Tuscaloosa, a walking/driving city

What the students' chosen buildings look like when placed together on a map.

I wanted to share what I call a "bubble map" of a select group of buildings that existed in Tuscaloosa during the nineteenth century. "Bubble" refers to the tiny circles, which Microsoft allows you to use in order to digitally manipulate a picture. This image started out as a basic Google Map. If you look closely, you can see the Black Warrior River in the top third of it. I was very interested in seeing how these structures, which the students randomly selected, would materialize if bundled visually together. I was struck by how we ended up with three churches and how all three are in the lower left hand side of the map, or essentially near downtown. I wondered how they ended up being in that location. We pondered this as a class yesterday. Perhaps it is because these churches contributed to this location being the center of Tuscaloosa during this century. Noticeably missing are some important structures like the Gorgas House and the Jemison Mansion. We just had a new enrollee so maybe he will choose one of them. As the city is presently laid out, and barring no traffic, you can see all of these buildings by car across  8.3 miles, or in 32 minutes. If this was truly a "walking city" map in Tuscaloosa's present layout, it is about 4.2 miles of walking and can be done in 1 hour and 42 minutes (at least that's what Google says. I am not so sure in this Alabama heat). As aside, we had a great visits yesterday by Sarah Riches, MA in Architecture, University of Chicago, and Dr. Susan Reynolds, Assistant Editor of Alabama Heritage. Riches offered the students a vocabulary to describe their randomly chosen buildings. I enjoyed hearing about how the use of words like "space" and "void" will help them critique a structure. Reynolds shared lots of historical information about the Kilgore House, a structure that was recently demolished. Among the highlights for me was learning about the female students who lived there at the turn of the turn of the century. One of them, a redhead, appears to have had an exuberant personality. I look forward to reading the students' thoughts about Barth's take on the ways in which the metropolitan press and department stores helped American "city people" form an identity during the nineteenth century, but also about how the city he describes was not experienced similarly by all Americans. Speaking of American, as we approach the fourth week of class, I really want them to think about what it means to be an "American." One tool for getting them into that head space is a History channel documentary, America: The Story of Us. I was prepared to not like this documentary, but actually enjoyed it and highly recommend it. We will take up the subject of what it means to be American as a class next week as UA's American Studies Professor Rich Megraw visits us to discuss a popular American sport, which like many things American, has its roots elsewhere: baseball. I have promised the students that I will try not to wear my grandpa's Yankees cap as I know Dr. Megraw is a big Philly fan and would be quite unhappy. PS See regular discussions of local structures in a blog written by The Tuscaloosa News Librarian Betty Slowe.