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Paper Abstract: Describes plantation architecture as designed both to hide slaves and the work of slaves from the owners of the plantation and their guests, as well as to control them. Psycholigical and cultural implications of plantation architecture. Paper Introduction: Introduction When we think about the importance of architecture we tend to thinkabout buildings constructed on a grand scale Versailles BuckinghamPalace the White House But it is the ordinary the everyday constructedspaces of individual homes that are tell us more about the values of a timeand place for our homes encode the values of our civilization and intime also come to reinforce them This paper examines the architecture oftypical plantation homes and the ways in which these buildings served asvisual emblems of Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. Regardless, what's left tends to be in various stages of decay. 119-124.[6] Hickman, http://www.tennessean.com/local/archives/ 2/ 4/16216315.shtml[7] Epperson, 199 , p. [and] Included in their repertoire of resistive acts was the strategy of territorial appropriation. Such appropriations had psychological benefits but theycould also have real pragmatic benefits as well: Often slaves claimed astheir own parts of the grounds between their quarters and the main house touse to grow vegetables. It was a modest but important victory over the planter's rules to appropriate, even if silently, his real estate. "They were at one time, a larger part of the Southern landscape than the big houses associated with them," he says. These domains usually included the quarters and frequently the barns, stables, sheds, and other work areas. 18(1): 1-14, 1984.Hickman, Elizabeth. 3 .[8] www.gwu.edu/~folklife/bighouse/brochure.html Thus the desire to have slaves and slave laborhidden in at least some measure from the white members of the household wasarguably psychologically (and culturally) highly important if slave-ownerswere willing to cede even a small measure of their power over slaves. They stood in distinct contrast to the oak and otherhardwoods of the main homes, wood that was often shipped from the North oreven from Europe. "White and Black Landscapes in Eighteenth-Century Virginia." In Material Life in America, 16 -186 , edited By Robert St. Moreover, bricks, made of local materials, often on the grounds of theplantations in much the same way that adobe bricks were made for Westernrancheros were cheap and not of high quality: They often began to crumblewithin a year or two. Rather,in creating passageways and rooms dedicated to the domestic work and thosewho performed it plantation architects were simply following in a longtradition (seen in both European and Asian architecture) of creatingdomestic spaces in which work could be accomplished at the least possibleinconvenience to the masters of the house.[2] One striking example of the way in which slaves and their labor washidden from the view of the masters of the house has been found atMonticello, where Thomas Jefferson had tunnels dug between the outbuildingsused by the slaves and the main house - tunnels that created a literalunderground domestic arena and also (as Jefferson himself noted) helped toshield slaves from inclement weather. Slaves were able to negotiate the physicalspace of the plantation, laying claim to different areas through theirbehavior. Introduction When we think about the importance of architecture we tend to thinkabout buildings constructed on a grand scale - Versailles, BuckinghamPalace, the White House. Slaves would gradually identify a space as theirs by countless domestic acts so that a garden plot, a house, a shed, or a cupboard became theirs by dint of custom. This allowed them to gain often precious caloriesand nutrients that might well be the difference between life and death. 36-4 .[3] http://www.pbs.org/saf/13 1/hotline/hbrown.htm[4] Fairbanks, 1984, p. The Tennessean, April 4, 2 2, available at http://www.tennessean.com/local/archives/ 2/ 4/16216315.shtml.http://www.pbs.org/saf/13 1/hotline/hbrown.htmUpton, Dell. But slaves repeatedly proved to be "troublesome property" ... As one architectural historian who examines slaveresidences notes: "Architecture confines and defines how people live andinteract with each other".[1] In general, plantation architecture was designed both to hide slavesand the work of slaves from the owners of the plantation and their guestsas well as to control them. But it was subject, as are all systems inwhich there are more people without power than those with it, tomanipulation and resistance. 24(4): 29-36, 199 .Fairbanks, Charles H. University of North Carolina Press, 1993.www.gwu.edu/~folklife/bighouse/brochure.html-----------------------[1] Hickman, http://www.tennessean.com/local/archives/ 2/ 4/16216315.shtml[2] Upton, 1988, pp. "That situation is entirely reversed today."[6] Appropriation of Space One of the important elements of plantation architecture scholarship -a term that is used by researchers to include not just the design of themain house and its side buildings but the physical space between them andthe ways in which materials were used to construct these two sets ofbuildings - is an understanding of the ways in which the physical spaces ofthe plantation were actually used. This paper examines the architecture oftypical plantation homes and the ways in which these buildings served asvisual emblems of larger social hierarchies and the respective places ofmasters and slaves. "Race and the Disciplines of the Plantation." Historical Archaeology. Over time such acts of appropriation instilled among slaves a sense of autonomy or even quasi-liberty. It is not surprising that the slaves would try to appropriate physicalspace in a way. This actual use often differed from theofficial or formal use of space.[7] Slaves might consider their quarters tobe their own and might believe that they deserved a measure of privacywithin them, but their masters believed that they had full rights to enterthe slave quarters at any time - given that they owned the land on whichthe buildings sat, the buildings, and the people within them. "Preservationist has cabin fever". But it is the ordinary, the everyday constructedspaces of individual homes that are tell us more about the values of a timeand place, for our homes encode the values of our civilization and - intime - also come to reinforce them. That such attitudes mocked the claims of absolute control made by slave- owning whites is sensed in the remark of a slave woman from Georgia who, when asked if she belonged to a particular plantation family, replied without hesitation: "Yes, I belong to them and they belong to me."[8] The architecture of the plantation was designed to maximize thecomfort of white masters while allowing for control of black slaves. "I know these places are disappearing,'' he says. "The Plantation Archaeology of the Southeastern Coast." Historical Archaeology. Inlarge measure this system worked as those masters - with so much greaterpower than the slaves - intended. Such behavioral claim on space are not, of course, maintained inthe archaeological record. BibliographyEpperson, Terrence. Disguising the Nature of Work This desire to hide the work of slaves from the view of the residentsof the main plantation home might suggest to us, looking backward as we arefrom the 21st century, that the slaveholders were ashamed of the fact thattheir households functioned by virtue of the work of people who were notpaid for their labor, but this is unlikely to have been the case. Many slaves looked upon the portions of the plantations where they were held as their spaces. 2.[5] Vlach, 1993, pp. This was something of a balancing act, for anytime one isolates a group of people one also liberates them to some extent.Anyone who has worked in an office where the boss cannot see one at alltimes understands this. Italso allowed them to grow and cook food that was more like traditionalAfrican food. In Tennessee, they tend to be either brick or log. Students of the design and layout of Virginia's early plantations have long recognized the extent to which planters used architectural elements and their spatial positioning to send messages of all different kinds; messages intended for their own sort as well as for those they considered their inferiors....It should come as no surprise, then, that slaveholders like Jefferson may very well have employed elements of the architectural grammar at their disposal to "hide" the presence of their enslaved work force.[3] Emphasizing the Nature of Difference The architecture of the main house and that of the quarters whereslaves lives (and the buildings in which they did the majority of theirwork such as threshing sheds, barns, stables, and the kitchens that wereusually separated from the main house) were marked by substantialdifferences in quality.[4] Not only did the main plantation house sport allof the decorative embellishments that the more functional buildings lacked,but the main houses were made of different materials and were built both tolast and to provide the greatest degree of comfort to the inhabitants.While the brick used to build slave quarters, for example, might seem to bea more substantial material than the wood used to build the main houses,the wooden plantation homes "breathed" in sweltering Southern summers. Back of the Big House: The Architecture of Plantation Slavery. While a number of the main plantation homes themselves havesurvived, most of their accompanying buildings have not. George, Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1988.Vlach, John. Thesebenefits accrued to the slaves on top of the benefits that they - likeoppressed people and workers in a range of circumstances - have derivedthroughout history from the everyday acts of resistance. His rules were designed ultimately to hold black people in assigned places as pieces of property. They can, however, be derived from contemporaryaccounts that describe the ways in which slave appropriated sections ofland and even of the buildings themselves. The result of thisfact is that anyone making an architectural survey of the South today wouldcome away with a distorted view of the ways in which the constructed spaceof plantation life functioned when it was intact: The little outbuildings and small houses around big, antebellum houses have been consistently lost throughout the 2 th century as community after community has madly scrambled to save the big houses. But slaves too made claims to land - not only to their own quarters.This is an important aspect of the use of space in plantation architecturethat is difficult to see today. The entire concept of the surroundings, or context, of a historic site is a hot topic in preservation circles, and many fragments of context have been lost. Very few are frame. By maintaining agricultural and culinary ties to their past,these small gardens helped the slaves maintain a greater sense of self,which might have proved to be just as vital as the better nutrition. The distinction because the beautiful, imported, refinedand long-lasting woods with the locally manufactured, low-quality andtemperature insensitive brick helped to symbolize and reify the differencesbetween black slaves and white masters.[5] Determining how the physical design of plantations helped to reinforcethe power of white masters over their slaves in a particular situation issometimes difficult slave quarters were generally built of relativelyflimsy materials and where they were not torn down have generally simplyfallen apart. If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.