Nguyen’s study focuses on the built environment of the Vietnamese-American community concentrated on Washington Avenue between 5th and 13th Streets. He draws on cultural landscape studies to document the space as an important hub for Vietnamese-American culture, and argue for its preservation as a dynamic living landscape.
The Society for American City and Regional Planning History, which administers this award, calls Nguyen’s work “original, well-written, and fun (rarely a word used to describe a master’s thesis).” In a statement, the jury writes, “Drawn from an impressive array of sources—oral history and ethnography, photographs, architectural drawings, and more—Nguyen’s Historic Preservation thesis makes important contributions to the growing field of Asian American urban history.”
Francesca Russello Ammon, professor of city planning and historic preservation, is the President-Elect of SACRPH, and co-founded the curricular concentration dedicated to public history of the built environment at the Weitzman School. Ammon says, “Our concentration prepares students to uncover the vernacular histories of everyday landscapes and to interpret their meaning for public audiences. Calvin’s thesis project perfectly exemplifies this goal. By examining the built environment of Philadelphia’s Vietnamese immigrant community, he illuminates a rich cultural landscape of foodways and heritage more broadly.”
Calvin’s thesis also won the Anthony Nicholas Brady Garvan Award for an Outstanding Thesis, awarded by the faculty of the Department of Historic Preservation.
After graduating from the Weitzman School, Calvin earned the Sally Kress Tompkins Fellowship, jointly awarded by the Society of Architectural Historians and the National Park Service’s Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), which supported a 12-week HABS history project focusing on Los Angeles’s Chinatown. He is currently working as a Preservation Coordinator at Indiana Landmarks.
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