Janet Ann Stewart
Birthday: 1925
Jan Stewart is a Mayflower descendant born in 1925 at Ft. Lewis, Washington of a Hudson River and New York City family (maternal) and West Point graduate (paternal). Her childhood was spent in the Revolutionary war- conscious part of our country from the New Jersey shore to Washington DC a heritage that she would spin into her life and work. Raised along the Eastern Seaboard of the United States in the military she also enjoyed the transitory life of the Air Force in her married life to a West Point graduate Class of '45 in post-Second World War Europe and residing in Bavaria Germany which afforded frequent travel on the Continent and in Great Britain at a time when civilian tourist travel was officially controlled. A later station in the Cotswalds of England expanded these experiences and would influence her interests and studies to come. Jan's concentration on English architecture has been expanded by annual one and two-month research stays in southern England. An additional enrichment in Jan's life was her years spent in 1888 adobe quarters when her father was the first commanding officer in the modern era at Ft Huachuca in southern Arizona. The history of southeastern Arizona would later prove fodder for her research. Areas of Achievement: Jan Stewart's life of diverse experiences has culminated in the professional importance she has evidenced in two distinct arenas: the architectural history of the Southern Arizona and the country houses of England and mansions and palaces of London. While associated with The University of Arizona as employee volunteer student and as lecturer Jan isolated and identified the southern Arizona vernacular architecture and developed a growth plan for further clarity and variety from the adobe idiom through Eastern-style fired brick buildings. Stewart executed the Nomination for the El Presidio Historic District for the National Register of Historic Places the first such in the State of Arizona She later presented the Significance for the nominations of the Barrio Historico and Sam Hughes Historic Districts in Tucson and authored the Nomination of the town of Bisbee, AZ. Jan is published in Journal of Arizona History Southwest Art and British Heritage. Her scholarly text Arizona Ranch Houses reprinted by the University of Arizona Press and the Arizona Historical Society remains the source text for research and architectural history coursework listed in current source bibliographies. She currently speaks and writes on the on The English Country House (castles places and manor houses) and London's Royal Palaces. As Jan's elder daughter her life was mine for a period of time. The sail to post-war Germany life there and later starting my education at a preparatory school in Cheltenham England and the experiences Mother afforded us in both have influenced me beyond the norm. She was never a tourist in life. She insisted on being a keen observer who absorbed travel and culture like the proverbial sponge; who I am was cultured in that sponge. --Laurie When I was three years old Mother found herself placed by circumstances in the Southwest a land more foreign to her than Europe. She has made this corner of the world an area of study and her contribution to the study of architecture of the Southwest is significant. From here her world reaches back to the homeland we knew in the British Isles and her capacity for learning and teaching encompasses all that too.