformation of Commercial Space in Los Angeles, 1914-1941, Cambridge: MIT Press, in press.

History on the Line: Testimony in the Cause of Preservation, Washington: National Park Service, and Ithaca, NY: National Council for Preservation Education, 1997.

City Center to Regional Mall: Architecture, the Automobile, and Retailing in Los Angeles, 1920-1950, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1997.

The Mall in Washington, 1791-1991, Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1991, editor.

The Buildings of Main Street: A Guide to American Commercial Architecture, Washington: Preservation Press, 1987.

On the Edge of the World: Four Architects in San Francisco at the Turn of the Century, New York: Architectural History Foundation, and Cambridge: MIT Press, 1983; paperback ed., 1989; reprint ed., Berkeley: University of California Press, scheduled for publication 1998.

Articles in APT Bulletin, the Journal of Preservation Technology, Harvard Architecture Review, Historic Preservation Forum, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, and Winterthur Portfolio.