Thomas Edward Frank

From the ruins of a Colorado mining town called Caribou to the masonry of medieval English chapels, from mounds and terraces left by indigenous peoples on the Ohio River to 19th century Main Streets and back streets of small town America, I have always been fascinated by built landscapes and human designs on the land. They are the tangible forms of our intangible sense of place. This theme runs through all my writing. Having grown up in a parsonage and served my career in ministry and higher education, I have a special interest in the institutions built by religious groups in the USA, particularly houses of worship, colleges, and utopian communities.

A graduate of Harvard (BA), with its 300+ years of wildly varied architecture, and Emory University (M.Div., Ph.D.), a fine collegiate quadrangle design overwhelmed by its location in a city notorious for erasing its built memory, in mid-life I completed a master's degree in Heritage Preservation from Georgia State. My interests have led me farther into exploring the patterns through which humanity expresses its needs and its aspirations, its devilry and its dreams. My most recent book, Historic Houses of Worship in Peril: Conserving Their Place in American Life, takes up the issues of emptying buildings and appeals for new imagination for the future of historic houses of worship across the land.

My current project is a journey into the rich and quirky history of experimental colleges, Black Mountain College in particular. For a taste of that research, see the Journal of Black Mountain College Studies in which I have two articles and now serve as Editor (blackmountainstudiesjournal.org).