Digital City: First Year Seminar

Franklin & Marshall College's general education curriculum includes first year seminars known as Connections. I have proposed a new CNX seminar for Fall 2018 that explores further last semester's class Migration Architecture: Intro to Spatial Analysis (ART 175). Rather than introducing students to migration architecture from antiquity to the present, this new seminar takes Lancaster as a laboratory. The students will partner with a number of community organizations and create digital databases, 3D-models, maps and narratives on erased urban histories. We will partner with the Lancaster Historical Society and map the houses of prostitution as recorded by the citizens' Vice Commission in 1915. We will partner with the archaeological field-methods class and excavate a suburban house from the 1920s. We will partner with the Catastrophic Relief Alliance and assist a lower income neighborhood in fixing up destroyed houses. Finally, we will partner with Lancaster's African American Oral History Project and reconstruct the Seventh Ward, Lancaster's most racially and ethnically diverse wards that was demolished in the 1960s to build
public housing. This project will add to the comparative database that David Pettergrew has been building for Harrisburg and my students have been building for Philadelphia. David and I hope to write a comparative article for all southeastern Pennsylvania. We have presented our work in conferences and are busily teaching our students how to build databases with us. We are thankful to conversations with Amy Hillier at the University of Pennsylvania, whose 2012 work on mapping the Seventh Ward in Philadelphia has been ground-breaking.

Like the Seventh Ward in Philadelphia (which W. E. B. Du Bois studied door-to-door in the 1890s) the Seventh Ward in Lancaster was the African-American core of the city. Very little survives from it both physically and historically since the original community was pushed out by a public housing mono-culture of poverty. Last semester, Franklin and Marshall hosted a Common Hour lecture that summarized the galant efforts of Lancaster's African American Oral History Project. You can watch this important event here: "Singing the Lord's Song in a Strange Land: Africans in Lancaster Country," (Oct. 5, 2017), or read about it here. The discussion included Leroy Taft Hopkins, Jr. (Professor of History at Millersville University and President of the President of the African-American Historical Society of South Central Pennsylvania), Betty Hurdle (retired Housing and Community Advocate), Kevin Ressler (candidate for mayor), and Antonio Callari (Professor of Economics). 

In preparation for my seminar, I initiated the conversation with the Oral History Project. In consultation with Leroy Hopkins, I took a first look at the 1912 maps of the core of the Seventh Ward. My little sketch above confirmed multiple African American churches, a synagogue, and other lost establishments. I have had conversations with many different groups in Lancaster. The African American Oral History Project seems by far the most sophisticated, directed by the major historian of African-American life in the city. 

And here is my blurb for the seminar

The Digital City

Buildings, people, sewers, side-walks, trees, graveyards, schools, hospitals, traffic, and the flow of capital. Welcome to the greatest work of art in human history, a work saturated with codes, messages, ebbs, and flows and ideally suited for digital complexity. Our contemporary experience of cities is digitally mitigated by smart phones, devices, global positioning systems, satellites, street views, drones, and sharing economies. Digital literacy makes possible the simultaneous reading of time and space. The city is a material repository of human actions whose traces can be read like a physical book. We will immerse ourselves into Lancaster's urban materiality and write digital stories. We will study the production of space and consider how race, class, and ethnicity have transformed the American city. Each student will partner with a community organization ranging from oral history projects, refugee advocates, historical societies, and neighborhood associations. We will digitally reconstruct demolished neighborhoods, map topographies of vice, and even conduct an archaeological excavation.

Student Life at Sayer Hall 1908

Sayre Hall of Mercer College (now University of North Dakota) was built in 1908, the first in a series of four buildings. We have an extraordinary document, a biography of a 1908 student who gives explicit details of student life in the Hall during its first year of occupation. (See previous post for details)

Roy Thompson of Cando, ND, enrolled at the Grand Forks Preparatory School for his high school senior year in preparation for enrollment at the University of North Dakota. He was the first group of students to be housed at Sayre Hall that had just been completed. I have pulled out some of the most interesting observations about the building.

• The dormitory was managed by an amicable Mrs. Hoy, who lived with her daughter Grace in an apartment at the first floor of the building. 
• Upon arrival to the still unfinished building, Thompson and his room-mate selected their room. They chose the southwest corner on the third floor. It had two rooms, a study, and a bedroom.
• The dormitory was so new that they had to spend two hours unpacking and putting together the brand new beds, the dresser and chairs that had arrived in shipping craters.
• Electricity had not yet been installed, so they used candles at night.
• Mrs. Hoy warned to be careful, as the walls were not yet finished and asked them to step carefully over the floors that
  had not yet been finished.
• The overall impression of a building was austerity. The young Thompson who had grown up in a Victorian house with wooden floors and carpets was struck by the austerity of the Beaux Arts artifice that he likened to a prison: "The thick walls, the deeply set in windows and doors somehow gave the impression of being in a penitentiary."
• One of the most memorable visceral impressions was the sound of the hard floors: "We were much annoyed at first by the noise of the place. People waking on the terrazzo floors—that was before the day of rubber heels—could be heard distinctly on the two floors below us, and our floor like approaching horses on cement. The emptiness of the building contributed to this clatter, as well as the lack of curtains, carpets and wall decorations."
• As the semester progressed, Thompson describes the development of a residential comradery. "Meanwhile, everybody in the new dormitory gradually became accustomed to living in close contact with others, and almost before we realized it, life had become a series of routines, repeated five days a week. As in most dormitories there was a strong tendency on the part of the students to regard all property as public. An example was Wiley’s electric flat iron, the only one on our floor. It was used by all and sundry not only for pressing trousers, but also to “cook cocoa,” and make fudge. Many a “feed” was held in the wee small hours after lights had been turned off, when the prevailing dress was not evening but night. During the first year in Sayre all such feeds were negotiated by candle light, and happily so." Another important event was the arrival of food baskets from home. "One of the great moments in the life of a Sayre Hall resident was the arrival from home of a basket of food; everyone on the floor dropped whatever he as doing, and went to the room of the recipient, and had a 'feed'."
The students ate at the University's Dining Hall, but Mrs. Hoy began to host small groups of students for Saturdays dinners. "It was during this pioneer year that Mrs. Hoy conceived the idea of treating the residents of Sayre, two or three at a time, to a tasty repast in the clubroom. Such 'feeds' were, of necessity, given on the installment plan and spread out very a long series of Saturday evenings. These 'feeds' were long remembered by the Hall’s residents, all of whom were far from home, and were remembered as a distinct achievement in the matron’s initial year."
• There is one description of how the common room took over spiritual functions on Sundays. "Early in the year a Sunday evening Vesper Service was started by the management. At first the boys gathered around the piano informally and sang hymns; later there would be a speaker from Wesley College. Such meetings served as a substitute for church series, for those who were in the habit of going to church found in inconvenient to go to Grand Forks. But after a few months the attendance dropped off and the Sunday meetings abandoned."
• There is one interesting note about Sayre Hall's artistic life. Although not frequented very much, the basement floor had a piano. It was here that one student with an intense passion for classical music practiced for hours.

These are a few highlights that can be intersected with our survey of the building. For me, one of the most interesting parts of the biography is the description of the intellectual conversations that took place within Sayre Hall. Living next door to Thompson was the student Garth Howland, with whom he became life-long friends. Howland was studying art and introduced Thompson to German Expressionism. Together they attended an exhibition of prints by Die Brucke, which shocked the viewers. It is amazing to think that Grand Forks was so connected to artistic fashions that one could see a Die Brucke exhibition. Garth Howland had a stellar career. He studied painting (at Harvard, in Paris, etc.) and in 1926 he founded Lehigh University's Art Department. While at Bethlehem, he became an expert on 18th-century Moravian architecture. William Murtagh, the world expert on Moravian architecture writes in his Moravian Architecture and Town Planning (1967) how Howland inspected Bethlehem's Gemeinhaus, one of the largest log buildings in the country. Howland surveyed the log structure in great detail before it was demolished, very much as we are doing with his beloved Sayre Hall, where he began his architectural studies.

Beyond learning about German Expressionism and classical music, Thompson also participated in a two-week archaeological expedition. In the summer of 1910, he joined History Professor Olin G. Libby in surveying Native American sites along the Missouri River. "We met at Bismarck. The party consisted of Dr. Libby, an Indian chief named Holding Eagle, his son Jim Holding Eagle, Francis Templeton, a U.N.D. student whose home was in Grand Forks, and myself. We were equipped with a farm wagon, two horses, two tents and camping equipment, feed for the horses, and food for ourselves. Jim Holding Eagle was driver and caretaker of the horses. When camping time came, we all pitched in and helped put up the tents."

It is exciting to have such granular information about the life of an academic building from its first occupant. I look forward to see how the biographical account intersects with the material survey. It is astounding to me that within those spaces of Sayre Hall, a young mid-western student could entertain German Expressionist colors and Native American sites under the same roof.

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College and University 1908 North Dakota

Bill Caraher, my partner in many writing crimes (Punk Archaeology, Man Camps, Refugee Archaeology), began a salvage archaeology project on his campus and kindly invited me to collaborate. The issue is this handsome 1908 Beaux Arts building that will be torn down this June. Our task is to archaeologically document as much as we can before demolition. Bill has set up a one-credit class for his students to carry out the documentation. What I hope to contribute is the architectural context. Research began this morning, and I will share some preliminary thoughts.

In 1905, Red River Valley University, a Methodist College in Wahpeton, North Dakota, moved to Grand Forks in an interesting arrangement of auxiliary co-existence with the public University of North Dakota. Red River Valley University was at the verge of economic collapse so the merger with UND was partly financial. It was also motivated by the demographic strength of Methodists among a predominant Lutheran landscape. More interesting is the desire for a science-driven public university to bring to its campus a liberal arts college and create a dependency of arts and sciences. As Louis Menand has argued in The Marketplace of Ideas (2010), liberal arts education in America was invented in order to directly serve the needs of a professionalizing higher education. The liberal arts became the filtering mechanism for professionalization. There was no binary choice between the arts and the sciences; the arts were created as a prerequisite (and albeit inferior) filter for technical specialization. Changing its identity on the new campus, the old Methodist college became an autonomous Wesley College within UND. The coexistence survived until 1963 when it was fully incorporated into the university. 

The two buildings that made up Wesley College were constructed in 1908, with expansions in 1930. Robertson-Sayre Hall and Corwin-Larimore Hall are Beaux Arts buildings in yellow brick and pronounced roof lines. Hundreds of colleges in the U.S. employed this style, following the success of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, the establishment of a Beaux Arts curriculum, and the City Beautiful movement. More locally, however, the 1908 buildings represent a break from the 1891 identity of a Methodist college, represented by the architecture of the abandoned Old Main in Wahpeton (photo below). They are also distinct from the Collegiate Gothic identity embraced by UND in the 1920s. After leaving Wahpeton, Red River University sold its grounds to the State School of Sciences in 1905, so Old Main turned from a Methodist college to a technical university, as it survives to this day (in 2015 the ND State School of Sciences renovated Old Main).

My first reading of the architecture of Robertson-Sayre and Corwin-Larimore is twofold. On the one hand, they embrace the general fashion of campus architecture, the period between 1893 and 1924 when the Beaux Arts reigned supreme. On the other hand, they assert a liberal arts collegiate identity in contrast to the technical university. It will be important to explore the Methodist connection, since Methodist colleges were pioneers in educational reform. After all, Oberlin College was radical in its admissions of African Americans and women based on its Methodist mission. If we were to point to the premier flagship of Methodist collegiate architecture, it would be Cass Gilbert's transformation of Oberlin College from a stone campus into a neoclassical campus. 

Cass Gilbert's Cox Building above (1915) or the Allen Museum (1917) are arguably more refined versions of a Beaux Arts (with Romanesque flourishes to bridge with the older campus identity). 

The architect of the two North Dakota buildings was a New Yorker. A. Wallace McRae in only known for his house designs that were published in contemporary journals like American Architect and Architectural Record around 1923-1925. Why would Grand Forks reach so far beyond its typical source of architects (either local or from Minneapolis)? My suspicion is a common arrangement for the period, where a metropolitan architect submitted designs that were carried out by a local firm. Built on codified architectural modules, the Beaux Arts style lend itself to mass production. It was during this time that large firms build national practices with the help of a newly professionalized staff of draftsmen. The comparison with Cass Gilbert will be interesting here, since he began his practice in Minneapolis before going to New York.

To simply talk about style, however, is just scratching the surface. UND's archives contains building specs that address the material source of construction. It is amazing, for instance, that Mercer Moravian Tiles were brought all the way from Doyleston, Pennsylvania for the floors. The granular study of the building will allow interesting insights on the East Coast-North Dakota emerging interdependencies. 

What I hope to do in the architectural analysis is to establish the norms for campus architecture in 1908 with a special focus on Methodist institutions. As Michael Lewis has shown in his survey of The Gothic Revival (2002), the Methodists quickly abandoned their anti-formal sensibilities of tent retreats and communitarian architecture. By the 1880s, they had fully embraced the formalistic Gothic style that was once unique to their counterparts, the Episcopalians. The sectarian distinctiveness of the Methodists (and their Second Great Awakening legacy) had architecturally disappeared by 1908. 

I hope we find some material articulation of the dominant conflicts in American education ca. 1900. These conflicts have not gone away. After all, the UND Buildings will be torn down to construct a newer vision of the curriculum. I hope we will address three conflicts: public university v. private college, science-technology v. liberal arts curricula, and secular v. religious values. 

I end with the very mission statement of the merger between Wesley College and UND presented by the President of UND in his address of the annual conference in Grand Forks.  In his March 1900 speech, Webster Merrifield laid out the intellectual and practical benefits of the merger:

“Whereas. The state university is in theory the university of all the people of the state, and is supported by the taxes of the members of the several denominations, as well as by the other citizens of the state, it would seem to be appropriate and fitting that the churches of the several denomination in the state should avail themselves of the privileges which belong to their members as citizens of the state, and should use, to whatever extent may seem desirable in the conduct of their education work, the facilities afforded by the state university. It is recognized that the state university is a civic institution and has for its mission the training of the youth of the state for efficient service as its citizens. It is recognized, also, that the distinctive object of the church is maintaining schools of its own is to secure trained leadership in religious and denominational work. There is, therefore, logically, no conflict between their respective missions, for the same young people are to serve in both these capacities. These two missions being in no sense antagonistic, but supplementary, it would seem the part of wise economy that these two education agencies should avail themselves, so far as possible, of the facilities and appliances of each other in the working out of their respective missions, keeping always in view the principle of separation of the church and state in so far as regards the control and expenditure of the financial resources of each." 

Quoted in Wallace N. Stearns, “History of the Red River Valley University,” State of North Dakota Collections of the State Historical Society of North Dakota 2 (1908), pp. 171-178.

Aegina Orphanage 1829-1834

I argue that we need to embark on a refugee archaeology in order to confront the current crisis head-on, on the one hand, but also to make up for lost ground in having ignored the modern Greek periods as archaeologically valuable. There are three foci for our historical archaeology 1820s/1920s/1940s and the refugee crisis following the nation-states three greatest moments of crisis before the 2000s.

I have been trying to collect a state-of-the-field on these three loci. Focusing on the 1820s, we have the refugee settlement of Pronoia in Nauplion as the best documented by historical sources (Kardamitsi-Adami 1994). As far as I know, there hasn't been a systematic survey of the neighborhood assessing how much of the urban fabric dates to the initial phase. 

Aegina has some prominence, too, but it is not so well documented. We know from Kapodistrias and Samuel G. Howe that the refugees inhabited the islands caves and Mycenaean burials (a topic for a future post). Greek philanthropism is concentrated on Aegina's orphanage, which became a prison. Vasilis Petrakos has just published man primary sources about the archaeology of Kapodistrias and includes the plans below from a 1991 survey of the building (Petrakos 2015, v. 1, pp. 77-78). 

The orphanage of Aegina was Kapodistrias' largest building project constructed in October 1828 and occupied in April 1829 (thus at the same time as Howe's Washingtonia). It was designed by Theodoros Vallianos, a native of Cephalonia who trained in Russia. The decorative treatment of doors, windows, and corners has Baroque sensibilities popular in Europe (and especially the Ionian). The building was designed around a large courtyard, and a central axis aligning the entrance with a chapel. In addition to dormitories, the orphanage housed its own school and craft workshops for carpentry, bookbinding, tanning, and textiles. It also housed the nation's first library, printing press, and archaeological museum (before it moved to what is now known as the Old Museum). 

This ambitious philanthropic agenda did not last. Only five years after opening, the orphans were moved to Nauplio, and the building was converted into a military school. In 1841, it was converted into a quarantine hospital, and in 1860, it was converted into a psychiatric hospital. For three years, 1866-1869, it served refugee again, this time from the Cretan war. The old orphanage is best known for its last and longest phase, 1879-1984, as a prison. During this period, thousands of political dissenters (as well as criminals) were incarcerated here and, in some cases, executed here. Kapodistrias' humanitarianism turned full circle with a most repressive prison in Greek history.

The continuity between institutions of social correction and social punishment is not unusual (no need to read Foucault here), but it raises a number of questions that warrant an archaeological lens.

REFERENCES:

Kardamitsi-Adami, M. 1994. “Πρόνοια, ο πρώτος προσφυγικός συνοικισμός της ελεύθερης Ελλάδος,” Archaiologia 51 pp. 35-46

Petrakos, Vasileios Ch. 2015. Ημερολόγιο αρχαιολογικό. Τα χρόνια του Καποδίστρια 1828-1832, 3 vols., Athens: Vivliotheke tes en Athenais archaiologikes etaireias.

Keat's Fancy Mantel

The Anglo-American fireplace is tightly intertwined with literature. It locates the act of reading while dislocating the domestic belonging. A collegiate fireplace at the University of Pennsylvania inscribes that tension in stone. Two youngsters William C. Hays and Milton Medary designed the oldest American student union with their professor Frank Miles Day. Houston Hall is a Tudor Revival building (modeled on the 17th-century Peacock Inn, Rowley). Its main hall is flanked by two large fireplaces carved in limestone. A band runs over the eastern fireplace that contains a running stanza from Keats 1820 poem Fancy.

"Sit thee by the ingle, when
The sear faggot blazes bright,
Spirit of a winter's night"

The heavy mantel becomes a didactic device for escaping the home through fancy. "Ever let the Fancy roam, Pleasure never is at home" is the poem's central message. Stuffy as this collegiate gesture may seem today, it contains an element of dislocation. The meaning of faggot has greatly changed over the last century from its original medieval French import into the English language. A bundle of sticks burns below a bundle of ripples. The blazing reality around which the readers bundle generates a conversation or an exit strategy.

The inglenook (literary "a corner of fire") became an obsession in British domestic architecture. Is it possible that the British hearth imaginaire could be transported to Greece? This blog, remember, explores the vernacular associations of Greek villages. If not directly, British domestic ideals would have passed to Greece through Germany, specifically through Hermann Multhesius. Published by Wasmuth press in Berlin in 1904, Multhesius's monograph The English House put British vernacular at the center of modernism. Just five years later, Wasmuth would publish Frank Lloyd Wright's famous folio that made him an instant celebrity among modernists (while still hated by Americans). While admiring the English house immensely, Multhesius cannot help himself but make fun of the British for insisting on fireplaces even as they all understand how totally inefficient they are.

I could not resist making a quick sketch of this literary marriage in stone at Houston Hall, a space that I have passed a thousand times. For more information on the building, see George Thomas and David Brownlee, Building America's First University (Philadelphia, 2000), p. 171.

Holman Bible Iron

Steel Beam Vernacular has been generally interested in the incorporation of metal into vernacular architecture. With Frank Furness as a pioneering figure, Philadelphia is well endowed. But I think I have ran into the grandest iron installation. It carries the masonry load of the whole facade (four stories) and opens up the first story in order to reveal the merchandise to the viewer. In this case, the merchandise is .... bibles. Philadelphia used to be the publishing capital of the U.S. before New York took over in the 20th century. The most profitable best seller was naturally the Bible, and Andrew J. Holman was one of its manufacturers. The Holman Bible Factory was designed by the Wilson Brothers in 1881 and located at 1222-26 Arch St (see here for details). The cast iron piers incorporate decorative elements from the brick facade (rosettes, mouldings, rustication, etc.) and dramatically express the pneumatic forces (notice Furness's trick of double-piled columns that refer to steam machinery). The iron facade is unique also in that they taper in at the base, making the building tilt towards the street. I had to stop for and take stock of the piers' complex elements.

Texas (inside) versus North Dakota (outside) man camp insulation

The North Dakota Man Camp Project had a productive research trip a couple of weeks ago, where we documented evidence of abandonment and scaling-down (see here). This phenomenon corresponds with other oil fields, where the decrease of oil prices, exaggerated further by the Iran deal, has caused a clear decline. It's in this general context that Karnes County, Texas, made the news this Sunday: Clifford Kraus, "Sinking Oil Prices Are Lowering Boom in Texas," The New York Times (Aug. 15, 2015), A1, A3.

The article included a photo of an oil worker walking out of his RV. See photo here. This has become a standard oil boom image, partially canonized by Kyle Cassidy (landscape view, right frame cuts through the middle of RV, resident walking or standing at entrance). 

Beyond its human content, the New York Times photograph highlights strategies of vernacular architecture. I did a sketch above to illustrate a subtle detail from the photo, the use of reflective insulation on the windows (marked in black). Whereas in North Dakota this material is placed on the outside of the RV, in Texas it is placed on the inside of the RV. The same material (available at any construction store) insulates against the cold in North Dakota and the heat in Texas. This is one among many regional variations.

I quote some relevant passages by Clifford Kraus below that make the man camp situation in Texas similar to that of North Dakota.

Workers whom migrated from far and wide to find work here, chasing newfound oil riches, are being laid off, deserting their recreational vehicle parks and going home. Hey farmers who became instant millionaires on royalty checks for their land have suddenly fallen behind on payments for new tractors they bought when cash was flowing. Scores of mobile steel tanks and portable toilets used at the ubiquitous wells are stacked, unused, along county roads. 'Everybody is waiting for doomsday,' said Vi Malone the Karnes County treasurer.

Just five years ago, Karnes County was a speck in the oil patch, its production a rounding error in a state historically tied to oil. Then came hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and teh sure in oil production it unleashed. Crumbling towns here reinvented themselves with new restaurants, markets and hotels as money and jobs poured in....

O Young Building, Grand Forks ND

Cast iron transformed commercial architecture in 19th-century American cities. Affording greater span for less footprint, they increased the space for windows and window-shopping. In corner properties, the iron column was capable of supporting the entire weight of the residential upper floors and open up the corner to the public, placing the entrance diagonally to the corner, and allow passage and view from both streets. Cutting the corner gave back space to the public street (experientially but not legally) and literally syphoned the shopper into the store. Decorative detail on the prefabricated iron post, moreover, attracted attention the store.

The "corner store" is, thus, an iconic installation in any19th-century American city. But since this paradigm does not work anymore, many of the old corner stores have closed their original public offering to increase their private real estate. When American cities went into depression in the 1960s, the iron posts stopped being maintained, rusted, and generally proved inefficient. So few of them actually survive in situ.

This morning, I took a walk through Grand Forks' beautiful main street (3rd Street) to see a beautiful iron corner post on 2 S 3rd Street and Demers. Originally the "O Young Building" it sat on a prime location with Demers Street crossing the Red Rive into Minnesota. The post had no information about the foundry that produced it (sometimes they are stamped) but, I would guess, it was manufactured in Minneapolis. It is divided into two parts with triple fluting, a base, capital, and a simple middle block decorated with disks. The pier is decorated on only two of its four sides, which suggests that originally the corner was not fully open but must have had some adjacent framing.

The entrance to the upstairs residential floors is on the other side of the facade and it is framed by decorated piers that match the iron post. From the distance, it looks like they are iron, too, but they are not. They are made out of wood, but carved so to match the iron prototype in the corner. This is pretty interesting. The carpenter (surely local) is completing here an architectural composition whose vocabulary was established by the foundry. Painting both white makes them indistinguishable. I was excited to discover this bi-materiality. On the East Coast and other midwestern cities, decorative details of this period are made in pressed zinc and do away with the carpenter altogether.

The Young store had an iron post on its other back corner, but it has been replaced with a newer steel column. A staircase leading to the basement on Demers Street features another iron element, a beautiful post for the railing, most likely manufactured by the same foundry (below):

Artesia

Wil Hylton's "The Shame of America's Family Detention Camps" in The New York Times Magazine this weekend (Feb. 4, 2015) came while editing our own essay on the man camps of North Dakota. June Carlos Llorca's photo "Children entering a dormitory at Artesia Family Residential Center in New Mexico last September," in particular, made me think of the similarities between the man camps we are studying and the federal detention center. The photograph gives enough factual information of the residential unit. I tried to extract a ground-plan and elevation from the photograph in order to turn photography into architectural evidence. Given the standardized sizes of windows and cladding, one could easily replicate the exact dimensions of the residential unit.

After speculating on the unit's ground plan, I thought it might be possible to produce an entire camp map using Google Earth. Adrian Meyers has given some guidelines on using Google Earth as an archaeological tool, see his pioneering remote sensing of Guantanamo Bay:

Meyers, Adrian. 2010. “Camp Delta, Google Earth and the Ethics of Remote Sensing in Archaeology,” World Archaeology 42, pp. 455-467

I confess that I didn't go very far with the remote sensing exercise, partially because I didn't have enough corroborative information to fine-tune the coordinates. After half an hour of browsing the landscape north of Artesia for images of a camp, I gave up on Google Earth. But I do hope someone takes ti up from here.

Argo and Bloomsbury Tents

The 21st edition of George Theotokas' Αργώ, recently reprinted by Estia has ugly typography and an even uglier cover (and why was it split into two volumes, I don't know). Gone is the beautiful font from the original (1936) edition. Van Pelt Library has a copy of the 3rd edition (1957), which I copied above.

Browsing through Richard Stone's Bloomsbury Portraits (1976; rev'D 1993), I was captivated by a set of drawings by Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell from 1913. They document camping trips at Thetford Forest, Norfolk. The tents are no different from the type used by the French Expedition in Greece in 1829 (see here). Grant's painting (above) is in a private collection. It speaks of a social indeterminacy and a bohemian attempt for ecological immersion. It seems that friends set up tents even when visiting the house in Charleston. Bell's work (below) is a screen that folds into three, now at the Victoria and Albert. Unlike Grant's painting that looks at the trio from the outside, Bell populates the folding triangular space with erotic figures, bending, turning, exposing breasts, thighs, faces. The same year, Grant hang out with Picasso in Paris, where they discussed ripping wallpaper to use in collages. I find an interesting resonance between ripping the paper of 19th-century interiors while also exploring the thinness of tent dwelling.

Zirwat Chowdhoury (Reed College) and William Tronzo (UC San Diego) are chairing a panel on "The Tent: One of Architecture's Many Guises" at the next annual meeting of the Society of Architectural Historians (see here). The bohemian expansion into tent space ca. 1913 would make an interesting topic. 

Andy Upright & Ann Klicka

At GO WEST! Craft Fest, I met two incredible craftsmen, the master Andy Upright and his apprentice Ann Klicka, who were illustrating the production of metalworks. The rhythmic beating of the molten iron on the anvil and a most interesting conversation made me realize the uniqueness of metalwork in the general spectrum of DIY craft revivals. It dawned on me that today's popular crafts, whether it be knitting, food, or vaudeville, exist in a zone of individual self-actualization. They fit comfortably into the edges of non-offensive and isolated social activities and they are rather shy of tackling the architectural environment. The art of the metalsmith, on the other hand, links other crafts together, it communicates and creates a material continuum. It has to bind stone (building structures) to wood (human softness), it intercedes between the mason and the carpenter. Stone is too hard and wood is too soft, making it extremely difficult to set wood into stone without a metal hinge. 

Andy Upright and Ann Klicka are excellent metal artists on their own right. Although raised in Minnesota and Massachusetts, respectively, their work made me celebrate the continuity of a Philadelphia tradition that goes back to Samuel Yellin. I remember the impact Yellin's workshop had on me when I visited it with my high school class. And Ann tells me that the Yellin Workshop is still managed by Clare Yellin, Samuel's grand-daughter but is not going as strong as it did during my high-school days.

When I picked up Andy's and Ann's cards, I thought of contacting them with ideas of historian-craftsman partnerships, like documenting Philadelphia's architectural iron. But first, I needed to do something appropriate with their actual cards. What you see above was my intuitive reaction to the magic they shared with an adoring audience at Go WEST! Craft Fest (including the undivided attention of two five-year old ones). Later that day, a craft beer specialist at The Local 44 Bottle Shop recommended a Gose, a crazily medieval beer that takes like salt and lemon and is still made in Leipzig. So, I had to remove the label from the bottle and paste it next to the metalwork Andy's and Ann's cards. Both experiences made me incredibly humbled to be living in a neighborhood where craft conversations are exerting a force of resistance.

Ruskin's Favorite Tomb

Followers of this blog may remember tracing one particular type of late-19th-century American funerary monument (Hand Monument, Hartman Monument, Brady Monument, etc.) This week, I was reading about World War I monuments in J. S. Curl's Death and Architecture (2002) and came across the origin of this funerary type in the chapter on medieval monuments. More exciting (but not surprising) was to learn that Ruskin was the figure who discovered this medieval type in the monument of Can Grande I della Scala in Verona (1355). In The Stones of Venice, he called it "the consummate form of the Gothic tomb"(Collected Works, vol. 11, p. 87).  See a beautiful drawing from John Ruskin's Teaching Collection at Oxford. A similar Scaliger Tomb, of San Signorio della Scala (1365), served as the model for Prince Albert's memorial at Kensington Gardens (1872) by G. G. Scott. The image above is from my notebook (and --clearly-- not Ruskin's).

R7L17 Introductory

R7L17 is a guide to the Ruskin's Seven Lamps of Architecture for seventeen-year old readers. The following annotations refer to Ruskin's "Introductory."  See earlier posts that explain the intentions.

The key argument in the Introduction is the need to have clear objectives. Making good judgments, argues Ruskin, is less a problem of execution but more a problem of defining clear goals. ,

[par. 01] This paragraph might be entitled "the right versus the possible." Ruskin introduces this work by referring back to a conversation he had some years ago, as if the conversation still plays out in his mind, and as if the conversation is now extended to us, who enter the scene. The conversation, interestingly enough, is not with a theologian or a philosopher, but with a painter, in fact, the best painter of his age. The interlocutor is distinguished simply for his ability to combine perfection in drawing (the formal qualities of line and composition) with "resplendence" in color. What is "resplendence." It's only the third line into 7L and we encounter an unfamiliar word. "Resplendence" means shining brilliantly. That this particular painter combines those two skills suggests that they are different and, in fact, difficult to combine. Indeed, formal composition, i.e. the making of form (lines, shapes, volumes) is quite different from the coloristic quality of the painted surface. If the former is rational and abstract, the latter is sensual and almost tactile. Good art for Ruskin needs both. It's not particularly important, but the artist that Ruskin is valorizing is William Mulready (1786-1863), a painter best known for his rural scenes. [LESSON: Show an image that illustrates the tensions between forma and color]

The moral of the conversation is encapsulated in Mulready's statement "Know what you have to do, and do it." This directive seems to simple to be useful. It is useful in as far as it points attention to the foreknowledge of what is right as a necessary prerequisite for a successful execution. Ruskin here develops an ethics of action hinged on clarifying objectives and executing on them. Failure comes less from the actuality that resists completion, but more from the inability to hold clear goals. This leads into Aphorism 1: "We may always know what is right; but not always what is possible." With the help of our conscience, our moral self, and our divine self, we can always ascertain what is right. In contrast, we might not always have the necessary data to assess what is possible. Since the possible is indeterminate, we should not use it as a guide. In other words, we should not base what we should do in what we perceive at that particular moment of time as doable. We are better off, basing our actions on what we know is right. Making decisions from the bottom up rather than the top down allows the muddled understanding of what is possible to interfere with the absolutely desirable. So, decide what is right first and execute regardless of the instrumental efficacy. [EXERCISE: Think of a good example in ethical judgement or political choice, where we make a decision made on efficacy; but then something changes and our initial calculation proves to be mistake; in contrast a choice base on principle does not waver or change]

[Par 02] Consideration of architecture need not be different from considerations of actions or politics because architecture is a "distinctively political art." This is an interesting assertion. Ruskin doesn't clarify what he means, but we can think of some possibilities. Since architecture is created by communal resources, then it should be considered a product of "the polity." 

Ruskin acknowledges that history has given us a confusing set of traditions regarding architecture. Those might have arisen from constricted situations. Ruskin wants to consider the basis of architecture without tradition. He starts with simple observations of opposites: imagination is different from technicalities; the soul is different from the body. Architecture's job is to unite those extremes, it balances the lower bodily parts of human existence with the simplicity and purity of the higher spiritual elements. If too much attention is given to considerations of material and construction, "the interference of the constructive," then architecture loses the purity and simplicity of its essential character. Ruskin accuses the architects of his time for giving materiality too much attention, obsessing over new material, and suggesting that material alone determines form. In this paragraph, Ruskin associates material/construction with the circumstantial constraints of moral action, hoping to place some primary essence in par with the pure moral right. In other words, just as we need an ethical "right" before we execute any action; we need an architectural "right" before we put it in a material form. The laws of architecture that we come up with will, thus, be pure of material contingencies. They will be universal and always applicable (like the absolutes of morality). The ethical rule "thou shall not kill" should not be contingent on the circumstances of the killing.

[Par 03] Against situational ethics. If we are looking for a universal law, it should not vary according to the kind of art we practice. Whatever holds true for painting should hold true for architecture or music. It should hold "for the horizon of man's action." Interesting how Ruskin uses a landscape metaphor -- the horizon (like "resplendent" color) -- to drive his point. Ruskin makes an interesting sub-point in this paragraph. Even though the situational principal takes its power from the universal, this does not mean that there is any loss, degeneration, or diminution. Principals are not quantitative units that are subdivided into domains; neither are they forces that lose force as they trickle down the metaphysical ladder. This is an important point for the following paragraph, where Ruskin will argue that every action, even menial actions (like the condition of slavery) can theoretically participate in universal redemption.

[Par 04] Finally, Ruskin tells us why he called his principals "Lamps" and not "laws" or "axioms" or "rules." A lamp illuminates us through the dark. A lamp also has potential energy; it can burn. Light cannot be distorted, it will always be light. Even if a light is faint, it is still a light; it has the potential to enlighten and to guide. What are the actual seven lamps? Ruskin hasn't listed them yet beyond the table of contents: 1. Sacrifice, 2. Truth, 3. Power, 4. Beauty, 5. Life, 6. Memory, 7. Obedience. Wow!!! This seems like a list of arbitrary concepts. Why these lamps and not others, and why seven (and not five or nine? Ruskin tells us that his list is not systematic or exhaustive. He chose seven because it was most "convenient" and not out of some master system. Ruskin does not claim to be some systematic philosopher. His lamps are not like laws of nature that could be tested with experiments. He even suggests that there could be more than seven. Thus, the enterprise of talking about lamps, is a process of talking about energy, and discovering about that energy through the process of reading and looking. In Ruskin' own admission, the arrangement is "arbitrary," so we could easily switch the order and the nomenclature is "illogical." Twentieth-century scholars have found Ruskin to be highly inconsistent himself, even between one work and another. 

[Par 05] Aphorism 2. Here Ruskin makes the important assertion that all practical laws are exponents of moral laws. In other words, what he had in mind about universal laws, was really all about moral laws. We know right away, that Ruskin must have a much richer notion of morality than a set of rules or laws, an explicit legislation. In the breath of "morality" he is really thinking aspirational "virtues" or the kind of things that spiritual beings possess. And the trickiest part of Ruskin's idea of virtue is that it cuts across all levels of existence from "the works of the hand" (things we make), "the movements of the frame" (what we do with our bodies), and "the action of the intellect" (what we think). Ruskin is not a philosopher, so he will not try to give us exhaustive and complicated arguments about the veracity of his claims. Let's just accept his notion of "fellowship," that what we do in the banal world of our bodies and actions may have some "fellowship," or friendly interaction with spiritual things, like God.

[Par 06] Ruskin will further deepen his notion of fellowship with the divine by showing the most unlikely actions or works can have virtue. This is a crazy idea, right? "the drawing of a line or utterance of a syllable" are capable of dignity. Ruskin thinks that a single sound (a syllable does not even make up a word) can have dignity. Similarly, a simple line that you draw on a white sheet (before it even makes a shape) can also be full of dignity. We'll have to do a couple of exercises in class to really capture this. Basically, Ruskin asserts here that there is no hierarchy or moral ladder. Intellectual pursuits at the top of the moral ladder are no different that banal physical things at the bottom of the moral ladder. Even the worst possible situation, slavery or drudgery, participates in the divine. 

For the time being, let's proceed to Ruskin's two quotations that show a further extreme of how something horrible can be in "fellowship" with virtue. Ruskin quotes George Herbert (1593-1633) and his poem "Elixir." Ruskin does not give us this information because he assumes we already know it. Elixir, in Ancient Greek, is a medical powder that literally dries out wounds. Metaphorically, it came to mean the cure for life, with alchemic connotation. The elixir is then a transformative ingredient. In this poem, Herbert argues that there is some ingredient that can transform the drudgery of labor (even of a slave) into a pleasurable thing. Hard work done for good ends becomes tolerable. Thus sweeping the room, the most brainless and demoralizing activity contains some fellowship with the divine.

The second reference in this paragraph is to John Knox (1514-1572). Knox was a leading figure of the Protestant Reformation in Scotland, considered the founder of the Presbyterian Church. You can find an image of Knox in the stained glass windows of the Lancaster Theological Seminary across the street. When the French attacked Saint Andrews in 1547, Knox was captured and forced to row in the galleys of the French ships. In this case, slave labor was drudgery but had divine ends.

[Par 07] In the last paragraph and Aphorism 3, Ruskin lights up some fire under us, awakening us to some highly immoral historical era. Keep in mind that Ruskin is writing from the perspective of modernity, witnessing the Industrial Revolution, seeing in front of his eyes the destruction of the environment and the exploitation of human beings in the factory. He is not sheltered in some suburban liberal arts college. He is at the heart of the inner city, at the heart of industrial production. He witnessed evil first hand (as we do when we watch The Wire, or House of Cards).

What is the crux of Aphrism 3? Ruskin basically tells us of two common alternatives that we can witness current even today. One alternative is to tackle the problem from a most theoretical perspective. We can just philosophize endlessly and argue ourselves through all the possibilities, kind of like what you are supposed to be doing in a liberal arts college, turning every "foundational" problem over and over, seeing all its facets through the comfortable distance of a privileged education. The second alternative is to just amuse ourselves, simply make the best of a bad situation by trying to have as much fun as we can. We can party hard and luxuriated in the material pleasure that modernity has made so easy for us. Both alternatives, the common solutions, are a problem for Ruskin. Both are avoidance strategies. The future is full of mystery and must be tackled through direct engagement. Whatever is happening today is exponentially getting worse, "like letting out of water."

Ruskin said a lot of things in the last seven paragraphs. Even if we are not convinced by anything he has said so far, we have at least been introduced to his style of writing and of making his points. To fully immerse in Ruskin's ideas, we will do the following three physical exercises.

EXERCISE 1. I have brought a bucket of water and 12 sponges. I want you to take one sponge and for five minutes to clean one particular part of the classroom. You cannot do this in groups or talk to each other. At the end of this menial activity, I will ask you to make two lists enumerating how this activity was 1) totally worthless, and 2) of some moral value. We will compare our lists and discuss how our action may have been virtuous.

EXERCISE 2. You have been handed a white piece of paper and a Sharpie. Make a line. We will put all our lines up on the wall and compare them. How could our lines have virtue? We can only figure this out if we tackle some actual lines and compare them to each other.

EXERCISE 3. In Par. 06, Ruskin tells us that elements in nature, "the snow, the vapour, and the stormy wind" are somehow magical. We will go outside for five minutes. You must disperse as far away from each other and try to capture one element (sound, sight, object) that is entirely natural, entirely created by nature. Try to capture it. We will return to class, and you'll be asked to explain how your natural observation possesses some kind of mystery, some kind of sense that goes beyond the physical explanation of nature (according to molecules, natural forces, chemical reactions)

R7L17 Preliminaries

John Ruskin
Seven Lamps of Architecture
Preliminaries


You have in your hands a paperback reprint of a book published in 1880. The book is light with a brown cover, it fits comfortably in your backpack, and at a price of $14.95 has not broken your wallet. The book's fonts and layout seems clearly antiquated, but the physical artifact does not. Although seemingly old, the book in your hands was published by Dover Books, a company founded in 1947 with the explicit purpose of making classic works from the 18th and 19th century available to American readers at a cheap price. Why did the publishers not change the format of the text to make it look more modern? After all, many 19th century books have been reprinted and they don't look weirdly old. Dover, instead, publishes a photographic facsimile of the  original editions in order to replicate the authentic experience that the original reader would have had. Since 1989, when this Dover facsimile was printed, new digital formats of old books have been made available. Google, for instance, has sought to scan every book in every library in the world. When copyright laws allow, they make that book available. If you go into Google Books right now, for instance, you'll find various PDF versions of the first edition available for free. The Kindle has free versions, as well. But in our seminar we want to replicate the intentional readership of this book, which would have been through a bound book.

The Dover book in your hand should trigger a couple of thoughts before you even set no reading it. First, you know it is a classic work tested through time. Second, you know that this classic ceased being published by a major house. And third, that someone in 1989 (when your Dover edition was first published) thought there existed a need to reprint the book. We will return on some of these issues of how a classic book that everyone read at a certain point in history becomes so undesirable that nobody buys it anymore. Its original publisher withdraws it from their catalog, but someone in the late 20th century reprints for a niche market of students and antiquarians.

Reading John Ruskin's Preface from February 25, 1880, we also realize that this is not the first but the second edition of the work. The first edition was published in 1848. The author tells us as a bit about the differences: he used a cheaper method of reproducing engravings, he removed some "pieces of rabid and utterly false Protestantism," and he added a few footnotes. The second edition was printed at the height of Ruskin's popularity at a lower cost, thanks to a cheaper way of printing drawings. We are thus privy to the work as most readers would have experienced it in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

After understanding the physical history of the object in our hands, we flip through the pages to size up the character of this work. We note that the book is very different than most books we have read. First, it is organized around chapters that are called "lamps" rather than chapters. Second, full-page plates are interspersed in the text without captions, or any obvious suggestion of where they should fit in the text (there are no figure numbers). And third, the font seems to change in the middle of the text associated with subheadings that pop up on the side of the text called "aphorisms." What a curious book with an algorithmic structure of 7-14-33 that overlays what will be a linear reading sequence. Thus, the truth lies somewhere between seven lamps, 14 plates and 33 aphorisms. This structure offers alternative ways of reading the book. Should we read the aphorisms first? Three years before Ruskin's publication, Karl Marx experimented with aphoristic writing in Theses on Feuerbach (1845) and Friedrich Nietzsche perfected the form in Human, All Too Human (1878). There is obviously something at stake here beyond an organizational scheme. The fragmentary sequence of theses seemed to reflect some of modernity's expressive needs.

The time has come to figure the book out from the inside out rather than from the outside in. We start with the Introduction.

R7L17

R7L17 is a collaborative project hoping to bring John Ruskin’s Seven Lamps of Architecture to a contemporary audience of young readers. Why would a 17-year old read the 7 Lamps? That's the argument that the project participants want to make.

The idea for the project came when I decided to use The Seven Lamps of Architecture as a primary text for my Freshman seminar in Fall 2014. Feeling proud of myself to immerse students in the classics of architectural theory, I soon realized how difficult the text is to contemporary readers (both young and old).  Most people know Ruskin through "The Nature of Gothic," which William Morris and the Arts and Crafts extracted from The Stones of Venice and spread like a gospel. Ruskin was so ubiquitous in the formation of the late 19th-century that most people understand him by simply following the cultural debates of the century.

The only way that I can assign Ruskin to my students with a clear conscience is if I prepare an annotated edition of the work. But I wanted to open up this question to other friends and colleagues who love Ruskin. My erudite art historians that love Ruskin themselves admit that they have never read a substantial body of his work, and most have not read The Seven Lamps cover to cover. Everybody gets Ruskin these days by never reading Ruskin, just by comprehending the cultural discussions of late-19th-century England in which he is already so pervasive. 

There is a trend in colleges these days to have reading groups, seminars, and conversations. The trend began with the Mellon Foundation, which about five years ago lavishly endowed such "Conversation" projects to any college that was willing to organize it. Ruskin would be horrified if he knew that people were getting monetary benefits for reading his Lamps. Having participated in Mellon Conversations, I'd like this project to be a little less institutionalized, more open-ended. So, this summer, I am embarking on a conversation with Ruskin and my friends hoping to produce a conversation. I can't quite make an argument of why anyone should participate in such an exercise without reading the book first.

Contributors will tackle the text over the next four months and individually submit a page-by-page commentary or general reflections. It can be as simple as brainstorming, explicating, free-associating, or offering a personal insight. At the end of the summer, I will collect all thoughts and commentaries and take the conversation further. I will also test those commentaries on my students and get their own feedback. 

John Ruskin is the single most important aesthetic theorist of 19th century Britain and the founder of American art education through his friend Charles Eliot Norton. His two great works on architecture, The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1848) and The Stones of Venice (1850), set in motion aestheticism, modernism, Arts and Crafts movement, socialist architectural discourse and new ways to relate art with life. When his writings were collected in the first decade of the 20th century, they filled 39 volumes, and became a fundamental source for Anglo-American intellectual life. In the first decades of the 21st century, however, Ruskin has disappeared from the curriculum. He seems to be read in graduate seminars in English aestheticism or architectural history, but has entirely disappeared from the undergraduate curriculum or general readership. Sadly, only three of his 39 volumes of writing even remain in print.

There are at least five reasons why Ruskin has disappeared from the general readership, 1) his Victorian prose is too wordy and difficult to understand, 2) his Christian and Socialist values are out of fashion, 3) his style of art appreciation has been supplanted by art history as social history, 4) his view of art is too moralistic, 5) his text is filled with antiquated cultural references that are no longer part of public culture, 6) formalist modernism has made historical conscience irrelevant to pure experience, 7) he is inconsistent and difficult to pin down.

When students stop reading Ruskin in the 21st century, they miss one of the most important cultural episodes in western culture. More importantly, they miss a way of looking at the world around them. Ruskin helps us make connections in contemporary cultural debates. I cannot just give the text to my students and expect them to make any sense of it. I must give them an annotated edition, which of course does not exist. Then, I realized that teaching, after all, is all about creating an annotating edition. So, this summer, I am embarking on a conversation with Ruskin and my friends of producing a commentary for the Seven Lamps. This reading group will tackle the text over the next four months and individually contribute a page-by-page commentary. It can be as simple as brainstorming, explicating, free-associating, or offering a personal insight. At the end of the summer, I will collect all thoughts and commentaries and take the conversation further. I will also test those commentaries on my students and get their own feedback.

THE STRUCTURE

This is what you have to do, if you are interested in joining the conversation. The objective is to read every one of the seven Lamps over the months of May-August. This means a Lamp for every two weeks.

I. The Lamp of Sacrifice (May 1-15)

II. The Lamp of Truth (May 15-30)

III. The Lamp of Power (June 1-15

IV. The Lamp of Beauty (June 15-30)

V. The Lamp of Life (July 1-15)

VI. The Lamp of Memory (July 15-30)

VII. The Lamp of Obedience (August 1-15)

If you're interested in participating, send me a note. I have no idea what the final outcome of this will be. I know that my commentary will be rather bookish and academic and it will actually be handed out to the students as a reading crutch.

Readers should use the Dover reprint of the text (which is the second, 1880 edition) first printed in 1989. It costs only $14.95. There are only two bookstores in a 100 mile radius of where I live that regularly carry it, Joseph Fox and Penn Book Center. They are currently out of stock, however, because my buddied have cleaned them out. I encourage you to order it through your local bookstore (that's what Ruskin would want you to do) or buy it from Amazon (that's what Ruskin would not want you to do).

My copy of the Seven Lamps is pictured above visiting a very Ruskinian place, Mercersburg Academy in central Pennsylvania. You see the capital of the mantle in the Edwards Room in Keil Hall, completed in 1900.

Louis Kahn's African-American Vernacular

Also posted on Society of Architectural Historians blog, March 26, 2014

When the telephone rang in my office at Franklin & Marshall College, I was surprised to learn that the caller on the other line was a resident of a Louis Kahn house and, most strikingly, a Louis Kahn house that has been largely forgotten. In 1942, Kahn, Oscar Storonov, and George Howe reconfigured the traditional row house to serve a community of African-American steel workers returning from World War II. Known to just a handful of architectural historians, Carver Court in Coatesville, Pennsylvania, had receded from public attention. And for that very reason, the Preservation Alliance of Greater Philadelphia had placed it on its 2012 Endangered Properties List. Thanks to the stewardship of Ben Leech and the research of Allee Berger, the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission determined Carver Court eligible for listing in the National Register of HIstoric Places in March 2013.

As the local architectural historian, I was invited to meet with civic and community leaders of Caln Township to brainstorm on the future of this housing complex and to strategize on celebrating its unique role in the history of African-American labor. Although I am not a Kahn expert, I had worked in Louis Kahn's archives as a student, and wanted to seize the moment that William Whitaker and Ben Marcus have set into motion with their spectacular new book, The Houses of Louis Kahn, and accompanying exhibition at the University of Pennsylvania Architectural Archives.

Carver Court is no ordinary house by virtue of its users, some of which are the original African-American steelworkers. Most of the better-known Kahn houses were commissioned by Philadelphia’s professional class and are located in the suburbs, while Carver Court engages Kahn’s early commitment to social and economic justice. If it were up to Kahn, Carver Court would not have been segregated. Race politics at this Pennsylvania mill town necessitated the residential division between black and white workers, even though both groups worked for the same Lukens Steel factory. The lynching of Zachariah Walker in 1911 underscored such ethnic tensions. Caln Township was initially settled by William Penn in 1714. Ironically, the white and black housing projects were separated by the Gardner-Beale farm, which had strong Quaker roots and served in the Underground Railroad. A farmhouse from 1811 survives and is now surrounded by Coatesville High School completed in 1968.

Louis Kahn was a housing activist as early as 1931, when he founded the Architecture Research Group. His partner, Oscar Storonov (and Alfred Kastner), had designed the first Modernist housing project in America, the Carl Mackley Houses for the hosiery workers union (1932). Kahn’s activism helped fight Philadelphia’s resistance to public housing and led into the foundation of the Philadelphia Housing Authority. Carver Court is the greatest physical manifestation of Kahn’s labor union vernacular.

Coatesville is located half way between Philadelphia and Lancaster at the intersection of the Pennsylvania Railroad Main Line and the Brandywine River. Coatesville’s steel mills, that produced the beams for the World Trade Center, are of great historical significance and, like Kahn’s housing, continue to operate (under new global management). Carver Court’s remoteness from Philadelphia and the general economic decline of manufacturing have contributed in a slow forgetting of both Pennsylvania’s labor movement and Philadelphia’s architectural engagement. Six decades after its original completion, Carver Court asks some important questions. It is only one of five housing projects designed by Kahn, Storonov, and Howe, and it the single specimen of their African-American architecture. Carver Court has slipped the radar of preservationists and historians because it looks nondescript and lacks the telltale signs of high modernist distinction. Its ordinariness, however, is what makes it exemplary. Taking cues from Le Corbusier’s elevated piloti, Kahn invented a scheme of adoptive design that reinterpreted the traditional row house. His “ground-freed” housing form elevated living quarters to the second floor and left the first floor open to the owner’s specific interpretation. Rather than limiting what the owners did with their allotted housing unit, Kahn wanted the occupants to exercise some freedom in how to use the first floor. It could function as a garage, a workshop, or added living space. The architect’s agency could be supplemented by the occupant’s agency, giving the community a sense of ownership and design engagement. Thus, the very indeterminacy of Carver Court that makes it a specimen of democratic design has also caused its progressive neglect by scholarship.

The phone call from Carver Court and the meeting with Caln Township precipitated a series of questions on both the original significance of the monument as well as the pedagogical opportunities in its rediscovery. A call from a grassroots community generates a research opportunity beyond the obvious scholarly needs. Involving undergraduate students in the documentation of Carver Court’s story seems one of those rare opportunities to engage students with artifacts. First, it is astounding how much work remains to be done even on America’s most important modernist architect. Understanding the afterlife of Carver Court is one immediate challenge, but one of great potential in teaching what Delores Hayden called “the power of place.”