Brick Making and the Production of Place at the Tuskegee Institute

Brick Making and the Production ofPlace at the Tuskegee Institute DONALD E.ARMSTRONG,JR. I n 1883, on the site of the Tuskegee Normal School, the first brick was laid for the foundation of Alabama Hall. As a carrier of meaning, this small masonry unit, irregular in shape, its surface a mottled topography of pits, dents, and other deformations, embodied the story ofstudent brick-making at the school. This story has been retold for more than onehundred years, including the account by the school's founder, Booker T. Washington, in his autobiography Up From Slavery. The story of the student brick-making has also been prominently featured in scholarly works on the life of Washington and the architecture of the campus, most notably those by Dr. Richard K. Dozier and Louis R. Harlan.1 This paper focuses on the early years of the student brick-making program (1883-1900) with reference to the contemporaneous Arts and Crafts movement. The story of the roughhewn bricks made by the students demonstrates that a significant aspect of architectural design is the making of its constituent materials. When that making is based on hand-working local raw materials into rustic construction materials, the approach advocated by both the Tuskegee brickmakers and the Arts and Crafts movement, the result is humanistic architecture that engages its natural context.2 Background The founding and early development of the student brick-making program at Tuskegee under Booker T. Washington was influenced by his experience at the Hampton Institute. During Reconstruction at Hampton and other black industrial schools with student manual-labor programs, the tradition of brick-making was preserved as practiced earlier by slave artisans and possibly by their Mrican ancestors. This tradition illuminates the significant role that artisan material-makers played in the design process. During the period of slavery in the United States, slave artisans, some perhaps with a memory of Mrican brick-making, made bricks by hand on plantations and in brickyards. Indigenous Mrican architecture reflects"a highly refined technical knowledge of the potential of clay" as used in sun-dried bricks. There were Mrican origins to other construction skills practiced by slaves, such as wickerwork wall construction.3 Slave artisans worked across the South including antebellum Alabama, where they"often constructed the homes in which their masters lived," likely engaging in brick-making. This manual brick-making was an act of design that contributed to the rich regional character of brick buildings. Some of these slaves may have passed on their brick-making knowledge to their descendants who, as faculty or hired laborers, may have transmitted their knowledge to the Tuskegee students.4 During Reconstruction,socialforces impeded the transmission of brick-making and other artisan knowledge to blacks, but it was kept alive in black schools, where student manual-labor programs offered courses in brick-making. Following the Civil War, the number of black artisans dropped, primarily due to industrialization. Some black schools kept artisanship alive through trades programs. A few of these were part of the Student Manual28 ARRIS Volume Sixteen DONALD E. ARMSTRONG, JR. Labor Movement, a "...short-lived experiment in American education," which combined academics with trades. Its purpose was to allow impoverished students to pay for their education with labor.5 Several of these schools had student brick-making programs, including Hampton Institute, Hampton, Virginia, where Booker T. Washington received his college degree, and Talladega College in Talladega, Alabama. Some white schools and integrated schools, including Berea College in Berea, Kentucky, also had student brick-making programs.6 Following the establishment ofthe Tuskegee Institute, other black schools used student brickmaking programs to construct campus buildings. These include the Centerville Industrial School in Centerville, Alabama, and the Piney Woods School, in Braxton, Mississippi. At the Snow Hill Institute, Snow Hill, Alabama, brickmaking was taught by a Tuskegee graduate.7 Student labor continued to be used throughout the twentieth century. Buildings designed by Frank Lloyd Wright for Florida Southern College in Lakeland, Florida, and Taliesin West made use of student labor.8 The Process ofBrick-Making On July 4, 1881, the Tuskegee Normal School opened in a "dilapidated shanty near the Coloured Methodist Church," in Tuskegee, Alabama, with Booker T. Washington as...