Devin Jernigan Awarded the 2025 Tompkins Fellowship

The Society of Architectural Historians is pleased to name Devin Jernigan, doctoral candidate in the History and Theory program at Yale University's School of Architecture, as the 2025 SAH Sally Kress Tompkins Fellow.

The Sally Kress Tompkins Fellowship permits a graduate student in architectural history or a related field the opportunity to create a written history for a building or related to their research. Their report will become a permanent part of the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) collection.

Jernigan's research focuses on the American traveling circus from the early nineteenth to the twentieth century, and especially the technologies this nomadic and popular spectacle used to enclose space. He received an honorable mention for the 2024 HABS Peterson Prize for documenting a circa-1890s Parson's family concessions tent likely used on the Ringling Bros.' World's Greatest Shows' midway.

His fellowship project will continue this theme as he documents Ca’ d’Zan, John and Mable Ringling’s "opulent winter home" in Sarasota, Florida. Architect Dwight James Baum designed Ca' d'Zan, an eclectic and unique building that only a circus impresario could have dreamt up. Jernigan will investigate its development, document what was produced, and situate it more broadly within architectural history.

Before arriving at Yale, Jernigan spent more than a decade in the architecture and landscape architecture fields He holds a Master's degree in architecture from Princeton University and a Bachelor's degree in architecture from the University of Cincinnati. 

The Sally Kress Tompkins Fellowship is administered by SAH, supported by SAH's Sally Kress Tompkins Fund, with project guidance provided by HABS staff.