America's historic sites, homes, and public buildings are a living record of the
diverse ethnicities that, over four centuries, helped to build a growing nation. Since
1891, the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America (NSCDA) has actively
promoted our national heritage through historic preservation, restoration, and
the interpretation of historic sites across the United States. In conjunction with
NSCDA, in 2025 The Artist Book Foundation (TABF) will publish Great American
Treasures, a comprehensive survey of the architecture, furnishings, and gardens
that epitomize the nation's diverse material culture over more than 400 years.
The publication will feature the NSCDA's collection of historic places, which
span the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries, and will highlight the residences of
those who established themselves in America during this time. It will feature an
array of buildings that speak to the diversity of traditions, people, and architecture
in a growing nation-from English Georgian houses on the eastern seaboard to
a French Colonial dwelling in Missouri and mission houses in Hawai'i. This survey
illuminates the stories and material traditions of the wide range of individuals who
contributed to the founding of the United States and to the development of Ameri-
ca as a dynamic multicultural nation.
Many of the sites tell the stories of familiar historic figures like George and
Martha Washington, John Adams, James and Dolley Madison, John Quincy Ad-
ams, Benjamin Franklin, and George Mason. Other sites offer the narratives of fig-
ures who contributed to America's artistic heritage, such as John James Audubon
and John Smibert, or those who helped to shape the country's mercantile system,
like Frederick Van Cortlandt and James Logan. Some places were designed by
well-known architects such as Robert Mills or McKim, Mead & White, while most
were the work of unknown or little-known architects, builders, joiners, and slave la-
borers. The classic architecture of these sites, their exquisite furnishings and lush
gardens, and even the headstones in historic cemeteries all provide a window into
the rich diversity of men, women, and children-free, indentured, and enslaved-
who came together to build America.