the industrial complex

today in hss105, the students and i pushed out of college hill into the industrial area to the south and east of this neighborhood. our steps took us to the wafco mill complex at mcgee and cedar streets, across cedar to fulton and under the overpass onto lee street. the loop closed by crossing back through the tate street overpass to campus. students noticed the lack of care and concern in maintenance along fulton, speculating about both the presence of homeless people here as well as the "behind the scenes" feeling of the place.

on the corner of lee and fulton streets, new apartments have taken over the former industrial sites and, before that single family residences along the street. there is also a sharp contract with the feeling of wafco mills complex, which seems more a part of the fabric of the neighborhood.

lee street feels very different than the neighborhood proper. along this thoroughfare, there seem to be four categories of building:
[1] the residential dwellings dating from the latter nineteenth century into the twentieth
[2] the industrial buildings that largely replaced them and shifted the vision of the landscape
[3] other store front buildings that provided a retail presence along the thoroughfare
[4] larger-scale apartment complexes constructed in the last several years (lee street/fulton = the largest)

side streets + back alleys

in hss105 today, we walked the side streets and back alleys of the college hill neighborhood to see if these streets actually represent microcosms of the larger neighborhood order....or whether they are something wholly different. at first glance, both rankin and carr streets seemingly represent the larger neighborhood....as does joyner. the alleys are more instructive where trash cans, sewer grates, fences, and other peripheral uses help inform the messiness of the general neighborhood hidden from every day view.

PRIMARY : SECONDARY : TERTIARY

we also looked at changing uses for buildings....post office to a printing company....methodist church additions.....bank building to a police station....grocery to convenience store....movie theatre to a bookstore....what was one a mini-city with a commercial area that served more than a narrow population of students has over two decades transformed into what clay calls a strip. some of this has to do with the lack of diversity in what stands as the commercial core.

the mendenhall muddle

the idea of infilling, central to today's (wet + rainy) class, informed our discussion in hss105. as we de-constructed the landscape along mendenhall street, students had the opportunity to use sanborn fire insurance maps to see changes along the thoroughfare in the early twentieth century. here are a couple of images from the handout.
as suggested within the handout, students thought about architectural style, their previous travels along tate street, and some additional ideas about the changing face of the neighborhood over the decades as buildings were built, some demolished, and new ones infilled.

the INFAMOUS neighborhood survey

so much of my work as a teller of stories relies on that of others. in architectural history and historic preservation, field work is key to understanding the built world around us. in hss105 yesterday, students took to the streets with a form i crafted to look at residential buildings along tate street. we counted everyday things along the streetscape...porches, shutters, doors, the presence of wood screen windows or aluminum storms, and the materials from which the dwellings were fabricated, etc. here's the form we used...

and here are the students using the forms along tate street...

and here are a few results recorded in my sketchbook...

even through this simple process, it's interesting to note what one learns by stopping, moving slowly, looking at the world around....and, oh yeah, maybe counting.

wrapping up with clay vocabulary

as we finished visiting the campus today in hss105, we headed from the monolithic, modern library tower to the quad, peabody park, the business building, along spring garden to the moore humanities and research administration building, concluding our brisk walk + talk at the gatewood building. students took a CLOSE look at the library tower in this next image...

...now THAT's encountering architecture first hand!

rounding the bend with clay

the students of hss105, gazing upward in the elliott university center entranceway.

today in hss105, we visited three buildings and worked hard to determine the centers in each of them. this exercise continues the larger conversation we're having about centers and edges....and the essential lesson is this: what is true for the "mini-city" of the campus is also true at the building level....thus clay's vocabulary can be tapped and adapted to the building scale...and likely to a room within the building scale. another classic text that sheds light on this basic IMAGEABILITY + LEGIBILITY of a city is kevin lynch's IMAGE OF THE CITY (1960). lynch's work is reviewed on the mobile city blog. worth perusing.

edges

among the most significant edges on campus, the rail line on the south side of the "mini-city" clearly distinguishes us from the properties that face lee street. we were lucky enough that a train came rumbling by to reinforce the sense that sometimes noise is an indicator of where edges and stacks lie, according to clay's terminology. i have to say some of my most favorite moments on campus lie at its edges.

center + periphery

september 1st brought the realization that school REALLY is underway! in hss105, we walked from the east edge of campus (tate street) to the north side of campus (market street), taking in the architecture along the way and speculating about meanings hidden and not-so-hidden in buildings. following grady clay's method for looking at the city, the students in class searched for fixes, district, fronts, strips, and beats. on thursday, they'll attempt to synthesize all of the efforts at analysis for the uncg campus. you can follow their efforts through the semester by the series of links on the right hand side of the blog. my initial foray is contained here, a page from my sketchbook.

one of the most obvious things about our walk was to understand the center of campus (as it happens...where walker avenue WOULD have crossed college avenue)....a spot between the library and the newer wing of the stone building, marked by the two porticoes of these buildings facing each other across the campus lawn. the specific spot is marked by a circle on college avenue. lots of alignment there....

on the periphery, students saw the "edges" of campus (what clay calls fronts)...and their advancement into the residential college hill neighborhood to the east. on thursday, we continue our exploration of edges....

de-constructing foust

this morning, students in the hss105 course dissected and speculated about the foust building as visual evidence for values of the university. their first efforts at "reading" using the classroom of the campus yielded some salient observations about buildings and the language that we all use to talk about them. here they complete the "thick description" exercise (with a nod to clifford geertz) before we began our class discussion.


the building that represented the target for our analysis: foust (originally the administration building on campus), built at the end of the nineteenth century. above, my drawing that represents my "thick description" for the morning.


here's a terrific ca. 1905 image of foust all "flagged up," with the two towers marking the center of the structure. horizontals and verticals balance here as surface decoration, and the massive front facade, facing spring garden avenue, suggest the importance of the building in the community landscape. to respond to the observation of the student who indicated that foust "looked so different," consider the following additional historic image of the building (ca. 1900) and its built environment context. looks to be the only survivor...


the latter two images posted here are part of a neat digital exhibition on postcards by the university archives and manuscripts division of the uncg walter jackson clinton library. you can see the display, Postcards from the University, in its entirety online.

the semester begins

today, i begin my journey as a chancellor's resident fellow for the lloyd international honors college at the university of north carolina at greensboro. i am teaching three seminar classes...the first entitled "you are your own gpu" which meets this morning, the second "visualizing american empire" gathers for the first time this afternoon.

in the gpu course, we'll be looking at local greensboro sites physically and then considering, through digital means, the same or similar sites across the globe. my thesis for this course is that despite the overwhelming amount of information literally at our fingertips, we know less about ourselves and who we are than ever before.

in the empire course, we'll consider the visual evidence of art, architecture, and media images as a way to look at the american empire at some critical junctures in the history of the nation. my central idea about this course is that our sense of "american-ness" is a much more complicated enterprise than relying on key iconic images of the nation to define us all.

in the third course, one of six sections for all first year honors students at the university, i'll help guide students in getting to know their campus -- and each other -- through attendance at arts and theatre performances, and through a common read of "enrique's journey" along with innumerable other explorations.