Mary Elizabeth Bland

Mary Elizabeth Bland’s path to architecture can be traced to her upbringing. Her father and grandfather were both civil engineers; she credits them with her early interest in buildings. Her deep appreciation for Classical and Southern vernacular architecture, however, springs from her childhood domain: she grew up in an 1840s Greek Revival home in western Tennessee. At Centre College, a small liberal arts school, Mary Elizabeth was able to study both math and studio art, a subject that first awakened her attraction to classical proportions. While studying abroad, she began to see architecture as perhaps a truer expression of culture than the fine arts; buildings were “living art that people could become part of.” This epiphany led Mary Elizabeth to enroll in the Master of Architecture program at the University of Notre Dame. Here, the graduate student’s purpose and past began to converge; she studied classical architecture throughout Europe, but also explored the comparatively contemporary classicism in her own back yard, the American South. Upon graduation in 2015, Mary Elizabeth eagerly joined Historical Concepts based on the familiarity of the firm’s work. In the firm’s portfolio, she sees her own history and a strong sense of place, something she intrinsically values and strives to create for others. She is the recipient of the 2019 J. Neel Reid Prize given by the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation. Her research involved studying architecture and urbanism from the Hapsburg Empire in Central Europe, specifically in Prague, Vienna, and Budapest.