on inserting higher education and the Gorgas House into America's emerging urban life

The Gorgas House was constructed in 1829 while the University of Alabama was being organized.

Amelia Gorgas became UA's Librarian in 1883.

This Wednesday, the students will visit the Gorgas House, one of four remaining campus buildings from the seven that survived  the Civil War. Over the years, the house has functioned in several ways. It was initially built as a multi-purpose dwelling before the University of Alabama's 1831 opening. A dining hall, storage room and pantry were located on the first floor. The second floor was a hotel and the living quarters for the university's steward. The building was also used as a residence for university faculty beginning in 1845. Its present name is a homage to Josiah Gorgas, the university's eighth President, who resided there with his wife, Amelia, daughter of John Gayle, Alabama's Governor (1831-1835). Suffering a stroke in 1878 after a brief stint as UA President, Josiah, a Pennsylvania native and Confederate general, became the university's Librarian. His wife assumed the position of UA Librarian following his death in 1883. She retired in 1906. Their family remained in the house until 1953 when it was preserved as a museum.

How do we insert the Gorgas family and this house into a bigger narrative concerning the emergence of urban life in the United States during the 1830s? While some observers are hard pressed even today to consider Tuscaloosa a "city," by the time the state capital moved from here to Montgomery in 1845, it was just that. To be sure, only 2,500 people are needed for an area to be considered a "city" in the United States and Tuscaloosa had a little over 4,000 at the time.

This week, we will make thoughtful connections between local history and Wednesday's assigned readings from Gunther Barth's City People. We will work hard, too, since Barth looks at five things - apartment and vaudeville houses, metropolitan newspapers, baseball, and department stores - to define what he sees as an emerging urban culture in a uniquely American context. He says these five things more than schools, churches, factories and political machines, announce the ways in which very different people from many places coped with the demands of an increasingly urban America. 

With Tuscaloosa in mind, it is worth it to wonder if Barth was too hasty in dismissing schools. For example, Tuscaloosa Female Academy opened in 1830 as one of the state's first educational facilities for women. Indeed, long before the University of Alabama opened it doors to women in 1893, this academy did as much. Interestingly, a lot of the cosmopolitan thinking to which Barth seems to point was  likely present in this academy, which had a literary society in 1831 and more than 400 volumes of books in its library a year later. Other pressing social issues - such as the lives of indigenous and African American people - notwithstanding, early on the state of Alabama sensed a need to educate its young women. Other schools for women in the area during the nineteenth century included Alabama Female Atheneum, later called Alabama Central Female College. It opened in 1845 in the state's old Capitol building. Why were these schools opened when they were opened? Who opened them and why here? And how do these young women fit into the "public feminine" story to which we will turn in the weeks ahead?

Additionally, given all the seeming advancements in a still young nation, among the topics will want to ponder is whether the emerging city life that Barth describes is a "happy" space. The students should be prepared to answer this particular issue via a short written reflection this Wednesday. Essentially, they should be asking themselves "What is Barth really saying in the opening pages of his book?" and  "Am I always persuaded by his arguments and his evidence?" 

Also, can the Gorgas House and the Kilgore House, which was constructed on UA's campus later in the century, serve as bookends to Tuscaloosa's initial urban evolution nineteenth century-style? Must higher education be omitted from the narrative of an industrializing country if we consider Tuskegee Institute's opening in 1881? Although known for focusing on agricultural education as well as its students' intellectual and moral life, the institute eventually received funding from Andrew Carnegie, one of the most prominent steel barons in the country. Tuskegee was thus inserted into an industrial narrative that, by late century, also included Birmingham, the so-called Pittsburgh of the South.

One aside: Gorgas House is presently celebrating the opening of the Panama Canal with an exhibit on Josiah and Amelia's eldest son, William. He was the Chief Office of the Sanitation for the United States Military in the Canal Zone. In fact, yellow fever and malaria were eradicated under his leadership. This exhibits features Panama Canal memorabilia and items for the Gorgas Family Collection. An earlier exhibit on William and his wife, Marie, also presents opportunities to think about many topics urbanization in Latin America and related topics, among them the significance of transportation and fashion.