THESIS

BETWEEN ICON & EMOTION PHILOSOPHICAL PREMISE

Introduction

This thesis explores the relationship between architecture and history by way of the Underground Railroad, a network of safehouses and people who aided escaping slaves in the antebellum period across the American South and North. An estimated 100,000 slaves escaped with the help of the Underground Railroad.

The thesis itself is designed as an aggregated monument to the Underground Railroad in seven parts, termed “stations.” Each station takes a position along an imagined route of the Underground Railroad. Each station represents a specific aspect of the narrative of the Underground Railroad in its design and program. From south to north, the stations are plantation, chapel, isolation, river, community, house, and orchard.

Each station is distinct in its program and semi-autonomous in its position in the overall Underground Railroad monument as it would have been in the Underground Railroad. Compartmentalization was a critical element of the Underground Railroad. Each “conductor” would know only the route between two stations on the network. This was to prevent the collapse of the entire network of safehouses should one agent become compromised. Concordantly, each station includes a design element from the preceding building and the succeeding building. However, the first building and the last building have no aesthetic relationship. This supports the esoteric and obfuscated nature of the subject.

The inclusion of aesthetically separated icons also contributes the idea of a monument to the obfuscated. In the Underground Railroad, the elimination of mysterious elements would mean the destruction of the nature of the Underground Railroad and the collapse of the network. This monument seeks to protect this enigmatic nature.

The atmosphere of each building is structured in concordance with the narrative themes of the historiography. That is to say, a station creating an atmosphere of terror will lead to a station creating an atmosphere of relief. The aggregation of atmospheres unites the stations into a monument, forming a narrative of identity. This is demonstrated in the way events shaped the identity not only of the Underground Railroad, but of the slaves it helped to escape from a system which repressed their identities and culture.

The balance between these two components, sublime icon and emotive atmosphere, constitutes the primary architectural focus within the seven stations. Each building manages the icon uniquely; some deconstruct, some reaffirm, and some blatantly eschew the icon. The thesis asserts this is how monuments should be thought of when designed.

The precise geographic locations of the buildings are irrelevant. The critical aspects of site lie in the natural features of the landscape. Because the monument represents something beyond site, such as a battlefield or a birthplace, the precise location is irrelevant and only the cultural location matters.

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The Underground Railroad was termed in conjunction with the growing network of railroads, taking on nomenclature related to the industry, for example safehouses were “stations” and people who escorted runaway slaves were “conductors.” A mythology circulated at and among the plantations, codenames and secret messages were used to spread the word of the Underground Railroad and enable the escape of slaves who otherwise could not have made it to the North.

Clandestine societies were created in northern cities, not only to fund the activities of the Underground Railroad, but also to support escaped slaves in settling into communities in the free states and to help them find jobs, providing them letters of recommendation. The process of integrating a free person into society was long, it required counteracting the effects of a systemically separated culture and joining into the wider American society. People were involved in the Underground Railroad for various reasons. Some believed slavery was an abomination and went against their religion. Some wanted equality for millions of slaves of African descent living in America. Some just wanted to help people escape something terrible they had experienced for themselves.

In 1861, the inevitable social and economic divisions caused by slavery in the American south led to a civil war between the secessionist Confederate States of America and the United States. Slavery, as a legal institution for the subjugation of a race, would not come to an end in the US until the closing acts of the American Civil War when President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. The states later ratified the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the US constitution which outlawed slavery, granted all citizens equal protection under the law, and extended the right to vote to all male citizens regardless of race, respectively.

There still exists a romanticism for the antebellum south, as evidenced in the popular discourse relative to Confederate monuments. Cries of “the South will rise again!” still persist in an unironic manner in many communities. Interesting to note, this is not a cry of “the South will reinstitute the system of slavery!” although that may be implied in the actual statement. This shows a romanticized attitude toward the “Lost Cause” of the Confederacy and the demonstration of southern values romanticized in popular culture by way of films such as Gone with the Wind. The film itself, as with many Confederate monuments, slyly dodges the topic of slavery, though slavery was the central point of the Civil War.

In my own upbringing in the American south, in my time in school history classes, I was taught by more than one teacher the reason for the Civil War. I recall exactly what two different teachers said. My seventh-grade history teacher said, “Whatever anyone else tells you, the Civil War was about states’ rights.” My tenth-grade history teacher said, “No matter what anyone else tells you, the Civil War was about slavery.” These are two antithetical and absolute statements. As an adolescent, this binary always troubled me a great deal due to their uncanny similarity and I struggled with what to believe. I’ve grown much more considerate in the intervening years and can give a clearer picture to myself of the reasons for the Civil War: the war was due to slavery, and the states’ rights defense was, and is, a sloppy attempt at asserting a moral justification for a war against liberty. This position is supported by a plethora of evidence such as: the Fugitive Slave Act, which curtailed states’ rights in favor of slavery at the behest of the Southern Cause; the constitution of the Confederate States, which identifies their position as being wholly in line with that of slavery; and the decades of racially motivated Jim Crow laws, riots, and lynchings targeted at black Americans to undermine their communities. However, such demonstrable facts will not change the minds of millions of Americans whose cultural identity is integrated with the “Southern Cause.” The Civil War absolutely defines the identity of the United States. Slavery absolutely defines the identity of the United States. These two things are integral to each other. However, slavery is not something which is prolifically monumentalized. War, on the other hand, is incredibly sublime. It is something easily romanticized and anesthetized, and it receives monuments because of this.

“Lost Cause” historiographers have erected monuments to many of the Confederate military figures. The institution of slavery is present in the historical context of such monuments, but the atmosphere is heroic and the icon does not orient directly towards slavery. Lost Cause historiographers will never erect a monument directly referencing the institution of slavery because that is not the narrative they are wont to tell. Anyone who does wish to narrate the tale of slavery will struggle to build a monument, because slavery it not a romanticizable subject. In the New South, there are two competing, irreal worlds. In one world, the Lost Cause of the Confederacy advocates the waging of a just war against the restriction of the federal government and the preservation of states’ rights against the Northern aggressors. (I have heard the Civil War called “the war of Northern aggression” on many occasions and from many people.) In the other world, the army of the righteous destroyed the shackles of oppression in a bloody four-year war. Thus, one horror ends another horror. Both narratives have ample representation in American monuments.

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The monument proposed here is not interested in romanticizing cultural identity. Rather, it is a confrontation with exactly that. The thesis aims to forward understanding of our relationship to this history, attempting to reconcile worlds, and in doing so, form a new understanding of an array of worlds.

Several elements of the Underground Railroad mythology that were useful in making both aesthetic and thematic determinations with regards to the individual buildings and the monument as a whole. The north star, Polaris, was a critical orienting element in most of the stations and the usage of the icon of constellations is apparent in each building. The concepts of movement and transit are also important thematic elements to recognize. The usage of Christian architectural iconography, especially of the Quakers who were instrumental in the development of the Underground Railroad.

Using French philosopher Jean Baudrillard’s precession of simulacra as a basis of how to avoid hyperreality in monuments, this thesis arrives at a few conclusions which impact the design of monuments.

Firstly, all monuments must have an orienting icon directing the viewer towards a particular moment, event, or person in history. This is the subject of the monument. The icon must represent something which fits Immanuel Kant’s definition of the sublime in that it expresses a monumental formless magnitude.35 This does not necessarily need to be a spatial magnitude; it is possible to use icons to represent an event with thematic magnitude. The icon commands the respect of the audience and the viewer by its sublimity, which is critical to monuments meant to depict events which demand respect and remembrance.

Secondly, all monuments should exude an atmosphere which projects an intended emotion, whatever it may be. A monument meant to represent an event which inspired terror in its victims should create an atmosphere of terror and fear. Likewise, a monument meant to represent an event which inspired hope in its contemporaries should create an atmosphere of hope and elation. Atmosphere is produced in architectural compositions using tectonic, spatial, and material elements, form, and the use of light. Atmosphere should engage the senses of sound, smell, touch, etc. Atmosphere is the wholistic effect of the building on its occupants.

Thus, these elements balance with each other to create an effective monument. If either of these elements were missing, or one overpowers the other, then the monument would not serve as an adequate representation of history and would fall into the trap of becoming an aesthetician of history, which anaesthetizes events and strips them of true historical context. The icon cannot, however, be preserved as an exact copy of the referent. To do so would be to create a copy of a copy. Each of the proposed stations considers this question of the referent in different ways.