architect tonic

a second memory; a second brain.
Max Belcher, photographer. The Macon Hall House, ca. 1885, Fortsville, Liberia, 1978. Architecture built from memory reveals the social structure left behind. “Free American blacks and former slaves were [sometimes forcibly] encouraged to emigrate to Liberia, in Africa, by the American Colonization Society and other groups from 1816 until 1847. While some of the latter wanted to abolish slavery and spread evangelical Christianity, others supported emigration as a way to strengthen slavery by removing freed blacks from the United States.” Bernard Herman, George B. Tindall Professor of American Studies at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has written a story about Liberian houses for the Journeys book. It begins with a letter: 6 January 1900, North Carolina Robert returned this afternoon, having made a trip to town, and collected the mail in the course of his usual errands. Sitting by the window writing on this gray winter day, a fire whispering in our old home’s hearth, I glanced down the lane and observed as Robert, with his awkward gait, stepped across the frost-rutted garden and up the back stairs to the kitchen—a brown paper bundle tucked under his arm, mud and dead leaves on his boots. After a scuffle of feet on the floorboards, and a rap on the door, Robert entered the room bearing the parcel with its travel torn corners. “From your friend in Africa,” he said, and left. My dearest friend, how long has it been since last we exchanged letters? When you decamped for Liberia with the others from this neighborhood, we pledged that correspondence would preserve our friendship, a friendship that had been sorely tested by the enduring habits and prejudices of this, our native country. And at first, our letters came and went, bearing my intelligence of family and friends left behind and your accounts of a new land and all that you intended to accomplish there. Slowly the pace of our exchange faltered until we lost connection. Thirty years, a lifetime—an ocean in itself, separate us. You decamped in the bitter years that followed the war, seeking a promised freedom that conquest and occupation failed to realize in practice. The prejudice of custom, they say, dies hard. Now, in the first gray days of the new century, I sit at my desk, the one where my father, your former master, kept his accounts of crops sown and provisions provided, your bundle open before me, reading all the letters I sent and that you saved—posted back to me with neither note nor explanation. I can only imagine the worst and wonder as to your health in that difficult and hopeful place. But why these letters were returned I do not know… - Journeys: How travelling fruit, ideas and buildings rearrange our environment.

Max Belcher, photographer. The Macon Hall House, ca. 1885, Fortsville, Liberia, 1978.

Architecture built from memory reveals the social structure left behind.

“Free American blacks and former slaves were [sometimes forcibly] encouraged to emigrate to Liberia, in Africa, by the American Colonization Society and other groups from 1816 until 1847. While some of the latter wanted to abolish slavery and spread evangelical Christianity, others supported emigration as a way to strengthen slavery by removing freed blacks from the United States.”

Bernard Herman, George B. Tindall Professor of American Studies at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has written a story about Liberian houses for the Journeys book. It begins with a letter:

6 January 1900, North Carolina

Robert returned this afternoon, having made a trip to town, and collected the mail in the course of his usual errands. Sitting by the window writing on this gray winter day, a fire whispering in our old home’s hearth, I glanced down the lane and observed as Robert, with his awkward gait, stepped across the frost-rutted garden and up the back stairs to the kitchen—a brown paper bundle tucked under his arm, mud and dead leaves on his boots. After a scuffle of feet on the floorboards, and a rap on the door, Robert entered the room bearing the parcel with its travel torn corners. “From your friend in Africa,” he said, and left.

My dearest friend, how long has it been since last we exchanged letters? When you decamped for Liberia with the others from this neighborhood, we pledged that correspondence would preserve our friendship, a friendship that had been sorely tested by the enduring habits and prejudices of this, our native country. And at first, our letters came and went, bearing my intelligence of family and friends left behind and your accounts of a new land and all that you intended to accomplish there. Slowly the pace of our exchange faltered until we lost connection. Thirty years, a lifetime—an ocean in itself, separate us. You decamped in the bitter years that followed the war, seeking a promised freedom that conquest and occupation failed to realize in practice. The prejudice of custom, they say, dies hard. Now, in the first gray days of the new century, I sit at my desk, the one where my father, your former master, kept his accounts of crops sown and provisions provided, your bundle open before me, reading all the letters I sent and that you saved—posted back to me with neither note nor explanation. I can only imagine the worst and wonder as to your health in that difficult and hopeful place. But why these letters were returned I do not know…

- Journeys: How travelling fruit, ideas and buildings rearrange our environment.

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