Leland M. Roth

Leland M. Roth is a leading American architectural historian who is the Marion Dean Ross Distinguished Professor of Architectural History emeritus in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture in the University of Oregon College of Design at the University of Oregon. His prodigious publication and teaching career began at The Ohio State University, then Northwestern University, and the University of Oregon, where he taught courses on U.S. architecture, eighteenth-century European architecture, Native American architecture, Oregon architecture, and the history of how music was performed and heard within architectural space. Roth’s studies of American and world architecture are among the most assigned and read books in university courses on the history of the built environment, and his admired work, Understanding Architecture, was translated into Spanish, Portuguese, and Turkish. Utilizing skills he acquired while completing his bachelor’s degree in architecture, Roth drafted dozens of plans, sections, and elevations for his many publications, which include Choice Reviews outstanding titles. His publications are esteemed for their unique narrative voice, and also for their assertion that style and context remain important to the scholarly discipline of architectural history. While at the University of Oregon, Roth helped create the graduate Program in Historic Preservation and taught in the annual Preservation Field School.