Only recently have social and cultural historians begun to show serious interest in some of more mundane and ubiquitous features of the built environment. Yet structures, such as balconies, as Cowan has demonstrated, were more than just architectural ornaments; they played a central role in the practices constituting everyday life and, as in the case of the doors and gateways that are the subject of this book, represent an immensely fruitful site for interdisciplinary investigation.1
The “spatial turn” across the social sciences generated an accentuated awareness of the importance of boundaries between different kinds of space—public and private, sacred and profane, rural and urban, domestic and foreign—and their function in political and social life and cultural practices. Moreover, the new focus on “emotion” has heightened awareness of the complex feelings invoked by place. These themes run through Jütte’s book, which addresses the “question of how the door achieved the...