The most prominent and long-lasting of the timber truss-roofed buildings from imperial Roman times was the Basilica Ulpia, the interior of which has been reconstructed by recent writers but with little agreement regarding the upper sections.

Study and travel in Europe provided a foundation for the establishment of artists and architects in the United States, including landscape architects and urban planners. In the closing decades of the nineteenth century, Charles A. Platt (1859 1933) and Charles Eliot (1861 97), men from privileged backgrounds in New York and Boston respectively, spent years in Europe seeking training and direct knowledge of historic patterns in garden, park and city making.