Dean

Marta Gutman Headshot

Marta Gutman

Dean, Historian, Licensed Architect

Phone: 212-650-7284

Email: mgutman@ccny.cuny.edu

Office: SSA 122

https://www.linkedin.com/in/marta-gutman-93230a9

Biography :

Marta Gutman, PhD, an architectural and urban historian, is dean of the Spitzer School of Architecture at the City College of New York | CUNY, the city’s premier public school of architecture. Expert in the history of public architecture for children and in repurposing architecture as a strategy for city-building, she studies ordinary places in cities. Through this work, she tackles power and culture in all walks of life, emphasizes the activism of women especially on behalf of children, and ties local stories to national and international histories. Gutman’s commitment to social justice has been manifest since she started her career as an architect designing housing for the New York City Housing Authority and shelters for battered women, abused children, and homeless New Yorkers.

Gutman’s A City for Children: Women, Architecture, and the Charitable Landscapes of Oakland won the Kenneth Jackson Award for Best Book (North American) in urban history (2015) and the Spiro Kostof Book Award (2017). A Distinguished CUNY Research Fellow in 2018, Gutman is the immediate past president of the Society for American City and Regional Planning History, a founding coeditor of PLATFORM, and a former coeditor of Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum. Her chapter “Intermediate School 201: Race, Space, and Modern Architecture in Harlem,” in Educating Harlem: A Century of Schooling and Resistance in a Black Community, eds. Ansley T. Erickson and Ernest Morrell (Columbia, 2019), received the Catherine W. Bishir Prize in 2021. She’s currently writing Just Space: Modern Architecture, Public Schools, and Racial Inequality in New York City (University of Texas Press).

Educational Credentials :

  • Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, 2000
  • M.Arch, Columbia University, New York, NY, 1981
  • A.B., Honors in Art, Brown University, 1975

Teaching Experience :

  • Dean, Spitzer School of Architecture, City College of New York, CUNY, 2022-present
  • Interim Dean, Spitzer School of Architecture, City College of New York, CUNY, 2021-2022
  • Professor, City College of New York, CUNY, 2004-present
  • Professor, Art History Program, Graduate Center, CUNY, 2014-present
  • Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences
  • Distinguished CUNY Research Fellow, 2018
  • Adjunct Professor, California College of the Arts,1999-2000.
  • Associate Chairman, Parsons School of Design/New School for Social Research, Department of Architecture and Environmental Design, 1988-92; Acting Chair, Spring 1991
  • Graduate School of Fine Arts, University of Pennsylvania, Visiting Lecturer, 1990, 1991
  • Assistant Professor, Columbia University, Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, 1985-88; Adjunct Assistant Professor, 1983-85; Paris Summer Program, 1985, 1987

Professional Experience :

  • Society of American City and Regional Planning History, President, 2022, President-elect, 2019-21
  • Platform, Founding Editor, 2019, www.platformspace.net
  • Co-editor, Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum, 2009-2015
  • Architect, Marta Gutman/A. Eugene Sparling, A.I.A., New York, NY, 1985-92
  • Project Architect, Moger-Woodson Architects, New York, NY, 1984-85
  • Project Architect, Conrad Levenson, Architects and Planners, New York, NY, 1982-84
  • Designer, Levenson/Thaler Associates, New York, NY, 1978-81

Licenses/Registration :

  • Architecture License, New York State

Selected Publications and Recent Research :

  • “Making and Unmaking the Neighborhood: Boundaries in Postwar Cities,” introduction, guest editor, special section of the Journal of Urban History 46, no. 6 (Nov., 2020): 1191-1205, first published online May-04-2017.
  • “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. New York: Columbia University Press, 2019.
  • “The Spaces of Childhood” with Marci M. Clark. In Oxford Bibliographies in Childhood Studies, ed. Heather Montgomery. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018.
  • A City for Children: Women, Architecture, and the Charitable Landscapes of Oakland, 1850-1950. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014.
  • “Teaching Marshall/Marshall Teaching: Encounters with Berman,” in Adventures in Modernism: Thinking with Marshall Berman, edited by Jennifer Corby (New York: UR /Terreform, 2015): 52-61.
  • 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/.
  • “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.

Professional Memberships :

  • The Vernacular Architecture Forum
  • Society for American City and Regional Planning History
  • Urban History Association
  • Society of Architectural Historians
Back to People