Marta Gutman

Professor Gutman, historian and licensed architect, teaches architectural and urban history at the Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture at the City College of New York and at The Graduate Center/CUNY. She examines ordinary buildings and neighborhoods, the history of cities, and issues of gender, class, race and especially childhood as they play out in everyday spaces, public culture, and social life. She is the author of A City for Children: Women, Architecture, and the Charitable Landscapes of Oakland, 1850–1950 (University of Chicago Press, 2014), winner of the SAH Kostof prize in 2017, and the UHA Jackson prize in 2015.  Her current book project is Just Space: Modern Architecture, Public Schools, and Racial Inequality in Postwar Urban America (in contract, University of Texas Press). Prof. Gutman is a founding editor of PLATFORM, the online forum for conversations about buildings, spaces, and landscapes, and the president-elect of the Society for American City and Regional Planning History. In August 2021, Professor Gutman was appointed Interim Dean of the Spitzer School of Architecture at the City College of New York.

Professor Gutman received the 2021 Catherine W. Bishir Prize, from the Vernacular Architecture Forum for “Intermediate School 201: Race, Space, and Modern Architecture in Harlem,” chapter 8 in Educating Harlem: A Century of Schooling and Resistance in a Black Community, ed. Ansley Erickson and Ernest Morrell (Columbia University Press, 2019). Professor Gutman was a Distinguished CUNY Research Fellow at the Graduate Center’s Advanced Research Collaborative in 2018. Her research has also been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the New York State Council on the Arts, the Danish Humanities Council and other organizations.

Book prizes for A City for Children:

• Spiro Kostof Book Award, Society of Architectural Historians, 2017.
• Kenneth Jackson Award for Best Book (North American), Urban History Association, 2015.
• The Historic Preservation Book Prize, from the University of Mary Washington Historic Preservation Program (2015)
• The Malott Prize for Recording Community Activism, from the Langum Charitable Trust (2013-15)

Prizes:

• Faculty Achievement and Distinguished Service Award, 2015 from CCNY Architecture Alumni Group of the Spitzer School of Architecture
• Provost’s Outstanding Teaching Award, 2013-14, City College of the City University of New York, nominated by students at the Spitzer School of Architecture and colleagues at City College.
• President’s Award for Outstanding Faculty Service, City College of the City University of New York, 2012-13, nominated by colleagues.

Publications:

• Gutman, Marta; Clark, Marci M. “The Spaces of Childhood.” In Oxford Bibliographies in Childhood Studies. Ed. Heather Montgomery. New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming.
• “I.S. 201: Race, Space, and Modern Architecture in Harlem,” in Educating Harlem: Schools and the Referendum on the American Dream, ed. Ansley Erickson and Ernest Morrell. New York: Columbia University Press, forthcoming.
• A City for Children: Women, Architecture, and the Charitable Landscapes of Oakland, 1850-1950. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014. 
• Designing Modern Childhoods: History, Space, and the Material Culture of Children, Ning de Coninck-Smith, co-editor. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2008.
• Response to Justin Binder’s ongoing Vacated project for Design and Violence, edited by Paola Antonelli and Jamer hunt (MomA, 2013 +), http://designandviolence.moma.org/vacated-justin-blinder/.
• “Teaching Marshall/Marshall Teaching: Encounters with Berman,” Urban Research 5: Marshall Berman, ed, Jennifer Corby and Michael Sorkin, 2016.
• “Cold Water,” in The Arsenal of Exclusion / Inclusion, ed. Interboro Partners. Barcelona & New York: Actar, 2017.
• “The Physical Spaces of Childhood,” chapter 13 in The Routledge History of Childhood in the West, ed. Paula S. Fass, 249-66. New York: Routledge, 2012.
• “Modern Housing: A California Story,” dialogue nine in Architecture from the Outside In, ed. John Wriedt and Dana Cuff, 251-55. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2010.
• “Race, Place, and Play: Robert Moses and the WPA Swimming Pools in New York City,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 67, no. 4 (December 2008): 532-61.
•  “Open-Air Schools in the United States in the Progressive Era,” invited contribution to Histoire de l’éducation 102 (May 2004 special issue): 157-80, Anne-Marie Châtelet, M. Lecouer, guest editors
• “Adopted Homes for Yesterday’s Children: Intention and Experience in an Oakland Orphanage,” Pacific Historical Review 73 no. 4 (November 2004): 581-618.