Andrew Saint's talk was called "An Englishman's Reflections on American Architecture," but he was wishing he'd named it "Two Way Traffic" for all of the cross-pollination between the two countries.

Although now it appears the traffic has slowed considerably.

"I have found it quite lonely being interested in American architecture in England," said Saint, an author, critic and professor of architecture at Cambridge University. Few of his colleagues are smitten with it, and his students are more interested in American culture than American architecture, with the possible exception of works by Frank Lloyd Wright and Charles and Ray Eames.

Saint made his remarks Thursday night at Oakland's Carnegie Music Hall, in a keynote address to the Society of Architectural Historians, which is holding its annual meeting here at the Omni William Penn Hotel. About 600 members from all over the United States and abroad have gathered for five days to share the latest scholarship in the field and to learn about their host city and its region.

In his 30-minute talk, Saint gave an abbreviated history of the architectural relations between the two nations, which in Colonial times -- 1620 to 1776 -- was a one-way street. But over the next two centuries, each country influenced the other's architecture and scholarship.

England's Garden City movement helped spawn the American suburb; the American skyscraper made its way to London, and architectural historians in England and America studied and wrote in depth about the buildings in each other's countries. But in the past two decades, he said, there seems to be waning interest.

"Do we respect and enjoy each other's architecture less? Are we bored by each other?"

One reason, he thinks, is that as scholars have become more cognizant of the influence of other cultures on American architecture, such as how the southern Germans and the Swiss brought over a barn type that became known as the Pennsylvania forebay, the net effect has been to minimize the Anglo-American link.

"Students are a pretty international bunch, but they admire few Americans," Saint said. "Why, I can't say," but he suspects that "American architecture is seen as too safe, too dominated by risk-averse clients and lawyers."

And while "you will want to cite Frank Gehry," Saint said, "he does not have the street cred of [Iraqi-born British architect] Zaha Hadid" and some others.

Among yesterday's conference sessions was one exploring "Playing With Architecture," in which two scholars talked about their research into architectural toys. Cooper Union architecture professor Tamar Zinguer showed how Erector sets were marketed in the early 20th century to the parents of boys as toys that would build character, teach engineering and develop a boy's "constructive side." But they also implicitly allowed destruction, something not permitted in later life.

The toy's advertisements also encouraged a boy's interaction with his father, showing how he could play along with his son, who might need help assembling the parts.

Men also could be involved with doll houses, said Australian art historian Juliette Peers, but primarily as builders or assemblers of houses for their daughters. Peers, who traveled for two days from her teaching job in Melbourne to attend the conference on her first visit to America, described the doll house as the most architectural object of all toys but one that has attracted little scholarly research, perhaps because of the "low merit" accorded to its small scale and its association with females. Toys preferred by males, such as computer games, have received more academic attention, she said.

Peers briefly highlighted some of the history of the doll house, beginning with its development as "a piece of rococo fantasy" for adults in the 18th century. More recently, the printed tin doll houses manufactured by Louis Marx and Co. are "extraordinary portraits of post-1945 America," she said.

Peers also compared doll houses to architectural models -- the difference is "one opens and one doesn't -- and suggested that architectural models legitimize a sort of adult play with doll houses.

The meeting, which began Wednesday with a preservation colloquium on Pittsburgh's Fifth and Forbes debate, concludes tomorrow.