Past Events

Kenneth Jackson Lecture on Four Cities

Sat, 17 Nov 2007 22:40:05 -0500

Jacques Barzun Professor of History and the Social Sciences at Columbia University Kenneth Jackson gave the keynote SESAH lecture A Tale of Four Cities, sponsored by SESAH and the Vanderbilt University Chancellor’s Lecture Series on October 25 at the Blair School of Music, Ingram Hall, in Nashville. If you would like to see the video streamed please click on the link below

http://www.vanderbilt.edu/news/releases/2007/10/26/video-kenneth-jackson-on-20th-century-history-of-new-orleans-memphis-nashville-and-houston

SESAH announces 2007 Award Winners

Wed, 14 Nov 2007 20:49:41 -0500

“Best of the South: Preserving Southern Architecture Award”
Goes to Walker Hall Restoration at the South Carolina School for the Deaf & the Blind. For more information about the project click here.

Annual Publication Awards go to Authors in Georgia, Texas & Tennessee

Nashville, TN – November 13, 2007. The Southeastern Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians (SESAH) announces the 2007 SESAH Award Winners. The awards were made at the 25th SESAH Annual Meeting, held in Nashville, Tennessee, from October 24-27, 2007. Visit www.sesah.org for more information about the conference.

The 2007 Best Essay Award was presented to Robert M. Craig for his chapter “Pilgrimage Route to Paradise: The Sacred and Profane along the Dixie Highway,” in Claudette Stager and Martha Carver, eds., Looking Beyond the Highway: Dixie Roads and Culture (University of Tennessee Press, 2006). Craig wittily compares early-twentieth century motor tourists on the Dixie Highway with long-ago pilgrims in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. The intriguing book explores the diversity of history along the Dixie Highway from Illinois to Florida in the era before interstate highways. Craig is a professor in the College of Architecture, Georgia Institute of Technology. See the press response from GATech here.

The 2007 Best Article Award was presented to Clifton Ellis for “The Mansion House at Berry Hill Plantation: Architecture and the Changing Nature of Slavery in Antebellum Virginia,” in Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture (Volume 13, No. 1, 2006). Ellis shows how the Virginia plantation house, Berry Hill, was shaped by gender and race in a time of cultural change and racial tension. Ellis is Assistant Professor of Architectural History, College of Architecture, Texas Tech University.

The 2007 Best Book Award goes to Mary Hoffschwelle for The Rosenwald Schools of the American South (University Press of Florida, 2006). Hoffschwelle, Professor of History at Middle Tennessee State University, highlights the remarkable partnership that built model schools for black children during the Jim Crow era in the South. The Rosenwald program, which erected more than 5,300 schools between 1912 and 1932, began when Booker T. Washington, principal of Tuskegee Institute, turned to Julius Rosenwald, president of Sears, Roebuck & Company, to help build schools to educate the South's black children.
See the press response here.

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The 2007 Best of the South: Preserving Southern Architecture award goes to McMillan Smith & Partners Architects, PLLC, of Spartanburg, South Carolina, for the restoration of Walker Hall at the South Carolina School for the Deaf and the Blind near Spartanburg, South Carolina.

Founded in 1849, the South Carolina School for the Deaf and the Blind enriched the lives of generations of sensory disabled students. Architect Edward C. Jones designed Walker Hall, centerpiece of the campus, in 1859, and it was expanded by famed architects Samuel Sloan of Philadelphia (1884) and Edwards & Sayward of Atlanta (1921). After years of neglect, funding shortages, and constant use left the building in disrepair, in 1999, the architects began planning the renovation of the nearly 70,000 square foot building. The $13 million renovation project maintained the historic character of the building while meeting and exceeding code standards. Today Walker Hall continues to serve deaf, blind, and sensory multi-disabled children and adults. Architect Donnie Love, his team of contractors, and the South Carolina School for the Deaf and the Blind executed an exemplary project in restoring a building of unique history.

“The 25th SESAH Annual Meeting was our biggest ever with 105 attendees traveling from over 20 states, Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico,” stated SESAH president David Gobel of the Savannah College of Architecture and Design. “The local host committee made celebrating this milestone in Nashville a very special occasion, with an opening plenary session featuring the mayor and live music, a keystone lecture at Vanderbilt University with over 400 in attendance, a closing party at the city’s Civic Design Center, and walking tours of several landmarks. We are grateful for our Nashville hosts as well as the many local partners and donors for making our visit to the Music City such a memorable experience.” Future SESAH conferences will be held in Greensboro, North Carolina, from October 1-4, 2008; Jackson, Mississippi, in 2009; and Chattanooga, Tennessee, in 2010.

The 2007 SESAH Publications Award Committee consisted of Ellen Weiss of Tulane University; Marilyn Casto of Virginia Tech University; and Travis McDonald of Jefferson’s Poplar Forest in Virginia. The 2007 Best of the South: Preserving Southern Architecture Award Committee consisted of Andrew Chandler of the South Carolina Department of Archives & History, Chair; Julia King of London and Pennsylvania; and Jennifer Baughn of the Mississippi State Historic Preservation Office.

ABOUT SESAH

The Southeast Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians (SESAH) is a regional chapter of the national Society of Architectural Historians and includes twelve states (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia). The nonprofit organization holds an annual meeting, publishes a quarterly newsletter and an annual journal, ARRIS, and presents annual awards. SESAH was founded in 1983 at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta to promote scholarship on architecture and related subjects and to serve as a forum for ideas among architectural historians, architects, preservationists, and others involved in professions related to the built environment. The annual meeting features scholarly paper sessions, business meeting, study tours, and a keynote lecture by a national leader in the field. SESAH members come from across the U.S. and Europe.

www.sesah.org

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SESAH announces 2006 Award Winners

Fri, 6 Oct 2006 19:02:22 -0400

Press Contact: Travis McDonald, Director of Architectural Restoration, Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest, P.O. Box 419, Forest, VA 24551-0419, Phone: (434) 534-8123, Fax: (334) 525-7252, Email: travis@poplarforest.org

SESAH ANNOUNCES 2006 AWARD WINNERS & EXPANDS TO INCLUDE TEXAS

Inaugural “Best of the South: Preserving Southern Architecture Award” Goes to The Coastal Heritage Society in Savannah, Georgia

Annual Publication Awards go to Authors in Virginia, Mississippi, Ohio, & Washington, DC – Special Award to Preservationist in Mississippi

SESAH Expands to include Texas in New 12-State Territory

Forest, VA – October 6, 2006. The Board of Directors of the Southeastern Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians (SESAH) announced the 2006 SESAH Award Winners at the 24th Annual SESAH Annual Meeting. Auburn University’s College of Architecture, Design, & Construction hosted the three-day conference, held September 27-30 in Auburn, Alabama. “SESAH continues to grow in many ways and this year’s meeting was marked by very strong attendance with nearly 100 participants from around the southeast, the nation, and even internationally,” stated SESAH president David Gobel of the Savannah College of Art & Design in Georgia. “The society’s Auburn meeting will be remembered not only for bringing in Texas, but for its inaugural ‘Best of the South’ award for preservation and for its generally delightful and exceptionally well-organized program of events.”

“The 2006 SESAH Awards reflect the diversity of scholarly and innovative preservation work being undertaken by scholars and preservationists throughout the South as well as from those outside the region,” stated Travis McDonald, spokesperson for the SESAH awards committees and the Director of Architectural Restoration at Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest in Forest, Virginia. “From Midwestern grain palaces and New South industrial architecture to the rehabilitation of a 1855 railroad roundhouse and academic studies of architects Benjamin Latrobe and Frank Milburn, this year’s award winners cover a wide range of architectural types and subject matter.”

The 2006 Best Essay Award was presented to Pamela H. Simpson for her chapter “Cereal Architecture: Late-Nineteenth-Century Grain Palaces and Crop Art,” published in the book Building Environments: Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture X, edited by Kenneth A. Breisch and Alison K. Hoagland

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(Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 2005), 269-282. “In this essay Simpson investigates the practice of making brightly colored ‘mosaics’ of natural seeds and grain that clad county fair buildings in the mid-west in the late 19th century,” stated Philippe Oszusick of the University of South Alabama and chair of the Publications Award Committee. “These ‘grain palaces’ inspired other communities to create their own versions of ‘cereal architecture.’” Simpson teaches Art and Architectural History at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia.

The 2006 Best Article Award was presented to Daniel J. Vivian for “A Practical Architect: Frank P. Milburn and the Transformation of Architectural Practice in the New South, 1890-1925,” published in Winterthur Portofolio, Vol. 40, No. 1, (Spring 2005), 17-45. “Vivian brings to light an architect working from the late 1880s to 1926 who was very popular in his time with at least 250 buildings to his credit in the Southeast,” stated Oszusick. “Yet much of his career remains in mystery with little knowledge of his work. This article examines Milburn’s career in relation to the changes that reshaped architecture and architectural practice in the post-Reconstruction South and the reasons why he was quickly forgotten following his death in 1926.” Vivian is an historian with the National Park Service in Washington, D.C. and a graduate student in history at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.

The 2006 Best Book Award was presented to Michael W. Fazio and Patrick A. Snadon for The Domestic Architecture of Benjamin Henry Latrobe (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006.) This major work analyzes all the domestic works of Latrobe, both in England and in America, “offering an authoritative treatment of the concepts, designs, and unique interior and exterior features of his houses.” “The authors analyze Latrobe as both an international architect and as someone who developed a ‘rational house’ for American society and culture,” stated Oszusick. “The well-researched book is beautifully illustrated with photographs, drawings, maps, and computer generated perspective drawings of unexecuted or lost works. This is a major contribution to the previous body of work on Latrobe.” Fazio is an architecture professor at Mississippi State University. Snadon is a professor of interior design at the University of Cincinnati in Ohio.

This year, SESAH created a new award called “Best of the South: Preserving Southern Architecture.” This award honors a project that preserves or restores an historic building or complex of buildings in an outstanding manner and that demonstrates excellence in research, technique, and documentation. SESAH’s inaugural 2006 Best of the South: Preserving Southern Architecture Award goes to The Coastal Heritage Society of Savannah, Georgia, for their preservation, restoration and adaptive use of the Roundhouse Railroad Museum Complex. The Central of Georgia’s railway complex is one of the oldest of its type in the country, dating to 1855. “The Coastal Heritage Society has done an outstanding job over many years in bringing this important industrial complex back into use,” stated Travis McDonald, chair of the Best of the South Awards Committee. “The recent work for which the award was given includes the rehabilitation work on the 1855 Tender Frame Shop; the restoration of the early twentieth-century workers’ garden and the 1923 locomotive turntable; the adaptive use of a 1920s African-American workers washroom; and the conservation of the 1920s addition to the 1855 Roundhouse. A preservation team of researchers and craftsmen have used sound documentary research, archaeology, architectural investigation, paint research, masonry and metal replication, timber conservation, and sensitive retrofitting of modern systems to preserve, restore, reuse, and interpret this important complex of buildings and structures.” Jury members called it “an excellent long-term project design” with “exemplary execution of craftsmanship.” Traci Bakit, Preservation Planner, and Jeanne Fullam, Project Superintendent, accepted the award on behalf of the Coastal Heritage Society.

One of the 2006 Best of the South Honorable Mention Awards went to Hanbury Evans Wright Vlattas Architects headquartered in Norfolk, Virginia, and the Community Arts Center Foundation of South Boston, Virginia, for the renovation and adaptive use of The Prizery, an early twentieth century tobacco warehouse that was converted into a community arts center, theater, art gallery, welcome center, and teaching center in South Boston, Virginia.

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The second 2006 Best of the South Honorable Mention Award went to Kann & Associates, an architectural firm in Baltimore, for the restoration of the Lovely Lane United Methodist Church in Baltimore, Maryland. This “exemplary restoration project” included the conservation and restoration of the ceiling mural in this 1885 Romanesque Style Church, designed by renowned architect Stanford White.

SESAH also announced a special award for “Professional Commitment” given to Jennifer Baughn, an architectural historian with the Mississippi State Historic Preservation Office in Jackson, Mississippi, for her unflagging efforts in the aftermath of last year’s Hurricane Katrina. Baughn organized and led teams of staff and volunteers in the enormous task of inventorying, assessing, and preserving the damaged historic buildings on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

The 2006 SESAH Publications Award Committee consisted of Philippe Oszusick of the University of South Alabama, Chair; Catherine Zipf of Regina Salve University in Rhode Island; and Travis McDonald of Jefferson’s Poplar Forest in Virginia. The 2006 Best of the South: Preserving Southern Architecture Award Committee consisted of Travis McDonald, Chair; Andrew Chandler of the South Carolina Department of Archives & History; Julia King of Fredericksburg, Virginia; and Jennifer Baughn of the Mississippi State Historic Preservation Office.

Future SESAH conferences will be held in Nashville, Tennessee, on October 24-27, 2007, and Greensboro, North Carolina, in October 2008. Visit www.sesah.org for more information.

ABOUT SESAH
The Southeast Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians (SESAH) is a regional chapter of the national Society of Architectural Historians and includes twelve states (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia). The nonprofit organization holds an annual meeting, publishes a quarterly newsletter and an annual journal, ARRIS, and presents annual awards. SESAH was founded in 1982 at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta to promote scholarship on architecture and related subjects and to serve as a forum for ideas among architectural historians, architects, preservationists, and others involved in professions related to the built environment. The annual meeting features scholarly paper sessions, business meeting, study tours, and a keynote lecture by a national leader in the field. SESAH members come from across the U.S. and Europe.

www.sesah.org

SESAH 24th Annual Meeting in Auburn, AL

Wed, 27 Sep 2006 19:16:04 -0400

Press Contact: Dr. Nina Lewallen, Auburn University, School of Architecture, 104 Dudley Hall, Auburn, Alabama 36849
Phone: (334) 844-5241, Fax: (334) 844-5419, Email: lewalns@auburn.edu

AUBURN UNIVERSITY HOSTS 24TH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE SOUTHEAST CHAPTER SOCIETY OF ARCHITECTURAL HISTORIANS

SEPTEMBER 27-30, 2006

Scholars from U.S. will present papers and study architecture of Alabama

University of Virginia professor Dell Upton’s keynote address at Auburn’s Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art Auditorium, September 29, 5:30 p.m. Open to Public, Reception Follows

Special exhibits at Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art Open to Public

Auburn, AL – September 12, 2006. The Board of Directors of the Southeastern Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians (SESAH) announces the SESAH 24th Annual Meeting to be held September 27-30 in Auburn, Alabama. The College of Architecture, Design & Construction at Auburn University is hosting the conference of around 100 scholars from around the U.S. and world. “We are thrilled about coming to Alabama to view the rich architectural resources of the state,” stated SESAH president David Gobel of the Savannah College of Art & Design in Georgia. “Auburn beckons with the allure of a true southern home.”

Conference participants include architects, architectural historians, planners, and historic preservationists who are traveling from around the nation and Europe to share their research on a variety of scholarly issues related to architecture. The sessions are wide-ranging and include such topics as Money, Power & Classicism; University Landscapes; Rethinking Modern Architecture; and Tourism & Architecture. “We are excited that the 2006 SESAH Annual Meeting has been scheduled to be held here on the campus of Auburn University,” stated Dan Bennett, the Dean of the College of Architecture, Design & Construction. “The thought provoking and engaging program includes exhibits and tours of the historically significant early work of Auburn alumnus Paul Rudolph. We expect an extremely successful meeting.”

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The organizing committee includes Auburn professors Susan Braden, Rebecca O'Neal Dagg, J. Scott Finn, Magdalena Garmaz, and Conference Chair Nina Lewallen. “We’ve been planning this meeting for over two years and we are excited about the wide scope and high quality of the paper presentations,” stated Lewallen. “We anticipate that the tours will be a highlight of the meeting since experts on Alabama architecture such as Robert Gamble of the Alabama Historical Commission and Ellen Weiss of Tulane University have agreed to lead tours and we have been able to arrange special access to several Alabama landmarks normally closed to the public.”

“Our visit to Western Alabama will give SESAH members the opportunity to see the work of Auburn University’s Rural Studio and to talk to students in the program,” added Lewallen. “While in Western Alabama, we are fortunate to have secured exceptional access to two buildings by Richard Upjohn, one of the most important nineteenth-century American architects.” A native of California, Lewallen holds degrees in architectural history from Berkeley and Columbia; she has been an assistant professor at Auburn for three years.

University of Virginia professor Dell Upton, a specialist in American architecture, will present the keynote lecture, which will take place on Friday, September 29, at 5:30 p.m. at the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art Auditorium on the university campus. Upton is the award-winning author of several books on American architecture, most recently Architecture in the United States published by Oxford University Press. The title of Upton’s lecture is “All History is Local: African-American History Memorials.” This lecture is free and open to the public. The Plenary Session on Thursday evening, open to registered conference participants, will focus on the effects of Hurricane Katrina on the built environment of the Gulf Coast.

Three architectural exhibits are on display during the conference. These include “Paul Rudolph: The Florida Houses,” curated by SESAH members Christopher Domin of the University of Arizona and Joseph King, and “Rural Studio: Education of the Citizen Architect.” Both are located at the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art and will be open to the public following the keynote lecture. Visit jcsm.auburn.edu for more information. In addition, “New Classicism: The Rebirth of Traditional Architecture,” curated by SESAH member Elizabeth Meredith Dowling of Georgia Tech and Anne Fairfax, an architect based in New York and Palm Beach, will be on display in the Dean’s Conference Room at Dudley Commons.

The Auburn University Hotel is the official conference hotel with presentations taking place at the Dixon Conference Center. Conference registration is $150 ($65 for students) and includes access to all paper sessions, a tour of Tuskegee University, a tour of Paul Rudolph’s Applebee House in Auburn, an evening reception and buffet dinner, and a Business Lunch Meeting and Awards Ceremony. The cost of the daylong Saturday Study Tours, one to Montgomery and the other to Western Alabama and the Rural Studio, is $50. Registration for the 24th SESAH Annual Meeting is still open. For more information and downloadable registration forms, visit the SESAH Website at www.sesah.org. To learn more about Auburn University, which is celebrating its 150th anniversary in 2006, visit www.auburn.edu.

Ellen Weiss’s Tuskegee University Tour was a highlight of the 2006 SESAH meeting in Auburn. With the benefit of her considerable knowledge and her superb handout (chock-full of maps, historical photographs, and background information), two busloads of us had a memorable visit. It included an on-site discussion of the development of the campus, a self-guided tour with a chance to talk with knowledgeable Tuskegee personnel and students, and a guided tour through Booker T. Washington’s residence, The Oaks (1899; now a museum operated by the National Park Service).
Being in the midst of this handsome collection of buildings brought to life the strength of Washington’s vision for the place. When he arrived in 1881, at the age of 25, to head the Tuskegee Normal School for colored teachers, the school had no land, no buildings, and only $2,000 for salaries. The historic campus bears the fruits of his ability to engage supporters, raise funds, and attract African-American professionals to join him in his life’s work here, among them Robert Taylor, the first professionally trained African-American architect, who graduated from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1892 with a degree in architecture, and David A. Williston, one of the first black landscape architects in the United States.
During this visit (a return to the campus for me), I gained new appreciation for the extent of Robert Taylor’s influence shaping the early campus and for the signature Tuskegee brick used in construction. The architecture (mostly by Taylor)—built of bricks made on site by the students—established the identity and pride of the institution. Even though three of Taylor’s major buildings have been lost (including the chapel, for which Paul Rudolph designed the replacement), some two dozen of the buildings remain.
To cap off a very special experience, we were able to visit the powerful, light-filled chapel, which Rudolph, an Auburn alum, designed.
The campus is a National Historic Site and a National Historic Landmark. National Park Service personnel operate The Oaks and the George Washington Carver Museum, which tells of the work of renowned botanist and long-time Tuskegee professor George Washington Carver.

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ABOUT SESAH
The Southeast Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians (SESAH) is a regional chapter of the national Society of Architectural Historians and includes eleven states (Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas). The nonprofit organization holds an annual meeting, publishes a quarterly newsletter and an annual journal, ARRIS, and presents annual awards. SESAH was founded in 1982 at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta to promote scholarship on architecture and related subjects and to serve as a forum for ideas among architectural historians, architects, preservationists, and others involved in professions related to the built environment. The annual meeting features scholarly paper sessions, study tours, and a keynote lecture by a national leader in the field. SESAH members come from across the U.S. and Europe.

www.sesah.org

Information about 2006 Annual Meeting

Fri, 1 Sep 2006 19:19:01 -0400

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Information about Annual Meeting in Auburn, 2006

The organizing committee, together with a dedicated group of student volunteers, is looking forward to hosting the 2006 SESAH meeting in Auburn, Alabama. We have some exciting new additions to the schedule that you may want to keep in mind when making your travel arrangements.

Kenneth T. Jackson, Jacques Barzun Professor of History and the Social Sciences at Columbia University, will be giving a lecture at 4pm on Wednesday afternoon as part of Auburn University’s Littleton-Franklin lecture series; the lecture will be given in the Science Center complex and is open to the public. You may also want to leave time for a self-guided tour of downtown Auburn and the Auburn campus; materials will be provided in the registration packets. Don’t miss Dudley Hall and Dudley Commons, home to the School of Architecture and the College of Architecture, Design and Construction. Two special exhibits that will be of interest to SESAH members will be on view in Dudley Commons. Boyd Childress, Head of the Library of Architecture, Design, and Construction, is planning a photo exhibit of American academic libraries, circa 1880-1920 for the ground-floor lobby and New Classicism: The Rebirth of Traditional Architecture, co-curated by Elizabeth Meredith Dowling and Anne Fairfax, will be on view in the second-floor Dean’s Conference Room. Finally, SESAH participants will be welcomed with a no-host bar reception (hors d’oeuvres provided) at the hotel and conference center starting at five. Please refer to the registration information for the other meeting events.

Please be aware that the average high temperature for Auburn in September is 85 degrees. We plan to provide plenty of water for all tours. We will also have sign-up sheets at the registration desk for those who might need rides to nearby events.

A reminder that there is limited space on the Saturday tours, so register early to get your first choice. If you sign up for the Rural Studio tour, please plan to dress for rugged and perhaps muddy conditions and don’t forget bug spray and a hat.

Additional updates, as well as a bibliography, will be posted on the SESAH website as the meeting date approaches.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at lewalns@auburn.edu.

See you in Auburn!

Nina Lewallen