Tuskegee: Landscape in Black and White
Author(s): Ellen Weiss
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Source: Winterthur Portfolio, Vol. 36, No. 1 (Spring, 2001), pp. 19-37
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Tuskegee
Landscape in Black and White
Ellen Weiss
BookerT. Washington's
school
wasbuiltwith
Institute,
Americans,
Tuskegee
foundedin i88i as a secondary
forAfrican
thehelpofwhitedesigners,
and
donors
who
shared
decisions
with
the
black
architects
and landscape
trustees,
planning
thatearlierstudieshaverevealed.Widely
architects
knownas an oasis ofracialpeaceevenwhensouthern
stateswere
and denying
educational
Americans,
discrimination,
disfranchising
African
legalizing
and
parity-and whenlynchings
white-on-black
mobviolencewereon therise-Tuskegeesharededucationalidealswithprogressive
northern
schools,an
architectural
withthewhiteSouth,and evensleeping
withitswhiteguests.
iconography
quarters
AT
the 1884 World'sCottonExpositionin
New Orleans, the three-year-oldTuskegee
State Normal School in Alabama (later
Tuskegee Normal and IndustrialInstitute) exhibited some student achievements: clothes, canned
fruits and vegetables, a bedstead, an essay on
teaching, some diagrammed sentences, math and
science exams, "inventional and geometric drawings," and three architecturaldrawings: a drawing of a house for the principal and two framing
drawingsfor the new girls dormitorythen under
construction.This exhibit sketched the ambitions
that Tuskegee's founders,Olivia A. Davidson and
Booker T. Washington, held for their enterprise-to create a secondary school to train rural
AfricanAmerican youth so theycould go back to
their own or into other rural communities to
teach. But the studentswere to learn far more at
Tuskegee than the three R's because everyaspect
of theirlivesneeded improvement.The
bootstrap
normal school, which had moved to its farmonly
two years before,was growingthe food to feed its
students,making theirclothes and furniture,and
Ellen Weissis a professorin the School ofArchitecture
at Tulane University.
The author is gratefulto MaryBeth Norton,Jessie Poesch,
Barbara BurlisonMooney,Karen Kingsley,PatriciaSullivan,and
MaryWoods forvalued contributionsto thisarticle.
?
2001
byThe HenryFrancisdu Pont Winterthur
Museum,
Inc. All rights reserved.
oo84-0416/ol/3601-oo0002
$3.00
selling agriculturaland industrialproducts. Eventually,studentsmolded bricksand sawed the lumber to construct more buildings intended not
only to provide shelterbut also to prove the race's
worth to a racist society.And, unlike Hampton
Institute in Virginia, which was the model for
Tuskegee, the accomplishments were achieved
with all-black teaching and leadership.'
There is a complex web of both pragmatism
and ideology spinning out from the 1884 architectural drawings that is controversial because
many,including W. E. B. Du Bois, argued thatan
industrialeducation, as opposed to a high school
or a college education, was a lesser route for a
supposedly lesser people and thus supported discrimination and segregation. Modern criticism
tends to favorDu Bois because of his intellectual
skills,appropriate rage, and heroic effortson be' The exhibitis describedin
Southern
Letter
1i,vol. 3 (October
1884). This monthlypublicationwas modeled on Hampton Institute'sSouthern
Workman
and was directedto northernsupporters.
The best modern account of earlyTuskegee is Louis R. Harlan,
BookerT. Washington:
The Makingof a BlackLeader,1856-19o0
(New York:OxfordUniversity
Press,1972). See also Louis R. Harlan, ed., TheBookerT. Washington
Papers,14 vols. (Urbana: Universityof IllinoisPress,1972-89); RichardK. Dozier, Tuskegee:
Booker
T. Washington's
Contribution
to theEducationof Black Architects
(Ph.D. diss.,University
of Michigan,199o); and L. AlbertScipio,
at Tuskegee:
Pre-WarDays
Historical
Institute,
Essayon Tuskegee
18811943 (SilverSpring,Md.: Roman Publications,1987). Washington's manybooks,thebestknownofwhichis UpfromSlavery
(New
York: Doubleday, Page, 1901), interweavehis social, economic,
and educational purposeswithhis school's development.
Winterthur
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20
half of civil rights.A powerful alliance of northern philanthropistsand southern politicians did
what they could to suppress classical liberal arts
studies as segregation increased during the early
twentiethcentury. But we must also remember
another point of view: that progressive, nineteenth-centurypedagogy interlocked head and
hand, thinkingand doing, and drawingand making as essential to all creativity.Drawing was considered the theoretical precondition of making
and was active in developing intellectual and executive as well as practical skills. This pedagogy
could easily interlock with older traditions of
"learning and labor" common to many white
colleges-Oberlin (1833) comes to mind-and
white secondary schools roughly contemporary
with Tuskegee, such as Mt. Hermon and Northfield Seminaryin Massachusettsor the integrated
Berea in Kentucky.Clearly, Davidson, who studied at a Massachusetts normal school, and Washington were swimmingin the same currents as
Anna Lloyd Jones Wrightwhen she bought her
son Frank those Froebel blocks.
Davidson died early, in 1889, so we cannot
easily separate her thinkingfrom Washington's.
She was born in Virginia in 1854, attended a private school for black children in Ohio, and
taught in Mississippi (where two siblings were
murdered by the Ku Klux Klan) and in Memphis.
She then studied at Hampton Institute for one
year and, with support from Mary Tileston Hemenway of Boston, graduated from the Framingham State Normal School in 1881, where she was
an honor student. Davidson joined Washington
in Tuskegee a month or two afterhe founded the
school, her arrivaldelayed because of one of her
serious and undiagnosable illnesses. She married
the widower Washington in 1885 and died after
the birthof their second son. Washington always
credited her withthe ideas, endurance, and fundraisingthattook Tuskegee throughitsfirstcritical
years.2
Washington was a pragmatist, seeking economic development forAfricanAmericans on the
assumption that not only selfrespect but also the
white majority'sacceptance and even admiration
would follow.His cultural or, one mighteven say,
spiritualwishes forhis people sometimes erupted
in impassioned prose. For example, he extolled
Denmark's welding of industrialand craftstudies
to ancient Scandinavian mythsto build a warm,
personal culture, a less alienating identification
T.
2 Harlan, Booker
Washington.
fora rural people than thatprovided bythe elite's
classical learning "bottled up and sealed in abstractlanguage." Studies of one's own people, he
wrote,inspire "interest,enthusiasm,and faithin
one's self, in one's race, and in mankind. That
which is distant, foreign and mysteriousis not
higher and better than thatwhich is familiarand
close at hand."3 Washington's sympathyfor the
poor and unschooled drove his interestin programs that mightgive those groups mental sustenance without making them feel inferiorto the
dominant culture.
Washington's agenda was economic-to recapture for African Americans the trades once
dominated by slave artisansbut lost to freedmen.
The race needed black architects in southern
cities so that black builders could go to their offices to see plans up for bid and thus increase
theirshare of constructionjobs. But architectural
drawing classes for future architectswould also
help carpenter-builders,carpenter-teachers,and
even carpenter-ministerswho would fan out
across the countrysidemaking fine frame houses
to replace windowlesslog cabins and dilapidated,
board tenant shacks. Washington gave printed
copies of building plans to ministers,teachers,
and farmerswho came to Tuskegee for conferences. An aesthetic as well as a social activist,he
had a deep love of nature thathe shared withstudents by preaching flowergardening and modest
interiordecor to the poorest of the poor. He had
a powerfulsense of the fitnessof things to their
purpose and was a proponent of carefularchitectural design on many levels, including multiple
sleeping rooms to separate adults from children
and boys fromgirls.He wanted the comfortsand
dignityof middle-class splendor to be available to
all AfricanAmericans and was convinced of his
methods for achieving these ends.
In June 1881, even before opening his school
in an existing church in the town of Tuskegee,
Washington had found the land thatwould allow
him to turn the normal school, which he had
been hired to develop, into an agriculturaland
industrialinstitute-a self-sustainingcommunity
where impoverished students could live, earn
their board and tuition,and learn advanced, efficientversions of all life-supportpursuitsto propel them into the larger economy. The first
loo-acre purchase (which had expanded to 580
contiguous acres threeyearslater and 1,8oo00
nonPapers,2:246-47. Washingtontraveled
S Harlan, Washington
in Denmarkin 1911.
TuskegeeLandscape
21
pursuitshad moved onto the successive land purcontiguous acres seven years after that) was
chases to the northwest,leaving the grounds bewithina mile of the Tuskegee town center. Nearness to townwas essential so thatthe community's tween the two roads free for new construction.
black children could walk to school. The land was
Phelps Hall Bible Training School and Thrasher
for
it
was
and
its
soil
(originallyScience) Hall were built withtheir enhilly,eroded,
farming;
poor
drained by decades of cotton monoculture, as was
trances facing the internal road rather than the
all the land surrounding the town. (Washington
public one, thus internalizingthe campus around
later said thathe chose poor land so thathe could
a circulation spine (as was common during the
teach soil reclamation.) Modern scholar Louis R.
period) and providing convenient access for the
studentswho used the buildings ratherthan outHarlan noted that the school was connected to
the town by a single road, which might be inter- siders who did not. This is important,as we shall
see as we consider some recent interpretationsof
preted as useful for controllingstudent access to
the white world except for the fact that the town
the Tuskegee landscape.
was so encircled by ravines and swamps that it
The internal road, which had to be parallel
rather than perpendicular to the public road bewould have been hard to find any other nearby
farm that could have been linked by more than
cause of the steep northernlandfall,was essential
one road.4 The school's site was typical rather to Tuskegee's ceremonial life. Cadet corps drills
than exceptional for the immediate area.
for the boys and daily marches to and from
The firstpurpose-builtTuskegee structurewas
chapel, classes,and meals took place on thisroad.
Porter Hall-a frame building that held class- Tuskegee also organized memorable special occasion parades. For a night-arriving
visitorin 1893,
rooms, a girls dormitory,offices,a library,and a
it
stood
from
to
on
the
a thousand students and teachers lined the inte1881
chapel-and
1905
northern edge of the farm's high ground, a narrior road from the entrance at the east to Washrow plateau that the school shared with the pubington's own house at the far west. They held
lic road (fig. 1). Porter Hall had three stories, lighted pine knots, waved them in salute as the
including its mansard roof, and it sat on a devel- visitor'scarriage drew even, and then fell in beoping internal campus road facing south toward hind the vehicle as it passed. In 1898 when Presithe public way. Two more substantial buildings
dent William McKinley stood on a reviewing
were constructed during the 188os, these of
stand in front of Washington's house, parading
student-madebrickratherthan PorterHall's pur- students carried sugar canes with cotton bolls,
chased wood: ArmstrongHall, a boys dormitory mistletoe, and palms wedged into the ends
to the east near several industriesbuildings and
(fig. 2). Mules pulled student-builtfloats down
the entrance, and Alabama Hall, a girlsdormitory the road to demonstrate each department's acto the west (not shown in fig. 1). The two new
complishments. Students stood on the moving
buildings also faced the public road as well as the
wagons, putting their newly earned trade skills
internal road, maintaining a visual primacy to
into action making tinware or clothing or aroutsiders.By crowdingthe firststructuresand the
chitectural drawings before the onlookers very
connecting interiorroad onto the northernedge
eyes (fig. 3). (Sometimes theyalso demonstrated
of the plateau, Washington and Davidson kept
how products were less efficientlymade before
most of the level land free for farming.A single
Tuskegee taught better methods.) In 1905 when
entrance remained at the eastern, industrialend
President Theodore Roosevelt visited, sixty-one
of the campus, thus saving land for cultivation. floats passed in review,
including one on which
Most of the school's contact with the outside
four boys made tiresusing a forge, a drill press,
world was to be through townspeople arrivingon
and a threadcutter.Graduations also occasioned
business. They came to buy bricksand buggies or
great parades. As grand public occasions, they
to have their horses shod and their newspapers
lured special trains from Montgomeryand drew
printed.Washingtonwas convinced thatracial refarmersby the thousands, theirwagons jamming
spect and thus tolerance would develop as towns- the roads for miles. White people appeared from
people became dependent on Tuskegee goods
the South and the North, the lattergroup generand services.
ally consistingof philanthropists,educators, and
By the early 1890s Tuskegee's agricultural journalists come to see the fruitsof the famous
Booker T. Washington's argument. Tuskegee's
interior road was a necessary stage to dramatize
4NewYorkEveningPost,June 9, 1885, as reprintedin Harlan,
Washington
Papers,2:278-79.
Washington's program for, simultaneously,the
22
Winterthur
Portfolio
3 6:i
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II
LI
Campus 1897
SEastern
,]
44;tw
r-.).
":
~~47#.4,.'?
7"-1"'
i
--ter.al.Road.........4
.17P
-&..
L
-
-.
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PublicRoad
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-
YIl
.
0r I
4III
Fig. 1. Eastern campus, 1897. (Sanborn Map Co., courtesy Library of Congress.) (1) Porter Hall, 1881-82;
(2) Alabama Hall, 1884 - offmap to the west; (3) ArmstrongHall boys dormitory,1886; (4) entrance fromthe
public road; (5) blacksmithshop, 1889; (6) Cassedy Industrial Building, 1892; (7) Phelps Hall Bible Training
School, 1892; (8) Thrasher Hall, 1893.
414
~"~~op
;44;
0
le
"All
Fig. 2. Visitorsstanding along the internal road at Tuskegee to watch a parade, December 1898.
From Booker T. Washington, The StoryofMy Lifeand Work(Toronto, Ont.: J. L. Nichols, 1900oo).
Washingtonand President McKinleyare on the stand in frontof Washington's 1890oframehouse.
TuskegeeLandscape
23
I9~I
ITIIX.
/
'I'll
TheStory
theparade,1898. FromBookerT. Washington,
(ToofMyLifeand Work
Fig. 3. Disassembling
ronto,Ont.:J. L. Nichols,1900). The drawingfloatis leftof center.The olderindustrialcampusis in
In middleground,fromleftto right:thepublicroad,ThrasherHall, theinteriorroad,
theforeground.
Hall boysdormitory.
PorterHall, Armstrong
northernwhitephilanthropicand southernblack
farming communities. These ceremonies and
Washington's lectures and books argued for his
vision. Washington'sTuskegee was a deliberative,
demonstrable idea embodied in a specific, emblematic place.
As Tuskegee expanded, new buildings were
erected on the southern part of the second land
purchase to the west. By 1900 there was a new
boys industrialbuilding and a brick chapel with
seating for two thousand, which, as Richard K.
Dozier has observed, was placed at a heart of a
largercommunity-the school and itsdeveloping
suburb, Greenwood, stillfurtherto the west.This
institute-generated"model village" was advertised in the national black press to attractAfrican
Americans who sought good schools for their
children.The name "Greenwood" was applied to
the residential area west of the campus by 1895,
when the communitywas about fiveyears old. In
1901 the Hampton-instigatedSouthern Improvement Association purchased two hundred acres
adjoining the existingcommunity.The new purchase was platted into a grid recorded on a February 1904 plan. Like the Tuskegee town's grid, its
diagonals are oriented to the compass in a Vitruv-
ian manner even though the topography is dissimilar. In 1903 the institutemoved its Practice
School westwardfromthe central campus to better serve the Greenwood residents.5Another entrance was built at the western end of the newly
established industrial zone so that black and
whiteneighbors could continue to have directaccess to goods and services and, as an added attraction,could attend special events such as concerts and graduations in the chapel.
For manyyearstherewas also a thirdentrance
close to the campus center and marked by an imposing brick gateway named for Abraham Lincoln (fig. 4). This entrance, opened during the
winterof 1902-3 and used at least until 1920, led
directlyto the existingPractice Cottage, a model
four-room farmhouse that "seemed to have
strayedfrom a countryroad," according to one
description. Rotating groups of senior girls lived
in the Practice Cottage and ran it as a household
withoutadults on-site. Tuskegee urged guests to
pp. 117, 133. For the 1904 plan, see
SDozier, Tuskegee,
Days at Tuskegee,
p. 66. On Greenwood,see Louis
Scipio, Pre-War
The Wizardof Tuskegee,
R. Harlan, BookerT. Washington:
igoiPress, 1983), pp. 169-70o;
1915 (New York: Oxford University
and Dozier, Tuskegee,
pp. 132-37.
Winterthur
3 6:I
Portfolio
24
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Fig. 4. Middle campus, 90o9. (Sanborn Map Co., courtesyLibraryof Congress.) (1) Alabama Hall, 1884;
brickhouse, 1899; (5) Hun(2) PracticeCottage,1895; (3) Washington'sframehouse, 189o; (4) Washington's
tingtonHall girlsdormitory,1899; (6) Douglass Hall girlsdormitory,1904; (7) Carnegie Library,19o1; (8) middle entrance, o1902; (9) officebuilding, o1902; (1 o) White Hall girlsdormitory,o1909;(x 1) Tompkins Dining Hall,
I905-10. The westernindustrialzone and the chapel are beyondthe top of the image.
visitthe cottage and admire its home-craftedfurniture and decorations. They could also purchase
for their country homes, should they wish, the
cretonne-covered barrel chairs the girls had
made, or they could take a meal, dining on the
simple fare the girls had learned to prepare for
their futurefamilies.6
The Lincoln Gates, donated by New Yorkers
Caroline and Olivia E. Phelps Stokes, framed two
of theirother building donations, the chapel and
Dorothy Hall (the girls industriesbuilding), in a
1902
photograph (fig. 5). The Phelps-Stokes sisters were design activists,quick to take drawing
pen to paper to argue appearance witharchitects
and generous with their own knowledge of
6 Booker T. Washington,Working
withtheHands (New York:
Doubleday, Page, 1904), pp. 100-102.
built in 1895 and moved about 1915.
The Practice Cottage was
Tuskegee topographywhen discussingthe sitesof
theirsix buildings. The sistersalso donated chapels to the white secondary school Mt. Hermon in
Northfield,Massachusetts,and to integrated Berea College in Kentucky,demonstratingan intriguing cross-racial committment. While Dozier
has shown that several black architects and a
black landscape architectwere the principal talents enacting Washington's campus vision, it is
also true thatwhitemen and whitewomen shared
in the process beyond the writingof checks.7
The hub of social interaction between boys
and girls in the otherwise strictlyregimented
school regime was the commissaryon the ground
7Olivia E. Phelps Stokes,sketchesfor a bathhouse redesign
and the Lincoln Gates, March 14, 1902, reel 179, Booker T.
WashingtonPapers, Libraryof Congress. Dozier, Tuskegee,
pp.
83-168.
Tuskegee
Landscape
25
th-
MEW::
ill
Ij
WON
~
;I;--;~:;I~~~-;~~
i
.........
Fig. 5. Middle entrancewithLincolnGates,1902-1903. (FrancesBenjaminJohnstonCollection,LibraryofCongress.)DorothyHall girlsindustries
buildingand thechapelcan be seen throughthegate.
The PracticeCottageis behindtherightpierand notvisiblein thisphotograph;thebarnscan be seen
throughthe rightpedestrianentry.
floor of Alabama Hall, the firstindependent girls
dormitory.From 1890 to 1910, the school constructed other brick girls dormitories surrounding Alabama Hall. When Alabama Hall was
finallydemolished in 191go, the remaining buildings formed a quadrangle that is stillthe campus
center; it includes Tompkins Dining Hall, which
was built to replace the early commissary'ssocial
function.The Carnegie LibrarywithitsIonic portico sitsat the top of the quadrangle at its highest
point to the south, the dorm-bordered land cascading from it northwarddown the hill (fig. 6).
Historian Kenneth Severens described this quadrangle, or mall, as "breathtakinglybeautiful," a
"loose configurationof red brick buildings articulated bywhitecolumns or entablaturesamid the
shade of irregularlyplaced treeson gentlysloping
terrain." Others mightfindthe slope surprisingly
steep, not gentle. But the sudden drop in section
works dramaticallywith the tree canopy above
and the mall's controlled width (as seen in plan)
to create a memorable campus heartland. The
Executive Council fixed the Carnegie Librarysite
inJanuary19go1 probablya year or twobefore the
plan of the quadrangle was decided. The arrangement is, of course, redolent of the Universityof
Virginia,then undergoing a well-publicizedrestoration. But Severens, noting the allusion, also
writesof the difference.He findsTuskegee unlike
"the precise and erudite formalityof Jefferson's
universityin having grown organicallyto accommodate a primarilyagrarian institution.'"
'West
and parallel to the mall lay a deep unbuilt declivity,the Big Valley,which shall be considered later.
Many of the black-and-whitehistorical camArchitecture:
aKennethSeverens,Southern
350 YearsofDistinctiveAmerican
Building(New York:E. P. Dutton,1981), p. 156.
26
Winterthur
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Fig. 6. CarnegieLibrary,1901-2. (FrancesBenjaminJohnstonCollection,Libraryof Congress.)
pus "snapshots" laid out for this essaywere written to aid visual comprehension of thisimportant
American place. The new Tuskegee enthusiast
can learn more by seeking out Richard K. Dozier's dissertationwith its excellent architectural
and planning historyof this attractivecampus.
Dozier organizes his account into four developmental periods within Washington's principalship (1881 to 1915) and he does so in relation to
the topography,the contributionsof the school's
black design professionals, and Washington's
community-buildinggoals and fund-raisingstrategies. Dozier shows that professionallytrained
black architectsand a landscape architect used
subtle symmetriesand axes, rotationsin plan, and
other design devices to relate buildings to one another and to the topographyand also to arrange
viewsfromwithinand without (fig. 7). Designers
carefullyshaped the landscape for visual impact
and imbued it with meaning for the school's inhabitants and visitors.The campus was infinitely
complex in its changing building stock and usages, challenging our understandingbut also invitinganalysisthrough the institution'sextensive
published and archival source materials,many of
which have barely been plumbed.
In four engaginglywrittenrecent essays,Kenrick Ian Grandison has "read" the Tuskegee
landscape through the filterof the South's increasinglyvirulentracism and found itsbuildings
and landscape inflectedby ambient violence into
a "landscape of terror."' Grandison then applies
9All byKenrickIan Grandison:"From Plantationto Campus:
Progress,Community,and the Lay of the Land in Shaping the
Early Tuskegee
Campus,"
Landscape Journal 15, no.1
(Spring
1996): 6-22; "Landscapes of Terror:A Reading of Tuskegee's
HistoricCampus," in PatriciaYaeger,ed., TheGeography
ofldentity
of Michigan Press, 1996), pp. 334-67;
(Ann Arbor: University
TuskegeeLandscape
27
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iv.i
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. . .....
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................
Fig. 7. Lookingwestalong the interiorroad at Tuskegee,November19o02.(FrancesBenjaminJohnstonCollechidesmostof
tion,Libraryof Congress.)PhelpsHall is at thefarleft.The officebuilding,underconstruction,
Washington's1890oframehouse betweenit and theCarnegieLibrary(whitecolumns).The chapel is in thedistanceon theright,and AlabamaHall, partially
visibleon theright,is oppositethelibrary.
his analysisof Tuskegee as the template forviewing all historicallyblack colleges and universities,
enlarging his sometimes circular interpretations
almost indefinitelyto supportan intellectuallyoptimisticbut perhaps fallaciousidea thatall human
interactions necessarily reveal themselves in architectural or landscape plans, allowing us to
"read" violence toward black people in campus
plans. But although it is easy to agree that all
membersof a society-the poor and unpublished
as well as the rich and scribbling-must be honored through studyof their built worlds, the actual bricks and mortarand the fields and fences
are mute to the varietyof human experiences that
"Beyond Buildings: Landscape as Cultural History in ContheHistoricalSignificanceofPlace," in MichaelA. Tomstructing
lan, ed., Preservation:Of What,for Whom? (Ithaca, N.Y.: National
Council for PreservationEducation, 1998); and "Negotiated
Space: The BlackCollege Campus as a CulturalRecordof Postbel-
lum America," American Quarterly51, no. 3 (September 1999):
529-79.
took place withintheirdomains. I will argue that
we cannot read race in Tuskegee's campus.
In viewing the artifactof the Tuskegee landscape throughthe lens of racistviolence, Grandison skewed his interpretationsin ways that unravel under scrutiny.For example, the fact that
the school was outside the townand on poor land
makes it, in his view, obviouslyand inevitablya
black institution.But the school had to have a
farm and the town's AfricanAmerican children
had to walk to get there-tough locational constraintsat best. To prove his point Grandison
should have identifiedan available farmof better
quality near or withinthe town that a more welcome white school might have been able to purchase. Grandison interpets the internal campus
road as a defensivelymotivatedduplication of the
public road, implyingthat a white school would
not have an internalstreetand would instead conduct its dailybusiness and ceremonial life on the
public road. He believes that a white school with
28
three major buildings facing across fields to a
public way would have separate drives from that
way to each building. That, of course, would
make building-to-buildingpassage lengthy-out
to the public road and back-and waste valuable
farmland. Grandison compares Tuskegee-a
black, coeducational, residential, secondary
school-with the white, single sex, apparently
nonresidential, college-level Auburn University
(then Alabama Polytechnic Institute) twenty
miles away,as ifrace were the only significantdifference between the two institutions.(Both were
land-grant schools by the mid 189os, but
Tuskegee only received a pittance. Tuskegee depended upon northern white donors, especially
for buildings.) He finds the white school more
imbedded within the town of Auburn, although
he does not clarifywhetherthe nearbysections of
the town antedated the school. If they did not,
the Auburn school and town comparison should
be made to Tuskegee Instituteand Greenwood,
the comparable adjacent "faculty-housing"'-type
residential area."' In any event, the firstAuburn
Universitybuildings were erected for a pre-war
boys academy that did not need farmland and
thus could be close to or within the town. (Both
schools eventuallyacquired adjunct farmsa mile
or more away from their main campuses.) The
difference between the two situations is more
complex than a simple matterof race.
Grandison also findsAuburn town and gown
to be intertwinedby the prestigiouslynamed connector "College Street." Washington, he maintains, had to mask his achievements by failing to
name the road that connected his town and
school for the "College." But Tuskegee was not
a college and could not have been termed such.
The institutedid not even create a department
devoted to college-level studies until 1925, a decade after Washington's death. Grandison describes the white school as embracing the public
road while Tuskegee, in its supposed terror,
shrankfromsuch exposure. But the opposite was
true. Tuskegee's firstthree buildings not
only
faced the public road but also stood physically
10For Grandison's assertionsabout location, see "Beyond
Buildings,"pp. 162-63; forhis claims about separatedrives,see
Grandison,"Landscape ofTerror,"pp. 359-6o; forthecomparison to AuburnUniversity,
see Grandison,"Landscape of Terror,"
p. 347. There is no available historyof the townof Auburn. My
memory,based on a 2-yearresidency,is thatthe historicarchitecture on the university
side of the townis fromthe verylate nineteenth and early twentiethcenturies,
suggestingthat the town
mayhave grownout towardthe existingschool froma more distantolder center.
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closer to it than did Auburn's firstbuildings. Indeed, Auburn never expanded to the other side
of College Street, but Tuskegee leapt its road
from the start.Washington rented three cabins
on Edward Varner's land across the way almost
immediately.He had tried to buy Varner's land
but his otherwise generous neighbor would not
sell, only rent. By the mid 188os Tuskegee had
built a two-thousand-seatpavilion on the leased
tract. Eventuallythere would be houses for institute executives, a tennis court (by 19o6), and,
after Varner finally sold the land, a stadium
(1925) and a symmetricalcourt defined on three
sides by three coordinated buildings for the new
College Department (completed in 1932). On its
fourthside the college quadrangle opened onto
the public road (Grandison claims it does not).
Greenwood edged both sides of the road from
the early 189os." In 1923, when the Ku Klux Klan
drove the public road in the nastiestovert threat
the school ever faced, it was understood that it
was traveling through the campus. This school
was no shrinkingviolet.
Still other Grandison interpretationsbeg refutation. Grandison believes that boys' dormitories
were placed to guard the entrances to the campus, spewing forthburlyteenagers to defend the
girls when the attack came. While it is true that
there were boys dormitoriesnear the eastern and
western industrial zones, each of which had entrances to serve the public, Grandison assumes
that the dormitorieswere situated to be close to
those entrances. But the industrial buildings,
most of which were built earlier, stood closer to
the entrances than did the dormitories.It is more
likelythat the boys dormitorieswere placed to be
as farfromthe girlsdormitoriesas possible, as was
usual practice in most coeducational schools.
Joseph Citro's penetrating examination of
Tuskegee life shows Washington to be overly
afraid of the appearance of sexual impropriety.
Citro finds the school's atmosphere oppressive
and attributesthisto Washington's obsessive control which, in turn,was due to his personal insecurities and his hypersensitivity
to outside criticism, not to a fear of physical attack. If
Washington worried about the latter, it would
have been sensible to protect the school's twothousand-foot frontage on the road with some"
On road naming,see, "Landscape of Terror," p. 347; on
the exposure of the public road, see Grandison,"Landscape of
Terror," p. 359; on the quadrangle,see Grandison,"Negotiated
Space," p. 553.
TuskegeeLandscape
thing more substantial than the modest wooden
fences that sometimes were in place. Grandison
does not acknowledge that the middle entrance
(with the Lincoln Gates) led directlyto the Practice Cottage, with its sleeping girls perilouslyexposed to the road and no sleeping boys nearby.
He does suggest that boys in the one-story"barracks" dormitoriescould guard against invasions
at thatgate." But thiswould mean that theymust
see through the chapel and the two-storyboys
and girls trades buildings, over a distance of six
hundred feet,and then up fortyor fifty
feetto the
top of a hill, hardlya feasible line of vision nor a
good location fora rapid response. Around 1900oo,
the Practice School, with young teachers and
small children, was moved west, far behind the
barracks, suggesting that no one viewed these
dormitoriesas a line of defense.
The core of Grandison's case for defensiveness in campus layout involves two specific
buildings, Thrasher Hall and the Carnegie Library.Both, he contends, face awayfromthe public road to reject the hostile white world. The library'sIonic portico and entrance do face north
and inward, but it is hard to believe that it was
not oriented thisway to dominate the long quadrangle it heads, a common planning paradigm
throughout the nineteenth and twentiethcenturies. The librarycould therebydisplayitselegance
to those to whom it meant the most-the
campus
community. Harvard's Widener Library is similarlypositioned facing the campus interior,with
its plain back addressing the general public. But
the libraryat the small black Livingstone
College
in Salisbury,North Carolina, was also
designed by
Tuskegee's black architect and planner, Robert
R. Taylor, and it projects itsIonic portico
directly
onto the street.'" There is no racial
coding
attached to thisissue. Grandison does not extend
his argument to the conclusion that if the
Tuskegee libraryis interpreted as rejecting the
public road, it must also be rejecting Booker T.
Washington.Washington's second house, built of
brick in 1899, was already standing across the
streetwhen the librarysitewas chosen. Grandison
12Grandison,"Landscape of Terror," pp. 360-62. JosephF.
Citro,BookerT. Washington's
BlackSchool-CommuInstitute:
Tuskegee
nity,1900oo-1915 (D. Ed. diss., Universityof Rochester, 1972).
Grandison,"Landscape of Terror," p. 360o.
13Grandison,"Beyond Buildings,"p. 164. Ellen Weiss,"Robert R. Taylorof Tuskegee: An EarlyBlack AmericanArchitect,"
Arris:Journal
oftheSoutheast
Chapter
oftheSociety
ofArchitectural
Historians2 (1991): 14. See also the birds-eyecampus viewin Who's
Whoin Colored
America,1z927 (New York:Who's Who in Colored
AmericaPublishingCorp., 1927), p. 283.
29
also failsto note that the OfficeBuilding, erected
just east of the library in 1902, had entrances
fromboth the privateand public roads, the better
to serve outsiders doing business withthe school.
When there was reason for the public to enter,
provision was made.
The second building Grandison finds oriented for racial self protection is Thrasher Hall,
which faces north and into the campus. Thrasher's vertical proportions (three stories and a cupola on a small footprint) remind Grandison of
the "Old Main" of many a nineteenth-century
college. But PorterHall was stillTuskegee's working "Old Main" when Thrasher Hall was built.
Porter Hall was the building a strangerwould enter to find reception rooms and offices,whereas
Thrasher contained only classrooms and dormitories, rooms that were used by the school's
insiders. Additional architectural expression on
Thrasher Hall's public-facing back side would
have been pointless and wasteful,as the institute
seems to have concluded. A lithographed bird'seye campus view,datable to mid 1899, records a
proposal thatisjust what Grandison would expect
to find if the school were white.'" The drawing,
which can be understood as a planning document, duplicates the towers and galleries of
Thrasher Hall's original north-facingfacade on
the southern public side. The remodeling would
have entailed not only the new exteriorconstruction but also a reworkingof the interiorto make a
hallwayconnection to the proposed new entrance
because a classroom blocked the way.Double entrances into a small building waste space, and it
is hard to imagine cash-strappedTuskegee spending money on meaningless architecturaldisplay.
Ultimately,the plan was rejected.
In 1905 Tuskegee completed its largestbuilding to date, the Huntington Memorial Academic
Building, sometimes called the High School, a
term that might be construed as a societal challenge since southern racism deemed "county
trainingschools" the appropriate secondary education for blacks, reservingclassical high schools
forwhites (fig.8). Because Huntington Memorial
contained officesfor the large Academic Department as well as an auditorium sometimesused for
14Grandison,"Beyond Buildings,"p. 64. The birds-eyeview
is in Scipio,Pre-WarDays
at Tuskegee,
p. 55. It showsbuildingsthat
were never built that reflectPhelps-Stokescorrespondenceof
September 1899, WashingtonPapers, Libraryof Congress.The
futuresiteof the CarnegieLibraryis empty;Alabama Hall is redesigned and rebuiltin the middle of whatwould laterbecome the
open quadrangle.
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30
j11
o42111
it
. ..'..
.....?'y.
...
Fig. 8. Huntington Memorial Academic Building, 1902-5. Burned 1994. (Frances Benjamin JohnstonCollection,
Libraryof Congress.)
public events,it would have been programatically
appropriate forit to address the street.Itdid, facing south fromitsperch next to PorterHall, overseeing the adjacent campus road and-beyond
the smaller,wooden Phelps Hall-the public way.
AfterPhelps was moved to another site and continuing until 1994, when Huntington Memorial
burned, it played the visual part of an "Old
Main," withits projectingand receding elevation
and richlyarticulatedcentral block. A staccato of
large and small arched and flat-headedwindows,
classicallyproportioned divisions,and a modest
one-story porch asserted institutionalpresence
withoutthe expense of large classical orders.
The problems this essay identifiesin Grandison's "landscape of terror" may lead the reader
to question the degree to which the material
world reallyreflectsthe immaterialin the absence
of a designer's deliberate intentions.Or perhaps
the question should be whetherthe South's racial
violence worked evenly across the land. Perhaps there was no landscape of terror because
Tuskegee never felt physicallythreatened. Louis
R. Harlan shows throughouthis work that there
were rarelyproblems in the institute'srelationsto
the white-controlledregion because the school
and town were interwoven politically and economically. He even suggeststhat "in the middle
of their own little city"-meaning the institute
and its suburbs-its denizens sometimes forgot
the hostile environmentin which most African
Americans lived. RobertJ. Norrell concurs, clarifyingthe paternalismthat helped the townvalue
the school's contributionto the "model community."Karen Ferguson has pointed out that there
were no lynchingsin surroundingMacon County
afterthe school's foundation. The institute'sagricultural extension programs for black share-
31
TuskegeeLandscape
croppers, she writes,helped the white planters as
well, a facttheyappreciated. And civilrightsactivist Rosa Parks believed that her parents moved to
Tuskegee before she was born because it was a
model for good race relations. The balance was
not perfect,by any means. Racial peace meant no
audible complaints from institutestaff,students,
and graduates about injustices elsewhere. Racial
peace meant a shackled press and furtherdissociation frommilitantwriters.But the bargain held,
tested only once before the civilrightsmovement
of the 196os. In 1923 the Ku Klux Klan drove the
public road to challenge black control of the new
federal hospital for black war veterans. While
armed black volunteers may have been standing
by, shaping the outcome by their mere presence,
in the end the instituteonly needed to refrain
from reacting to the implied insult,which it did.
Nothing happened." The next major construction, the quadrangle forthe College Department,
opened boldly onto the road. There is no evidence as to whetherit did so in triumphor if the
configuration was simply the result of current
funding conditions (which were excellent) and
normativeschool planning.
Other evidence shows a Tuskegee picturewell
worthdeveloping to help us understand the institute's success and its resulting impressive plant.
Washington had intended warm interracial relations from the start,believing as he did that accommodation and self-helpwould solve all problems-an approach that,needless to say,worked
better for him than for others. As early as 1884,
while addressing an educators convention in
Madison, Wisconsin, he exercised what Harlan
has termed his "winningwaysof interracialdiplomacy" by praising Tuskegee's white leadership
foritsgenerosityand support. Some of the town's
15
Harlan, Makingofa BlackLeader,p. 161. RobertJ. Norrell,
The CivilRightsMovement
in Tuskegee
ReapingtheWhirlwind:
(New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985),
chaps.
1, 2.
Karen Ferguson,
"Caught in 'No Man's Land': The Negro CooperativeDemonstration Service and the Ideology of Booker T. Washington,19001918," AgriculturalHistory72, no. 1 (Winter 1998). Rosa Parks,
Rosa Parks:MyStory
(New York:Dial Books, 1992), p. 6. On racial
peace, see Harlan, Makingofa BlackLeader,p. 164. On the veterans hospitalconflict,see Pete Daniel, "Black Powerin the 1920S:
The Case of the Tuskegee Veteran'sHospital,"JournalofSouthern
History36, no. 3 (August 1970): 368-88; Albon L. Holsey, "A
Man of Courage," in WilliamHardin Hughes and FrederickD.
Patterson, eds., RobertRussa Moton of Hampton and Tuskegee
of NorthCarolina Press,1956), pp. 127(Chapel Hill: University
43; RaymondWolters,TheNewNegroon Campus:BlackCollege
Rebellions of the z92os (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1975),
and Norrell, Reaping the Whirlwind,pp. 27-29. For
pp. 137-91;
theoral traditionregardingarmedguards,see Wolters,New
Negro,
pp. 174-75.
teachers were present and could report home
how well theircharismaticneighbor publicallyexpressed his gratitude.As his fame grew Washington was careful to share its benefits,suggestingto
both George Foster Peabody and Andrew Carnegie that they might also help a white school in
town. The institute brought electricityto the
county and to a politician's house, and Washington made sure that presidential visits included
stopovers (in McKinley's case, a sleep-over) with
the town's elite. Washingtonhad used his extraordinary fame in both the black and the white
North to build a national web of political alliances-the
con"Tuskegee Machine"-that
trolled black newspapers, business groups, pulpits,patronagejobs, and, ultimately,the northern
black vote, which he could then deliver to a succession of Republican presidents. Therefore,
when Washington later reminded McKinley of
this particularexperience in Alabama hospitality,
he warmed the way for the local host when the
latter went to Congress. (Washington also leveraged federal patronage jobs for the host's
brother.)'6This whiteAlabama politician was well
wed to the interestsof the black man to whom he
owed these special favors.
Thus it is not surprisingto read hard evidence
of the school's real securityas shown in some revealing accounts.17 In 1905 Washington had
hired Pinkertondetectivesto scout out potential
troubles before President Theodore Roosevelt's
arrival. They lolled around the courthouse
square, railroad station,and adjacent hamlets listening to the talk.A fewrough types"withoutinfluence" spoke against Tuskegee, including one
Von Grabill,who ranted awayin a local hotel. But
they were a tiny minority,the Pinkertons reported. Everyoneelse voiced pride in and support
for the school that had attractedso much glamour and money. Washington's skills ensured all
would be well as long as everyonebehaved-and
he saw to it that his people did. Even ifwe could
actuallysee a physical "landscape of terror,"it is
hard to findreasons forit in thisparticularneighborhood. In short,a whiteOlivia A. Davidson and
a white Booker T. Washington could have built
an identical campus forpoor whiteyoungstersexcept for the probabilitythat the lack of a moving
cause would have made it difficultto attractphilanthropic support.
The fact is that Tuskegee was consciously
6Harlan, Makingofa BlackLeader,pp. 117, 161, 286-87.
"7Harlan, Washington
Papers,8:418-20.
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32
shaped by black and white professionals to elite
chusetts,officein 1894 and discussed Olmsted's
aesthetic ideals. It was a landscape of conciliation,
traveling from Asheville, North Carolina, at
with whites and blacks working separately or to- Tuskegee's expense to donate a landscape
plan.
gether to fill a need. Upon arriving in 1881,
Curryquicklyapproved Washington's "landscape
Washington wrote that Tuskegee townwas green
gardening" idea: "It is impossible to estimate
and treed and looked like a New England vil- what an educatory influence in morals, and
aeslage-a paradigm he could have known at the
thetics,such an object lesson has"-a common
time onlybyhearsay.It was not until the following claim of environmentaldeterminismthen
usually
summer that he firstwent North to raise money.
applied to whiteinstitutions.Two yearsbefore, in
In 1888, with his school nearly broke and him
1892, Washington had hired the only schoolaway begging for funds to fend offcreditors,he
trained African American architect, Robert R.
shade and ornaordered the planting of fifty-six
Taylor, as campus designer and drawingteacher.
mental trees on the campus-water oak, magnoTaylor,an MIT graduate, had a fullbeaux-artsedlia, mock orange, and soft maple. Washington
ucation, and he remained at Tuskegee for the
seemed to be courting northern philanthropy next thirtyyears. The school was never without
a
withWASP aestheticsalong withWASP workethic
professionaldesigner. Dozier attributesthe subtle
and politesse even when he could ill affordit. We
symmetriesof the eastern campus and the rotaneed to follow the money for those trees (and on
tional geometry binding the western industrial
many other matters as well) to understand the
buildings to the chapel in the 1890s to Taylor's
landscape planning that Grandison, following expertise,and he believes thatTaylor made a forDozier, attributessolely to black planners. There
mal plan for the whole campus around 1900. In
mightbe white money, thus white power, behind
1902 Washington hired Cornell-trained African
more of them than we know. For example, one
American landscapist David Williston to teach
could suspect that the influentialJabez L. M.
horticulture.Williston was clearly a designer as
Currystood behind the tree-plantingas he stood
well; in Dozier's estimation,he took on planning
behind many other decisions at Tuskegee. As
responsibilitiesaround 1906.19
Dozier has shown, Curry had persuaded
Black talent with elite "white" trainingTuskegee to change the name of a building from Tuskegee is not the place to find the counter-histhat of its donor to one honoring the lavishlyentoryburbling up from below to witness the lives
dowed John F. Slater Fund for Negro Education,
of a silent people, as Grandison wishes. Nor is it
which Curry was soon to represent and which
possible to interpretTuskegee as a naivelyexpresWashington was aggressivelycourting.A Confedsive vernacular artifactwhen we learn that two
erate general and a racist by modern standards well-known
white landscape architects, Warren
because he advocated classical high school for
H. Manning andJohn Nolen, also made plans for
whites but industrial education for blacks,
Curry the campus. The TuskegeeStudentnoted Manwas neverthelessdedicated to excellence in
pubning's design effort:"The essential unity of the
lic education forAfricanAmericans. He admired
buildings will be better preserved in the future
Washington, sent repeated financial contribu- than heretofore and the grounds will be laid off
tions to Tuskegee, and is on record as
urging
and kept hereafterwith regard to their permalandscaping improvements as well as tidiness at
nency and beauty." Manning's "topographic surthis particular school.'8
vey" of February1902 mayhave been partiallyexCurry's long involvementwith Tuskegee suggests thatperhaps a mix of attitudinalracism and
"9On Olmsted, see Kenneth Severens, Southern
educational idealism did not preclude
Architecture
high-style (New York:E. P. Dutton, 1981), p.
'55; and Harlan, Washington
landscape design. Washingtonhad met withFred- Papers,3:469-70. Curryquoted in Harlan,
Washington
Papers3:
erick Law Olmsted in his Brookline, Massa475. Weiss, "Robert R. Taylorof Tuskegee," pp. 3-19; Dozier,
18Harlan, Washington
Papers,2:14o; on the treeplanting,see
Southern
Letter
5, no. 1 (May 1888). Dozier, Tuskegee,
p. 116. On
Curry,seeJohn E. Fisher,TheJohn
F. SlaterFund:A Nineteenth-CenAction
Education
tury
Affirmative
forNegro
(Lanham, Md.: University
Press of America,1986), pp. 116-19. See also Harlan, Makingof
a BlackLeader,pp. 116,
29o. There is a long-standingdebate over
Curry'sracistpronouncements,both to theirextentand intent-whethertheywere voiced forpragmaticpurposes only.
Tuskegee,
p. 117. On David Williston,see Dozier, Tuskegee,
p. 138;
KirkMuckle and Dreck Wilson, "David AugustusWilliston:PioneeringBlack Professional,"LandscapeArchitecture
72, no. 1 (January 1982): 82-85. Williston'srequestforemploymentis dated
March 31, 1902; box 2, Booker T. Washington Papers, Library of
Congress.His presence thereafter
at Tuskegee seems to be intermittent-a recent studyreportsthat he was Superintendantof
Buildingsand Grounds until 1929 and thathe was a consultant
until1948; Cari Goetcheus,"Booker T. Washington,theMan and
His Landscape," CRM: CulturalResources
8 (1999):
Management
31-33.
TuskegeeLandscape
ecuted since late the followingmonth his assistant
was observed laying out the grounds. Tuskegee
trusteeGeorge Foster Peabody, who had spent his
boyhood in nearby Columbus, Georgia, paid
Manning's bills. Nolen arrived early in 191 1, lectured, consulted with Williston,made a "rough
study,"and wrotea report.Manning's 1902 drawing and Nolen's report have yetto surface,tempting us to assign to them, to Williston,to Taylor,
or to all four the planning of the romantic Big
Valley, about which Grandison has writtenwith
fine eloquence.'" Grandison's enviable prose
should help all players-the National Park Service, which owns parts of the campus and gives
tours, as well as Tuskegee administrators-perceive and thus preserve the valley along with the
school's other architecturaland landscape treasures and thus honor the extraordinaryefforts
that formed the school.
Preservation issues aside, there is still much
more about thisvalleythatwe must understand if
we are to interpretthe Tuskegee scene responsibly. A photograph probably taken in February
1910 shows buggies parked at the most visible
end of the valley-close to the public road and
the Lincoln Gates-while theirowners attend the
annual Negro Conference, Washington's inventive outreach program to encourage farmersin
their struggle to move from sharecropping to
landowning (fig. 9). Grandison believes that the
actual meetings took place in the valley-events
thatwould have been distinctlyuncomfortablein
February,when the conference met. The farmers
gathered during the early years in the pavilion,
later in the chapel, and then in various auditoriums such as the one in Douglass Hall. Grandison's take on the valley as Washington's didactic
meditation-for the benefit of the bordering
girls dormitories-on the ultimate value of the
land to African Americans is interestingeven if
unprovable. Since the valley is overlooked by a
two-storyIonic portico on the back side of the
otherwisemodest Tantum Hall girlsdormitory,it
may indeed have had a special meaning. This was
where the firstTuskegee bricks were made-"right below Tantum and Douglass Halls [Doug20Grandison, "Beyond Buildings," p. 16o; "Landscapes of
Terror," pp. 366-67; "Negotiated Space," pp. 530-32. Tuskegee
March 15, 1902; see also Taylorto Washington,February
Student,
19, 1902, and Taylorto EmmettJ.Scott,March6, 1902, reel 207,
Booker T. WashingtonPapers, Libraryof Congress.For Nolen's
consultationwithWilliston,see Tuskegee
March 18, 191 1;
Student,
the reportis mentionedin Washingtonto WarrenLogan,
May 8
and 15, 1911, reel 55, Booker T. WashingtonPapers,
Libraryof
Congress.Grandison,"From Plantationto Campus," p. 16.
33
lass is on the opposite valleyrim] in thatbasin on
the rightas you go over to Tantum," as William
Gregoryremembered a half-centurylater. "The
bricks were carried to the place of building in
wheel barrows,in our arms, in sacks, and any old
way.This was more like fun forus than like work.
We worked day and night." For Washington and
Davidson, brickmakingwas a difficultand nearly
defeating process thatwas often described as the
central crisisof earlyday legends. Washingtonreportedly had to pawn his only precious possession-a watch-to be able to respond to the latest kiln failure with one more try.He may well
have wanted to commemorate that effortas well
as the place's gentle beauty with Tantum Hall's
columns, and he seems to have had rare freedom
from the donor's privileged opinions to exercise
his will. Correspondence withMiss Tantum shows
an unusual willingnessto accept the site and designproposals fromTuskegee withoutdiscussion.21
If the valleywas used repeatedlyas parkingfor
visitingfarmers'buggies and beasts, it mightalso
have accumulated other meanings, invitingstill
more useful speculation. One could read the valley as the symbolicgatheringof all black farmers
as those in attendance arrived. One could read
the portico on Tantum Hall as a symbolic "big
house" shelteringthese black farmers'daughters
rather than the white daughters of the planter
class. The portico could suggest the capitol-like
ennoblement of all black-workedfarmlandwithin
the conference's sphere of influence. But in the
spring of 1906, with construction on Tantum
Hall under way,the valleywas fenced into rectangular feed lots with orderlyrows of simple sheds
(fig. 1o). This photograph contradicts Grandison's assumption that this area was alwaysa pasture, an idea whose only evidence may be a photograph showing grazing cows. (When that
photograph was originallypublished in 1916, its
caption reported that the photograph was posed
in order to display part of the dairy herd. It was
taken in 1910-12, not in 1900, as Grandison
claims.) The fences and sheds thatwere in the valley in 1906 could be seen byvisitorsto the school
who were routinely escorted in Tuskegee-built
carriages drivenby Tuskegee-clad and Tuskegee21Grandison,"NegotiatedSpace," p. 268; on the valleyas didactic meditation,see Grandison,"From Plantationto Campus,"
p. 16. William Gregory,"A Student's Account of the School's
Institute:
TheFirstFifty
Opening," in Anson Phelps Stokes,Tuskegee
Years(Tuskegee: Tuskegee InstitutePress,1931), p. 66.
Margaret
W. Tantum to Washington,July21, 1905, reel 568, Washington
Papers, Libraryof Congress.
Winterthur
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34
I
I
~ ~B
4aFRP
4~Al/'
~Al
Fig. 9. Southernend of the Big Valleywithfarmers'buggies,probablyFebruary1910. FromEmmett
Builderofa Civilization(New York: Doubleday,
J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe, BookerT. Washington:
(withcupola) and TompkinsDiningHall (withdome) are in
Page, 1916.) WhiteHall girlsdormitory
thebackground.
shod studentsso theycould admiretheinstitute's
valuablelivestock.
The viewfromthe road down
into the pens would have servedWashington's
purposes well. It was not until 1911 that the
statelylawn in a fashionableromanticstylewas
planned or in place, as evidenced by a topographiccampus map thatshowsnot onlybuildingsbut also trees.The map was made byWalter
Franz,a Cincinnatiengineerwhowas thenbuilding the Tuskegeeheatingplant.22
Justas we do not knowexactlywherior why
thevalleywas changed,we do not knowwho determinedthedetailsofthetransformation.
There
is anotherpossibleplayer:in 1905 formerNew
YorkCitymayorSeth Low, who had developed
Columbia University'scampus, joined the
Tuskegeeboard of trustees,
becomingchairman
twoyearslater.He frequently
wroteof the need
forphysicalplanning,and he broughtTuskegee
administrators
to his ownfarmto showthemhis
latestinnovationsand the resultinglargercrop
2,Grandison, "Landscapes of Terror," p. 362; Grandison,
"From Plantationto Campus," p. 16. The photographwas originallypublished in EmmettJ. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe,
BookerT. Washington:
Builderofa Civilization
(New York:Doubleday, Page, 1916), p. 191. The buildingsconfirmthe 1910-12
date. The Franz map is reproduced in Scipio, Pre-WarDays at
Tuskegee,
pp. 76-77.
yields.GeraldKurland,Low'sbiographer,
reports
thatLow inspected"everyfoot" of Tuskegee's
buildings and grounds on his annual visits.
"When new buildingswere constructed,
or imin
made
old
ones,Low-having a deprovements
tailedknowledgeof the campus-gave close instructions
fromfar-off
New Yorkas to precisely
wherethe new buildingsshould be located and
should be made."23
exactlywhatimprovements
The decision,then,and thusthevalley'smeaning
could have come fromanycombinationof black
and/or whitecooks in this complex landscape
stew.It could be Washington'soriginalvision,as
Grandison assumes. It could have been Williston's,Taylor's,Manning's,or Nolen's idea. Or
it could havebeen Low's or stillanotheroff-campus advisor'sor donor'snotionof improvement.
Those whopaythepiperdo getto call thetunes,
especiallywhenmorelargesseis expected.
Two otheraspectsofthisblackand whitecamis
pus need to be addressedin thisessay.The first
themeaningof high-style
or
architectural
design
classicismin a school forthe impecuniouschildren of formerslaves.ArchitectTaylor'ssubtle
2"Gerald Kurland,SethLow: TheReformer
in an Urbanand IndustrialAge (New York: Twayne, 1971), p. 324.
TuskegeeLandscape
35
MON
M"D
Fig. lo. Middle area of the Big Valleyfencedforlivestock,
April19o6. (FrancesBenjaminJohnston
is near the centerof the photograph,
Collection,Libraryof Congress.)DouglassHall girlsdormitory
and CarnegieLibraryis at thefarright.
talentwas beaux-arts traininggone underground
to emerge in studied proportions,weightedwalls,
syncopated voids, varied massing, and spare but
astutelyplaced details-the visual equivalence of
plain prose. Washington always recommended
simple, direct speech to his students, telling
them,forexample, thatJohnD. Rockefeller,who
gave the money for a spare but elegantlyproportioned boys dormitoryin 19go1,alwaysspoke with
words of one syllable,not two,or twosyllablesbut
not three-and he was the richest man in the
world. Taylor's early Tuskegee buildings, with
their vernacular-seemingarchitecturalmodesty,
are so close to Washington's rhetoricalideal that
the school's firstclassical portico,which appeared
on the Carnegie Libraryin 1901--2, comes as a
surprise,particularlywhen we remember the increasing racism then searing the South. The year
the librarywas built was the year Washingtonwas
excoriated throughout the region for taking a
meal with PresidentRoosevelt in the White
House, therebyseeminglyviolatinghis promise
not to seek social equality.At thesame time,Alabama's new constitution
mostAfridisfranchised
can Americansand lynchingswere on the rise
throughoutthe South. Soon, the Rockefeller-financed SouthernEducationBoard,following
the
earlierSlaterFundefforts
to turnclassically
based
schoolsintoindustrialinstitutions,
wouldfurther
undermineclassicaleducation-withGreekand
Latin languages-for AfricanAmericans,thus
to join the
cuttingthemofffromopportunities
Van
has
higherprofessions.
Abigail
Slyck argued
thatthelibrary's
classicalarchitectural
ambitions
would not have come fromthe Carnegieend of
the commission,
of the Ionic
leavingthe mystery
columns unresolvedfor now. CatherineBishir
has made it clearthatthisperiod'sclassicalporticos reifiedthe triumphof systematic
discrimination by envisioninga mythologized
antebellum
36
past.24Neither the Taylor-Washingtoncorrespondence, the entire run of the Tuskegee Institute
press, nor any known Tuskegee-related publication allude to this ambitious architecture as
what it might seem to us-an obvious societal
challenge.
The habits of brevityand discretion that pervade all Tuskegee prose may, of course, mask an
internal,unspoken discourse-such as the knowledge that slave craftsmenbuilt those pre-warcolumned porticos, making them as much of the
black race as the whiteone. A particularlymoving
appropriation of white classicism for black purposes stood less than one hundred miles awayand
may have loomed large in the Tuskegee consciousness. Swayne Hall at Talladega College was
erected in the 185os as a whiteboysschool. It had
a two-storyprojecting Doric portico raised on
piers,making it a monumental three stories.Slave
craftsmenwho built the structurelater sent their
children to studywithin.Ambrose Headen, who
sent four children, stated: "I rub myeyes and try
to wake myself.When my boys and girls come
home from school with their algebra, Greek and
Latin books, I say to myselfare these mychildren
thatwere slaves a fewyearsago, counted no more
than cattle?" Some of these children later taught
at Talladega. The school continued to offerclassical studies well into the era of virulent disapproval. Slave-built Swayne Hall, which later
housed Talladega College, connects one of the
noblest forms of western architecture,a monumental Doric portico, to the heroic strugglefor
educational parity.If we fail to find the universalizing humanity in this architectural tale confirmed in writing,perhaps it is because greater
safetylay in silence. That is, by never voicing such
histories, their implied challenge would not be
heard by white outsiders and they would be allowed to stand. The most scurrilous attack on
Tuskegee I know of faulted the school for expecting white men to doff their hats inside its
buildings and to address its teachers as "mister."
The author had charged that the school was
teaching social equality and encouraging unrealistic economic expectations. But this rabid pamphleteer, who was also the ranter the Pinkerton
men had overheard, admired the physical cam24Booker T. Washington,Character
Building(New York:Doubleday,Page, 1902), pp. 40-41. AbigailVan Slyck,FreetoAll: Carand American
negieLibraries
Culture,890o-l92o (Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press, 1995), PP. 144-48. CatherineW. Bishir,
"Landmarks of Power: Building a Southern Past, 1885-1915,"
Southern
Culture,
Inaugural Issue (1993): 5-45-
Winterthur
Portfolio
36:I
pus, as did everyone-accepting its architectural
classicismwithoutcomment.25
Finally, to fully consider Tuskegee's biracial
landscape we must also understand that distinguished white travelerstoured, ate, and even slept
in the black community.John D. RockefellerJr.
was such a guest; he wrote Washington to thank
him for returninga razor strap he had leftin his
room in Washington's home. In 1908 Britishcolonial administratorSir HarryH. Johnston,whom
Harlan has characterized as an outspoken white
supremacist, slept ten nights in Washington's
house. Other suggestionsof a gentler racial coding than we might have expected abound. In
1894 Washington urged rights advocate Ednah
Dow Littlehale Cheney and her Yankee associates
to hold interracialteachers meetingsat Tuskegee
and use it as theirbase for tours into the countryside to studythe lives of poor plantation women.
He even offered to accommodate a dozen or so
of the northern white women; others could stay
in townhotels. Washingtonnoted that the vicinity
was "very liberal," and theywere used to having
integrated meetings at the institute, so there
would not be any race problems. In 1897, while
traveling,Washington arranged for a Philadelphia Quaker woman to staywith his wifein their
home. The followingyear seventy-seven-year-old
Julia Ward Howe and fivefriendsarrivedin time
to have dinner with the Washingtons.They then
attended regular evening chapel services, and
Howe stayed with the Washingtons; she later recalled that Mrs. Washington had to assure her
that there could be no snakes under the bed.26
Interracial hospitalitywas somewhat regularized in 1903 when guest rooms were added to
Dorothy Hall, the girls trades building, and private bathrooms were built for designated guest
rooms in Rockefeller Hall. For the twenty-fifth
anniversaryin 1906, HuntingtonHall girlsdormitory was emptied for visitors.The outfittingof
on-campus guest rooms was another occasion
Headen is quoted in Maxine D. Jones and Joe M. Richard25
son, TalladegaCollege:TheFirstCentury
(Tuscaloosa: University
of
Alabama Press, 1990), pp. 13-14. Stanton Becker Von Grabill
(pseud. RupertFehnstroke),Letters
fromTuskegee;
BeingtheConfessionsofa Yankee(Birmingham,Ala.: By the author,
1905).
26RockefellerJr. to Washington,April 27, 1901, reel 68,
Booker T. WashingtonPapers, Libraryof Congress.Harlan, Wizard ofTuskegee,
p. 288; see also HarryH. Johnston,TheNegroin the
NewWorld(London: Metheun,1910), p. 408. Harlan, Washington
Papers,3:424-25. Washingtonto WarrenLogan, April 9, 1897,
in Harlan, Washington
Papers,4:270. Julia Ward Howe, "Atlanta
University& Tuskegee, LargelyReminiscent,"November 1893,
container2,JuliaWard Howe Papers, Libraryof Congress.
TuskegeeLandscape
for Washingtonian didacticism. Every part of a
room-its woodwork,wiring,plumbing, and furniture-were student-made,he would informhis
visitors,just as every meal showcased student
achievements in farming,cooking, and serving.
We need to know much more about the on-campus black and white interactions-for example,
entering and exiting the chapel and the seating
within,forwhich there are oral traditionsforseparation but as yet no documentation. Undoubtedly, strictlycoded behaviors guaranteed racial
(and gendered and generational) proprieties.
But there seems to be no residuum of thiscoding
in the physical campus; Tuskegee's buildings,
their siting,and their ambient landscaping failed
to record the vicious stupidities of American
apartheid.
With thisessay,I endeavor tojoin Grandison's
vigorous effortsto introduce Tuskegee to a broad
audience, one that will appreciate its attractive
physical campus as a monument to the school's
signal importance. Tuskegee's building history
has an almost urban complexitybecause of the varietyof participantsin the design process and the
ever-changingbuilding stockand itsusages. Complexities only deepen as one triesto sort out who
was making each decision, much less why.While
it is probable thatDozier is rightthatWashington
and his several professionallyeducated black architects and planners did the most to shape the
scene, white players were also putting in their
well-financed oars. Opinionated foundation directors,trustees,and building donors brought in
the talents of still other professional architects
and landscape architects to enact their visions,
leaving the historicalrecord muddied except for
one remarkable fact: blacks and whites-clients,
administrators,and designers-worked together.
This situationanticipates stillother surprises:the
37
early campus was more integrated for visitors
than one might have thought.And this black establishmentshared a high-stylearchitecturaliconography with white communities throughout
the South during the yearsof increasing discrimination and segregation. Railwaycar usage, voting
rights,and curriculum content were hardening
into custom and law, becoming flashpoints for
sanctioned violence just when Tuskegee was
building classical porticoes and a dome, as if full
equality were the order of the day.
It is dangerous, then, to assign a single meaning to such a campus landscape. Surelyseeing the
campus as a defensive configuration-a "landscape of terror"-is too simplistica reading, especially when we remember that it was known
throughoutthe AfricanAmerican South as an oasis of safety.This does not mean that such analyses should not be tried on other sites.This important subject needs careful historicalinvestigation.
The South is rife with African American
schools needing documentation, publication,
and preservation.Among them are the manysuccess stories-Hampton, Tuskegee, and dozens of
small industrialschools along withsuch finecollegiate achievements as Atlanta, Fisk, and Howard
universities.Many have found theirway onto the
U.S. Department of the Interiorlistof historically
black colleges and universitiesand warrant the
financialaid Congress is now offering.Others are
not so lucky. Many "little" Hamptons and
Tuskegees, county trainingschools, and mission
society and denominational foundations have
quietlysubsided into the land or merged into the
later segregated public school system.All should
be located and recorded as monuments to the extraordinaryeffortsof blacks and whites working
separatelyand togetherto make thingsbetterfor
all.