I loved D.C. even before I knew that I loved cities in general. There was something about the power, the tradition, and the variety of architectural styles placed within the order of the L’Enfant Plan. So when I visited recently, began to remember why I loved the city then and found a few more reasons to love it now: A red castle, a circle of art, and a statue in a garden. Enjoy:
The Smithsonian Castle
The Hirshhorn Museum
Posted in Creativity, Significance, Space
Tagged Artifact, D.C., Hirshhorn Museum, History, Power, The Smithsonian Institution
Over the course of the past year, I’ve been writing my way through a bunch of different thoughts and ideas and the result has basically become the entirety of this blog. At the same time, I’ve also been gradually trying to connect the dots with one underlying theme: that life is all about circulation and significance, the movement as well as the moment.
Since my words don’t always make a lot of sense, I’m constantly trying to find new ways to explain myself and share what I think is interesting about the world: examples of circulation and significance in our daily lives. Most of these places are either what I consider Highways (circulation) or Hallowed Halls (significance). Today, I get to write about a place that embodies both of these characteristics and the tension that exists between the two.
I recently visited the Negro Burial Ground just east of downtown Richmond in Shockoe Valley. My approach to this site was across a VCU parking lot and through a tunnel under Broad St. As you walk through the tunnel, you emerge onto a huge empty field of beautiful grass that was once yet another parking lot in downtown Richmond. In recent years, the asphalt was removed and this area was designated “A Place of Contemplation and Reflection.” I appreciate this area mostly because it’s a complicated place. There aren’t physical buildings that most people would consider “historic,” but what happened on this one piece of ground (the public execution and careless burial of enslaved and free people) is considered enough to make the place significant today. Once a place of fear and violence, it has been restored to the people of Richmond as a place of silence and careful thought.
While I think the site itself is certainly worth visiting, what I really care about is a place located just above the actual burial grounds. From this vantage, you can see that less than 50 yards away from this place of contemplation is Interstate 95 in all of its glory. The cars and tractor trailers fly by on this crazy asphalt slingshot that shoots cars straight through the heart of my city. Like all highways, it’s a totally anonymous no man’s land where you don’t walk, you don’t slow down, and you don’t typically notice the historic burial grounds nearby. When you’re on a highway like this, you don’t care much for where you are because you’re more focussed on where you’re going. That’s essentially the nature of movement.
To get the photo above, I climbed up a little hill to the foot of the Broad St. bridge I had previously walked underneath. For a while, I just sat up on the hill and watched the disinterested movement of the highway next to the contemplative stillness of the old burial ground. I realized that we need both the movement and the moment, but I think sometimes we feel like we have to make a choice: You have to be either ambitious or thoughtful, motivated or lazy. When I experience a place like this, it reminds me that we should be aware of both aspects of life. It also makes me a little more hopeful that my writing is still relevant. What I have learned through writing this blog is still teaching me and making the world a more interesting place.
While I was looking out on the scene, I realized that photos and words are limited media for describing ideas such as movement and moment. So I filmed a brief and simple video (below) that might help to further explain this relationship. It’s much more about the idea than the video itself … and I recommend muting the video sound and listening to Lisbon, OH by Bon Iver while you watch it.
As always, more to come.
P.S. ↬ to Gwarlingo for the movement/moment pairing … it used to be found in their explanation of the meaning of the word Guarlingo which is Welsh for the sound a grandfather clock makes before it strikes on the hour, “the movement before the moment.” Of course, my blog is about the movement and the moment, but I thought it was an interesting side note.Posted in Hallowed Hall, Memory, Movement, Significance
Tagged Artifact, cemetery, Contemplation, depave, downtown, Gwarlingo, highway, I-95, identity, Loss, Memory place, Negro Burial Ground, race, Richmond, Shockoe Valley
Cemeteries are memory personified.
They are the tangible outcome of the human desire to be remembered. The desire to last beyond our death. They are the pyramids of the masses; each grave a person’s last chance to make their case for God and men. Cemeteries are also a halmark of civilized society … not everyone receives the dignity of a headstone. And because not all headstones are created equal, they’re also a tangible and public investment in the future of the family name.
In his book, The Language of Towns and Cities, Dhiru Thadani writes an entry for cemeteries that includes two photos of Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond. “Authentic towns and cities have cemeteries,” he writes, “and space should be planned to accommodate this essential component when designing new towns.” When I read this, I appreciated Thadani’s attention to the value of cemeteries in modern life. I also considered it a bit of a coup for Richmond considering the other noteworthy cemeteries in America. Then again, it’s completely justified.
There is something so basic and yet remarkable about the time and care that was taken in the planning and development of Hollywood Cemetery. It’s no wonder Richmond’s aristocracy used to picnic on the hills of Hollywood overlooking the James River. They escaped the smoke of the city, tidied up their family plot, and caught a cool breeze on warm summer days. Since the cemetery was first planned, it has been maintained, improved, and today remains a destination in this old American city. A brick walkway was added to create “President’s Circle” where two former US presidents are buried. The cemetery stands, in part, as a testament to the longevity of power and tradition in American society.
Another remarkable cemetery in Richmond, one that is not highlighted in Thadani’s epic, is Evergreen Cemetery. I visited Evergreen four days before I visited Hollywood and, as anyone would tell you, the difference is stark. Where one has improved, the other has declined. Where one is prominently placed on the hills overlooking the James, the other is beside a highway in Church Hill. Where one is a testament to power, the Other is a testament to the longevity of systemic stigmatization and shame.
At one time, Evergreen Cemetery must have been a place of prominence in the black community. At least a generation of leaders, their family and friends were buried in this place. The most noteworthy resident is of course the famed Maggie L. Walker: the first American woman to “charter a bank in the United States.” Her grave, like many others, is now shaded in the canopy of a forest that has grown where there was once a field. Mausoleums have been raided, pathways are hidden by brush, and the lives of black Richmond are gradually being lost to time.
With cemeteries, it’s always difficult to understand who is responsible for upkeep. The children of the deceased, the businessmen who sold the plots, or the society at large. The more fascinating question to me, of course, is not who, but why? At its most fundamental level, the maintenance of graves is actually a maintenance of one’s personal identity and heritage. In the case of Hollywood, this is both American and Confederate heritage. In both cases, the members of these groups seem totally unashamed of their pride. They live boldly in their past and work tirelessly to maintain the vestiges which prove it’s legitimacy.
In contrast, the people who would have maintained a place such as Evergreen were a vastly more manipulated and displaced group in the twentieth century. The successful class of black Richmonders, once confined to the city, were proud to erect monuments and sustain traditions that defied the white power structure’s condescending narrative of black inferiority. Once segregation was overthrown, however, many left the city behind and perhaps coincidently left behind their heritage as well. Of course, this is true of nearly every American who left the city in the twentieth century. And yet, one cemetery shines and the other is being slowly eroded by time.
“Segregated at Death” was a title that I considered for this post, but I decided that it wasn’t the message with which I wanted to lead. I decided that it would be more worthwhile to simply present these two cemeteries and hopefully develop more of a holistic understanding of both (and cemeteries in general) in the context of the other. Thadani’s omission of Evergreen is unfortunate, but not unexpected: his work is often more concerned with aesthetic than politics. For me, I believe that if if we’re going to talk about cemeteries, we ought to at least consider both sides of the American color line to get the full story.
If anyone else wants to start tearing down trees at Evergreen let me know! I still think it can be saved and I would love to be a part of clearing the brush from old Richmond graves. The task is daunting (if you’ve been there, you know), but I think would be worth it.
Perhaps the more we work the more we will know why.
This post is a part of a series I’m putting together on my RVA page.
There is nothing more creative than adaptive reuse. In a world of earth movers and concrete slabs, redeveloping old buildings has become more rare than starting from scratch. Adaptive reuse forces creative builders to work in an existing space and create something that honors the history of the space while also recreates a new use for old bricks.
My favorite current adaptive reuse project in Richmond is the Live/Work Lofts at Beckstoffer’s Mill. I like this project because it’s compact (one city block), extremely well-done (down to the brick sidewalks), and it’s in the middle of a neighborhood. The old wood mill has been reimagined and resurrected for twenty-first century use. Yay for creativity and hard work in Church Hill.
This is a part of my, Cataloguing Richmond series on my RVA page.
Posted in Lost Treasure, Significance, Space
Tagged adaptive reuse, Artifact, Beckstoffers, brownfield, Church Hill, creativity, existing space, factory, Live/Work Lofts, Old bricks, reimagine, retrofit, Richmond, RVA, Urbanism
On May 31, 1950, the Richmond Times-Dispatch ran a cartoon titled “They’ll Do It Every Time.” I guess the “bad driver” trope was the 1950s alternative to the “captive wife.” It’s pretty self explanatory:
Posted in Perception, Weekend Graphic
Tagged Artifact, comics, downtown, identity, rhetoric, Richmond Times-Dispatch, RVA
They don’t build ’em like they used to … so why don’t we take care of the old stuff? My “Lost Treasure” category is for structures and spaces that have been forgotten. The first entry is my favorite bit of public infrastructure in Tyler. The tunnel is a stone arch made of stone with a capstone that reads, “1880.” You might not have noticed it just east of the intersection of Elm St. and Fannin Ave. Here’s a link to the Google map aerial shot for reference. This is something worth restoring:
On Monday Nov. 14 1965, the Richmond Times-Dispatch published an article in the opinion section. It reads,
In the 1950s and 60s, members of the automobile hegemony often made grand statements. I’m amazed that even in 1965 this one sounded like a bad idea.
So we all know that our downtowns aren’t what they used to be. They’re cleaner, taller and most importantly (in most places) they’re quieter. There’s just no people. But we Americans also all seem to carry this strange collective memory of a heyday when our cities and our downtowns were bustling, busy, smelly and successful.
In that era, downtown was a source of pride and a symbol of ambition and progress. In her book Downtown America, Alison Isenberg describes downtown as the cite of transformation, protest, destruction and renewal. Most importantly, she argues, the history of downtown America teaches us about ourselves as Americans and specifically what we value. She writes,
“It has been the people — their crusades, their financial stake, their ideals, and their changing priorities — that have given meaning, hopes, and limitations to the material condition of downtown and that ultimately have given Main Street its form. This interplay puts buildings up and takes them down (Insnberg, 316).
It was people who cast a vision for a space and called it downtown. They called it special — worth taking a risk and worth making bold statements. But today downtown America is mostly just a few lines on a historical marker, “This place was once great because ___.” There are very few people who live downtown, there is little diversity, and most of the buildings are relics of a once-proud past. We have lost downtown and the institutions that resided there. All we have now is a memory of a space and an incredible longing for the heyday of our cities.
In the past few months I have visited two small towns that perfectly encapsulated this nostalgia. The first is Houma, Louisiana and the second is Ilwaco, Washington. 
In Houma, I experienced the mélange of Louisiana cultures: Country music bars, party busses blaring rap music (it was Mardi Gras weekend), old southern mansions, a beautiful old courthouse and food carts serving Mexican food. As I walked through the city I noticed a mural of an old “Main St.” scene (above). “A look in to the past …” the mural reads, “Historic Downtown Houma.” The larger image is of “Main Street looking west” and the smaller image to the right is of the old Houma Courthouse ca. 1906. I suppose this mural, sponsored by the Downtown Business Association, was an attempt to remind people in the region of the proud history of Houma. Hopefully visitors will enjoy a stroll “into the past,” spend their money, and come again.
The second example of a nostalgic mural (left) is a little more complex. It is titled a “Main Street” mural in Ilwaco, WA located on, not Main St., but Spruce St. at the intersection of First Ave. This mural depicts the same nostalgia for a bustling past with cars! trains! A/C grid! and a man with a hat! walking through the street. This is clearly a mural of past progress and innovation. 
When I looked closer, however, I realized that it’s actually a mural of a mural of progress. On the left side of the mural, there’s a boy walking with a skateboard toward the mural of the old Main St. The boy seems to represent a newer sort of progress, but is placed in context of the historical legacy of the city.
So what are these murals trying to say?
Greg Dickenson writes extensively about the connection between memory and place and the significance of both on personal identity. He considers the new spaces that we inhabit (e.g. McDonalds and strip malls) which seem devoid of historical context. They are clean and new, but what do these spaces lack? Dickenson’s perspective states,
“In a post-traditional period, a time of deepening memory crisis, secured place becomes harder and harder to maintain, giving rise to nostalgia to cover the discomforts of the present.”
This nostalgia is often revealed in murals such as the two above as well as in old photographs, old marquees, historical markers and similar references to the past. It is sort of a cheap nostalgia because it really doesn’t help us to understand the complexities of the past. I think that a more complex history would defeat the purpose of increasing tourism because it wouldn’t make people feel “comfortable” in these nostalgic places. The problem with that simple message is that when downtown was bustling it was a complex place. As long as we continue to sanitize (“suburbanize”) our cities for the sake of visitors and tourism we fail to revitalize (“urbanize”) our downtowns.
Posted in Significance, Space
Tagged Artifact, downtown, identity, Loss, Memory place, node, nostalgia
Well, it happened. My university invited students, families, professors and friends to unite and create a weekend of temporary places throughout campus and the city. These were places of reunion, reflection, celebration and, ultimately, the conferral of a degree for each student’s completed course of study. This invitation created an incredible pull which brought people (with means) from all over the world to join each other for a brief moment and to give legitimacy to the ceremony of graduation. It was excellent.
My family seven united in Richmond in order to celebrate my achievements as well as to enjoy each other’s company on this incredible weekend. As it was also Mother’s Day, the reunion of graduation assumed even more significance to my family and others. In some amazing way, the presence of my family on this day allowed me to love my college experience because it had been shared with those I love. The temporary place of Graduation, while nostalgic, is also intended to become even more powerful a memory than those considered on that day. Now, the place of Graduation in my memory has truly become the culmination of life that many hoped it would be.
Perhaps the most significant place during this process was a small patch of grass beside Ryland Hall. It was here that my thesis adviser met my family including my parents and my 93-year-old grandfather. To me, this was a place of Healing because my grandfather and parents are the reasons why I was empowered to attend college, but they did not know what I would eventually learn. In four years, I wrote many papers and had many conversations that they would not agree with and developed passions that seem impractical. Often during this time, I viewed college as more of an implicit rebellion than a submission to my grandfather’s provision. Despite this attitude, I worked hard and developed relationships with people like Dr. Brandenberger who watched me grow. When Dr. Brandenberger met my grandfather, he made the comment that I got my money’s worth. He couldn’t have chosen a better person with which to share that news.
As I now (appropriately) reflect on the place of Graduation, I realize that it was a different place for each participant and now exists as many different memories in each person who attended. For some, it was perhaps another place of loneliness and for others I believe it was an inconsequential celebration that they felt they deserved. For me, it was a place of redemption and celebration, not of my achievements, but of the blessing it is to have a family that can create such a place of love anywhere in the world. The milestone served its purpose and I truly believe that I have completed more than I ever imagined I would in four years. Now that I am done, I stand on the past and look forward to the places I will create with other people in the future. I know not where or with whom but I know that I will be committed and active in the process of creating meaningful places.
It is exciting, indeed.
When I was young, people taught me history from a book. This history was often a history of nations and political places (e.g. Texas, Germany, the South) and we usually discussed history as a distant idea with little relevance to our lives. I believe this omission is common practice, but in many ways it prevented me from fully appreciating the legacy of history and what Faulkner famously stated is “never dead … not even past.” Additionally, I’ve come to realize that the political history I was taught was difficult to interact with because politics themselves are abstract. I began to realize that the national history seems irrelevant because it seems to only indirectly relates to one’s personal life. I believe that we should rediscover the value in local, applied history that engages the mind on many different levels. Furthermore, I have realized that in studying the physical structures of a society one can develop a deeper understanding of the politics and power of the past.
This is my manifesto for studying that which is built.
Consider the legacy of segregation in America. While there has not been a law mandating segregation for decades, the reality of segregation today is difficult to deny. This legacy lives on in both the tangible structures and the intangible social divisions that locked themselves into the urban landscape years ago.
In my hometown, Jim Crow told black residents to live north of the railroad tracks and white residents of course lived to the south. This one simple policy, coupled with latent racism, has transformed my city into an oblong egg shape as more and more businesses and people move farther south. While they may claim they are moving towards new regions, they are also moving farther away from the historically black and historically poor northern region of the city. Implicit within this movement to the south is the stigmatization of those neighborhoods to the north and their residents. This stigmatization is no longer written in law, but it lingers in the streets named after MLK, the local HBCU Texas College, the Salvation Army and other similar signifiers of race and class. The power of stigma prevents many developers and individuals from imagining a profitable future for the spaces to the north of downtown Tyler. It’s a mental block, but it is directly informed by the physical environment.
This is because the built environment makes statements about the relative significance of a place. On the surface, buildings teach the observer about an area and the people who live there. On a deeper level, buildings teach the scholar about the society that has shaped that place and transformed it’s potential. Greg Dickinson further describes the way buildings “speak” to us in his article “Memories For Sale: Nostalgia and the Construction of Identity in Old Pasadena.” Dickinson writes, “Places are often constructed to make claims about a society. As time passes, these places become rhetorical artifacts that can maintain rhetorical and memorial significance. (Dickinson, 4). This rhetorical significance is powerful and shapes the way we experience places whether or not we are aware. There are many structures that obviously make claims about a society (e.g. Confederate monuments in Richmond) and others that are more subtle such as bike lanes and sidewalks for those who cannot afford to drive. There are also “absences” in many cities where significant places have been destroyed and memories have been lost (I will discuss memory places more at a later time).
As a student, I was not made fully aware of the rhetorical and historical nature of places until an independent study on the rhetoric of highway battles with Dr. Kevin Kuswa. As a spatial thinker, this lesson illuminated my view of the American city and activated my brain to think of history and society in three-dimensions. I believe that it is necessary to teach our students about the built environment because we will begin to realize how significant history is to our individual cities and lives. It helps to answer questions such as, “Why does everyone in my neighborhood look the same?” and “Why aren’t the roads in our neighborhood paved?” The city becomes the classroom and the students become active participants in both learning about the general history and more significantly about themselves and their place in society on a local and national level.
Highways and Hallowed Halls 