Realized ideals: Grecian-style buildings as metaphors for democracy on the trans-Appalachian frontier

This dissertation focuses on the architecture of the antebellum Frontier South and the Old Northwest to demonstrate the cultural similarity of these two regions. I analyze Grecian-style buildings within communities that share the common nickname of "Athens" to explore the ways in which people of the trans-Appalachian West defined themselves, their communities, and their place within the nation. The nineteenth-century buildings under scrutiny in this study offer new evidence about the nation-building process and the construction of a common culture and they present a significant opportunity to look at visual evidence in order to couple it with written records to explain the cultural claims of the trans-Appalachian West.;People constructed Grecian-style buildings throughout the trans-Appalachian West to emulate the temples of Ancient Greece and to deploy through those buildings social and political meanings tied to the ancient democracy. Both north and south, buildings provided a common architectural language that was adapted freely to all types of structures---government buildings, educational facilities, churches, commercial structures, and residences---through which people suggested inherent external meanings of stability, rationality, and balance in a world marked by impermanence and disorder.;The embodiment of democracy in the Grecian style across the nation lasted through the mid-nineteenth century when Americans turned to nonclassical architectural styles to express their cultural sophistication and political aspirations. This shift in design sensibilities provided opportunities to manipulate meanings for the Grecian style and establish a regional identity for the South. What was "democracy in built form," a national style in the antebellum nation, became a regional variant by the twentieth century.;This dissertation, with its focus on eight similarly nicknamed communities, offers explanations of meanings encapsulated in the Grecian-style buildings of the trans-Appalachian West. Grecian-style buildings throughout the antebellum landscape west of the Appalachian Mountains indicate that similar cultural activity took place to shape the landscape and to erect upon it idealized structures that stood as evidence of clear desires by individuals, groups, and institutions to refashion the republic of the nation's founders into a fully realized democratic nation ruled by common men rather than an educated elite.;Above all, the uniformity in the use of the Grecian style across the nineteenth-century trans-Appalachian West exposes a means for understanding this geographic space as a single region. Regionalism and sectionalism, as understood today, are concepts deeply challenged by the circumstances of antebellum middle America as indicated in this cross-sectional examination of communities. Like the buildings themselves, the eight communities under scrutiny encapsulated an evolving world order that began with revolution, continued with appropriation of land and commodities from Native Americans, and shifted toward nation-building.