“Best of the South: Preserving Southern Architecture Award”

Goes to Walker Hall Restoration at the South Carolina School for the Deaf & the Blind. For more information about the project click here.

Annual Publication Awards go to Authors in Georgia, Texas & Tennessee

Nashville, TN – November 13, 2007. The Southeastern Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians (SESAH) announces the 2007 SESAH Award Winners. The awards were made at the 25th SESAH Annual Meeting, held in Nashville, Tennessee, from October 24-27, 2007. Visit www.sesah.org for more information about the conference.

The 2007 Best Essay Award was presented to Robert M. Craig for his chapter “Pilgrimage Route to Paradise: The Sacred and Profane along the Dixie Highway,” in Claudette Stager and Martha Carver, eds., Looking Beyond the Highway: Dixie Roads and Culture (University of Tennessee Press, 2006). Craig wittily compares early-twentieth century motor tourists on the Dixie Highway with long-ago pilgrims in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. The intriguing book explores the diversity of history along the Dixie Highway from Illinois to Florida in the era before interstate highways. Craig is a professor in the College of Architecture, Georgia Institute of Technology. See the press response from GATech here.

The 2007 Best Article Award was presented to Clifton Ellis for “The Mansion House at Berry Hill Plantation: Architecture and the Changing Nature of Slavery in Antebellum Virginia,” in Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture (Volume 13, No. 1, 2006). Ellis shows how the Virginia plantation house, Berry Hill, was shaped by gender and race in a time of cultural change and racial tension. Ellis is Assistant Professor of Architectural History, College of Architecture, Texas Tech University.

The 2007 Best Book Award goes to Mary Hoffschwelle for The Rosenwald Schools of the American South (University Press of Florida, 2006). Hoffschwelle, Professor of History at Middle Tennessee State University, highlights the remarkable partnership that built model schools for black children during the Jim Crow era in the South. The Rosenwald program, which erected more than 5,300 schools between 1912 and 1932, began when Booker T. Washington, principal of Tuskegee Institute, turned to Julius Rosenwald, president of Sears, Roebuck & Company, to help build schools to educate the South's black children.

See the press response here. 

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The 2007 Best of the South: Preserving Southern Architecture award goes to McMillan Smith & Partners Architects, PLLC, of Spartanburg, South Carolina, for the restoration of Walker Hall at the South Carolina School for the Deaf and the Blind near Spartanburg, South Carolina. 

Founded in 1849, the South Carolina School for the Deaf and the Blind enriched the lives of generations of sensory disabled students. Architect Edward C. Jones designed Walker Hall, centerpiece of the campus, in 1859, and it was expanded by famed architects Samuel Sloan of Philadelphia (1884) and Edwards & Sayward of Atlanta (1921). After years of neglect, funding shortages, and constant use left the building in disrepair, in 1999, the architects began planning the renovation of the nearly 70,000 square foot building. The $13 million renovation project maintained the historic character of the building while meeting and exceeding code standards. Today Walker Hall continues to serve deaf, blind, and sensory multi-disabled children and adults. Architect Donnie Love, his team of contractors, and the South Carolina School for the Deaf and the Blind executed an exemplary project in restoring a building of unique history.

“The 25th SESAH Annual Meeting was our biggest ever with 105 attendees traveling from over 20 states, Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico,” stated SESAH president David Gobel of the Savannah College of Architecture and Design. “The local host committee made celebrating this milestone in Nashville a very special occasion, with an opening plenary session featuring the mayor and live music, a keystone lecture at Vanderbilt University with over 400 in attendance, a closing party at the city’s Civic Design Center, and walking tours of several landmarks. We are grateful for our Nashville hosts as well as the many local partners and donors for making our visit to the Music City such a memorable experience.” Future SESAH conferences will be held in Greensboro, North Carolina, from October 1-4, 2008; Jackson, Mississippi, in 2009; and Chattanooga, Tennessee, in 2010.

The 2007 SESAH Publications Award Committee consisted of Ellen Weiss of Tulane University; Marilyn Casto of Virginia Tech University; and Travis McDonald of Jefferson’s Poplar Forest in Virginia. The 2007 Best of the South: Preserving Southern Architecture Award Committee consisted of Andrew Chandler of the South Carolina Department of Archives & History, Chair; Julia King of London and Pennsylvania; and Jennifer Baughn of the Mississippi State Historic Preservation Office.

ABOUT SESAH

The Southeast Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians (SESAH) is a regional chapter of the national Society of Architectural Historians and includes twelve states (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia). The nonprofit organization holds an annual meeting, publishes a quarterly newsletter and an annual journal, ARRIS, and presents annual awards. SESAH was founded in 1983 at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta to promote scholarship on architecture and related subjects and to serve as a forum for ideas among architectural historians, architects, preservationists, and others involved in professions related to the built environment. The annual meeting features scholarly paper sessions, business meeting, study tours, and a keynote lecture by a national leader in the field. SESAH members come from across the U.S. and Europe.

www.sesah.org

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