As an European, I find Americans more fascinated about Medieval buildings than us. I can see medieval churches and such by just a 10 minutes subway trip into the old town of the capital with ease. Less than 1 eur with a travelling pass card.
It's just there, we see them without giving them too much care.
The same with squares with buildings showing up arcs in the first floor. They give you both a shadow and and a place to rest.
A pity the modern brutalist architecture wants these wiped out.
Still, liking them doesn't make must fascinating, but just useful
and charming because of the slowed down ambient compared to modern cities.
To me the modern US folklore and weird stuff (contraculture, UFO cults and such), scifi/hippie/hackers cross-polination are much more fascinating, because it's something 'modern' and 'weird',
more machine bound than a utilitarian-but-pretty inspired design.
Such as the Illuminatus trilogy.
Back to Europe, tons of medieval knowledge was still in use in small villages, such as knitting methods, homemade soap with cooking oil and so on. Oh, and lewd jokes/limericks, these were told and sang across centuries.
I grew up in a part of the US that was “settled” in the mid 19th century. The absolute oldest buildings are just now approaching 200 years old and there aren’t many of those even. From that perspective it’s astonishing to be able to see the work of someone’s hands from so long ago. Obviously there were native Americans here long before European settlement, but evidence of their presence has been so thoroughly erased that it feels like everything you see sprung up in the last century. Even our forests are new, as pretty much the entire state was clear cut by the start of the 20th century.
> Obviously there were native Americans here long before European settlement, but evidence of their presence has been so thoroughly erased
Most of what the native Americans built would be erased by now anyway. They mostly didn't build with stone or metals, but with wood that rots. Most European castles were built out of wood and there is not trace remaining other than town archives (if that) even though no deliberate effort was made to erase them.
Not to excuse the deliberate eraser of history, it happened and is bad. However don't get the wrong impression either, most wasn't deliberate history erasing. Most of it was natural decay, followed by this useless bit is in the way of progress - the natives did exactly the same thing to their old worn out structures.
I live in wiltshire, in the UK. There are lots of ancient hill forts. They were originally terraced earth + wooden pallisades + wood/mud buildings. All the wooden structures have long since decayed, but the earth structures still remain, if somewhat eroded. I guess there isn't much in the way of hills on the American plains though.
America is a lot bigger than the uk - it extends across the whole continent. so all gereraizations are false on some level. There are places where the natives left hills (mound buildres). However in general they were not building that way: wood is a lot easier to build withe than earth and usually good enough.
Indeed. Brutalist architectures would work well in Northern Europe, not much in the south when you have both hot summers and cold winters were heat AND cold spread over.
Thick brick/stone walls would protect you both from the heat in summer (down to 15 degrees colder as it's crazy as it sounds) and from chilly winters if you got a bunch of blankets.
Still, liking them doesn't make must fascinating, but just useful and charming because of the slowed down ambient compared to modern cities. To me the modern US folklore and weird stuff (contraculture, UFO cults and such), scifi/hippie/hackers cross-polination are much more fascinating, because it's something 'modern' and 'weird', more machine bound than a utilitarian-but-pretty inspired design. Such as the Illuminatus trilogy.
Back to Europe, tons of medieval knowledge was still in use in small villages, such as knitting methods, homemade soap with cooking oil and so on. Oh, and lewd jokes/limericks, these were told and sang across centuries.