A Manufactured Wilderness: Summer Camps and the Shaping of American Youth, 1890 – 1960

Abstract

232 Children, Youth and Environments Vol. 20 No. 2 (Fall 2010) ISSN: 1546-2250 A Manufactured Wilderness: Summer Camps and the Shaping of American Youth, 1890 — 1960 Van Slyck, Abigail (2006). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press; 296 pages. $27.50. ISBN 9780816648771. A Manufactured Wilderness is an engaging and nostalgic examination of a largely unexplored element of architectural history, the North American summer camp. Through a rich investigation of camp mess halls, sleeping units and program areas, Abigail Van Slyck investigates the major trends of camp development and their impact on the construction of childhood from the late 19th century through the mid-20th century. In particular, Van Slyck addresses American society’s changing attitudes toward children’s health, sanitation, play, gender relationships, and Native American culture, and investigates the role summer camps played in addressing social anxieties of the time: gender roles, class tension, race relations and particularly modern society’s impact on the lives of their children. In Van Slyck’s words, this volume differs from conventional works in the field of architectural history in two significant ways. First, it focuses on the cultural landscape, defined as the intersection of the built environment and social life with the natural landscape. Second, it “defines architecture as a process in which institutional priorities are translated into material form” (p. xxxi) by shifting the focus not onto the architects themselves, but onto the decision makers who hired the architects. Van Slyck investigates a range of camp operations, including private camps, religiously affiliated social service camps, and those sponsored by youth organizations in the Southeastern, Midwestern, and Northeastern U.S. and neighboring Canada. This volume is organized into six chapters, each examining a primary area of summer camp life—camp layout, program activities, housing and sleeping areas, cooking, eating and mealtime sites, 233 camp sanitation and hygiene, and the use of Native American motifs in the camp landscape—and how these reflected the changing views of middle- and upper-class childhood in North America. In Chapter 1, Van Slyck describes in great detail the changes in the physical layout and design of camps as they reflected the changing priorities of early 20th-century North America and also considers the “cultural meaning of the camp landscape in two realms” (p. 2). First, she examines the role of camps in the transformation of the North American rural landscape. Second, she investigates theories of camp planning and their impact on the camp sites themselves, with special attention given to the “metaphors embedded in the camp landscape” (p. 3). Van Slyck describes how camp directors restructured their camps’ layouts to reflect changing priorities and concerns of the day, noting the transition of camp layouts from ad hoc arrangements in the late 1800s, to strict, straight militaristic lines in the 1900s, to a trend toward more naturalistic design in the 1920s. The second chapter focuses on camp activities and programs. It offers an interesting description of the challenges faced by camp directors to make available recreational experiences that not only provided an outdoor experience (as part of the back-to-nature trend of the late 1800s) but also addressed the gender, race and social anxieties of the time. In the third chapter, on camp housing and sleeping, Van Slyck notes that camp directors maintained a keen interest in campers’ health, and sought to provide healthy living and sleeping conditions. This chapter traces the changing form of sleeping areas as they transitioned from the attic floors of Fresh Air Camps to canvas tents and wooden platforms to cabins and bunkhouses. Chapter 4 investigates the development of camps’ cooking and eating sites. Utilizing Elizabeth Cromley’s idea of the food axis, Van Slyck discusses the varied stages and locations for meal preparation, eating and clean up, noting how the architectural design of mess halls and dining lodges changed over time to both maximize the efficiency of the kitchen, and to minimize campers’ awareness of the adult activities associated with meal preparation. 234 This chapter provides several photo images and floor plan drawings to illustrate the changing architectural design of these facilities. Sanitation was of great concern from the earliest years of organized camping. Compared to schools, camps had the...