Barbara Lane correspondence with German architects (1955-1982)

Barbara Miller Lane, a graduate of the University of Chicago and Barnard College, and a PhD in history from Harvard University, came to Bryn Mawr in the fall of 1962 to teach history. The recipient of more than a dozen major grants and fellowships throughout her career, Lane has been a visiting professor at the Columbia University School of Architecture, a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts in Washington DC, a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study, Berlin, and a member of the "City Forum", an advisory group on planning Berlin after German unification. In 1971, she helped to found the Growth and Structure of Cities Program, and served as its director from 1971-1989, and again in 1996-97. Within the Cities Program, she introduced courses in the history of urban form and the history of modern architecture.

Her books include Architecture and Politics in Germany, 1918-1945 (Harvard University Press, 1968, revised edition 1985, Italian edition 1973, German edition 1986), which is considered the classic work on German architecture and planning in the early twentieth century; a compilation on Nazi Ideology Before 1933 (ed., with Leila Rupp, University of Texas Press, 1978), and National Romanticism and Modern Architecture in Germany and the Scandinavian Countries (Cambridge University Press, 2000). Shorter publications deal with subjects such as political symbolism in 19th- and 20th-century public buildings, the late 19th-century streetscape, Expressionism and modern architecture, architecture and planning in 20th-century Berlin, and the career and significance of Albert Speer. Other research interests include the evolution of American and European domestic architecture, the development of Swedish design theory from the 1890s through the 1930s, the history of city planning in the later 20th century, and methods of research in architectural history.

Since her retirement from full-time teaching in 1999, she has returned to Bryn Mawr College to teach advanced undergraduate and graduate seminars on such subjects as "Medievalism and Modern Architecture," "The Bauhaus and Weimar Culture," and "Housing and Dwelling: Perspectives on Modern Domestic Architecture."