Dr. Kathryn Holliday

Bio

Kathryn Holliday is the Randall Biallas Professor of Historic Preservation and American Architectural History in the School of Architecture and Professor of Landscape Architecture. She is an architecture and landscape historian with a strong commitment to community-engaged, place-based historic preservation. Creating connections between the university, faculty, and students in the pursuit of projects that promote a fuller, more equitable narrative of American history is central to her work. She is an interdisciplinary scholar and teacher, with degrees in Art History and Environmental Studies from Williams College, an MA in Art History from the University of Texas at Austin, and a PhD in Architecture from the University of Texas at Austin.

Her current research focuses on issues authorship and storytelling, and the ways that buildings and landscapes intertwine stories of labor, technology, capital, gender, and race to shape the world around us. She is completing the book Telephone City: Architecture and the Rise and Fall of the Bell Monopoly (under contract with the University of Pittsburgh Press in the Culture, Politics, and the Built Environment series), which reconsiders the Bell telephone monopoly through its role as the largest private builder, real estate manager, and employer in the history of the U.S. She is co-editor of the forthcoming Rewriting American Architecture: Contesting the Myths of National Culture, which collects essays by 20 scholars who address the need to center histories of race, conflict, and land in our understanding of American architectural history (University of Texas Press, 2026). She is a core contributor to the current Sawyer Seminar At Risk U, focusing on academic freedom, the meaning of campus, and patterns of university land ownership and management. Prior works have focused on the role of newspaper architectural criticism in shaping civic dialogue (The Open-Ended City, 2019) and the professionalization of architectural theory and practice (Leopold Eidlitz: Architecture and Idealism in the Gilded Age (2008) and Ralph Walker: Architect of the Century (2012)). Professor Holliday’s work has been supported by the Mellon Fellowship in Urban Landscape Studies at Dumbarton Oaks, the SOM Foundation Research Prize, and the National Park Service Civil Rights Grant, as well as grants from the Hagley Library, Kress Foundation, and Dallas Chamber of Commerce amongst others.

Prior to joining the University of Illinois in Fall 2023, she taught for 16 years in Dallas-Fort Worth at the University of Texas at Arlington. There she was the founding director of the David Dillon Center for Texas Architecture, which connected the university and surrounding metropolitan region in conversation about issues of urbanism, design, and historic preservation. Through more than 10 symposia and associated events and publications, the Center acted as a convener focused on shifting public policy. The last Dillon symposium, Don’t Sell the Land, was held in 2022, bringing together faculty, policymakers, and non-profit leaders in conversation about preservation and placemaking in historic Freedman’s towns.

Since joining the University of Illinois in Fall of 2023, she has worked to form partnerships and build a new network of trust with the local community in Illinois. Working with students she was co-curator of the Making Place for the Arts at Home exhibition at the Krannert Art Museum in 2025, exploring the history of mid-century modern architecture and segregated patterns of housing development in the postwar period in Champaign-Urbana. She is a member of the Urbana Historic Preservation Commission, has worked with students to support the writing of landmark nominations for multiple community partners, and met with local historic preservation commissions and advocacy groups to support their needs across the state.

Teaching and advising

Chair, History + Theory + Preservation, School of Architecture
Chair, Graduate minor in Heritage Studies and Preservation, Department of Landscape Architecture

Affiliations

Professor, School of Art + Design (0% appointment)
Professor, Informatics Programs, School of Information (0% appointment)