1999.02.11 10:28

I'm now going to relate a story that may or may not have something to do with "feelings" and place.

I spent the summer of 1978 in Perry, Missouri (population 839) as a Historic American Building Survey (H.A.B.S.) student team member. Our team was surveying and documenting two small towns and a variety of domestic buildings that were to be demolished after our survey because the land was soon going to be under water once the Salt River Dam was complete. One of the buildings I surveyed along with Barbara Hendricks (a architecture student from Texas) was so remote that Barbara and I were dropped off in the morning and not picked up again until 4 o'clock in the afternoon. The house was named for Samuel Bell, and it was a simple 2 story farm house with a front porch, central hall, and a gable roof running from side to side. I soon discovered that we could easily get on the roof by going out one of the second story windows and onto the lower roof of the one story addition to the back of the house. I suggested we eat our lunch up on the ridge of the roof.

From the ridge of the roof a portion of the Salt River valley lay before us. The view was indeed beautiful, especially its rawness, and it was weird to think that this was all going to be under water in the near future. As a born and raised northeastern urbanite, all of rural Missouri offered me a plethora of new sensory impressions, and at this spot I found myself wondering what the "Indians" may have once thought of this place. Again, I was struck by the natural raw beauty of it all, and I said to Barbara, "I think this place is sacred." Barbara quickly retorted, "there are a lot of other places I'd call sacred before this."

About a month later, toward the end of the summer when most of the team was in the office drafting, our team historian, Travis McDonald (who is today the resident architectural historian of Thomas Jefferson's Poplar Forest), came into the office with exciting news -- demolition of the Samuel Bell house was put to a halt and the archeologists, who were also working in the region that summer, were to set up a dig there because it was discovered that the Samuel Bell house was built upon an Indian burial site. I immediately turned to Barbara and said, "I told you that place was sacred!"

In all honesty, I didn't experience any special "feelings" while I was at the Bell House. It just happened that the notion of sacredness entered my mind as I was giving a little thought to what I saw.





art imitates [what a] life
2003.10.03 15:42

During the summer of 1979, I worked in Savannah, Georgia for H.A.B.S, the Historic American Building Survey. As part of a team of hired architecture students, I measured and drew the plans of many homes within Savannah's Victorian District, which was then a somewhat decrepit neighborhood of Victorian homes, rentals populated by mostly poor African-Americans. After our survey (which most times meant going through occupied residences), the homes were to be renovated (with Federal money; remember Carter was then President), but the population was not to be displaced, rather moved into another renovated home (that is until the Federal subsidies were no longer available).

One of the last houses on my to do list was a twin with four living units. Permission to get into all but one upstairs unit was easy; a wife was always home in this last unit, but the husband would only allow us (me and another student) in if he was there to. Finally, one day after he got home from work, we were let in. I didn't really like the looks the husband and wife were giving us, but you kind of got used to that after spending a summer walking through every inch of other's people's habitats. We started in the back of the unit and worked forward, and then we got a shock when we entered the living room, where he was sitting on the floor while she picked dirt out of his hair; the FLINTSTONES was on TV. On the floor around the entire perimeter of the room were pretty nasty porn magazines laid neatly side by side; around the perimeter of the room is exactly where we had to go to take measurments. Job accomplished, albeit on tip toe. The next room, in front of the stairhall (what used to be called the trunk room because that's where Victorians kept their trunks) was full of a rather extensive collection of rifles. I took one look and said to my partner, "The rest of this place has exactly the same measurments as the unit next door."

"Bye. We're done now. We'll let ourselves out."




Re: architects from D.C.?
2004.08.19 13:51

I worked in the DC area the Summer of 1981. I know that doesn't count now. Lived in a house-share on 13th St. just south of Q. Still remember hearing the clicking of hookers' highheels pacing up and down the sidewalk while trying to sleep at night. Each day drove down to Gunston Hall, Virginia, colonial home of George Mason who wrote the Virginia Declaration of Rights which in turn became the US Constitution Bill of Rights. The house was being surveyed and measured top to bottom for HABS--drawings now at the Library of Congress. Hardly an exciting place, but valuable Paul Revere silver pieces were stolen from the Dining Room (--completely documenting that room was one of my assignments) one weekend (luckily I was then at the Jersey shore). Plus it was surmised by the end of the summer that all the tour guides were practicing witches--Colonial Dames through and through, you know.

I drove home (to my just inherited house) back in Philadelphia every weekend, so the only time I got to know DC was during the week in the evenings. All the museums on the Mall were open till nine pm then, so I many times visited all of them. I used to know the National Gallery by heart, but not anymore. Masolino's ANNUNCIATION inspired chronosomatics, however. Toward the end of the summer I discovered the Library of Congress remained open till 10 pm, so I went there a lot too. All the public manifestations of our federal government nicely impressed me back then.

One night while R was visiting I drove him around to the east parking lot of the Capitol. The building looks magnificent at night from there, and you could literally drive right up to the steps. R wanted a better view so he stuck his whole torso out the car window. Then a guard angrily yelled, "Get back in the car!"

During August, our HABS team captain and his girlfriend were house-sitting Wolf von Eckart’s place just off Dupont Circle. Both Wolf and his girlfriend, (the) Miss Manners, lived there, so it was fun getting an up-close and personal tour of that.

I have fun and youthful memories of DC, but I've returned there only trice in 23 years.

ps
Imagine this, one architecture student and one recent architecture grad belting out tunes from the ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW behind the closed doors of George Mason's study, exactly where the eventual US Bill of Rights were first written. "There's a light! Over at the Frankenstein place..." etc.


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good luck, tk.arch.
when they say end of April, they mean end of April.