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Robert Craycroft served in the Peace Corps during 1966-67 in Nigeria.
Robert Craycroft served in the Peace Corps during 1966-67 in Nigeria.
Robert Craycroft
Professor of Architecture
E-mail address: craybob@sarc.msstate.edu
I was born in Cincinnati, Ohio on February 20, 1943. We spent my toddler years in Mount Pleasant, Texas returning to the Cincinnati area where I did most of my growing up. I graduated from Hughes High School in 1961 and began studying architecture at the University of Cincinnati that fall.
I served in the Peace Corps during 1966-67 in Nigeria. I returned to school following my time in the Peace Corps, graduating in 1969 with a Bachelor of Architecture.
Following graduation, I moved to Chicago where I worked in several architects offices. In 1974 I decided to pursue a teaching career and moved to St. Louis to attend graduate school. Job opportunities took me to the deep south where I've been ever since.
Along the way I developed an interest in the genealogy of the Craycroft Family and a passion for architectural building blocks. I've traveled fairly extensively in Western Europe, southern Spain being my favorite destination. On December 18, 1994, the lovely and talented Anne Hanger became my wife.
Education:
1977 Master of Architecture and Urban Design,
Washington University in St. Louis.
1969 Bachelor of Science in Architecture,
University of Cincinnati.
The Neshoba County Fair: Place and Paradox in Mississippi
by Robert Craycroft
Publisher: Mississippi State University:
Center for Small Town Research and Design, 1989
When a small group of farmers held a picnic in a Neshoba County pine grove in 1889 to discuss ways to improve their agriculture, they were participants in a national trend. But, during the ensuing century that picnic's successor, the Neshoba County Fair, developed in geographic and cultural isolation to become a truly unique American institution.Today, its Founders Square and pavilion, 562 permanent cabins, and other amenities organized into streets and neighborhoods may very well constitute this country's best continuing exposition of the principles of vernacular architecture and urbanism.
The Fairgrounds exhibit both organic growth by accretion, based on eye-level experience, common sense and tradition, and growth by design, based on abstract constructs. The cabins demonstrate the evolution, variation, and degeneration of a building typology. The craft of construction and individualized decorations embody the best traditions of folk art. And, the rapid growth of the Fair during the last generation epitomizes the greatest threat to the vernacular tradition--modernity. The cultural merit of the Fair was affirmed in 1980 when the grounds and all of its structures were listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
In spite of the Fair's significance as an important part of our heritage, it has received no attention beyond that given it in the popular press. This book was undertaken, first of all, simply to document the Fair through a brief summary of its history and a description of its activities, and through drawings and photographs of its buildings and grounds. The project's second goal was to dissect and analyze the Fair's extremely complex environment in order to provide an understanding of the structure of order and incident that underlie its picturesqueness. Finally, the book was written in an attempt to understand how the Fair developed such a strong "sense of place," why it has persisted, and what lessons, if any, can be learned from it. Every attempt has been made to keep the discussion accessible to interested lay-persons, yet substantive enough to be of interest to architects, planners, and folklorists. The research upon which this book is based was funded, in part, by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Change and Tradition in the American Small Town
Edited by Robert Craycroft and Michael W. Fazio
Publisher: Mississippi State University:
Center for Small Town Research and Design, 1983
As forces of technological and social change sweep over America, many traditions seem threatened, one of these being the small town. This institution, perhaps the most apparent embodiment of American traditions and values, tends to be severely altered by the great momentum of technological and social advancement.
The essays in this book, assessing what the editors call the "inertia of tradition and the dynamics of change," were presented as conference papers at the Second Chautauqua in Mississippi, held in April 1981 and hosted by the Center for Small Town Research and Design at Mississippi State University. They bring together perspectives of several disciplines-psychology, sociology, history, literature, landscape architecture, and urban and regional planning-in an effort to question and understand the changes which affect the traditions of small towns of America.