Abstracts of Papers Presented
Session 1-A: Earth, Wind and Water: Perspectives on Environment, Culture and Landscape (9:00 – 10:20 a.m.) Feix Ballroom, Room 108.
No Stopping the Dust: The Dust Bowl and Oklahoma’s Vernacular Architecture
Alyson Greiner, Oklahoma State University
Much has been written about the Dust Bowl and its ecological, financial, and psychological traumas, and for good reason. We still have a great deal to learn about the resolve and resilience of those who migrated, as well as those who remained to eke out a living during these challenging times. Few studies, however, have addressed the impact of the Dust Bowl on the Oklahoma vernacular. This paper offers an exploratory foray into this topic. The research draws on photographic and other historical records, and preliminary findings lead to reflections on changes in the symbolic meaning of the house and home.
Perceptions of Landscape Values and Threats in the Delaware River Basin
Claire Janz, Antonia Price, Scott Drzyzga, and Dorlisa Minnick, Shippensburg University
In the Delaware River Basin, water is the center of $25 billion in annual economic activity, including recreation, water quality, water supply, hunting and fishing, ecotourism, silvaculture, agriculture, open space, and port activities. Landscape values underpin many of these activities and reflect competing cultural perspectives on how resources should be used or managed. This research explores how conservation practitioners, land use planners, and other related professionals value landscapes across the 13,500 square mile river basin, with a focus on what they perceive are the basin’s greatest strengths and weaknesses, and future challenges and opportunities. Data from a series of 5 workshops held through the basin were analyzed using text data mining software. Data were also collected via surveys and analyzed quantitatively. Results revealed a series of complex and interrelated resource management themes, ranging from the importance of local food production to funding for technology and data collection. Strengths and weaknesses were often acknowledged to be “two sides of the same coin,” with perceived economic opportunity often competing with landscape preservation goals. This is most apparent in the energy sector, where development of solar and wind farms and exploitation of natural gas resources competes with a desire to preserve intact forests and beautiful vistas. We also found geographic differences in landscape values and perceived threats. These results illustrate 1) landscape values reflect competing views on resource management; 2) perceived strengths and weaknesses are geographically variable, indicating that they are contextualized by the day-to-day experiences of individuals. These findings have implications for how basin-wide management goals and strategies can be effectively defined and communicated.
The Grand Valley Diversion (Roller) Dam: Appreciating an Everyday Landscape
Jeffrey Widener, University of Oklahoma
For the past 100 years, the Grand Valley Diversion Dam has maintained a constant elevation of Colorado River water so that the Grand Valley irrigation canals, which are the lifeblood of this small and rapidly urbanizing agricultural region, could flow consistently as water levels fluctuated. In June 2015, the Palisade Historical Society held a birthday celebration that showcased the significance of this invaluable landscape. The outreach event included guest presentations by water managers, Colorado Representatives, and relatives of former dam workers. Local organizations associated with water issues, including the Tamarisk Coalition, were present to provide advice and information. In addition, the celebration included an art contest/exhibit wherein artists communicated the importance of the dam and of water in the American West. This is a community of only a couple thousand people so having around 500 visitors in attendance for the day and having 300 people take part in the cake-cutting is indeed impressive. And as I ate my cake, drank my fresh, locally produced Talbott’s Mountain Gold Apple Juice, examined the fine pieces of artwork, and talked to attendees, I readily recognized just how important public humanities events such as this one are as vehicles for presenting everyday landscapes.
The Landscape Backstory of Discarded Sachet Water Bags in Niamey, Niger
Sara Beth Keough and Scott M. Youngstedt, Saginaw Valley State University
In Niamey, Niger, there are several ways that individuals access water outside of the piped water network. This paper explores one such way: the production, sale, and consumption of “pure water,” or ½ liter bags of water sold cold by mobile vendors on the street or from small shops. When purchased, this water is consumed immediately, and the plastic bags are discarded nearby. Through interviews with producers, vendors, and consumers, we explore the commodity chain involved in the delivery of this cold, “pure” water in Niamey, and the cultural landscapes created through this hybridized economic activity.
Session 1-B: Ethnic Landscapes (9:00 – 10:20 a.m.) Robertson Ballroom, Room 109.
Habsburg Colonial Policy, Material Culture and Ethnicity in the Danube Swabian Landscapes of the Romanian Banat
Timothy G. Anderson, Ohio University
This paper addresses the origin, structure and meaning of planned villages associated with the 18th-century Habsburg colonization of the Romanian Banat. One of the most distinctive elements of the cultural landscape associated with this colonization was the design and construction of dozens of centrally-planned agricultural villages for German colonists, most of which are gridded communities with highly distinctive material culture elements. Employing fieldwork and archival research, the paper addresses how the re-settlement of the Banat represented an opportunity to conduct a controlled experiment in the implementation of new Cameralist policies on the part of Habsburg planners and engineers and how the region’s cultural landscapes represent a distinctive historical-political discourse materialized in the landscape.
“Dutch Double” Houses and the Value of Authenticity
Lisa Brownell, Ohio History Connection
This paper explores the story of the "Dutch double" house type, a common vernacular house style found in the German Village National Register historic district in Columbus, OH. These modest homes are side by side duplexes built of red brick with their gable ends facing the street. On the one hand, this is a story of vernacular building styles employed in America by working class German immigrants in the 19th century. On the other hand, it is the story of the way a community tells stories about itself to others, the way it crafts its history around truly historic artifacts, but tells stories that are not necessarily truly authentic. In the end the paper argues that these types of inauthentic stories are not only acceptable but valuable in sustaining a rich sense of place.
The Migration of Canary Islanders and Their Culture to Louisiana
Gerald T. McNeill, Southeastern Louisiana University
The Canary Islanders or Islenos migrated to Louisiana between the years 1778 to 1783. This was during the time period when Spain ruled Louisiana. These Islanders migrated from a chain of small islands less than one hundred miles west of the African coast, which was southwest of the Spanish peninsula, but the Islanders spoke a native Portuguese dialect. Many of these Canary Islanders joined the Spanish military and some even were conscripted into the Spanish military to help populate Louisiana and to try to keep out the English or any friends of the English. Other Islanders were agriculturists. The Spanish Crown had offered each volunteer a home, tools, and the means of subsistence for at least four years. The Canary Islanders settled in four main areas – San Bernardo de Galvez, Galveztown, Valenzuela, and Nueva Iberia. San Bernardo de Galvez turned out to be the most important settlement of the Islenos. The Spaniards called the district “Terra de Buyes”, but it became better known as the French, “Terre-aux-boeuf” or the land of the oxen. These Islanders were isolated in many cases, but their settlement areas developed a strong culture, which still survives in Louisiana even though the physical landscape - the coastal areas – has changed tremendously. Both the Islenos culture and the Louisiana physical landscape aspects will be emphasized to understand what these peoples once had and what they have lost.
Ethnic Landscapes in America: The Future
John A. Cross, University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh
What ethnic landscapes will we see in the United States in the future? Change will undoubtedly be observed, just as today’s immigrants are quite different from those who arrived one or two centuries ago—but what changes will be seen? Which ethnic landscapes will have largely disappeared, and what ones will have become more conspicuous? Geographers and historians have long recognized commonalities among those ethnic groups that made the greatest impacts upon the cultural landscape, including time of arrival, size of ethnic group, isolation of population, concentration or dispersal of population, and the physical and cultural environment that surrounds the group’s settlement. What forces enhancing assimilation or persistence does the group encounter, and how does it respond? Are certain ethnic groups differentially vulnerable to environmental threats?
This paper dwells upon the role that active resistance to assimilation will have in shaping future ethnic landscapes in America. In contrast to the forces of assimilation that have seen Irish, German, Italian, Mexican, and many Asian immigrant populations become integral parts of the American landscape, contributing elements that have changed the generic American landscape, certain ethnic populations have much more proactively resisted such assimilation. Their imprint upon the nation’s ethnic landscape has grown, as they separate their settlements from unwanted influences of American society. Examples include the Amish, the Hutterites, and the Hasidic Jews.
Session 2-A: Preservation 1 (10:40 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.) Feix Ballroom, Room 108.
The Kuhn Family Cemetery
Paul Marr and Sam Edwards, Shippensburg University
The Kuhn family cemetery in Franklin County, Pennsylvania is typical of early rural burying grounds. Set aside by landowner Peter Kuhn in the late 18th century, this hilltop cemetery was active for over 100 years. As the family sold off land or left the area, the cemetery fell into disuse and disrepair. In 2016, descendants of Peter Kuhn initiated a project to determine the size and number of burials in the cemetery, as well as an overall assessment of its condition and advice on restoration and preservation. In addition to the 15 currently marked graves, we located another ≈ 22 likely graves and ≈ 10 possible graves. Through the use of grave probes it was also determined that the burials were very shallow (1.25 feet) below the modern surface. This was likely the result of the cemetery’s location where the shallow depth to bedrock, thin soil cover, and erosion which made digging deeper graves very difficult. We advised against active restoration of the grave markers at this time, as this can be expensive and requires skilled application, opting instead for stabilization and maintenance of the markers. Finally, we suggested clearing the undergrowth and the removing unstable trees which would help preserve the site and limit additional damage to the remaining markers.
Battle Harbour, Labrador: From Resettlement to Restoration
Dawn S. Bowen, University of Mary Washington
Battle Harbour, Labrador, was established in the 1770s as a center for the salt cod fishery. For over two centuries, the island was one of Labrador’s primary fishing and trade centers. In the 1960s, the Newfoundland government offered economic incentives for people to relocate to larger, more centralized locales. By the late 1960s, nearly all of the community’s residents had moved to Mary’s Harbour. Battle Harbour continued to function as a fish processing center until the moratorium on the cod fishery in 1992. What was distinctive about Battle Harbour was that its “room” – the term given to the totality of the buildings dedicated to fish and seal processing – remained wholly intact. During the next seven years, a total of 20 buildings were restored and interconnected walkways and wharves were rebuilt. The project provided a significant boost to the local economy, with 20 individuals reconstructing buildings. Battle Harbour’s structures are significant because they provide tangible evidence of an industry and a way of life that once defined the province.
Making a Molehill out of a Blair Mountain: The Erasure of Heritage and Landscape in the Southern Appalachian Coalfields
Christa A. Smith, Clemson University, and Margaret M. Gripshover, Western Kentucky University
The historic preservation movement in America has moved far beyond its “George Washington Slept Here” roots, to one that now includes documenting and commemorating neglected and sometimes uncomfortable histories. Twenty-first century practitioners now seek to preserve buildings, sites, artifacts and landscapes related to race, gender, contested spaces, and more recently, LBGT experiences. This paper focuses on the efforts to preserve the contested space of Blair Mountain, WV. Blair Mountain is the site of the 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain, which was the largest organized armed uprising in American labor history. The decades-long effort to preserve the mountain and prevent the erasure of this significant battlefield, is examined. The listing of Blair Mountain Battlefield to the National Register of Historic Places in March, 2009 and the subsequent delisting of the site four months later, resulted in significant local political fallout and nationwide attention. The delisting of Blair Mountain Battlefield confirms that historic preservation continues to serve as an important mechanism for negotiation and accommodation between disparate groups as they seek to control competing visions of identity and memory of contested spaces. The effort to preserve Blair Mountain, WV plays out against the backdrop of corporations vs. environmentalists; local vs. the “outsider;” and the local vs. local. The failure of preservation efforts to effectively negotiate among competing interests could ultimately result in the physical erasure, via mountaintop removal, of this important American landscape.
Session 2-B: Mixed Media: Ink, Paper, Notes & Photos (10:40 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.) Robertson Ballroom, Room 109.
Stamps as Political Branding: The Changing Role of Place in U.S. State Centennial Issues
Stanely D. Brunn, University of Kentucky
The United States Postal Service has issued more than 5000 stamps in the past 170 years on a host of topics, including political, literary, scientific, cultural and entertainment individuals as well as Hollywood, sports, music, popular culture and prominent landmarks, national parks and state centennial or bicentennial issues. Stamps are “small diplomatic pieces of paper” issued by the state for users and viewers within its territorial boundaries and those outside. The stamp topics, designs, images and values are all meant to represent important historical and contemporary cultural, economic and social developments in the nation’s past. Less than 15 percent of all U.S. stamps have any place or location reference, including a state, territory or city, park or heritage site, unique landscape, a fair or festival, battlefield or museum. In this study I look at the 104 stamps issued in the past eighty years for a state centennial or bicentennial or related historical event. I consider stamps within the context of “political branding,” a framework where one looks carefully and critically at images and themes that the state wishes to associate with that state. Branding and consumer production have been the subject of work by a number of recent economic and social geographers, especially Andy Pike; political branding is a neglected topic that awaits study. I examine the centennial stamps by topic and year and identify four distinct periods of different designs and topics from the earliest stamps (1930s) which were mostly noted colonial leaders to the most recent (post 2000) which are colorful, generic and almost seductive landscape scenes. Key individuals were once popular subjects on these centennial issues, as were maps, but both have been reduced in important to almost “placeless landscape” features. Examples of stamps are illustrated in the presentation. With a critical read of these visual products and accompany text I explore what these stamps inform us about U.S. history, culture and politics and also suggest research topics for others interested in the political and cultural meanings of these small pieces of “political propaganda” in the U.S. and elsewhere.
Managing Paper: The Evolution of New Jersey’s Department of Motor Vehicles
Ellen Hostetter, University of Central Arkansas
Every American motorist must interact with their state’s Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) to complete basic, legal tasks: obtain a license to drive, register a vehicle or transfer title, regularly renew registrations and licenses. Dealing with the DMV is such a mundane part of life – associated with to-do lists and tedium – it is easy to forget that registration and licensing did not always exist, nor did each state’s vast DMV infrastructure. This presentation explores one state’s DMV – New Jersey – and one aspect of its backstory – how today’s DMV is, in many ways, the material effect of overseeing registration and licensing, regulatory actions that worked through paper.
The New Jersey Legislature was one of the first state governments to require individuals to register their motor vehicle(s) in 1903 and obtain a license to operate in 1906. Registration allowed the state to identify every machine on New Jersey’s roads by assigning each automobile a unique number. Licensing allowed the state to decide who could be on the road by passing each motorist through a standardized exam.
These two acts depended on paper. Documents were the legal link connecting individual machines and motorists to New Jersey government; they ensured that the state not only knew, but could remember, individual automobiles and state-approved motorists and that both automobiles and motorists had a verifiable legal identity. The ongoing implementation of registration and licensing required managing paper – not only storing records, but making them accessible. The evolution of records management is the evolution of the DMV.
Caverns and Caves Depicted in Music
Ralph Hartsock, University of North Texas
Music, like film, and the visual arts (painting, photography, ceramics, and sculpture) depicts objects that no longer exist. Smetana’s Moldau depicts a river that no longer exists in its original form, due to the construction of a dam. Several composers have treated one of the themes for ISLPMC 2016 in their music—caverns. This is a brief overview of some of these works about caverns. In Art Music, is the romantic era composer Felix Mendelssohn and his Fingal’s Cave overture. Otto Luening and Vladimir Ussachevsky contributed their electro-acoustic sounds for David Broekman to use in his Carlsbad Caverns, an episode from the television series Wide, Wide World. Some American popular songs, composed between 1850 and the early 20th century depict Mammoth Cave, those in Oregon, and elsewhere.
“The French Connection III”: Route 11 - A Biography of a Highway in Pictures – The Finale
Wayne Brew, Montgomery County Community College
U.S. Route 11 was constructed as part of a federal interstate highway program that began in the 1920s. Route 11 runs from the New York State border with Quebec Province at Rouses Point to just outside New Orleans. Over my lifetime I have traveled large portions of the road, but never in a systematic or consistent way. This is the third and last report of my findings along Route 11 from Knoxville, Tennessee to outside of New Orleans. In this report of the journey I will continue to peel back the layers of cultural landscape and to document the vernacular and commercial structures (including reuse) along the road. There will also be a discussion of the named portions of Route 11, the changing endpoint, and other oddities found along the way.
Session 3-A: War, Memory, and Commemoration (1:30 – 2:50 p.m.) Feix Ballroom, Room 108.
In Memory of the Sons of Tennessee: Nashville's War Memorial Building
Claudette Stager, Tennessee Historical Commission
While most citizens of Tennessee agreed that there should be a memorial to those who fought and died in World War I, not everyone agreed on what the memorial should be. Efforts began shortly after the war ended, but it was not until 1925 that the War Memorial Building in Nashville was completed. The state, city of Nashville, and Davidson County all worked toward completing a memorial and all three governments funded the project. Two architectural competitions were held with the review committee consisting of out-of-state architects. Bronze tablets and a large Victory statue, central to the memorial concept, were not completed until 1929 and 1931. The multi-use building stands as a memorial to those who served in several wars.
Building Powder City: Old Hickory Village, Davidson County, Tennessee
Tara Mitchell Mielnik, Metropolitan Nashville Historical Commission
In October 1917, the United States government optioned 5,600 acres of farmland in Davidson County, Tennessee, east of the city of Nashville and along the banks of the Cumberland River, for the construction of a munitions plant to provide gunpowder for the war effort in Europe. The federal government contracted with E.I DuPont de Nemours Company for the construction of the plant and associated facilities, including a railroad, worker housing, and other public service buildings for what would become the world’s largest powder plant. Construction speed, safety, and security were of utmost importance, and within months over four thousand buildings were constructed, including hundreds of residences for the tens of thousands of workers and their families who moved to the new town over a period of weeks in the spring and summer of 1918. The plant employed a large variety of workers, segregated by race, gender, ethnicity, and marital status, and including whites, blacks, and Latinos, as well as both men and women. The architecture of these new houses and residence halls was like nothing Nashville had seen before, using company town plans and mirroring similar DuPont communities in Virginia, Colorado, Montana, and Washington.
Following the Armistice, the new town emptied almost as quickly as it had populated. Buildings were left empty, and the government sold the land and improvements to a newly-created Nashville investment group. Within a few years, the DuPont Company returned to the area to construct a fiber silk plant, rehabilitating many of the residences for company housing. Old Hickory, as the community had become known, remained a company town under DuPont’s control until the mid-1940s, although DuPont would retain a plant presence into the 21st century.
As Old Hickory Village nears the celebration of its centennial, along with the centennial remembrances of the Great War, residents are loving caretakers of the remaining architectural history of the “the Village,” where over 500 original homes remain, many of them listed in the National Register of Historic Places. The preservation of Old Hickory Village is a permanent reminder of the wartime contributions of Tennesseans on the home front.
The Worst Fight of His Life: Alvin C. York and the Struggle to Create York Institute
Michael Birdwell, Tennessee Technological University
Known as the greatest draftee of the First World War due to the actions on October 8, 1918 in the Meuse-Argonne that earned him the Medal of Honor, Sergeant Alvin C. York returned to Tennessee with a singular vision---bring education to the rural children of the Cumberland Plateau. Armed with only a "third grade" education, life in the army convinced York of the necessity of a formal education. He courted the national spotlight, not for personal fame or glory, but to raise funds to build what became known as the York Industrial and Agricultural Institute. When he launched his campaign the Volunteer State did not have mandatory education and was ill equipped to provide those services. York traveled the country and met with educators across the United States seeking advice about how to move forward. Though he was celebrated in places like New York and Boston, he suffered personal humiliation at home. People scoffed at the notion of a man with limited education launching a school, and many locals questioned the need for formal schooling.
As York's struggle continued, he found assistance from the University of Tennessee and philanthropists who invested in the creation of a high school situated upon a 400 acre campus. York played a key role in the design of the 20,000 square foot structure in a modified Georgian style. He considered the creation of the school his greatest achievement, and wanted to be remembered for it rather than his military skills. The fight that he fought---which resulted in him mortgaging his home twice to pay teachers' salaries, buying a school bus from his own funds, and other acts of largesse—led to the state taking over the school to guarantee its success.
In 1980 the majestic brick building was abandoned for a newer more modern and less aesthetically appealing structure. Years of neglect and failure to put simple maintenance into the budget, caused the building to fall into disrepair, and the state of Tennessee informed Fentress County residents that the structure that Sergeant York made his life's work, would have to come down in 2007. This launched the second phase of Sergeant York's struggle as his three living children picked up the torch to save and preserve the building. Since 2007 several interested parties pitched in to stabilize and mothball the building and now efforts are in the works to have it turned over to the Sergeant York Patriotic Foundation to oversee the restoration and adaptive reuse of the structure that will be used for higher education, museum and meeting space, and a satellite VA clinic.
Conflict in “God’s Acre”: Louisville’s Cave Hill Cemetery and Kentucky’s Contested Civil War Identity
Joy M. Giguere, Penn State York
Established during the height of the Rural Cemetery Movement in 1848, Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville was distinguished as one of the cultural institutions of which antebellum Kentuckians were most proud. Beautifully situated and containing the graves and monuments of the area’s most illustrious dead, Cave Hill was an entrenched part of the cultural landscape by the eve of the Civil War and was tied to notions of both local and national identity. The onset of the war turned the state into a battleground, both literally and figuratively, as Kentucky’s white residents grappled with their sense of allegiance to the Union while remaining committed to the institution of slavery. Cave Hill Cemetery was, at times, subjected to the military needs of commanders, despite local protest. At war’s end, the cemetery became the final resting place of both Union and Confederate soldiers, and despite the state’s wartime allegiance to the Union, the burial landscape became a central location for the performance of white Kentuckians’ postwar identity, which for many took a definitive turn in favor of the Confederacy. In this paper, I will thus examine the cultural significance of Cave Hill Cemetery as part of the rural cemetery movement prior to the Civil War, as well as how the site became instrumental in postwar performance of Confederate identity and fashioning of the ‘Lost Cause’ in the Bluegrass State.
Session 3-B: Landscapes of Fun and Faith (1:30 – 2:50 p.m.) Robertson Ballroom, Room 109.
In Ocean and Grove: Landscape Discourses of Leisure, Worship, and the City at Ocean Grove, New Jersey
Samuel Avery-Quinn, Appalachian State University
In 1869, leading members of the Wesleyan Holiness Movement established Ocean Grove, an oceanfront camp meeting resort in Monmouth County, New Jersey. Founded on the cusp of the boom years for Jersey shore resorts, Ocean Grove became the most popular religious resort on the East Coast of the United States. A growing body of scholarship on Ocean Grove has come to treat the resort as a significant example of the spatial preferences and town planning efforts of the Holiness Movement. In this presentation, I explore the role of conflicts at the resort – between leisure and worship, and between the romanticization of nature versus the sacralization of city life. These conflicts were significant in shaping both the design of the resort and discourses about the resort’s meaningful landscape.
Stadiums, Cities, and the NFL: A Content Analysis of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch Ian Boese, University of Missouri
The story that developed between the National Football League, St. Louis, and Rams’ owner Stan Kroenke regarding the possible (and now subsequent) departure of the Rams proved to be a complicated and multi-faceted one. By looking at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and conducting a content analysis of newspaper articles covering the building of a new riverfront stadium between January 1, 2015 and January 11, 2016 (the day before the Rams announced their departure to Los Angeles), three major themes emerged. These narratives included whether or not St. Louis was a big enough city to continue to maintain the Rams (as it already supported two other professional franchises), what the costs would be to keep the Rams and whether it was worth it, and what the stadium plans would mean for the city in terms of design, infrastructure, and revitalization. After examining the themes, it is evident that the newspaper attempted to represent the people of St. Louis and their diverse thoughts and feelings regarding the possibility of building a new outdoor stadium, instead of only acting as a booster for the project and the Rams. This research suggests that sports franchises are not currently using major newspapers to convince readers to commit significant public funding in order to build new sports complexes, implying that there has been a shift in dynamics and that a new relationship has developed between the press, cities, and the funding of sports, in which newspapers no longer strictly support the building stadiums using tax dollars.
Ballpark Village and Busch Stadium III: Reshaping Sense of Place in St. Louis
Douglas A. Hurt, University of Missouri
Sports landscapes are playing an increasing role in urban development in the United States, remaking regions as economic activities like manufacturing have declined in recent decades. Reconstructing the built environment to reallocate space to tourism, entertainment, and cultural spectacle is designed fill this economic void and to shape new urban identities. Entertainment zones, themed restaurants, atrium hotels, redeveloped waterfronts, and gentrified housing often accompany new sports facilities in American downtowns. Since the 1870s, three permanent stadiums have hosted professional baseball games in St. Louis. The current retro-style stadium (Busch Stadium III) is located downtown adjacent to Ballpark Village, a planned mixed-use, baseball-themed entertainment district. This paper investigates the development of Ballpark Village and Busch Stadium III and assesses their roles in fostering place attachment and in shaping the changing urban images of the city.
Session 4-A: Preservation II (3:10 – 4:10 p.m.) Feix Ballroom, Room 108.
Preserving County Courthouses in the United States
Jordan McAlister, Oklahoma State University
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the United States experienced a golden age for civic architecture in the form of thousands of stately county and parish courthouses erected around the country. Building an edifice that symbolically demanded respect and reverence with its size and suggested longevity and the strength of government with its masonry was deemed vital for the reputation of any county seat, parish seat, or shire town from Maine to California. The vast majority of these seat communities were rather small, and a stylized show of might through architectural grandeur was understood to genuinely cement a town’s reputation. Regional variations in design developed, and in many county seats, community identities formed around the imagery of their county capitols. The beautifully columned Greek-Revival courthouses of the South were designed to evoke the idea of a democratic tradition handed down from the ancients. The massive Richardsonian Romanesque courthouses of Texas and the Midwest were suggestive of great power and virtue. A number of local architects and firms, such as J. Riely Gordon in San Antonio, the McDonald Brothers in Louisville, and Buechner & Orth of Saint Paul would build their careers on designing dozens of impressive palaces of justice that are still regarded as treasures today. However, public understandings of the built landscape have changed over time. As the national infrastructure has aged, so too have its county courthouses, and some of these structures are now seen as undesirable, crumbling relics. In a number of counties, communities have elected to demolish their older, ornate courthouses, which to some hearken back to a bygone era, better forgotten. Often times these acts, which wound preservationist, are performed in the name of progress and utility. While a number of these gems did not survive the wrecking balls of the 1960s and ‘70s (or even those of the 21st century), a great many of the courthouses of the United States have been preserved and are still in use in varying capacities today. This presentation will focus on the myriad different preservation approaches to the tasks of saving, using, repurposing, or memorializing these emblematic structures of the United States landscape. This research will highlight some of the great preserved county and parish courthouses of the U.S. and will identify preservation regiments specific to state and local efforts. It will introduce unique courthouse preservation examples and attempt to explain the roll of the National Register of Historic Places in courthouse preservation.
The Nomination of Camp Redlands to the National Register of Historic Places
Amanda Weber, Oklahoma State University
In the 1930s, the government through the Works Progress Administration (WPA) worked to turn land that had suffered from erosion into recreational areas. Lake Carl Blackwell was the first in Oklahoma, through the Central Oklahoma Land Utilization Project. The project used the creation of the Resettlement Act of 1936, which allowed for the sub-marginal land of Yates, Oklahoma (now Lake Carl Blackwell and Camp Redlands), to be retired from agricultural use and converted to new uses. This allowed those living near and around the area of the dam project to be relocated either on a plot in town or on 40 acres outside of town. This resulted in a 3000-acre reservoir that is Lake Carl Blackwell. However, more significantly is the remnants left behind by the WPA construction workers, the cabins of Camp Redlands, which they used as temporary housing during construction. The property was nominated as a district due to its seventeen contributing resources, including twelve cabins (1937-38). The Camp Redlands district is bounded on the West and South by Lake Carl Blackwell and to the North by the continuation of W. Lakeview Road, also known as E0600 Road. The East boundary is an extension of North Karsten Creed Road. Surrounding the main camp is a shelterbelt on the East, West, and South.
Enhancing Access to the Historic American Building Survey for Humanities Research
Dan Bonenberger and Christina Miranda, Eastern Michigan University
The Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) is the premier archive of historic structures in the United States, with measured drawings, large format photographs, and/or written reports documenting over 42,000 significant places. Its high resolution, copyright-free images are widely used by scholars of American building and architectural traditions, material culture, and cultural landscapes and others who study and interpret the people, dwellings and living spaces of the past. Unfortunately, the ability to search and analyze this vast resource is hampered by a lack of descriptive metadata in the Library of Congress’s online database. For example, a search for the term “Modern,” yields only two of fifty-two classics of Modern Architecture that are known to be in the collection, illustrating the critical need for better indexing. A team of graduate students and their professor at Eastern Michigan University (EMU) recently completed an exploratory project in partnership with the National Park Service with the long-range goal of enhancing access to the HABS collection for scholarly research. This paper examines the existing on-line search mechanism and the project’s evaluation of various methods that may be used to index the collection and generate searchable metadata. It also shares insights gained about HABS and its records of houses in the Ohio study areas, and explores how future researchers may query and analyze the collection to generate new knowledge about the people and places of the past.
Session 4-B: This Drink's on Us! (3:10 – 4:10 p.m.) Robertson Ballroom, Room 109.
Take Me Out to the Beer Game: Craft Brewing and Minor League Baseball
Thomas L. Bell, University of Tennessee and Margaret M. Gripshover, Western Kentucky University
Beers at baseball parks today are no longer just the light lagers brewed by the macro-brewers that dominate the US market. Rather than the traditional Old Style or Hudepohl hawked by vendors with the ubiquitous, “Cold beer here-ah,” baseball fans across the country often have their choice of quaffs from one of the many craft beers. This trend began in Major League Baseball (MLB) and filtered down to Minor League Baseball (MiLB) parks over the past ten years, the latter of which is the focus of this paper. We argue that drinking craft at MiLB ballparks appeals to a different aesthetic and has a deeper local connection than drinking craft beer at a MLB ballpark. Craft beers consumed at MLB parks are overwhelmingly those from brewers identified as high volume regional craft breweries (e.g. Sierra Nevada), whereas those available at MiLB ballparks are often those produced by smaller microbreweries produced within the “fanshed,” i.e. the market area of the baseball team. Both the microbrewers and consumers are driven by a desire for authenticity, cachet, and local products. Some brewers capitalize on this appeal by using local cultural and environmental features in their naming conventions and at least seven breweries have beers named for MiLB teams and one brewery is even located within the minor league ball park. Such micro-craft breweries are a reflection of the larger locavore movement—a counter narrative to, and pushback from, the perceived increase in the large-scale corporatization of American society.
Craft Breweries and Adaptive Reuse
Neil Reid, University of Toledo
In recent years the United States has experienced a craft beer revolution. Today there are over 4,500 craft breweries. In 1985 there were only 8. In the period since 2010 there have been over 2,700 new craft breweries established. The rise of the commercial craft brewing movement in the United States has been a response to growing consumer dissatisfaction with the homogenous, bland tasting, beers produced by America’s two largest brewers – Anhueser-Busch and MillerCoors. A growing segment of America’s beer drinkers, particularly millennials, are demanding greater variety in terms of the style, strength, and flavor of beer. Additionally, there is growing consumer demand for products that have are locally-produced– the neolocalism movement. Craft breweries are small scale operations that provide consumers with an artisanal product that is produced by individuals that have a commitment to high-quality locally-produced beer.
Many craft breweries have a strong commitment to environmental sustainability and this is reflected in their production practices that include use of alternative energy, use of recycled packaging materials, solid waste reduction programs, etc. Another way in which craft breweries engage in sustainable practices is through what urban planners call the adaptive reuse of buildings. Adaptive reuse can be defined as reusing an old site or building for a purpose other than that for which it was designed Many craft breweries are in buildings that were once used for something else – a church, a fire station, a potato chip factory etc. Not only do craft brewers use old buildings but they often embrace the former use and incorporate it into the identity of their brewery. For example, the Church Works Brewery in Pittsburgh, PA is located in a former Catholic Church and has among its offerings Pipe Organ Pale Ale and Pious Monk Dunkel. The purpose of this paper is to explore adaptive reuse within the context of American craft breweries. In doing so the paper will attempt to answer three questions – a) how extensive is adaptive reuse, b) where adaptive reuse does occur to what extent do craft brewery owners leverage the building’s former use in creating their brewery’s identity, and c) do there appear to be a particular type of former building use that is favored by craft breweries?
Bat Wings and Booze: The Modern (and Modernist) Philosophy of the Bacardi Corporation
Jim Gabbert, National Park Service
The forward-thinking vision of two brothers in southern Cuba brought to the world a family name that became synonymous with rum – Bacardi. Throughout the history of the company, the Bacardi family embraced modern methods for the production, distribution, and marketing of their eponymous product. From distillation methods to building design, the Bacardi family rode a wave of modern ideas to become the world’s largest and best-known producer of distilled spirits. The Bacardi distillery in Cataño, Puerto Rico, is the embodiment of the significance the rum trade has had in the Caribbean basin and of the Modernist design philosophy adopted by the corporation. It represents the evolution of the production process, wherein production moved from crude stills erected alongside sugar factories to its eventual industrialization. It represents the culmination of the economic evolution of rum production and trade from its creation as a simple by-product often used in lieu of pay for workers to a multi-billion dollar, multi-national industry.