Research Interests
Professor Schmiechen is currently interested in the intersection between the two most 'traditional' fields in nineteenth-century historical studies—that of urban and economic/labor history—and the new methodologies that have emerged out of post-structuralist/post-modern historiography and recent work in historical geography. Specifically, his work centers on a view of nineteenth-century cities and urban development through the methodologies of spatial history—how a reading of urban space and architecture allows the historian to merge constructions such as gender, identity, the public sphere, civic society, and material life and culture into an understanding of how the modern world was formed.

Recent Publications
Snapshots. A Saugatuck Album. A Photographic History of Saugatuck, Michigan. Saugatuck-Douglas Historical Society Fund, 2001 [principal author], 2003.

Off the Record. A Pictorial History of Saugatuck in the 1940s and 1950s (Saugatuck-Douglas Historical Society Fund, 2001) 135 pp., 157 photographs. [principal author]  Winner: Historical Society of Michigan Award Of Merit, Best Books on Michigan History in 2001; Winner: Michigan Museum Association Design Excellence Award, for collaborative work between author and designer, 2001.

The British Market Hall, A Social and Architectural History [principal author] (Yale University Press, June 1999), 312 pp., 187 illustrations, Gazetteer, of 626 markets in 392 cities.  Winner: Association of American Publishers Outstanding Titles Award, 2000.

Current Student Work
London, the World City: From the Great Fire of 1666 to 1914
Student Seminar Projects, Fall 2007 (Partial Listing)

Seminar Goal/Outcome: Through collective readings and consideration of the methodologies related to spatial/architectural history and through individual research, this seminar examines how London’s built environment (structure, architecture, open space, public and private space) was invented/evolved over time by fire, architectural invention, intellectual and social thinking, and industrial-economic change—and how such changes both reflected and acted as an “agency” of human physical and psychological need.

Clubs and Coffee Houses—the Politicization of the London Landscape. Drawing of the analytical work of Jürgen Habermas and others, this project looks at the impact that the well –known twin political upheavals—the Glorious Revolution and the Act of Union—had on the face and composition of the physical makeup of the city itself. More and more people, including a mass of new political participants from Scotland, rushed to London. Public and private spaces, including the aristocratic residential “squares,” coffee houses and clubs will be examined as new spaces (“war rooms” as such) for political discussion and exchange—and a places for a new form of political participation, the “party.” Stephen Gutwald

London Workhouses. This project looks at the evolution of a particular space for London’s poor, the workhouse. This space represents a changing attitude of the ruling elites toward the poor—and in particular a way to clearing undesirable elements from London’s public spaces. Using various 19th century Parliamentary Reports and the Charles Booth poverty study of the 1890s, the study asks questions about how the workhouses were spatially organized, what the houses intended to accomplish, and how well the system worked to meet these goals. Elliot Nelson

The Geography of Class in the Development of Bloomsbury. Bloomsbury section of London was reconstructed in the 18th c to hold a number of elite estates called “squares” that consisted of residential townhouses situated around green spaces. These squares provide a lens through which to analyze class tensions, an oasis of lifestyle emulating that of rural estates, and a movement toward the modern suburban way of life. My sources include a large number of 18th c essays/critiques on the social and physical architecture of London life. Jennifer Starkey

The London Penal System as Reflected in Prison Architecture. This project centers on how the London penal system was transformed from one concerned with incarceration of the criminal at the beginning of the 19th c to one that focused, by the later part of the century, on how to make the criminal a productive member of society upon his/her release. The project primary sources are an extensive collection of penal system reports included in the British Parliamentary Papers. Dan Weaver