Visit to Gorgas House sets off semester-long query

Lydia Ellington, Dir. of UA's Gorgas House, speaks to class.

This year's "The Nineteenth Century City" class reflects the decline in enrollment seen in some courses in the History department and elsewhere on campus. My colleagues and I are trying to sort through this. 

In the meantime, I am determined to keep course content interesting. I think we're off to a good start. Our class of seven students visited yesterday Gorgas House, an antebellum house on the University of Alabama's campus. There, we learned about the Gorgas family, among them Mary and Jessie, two daughters who were permitted to obtain an education. That they did juxtaposes nicely with our interest in female academies, or young women in institutions of higher learning in the United States between the 1830s and 1920, the window to which historian Gunther Barth points as being a place to see emerging urban life. 

After the visit to the Gorgas House, the students were given two letters written by Josiah Gorgas, former UA President. The recipients were his daughters who were studying at Sewanee, The University of the South in Tennessee. 

In one letter, the elder Gorgas inquires about the outcome of a baseball game. This was intriguing as baseball is one of five things to which Barth points to announce the arrival of a modern urban culture in America. Barth states that it is around this game, which gradually becomes popular in the second half of the nineteenth century, that people of varying backgrounds learn to root for the same team, or share a "common humanity." 

Throughout the semester, the students will be challenged to see how young educated women figure into this common humanity. Who gets included in this narrative, I've asked them. Who gets left out? How do we find meaning in a generation of young women who seem to be forerunners to feminist ideas, among them Amelia Gorgas, Josiah's wife? She not only ran the University's Library, post office and infirmary when her husband became ill, but continued to successfully raise six children into adulthood.

One aside: Dr. William Gorgas, one of the Gorgas children and the 22nd Surgeon General of the United States Army, appears to have been an avid fan of baseball as Gorgas House displays his lifetime pass to the American League games. He is best known for helping the United States combat the impact of yellow fever during the building of the Panama Canal at the turn of the century.

Victoria Ott, guest speaker

Meanwhile, like last year and the year prior, the semester-long query will culminate in a class project. This year, the students will present a curated exhibit of primary sources at the Gorgas House. Victoria E. Ott, James A. Wood Associate Professor of History at Birmingham Southern University, will be our guest speaker.

Katherine Richter, Executive Director of the Tuscaloosa County Preservation Society, and Ian Crawford, House Manager of Jemison Manager, have generously offered their insight about Tuscaloosa's founding families to help us get started. Richter also shared diplomas and report cards that will also be helpful. Heartfelt thanks to Lydia Ellington, Director of Gorgas House,
for her assistance, too.

on happiness and the urban space

                The suspension of the Alabama vs. Florida Atlantic game owing to lightning in Tuscaloosa presented an opportunity to do another blog post. As earlier mentioned, the students visited Gorgas House this past Wednesday.  See a video postcard of their visit in this post. That’s Ben, one of the students enrolled in this class, playing piano! Our thanks to Lydia Ellington, Director of Gorgas House, for her presentation on this historic home.

                Before the visit to Gorgas, the students were asked to write a short reflection on whether the nineteenth century city Gunther Barth describes in his book on emerging urban life in nineteenth century America is a happy space.

                 Rae said “cities represented happiness and advancement” for some incoming immigrants, but they also represented despair “brought on by poverty and inequality.” She decided that Barth essentially “wants us to understand the varied states of the people” in nineteenth century cities.    

                Voni wrote that what Barth was really setting out to do was unveil the city as an “evolving place.” She noted this relation to how he describes the “Eastern European man who doesn’t recognize his wife when she gets off the boat because her appearance is country and Old World.” It wasn’t so much that she was Old World, “ Voni noted, “but that her “husband’s perspective… changed.”            
          Caroline also saw the nineteenth century city as “always changing” and moreover, a space that seems to have an “exciting atmosphere” if nothing else.

          Devon said pondering whether the urban space Barth describes is “happy” requires a “yes and no” response. For sure, “people were divided” on the basis of “their background or wealth,” she added, saying, “People living in luxury apartments had different lives from the people living next to a mill.”  Emily added that in such a space, people “were constantly surrounded by people [they] didn’t know” and yet  “this brings a certain sense of unity and interdependency.”

          Caleb said city dwellers merely “appear to be happy. “ They also appear to be “busy because…by the time people actually recognized the new urban phenomenon…the twentieth century was shaping the world.”

         Will said the city that Barth is describing is in a “developmental phase” as “so many different people come together in” one space. 

          Jeff said emphatically that cities were “not happy at all” on the basis of Barth’s description because so many people, among them “the Chinese, Jews, Romanians and Russians” were in a compact space.  Chiming in, Undre wrote, “Cities appear to be filled with stress and confusion because of the variety of culture compressed [in one space].

          Ben said “the world that Barth describes does not at first seem to be happy” because it is “crowded and noisy.” He added that “depending on your class ‘happiness’ was easier to come by.” Wayne also mentioned the crowds saying, “too many people outnumber[ed] the amount of jobs.”

          Jasmine also said emphatically that the urban space that Barth describes is not a happy and this partly because it is a “divided” space. She mentioned how Jane Addams, a founder of Chicago’s Hull House, a haven for some newly arrived, turn of the century immigrants, saw such a phenomenon as being a “modern” one  as evident in how streets lined with “slums” that intersected with fancier living on Broadway.

         Jess said “while there may be enclaves of happy people," but many city people are just there to  “succeed or survive.”

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. 

Dr. Susan Reynolds lectures on the Kilgore House

Dr. Susan Reynolds of Alabama Heritage lectures on the Kilgore House.

The students gather for a photo after Dr. Reynolds' lecture.

Great class today. We visited the former site of the Kilgore House and then headed back to tenHoor Hall to meet Dr. Susan Reynolds, Associate Editor of Alabama Heritage magazine. She lectured on this deeply-missed historical house. Before its demolition last year, the magazine was the house's final tenants. We appreciate Dr. Reynolds for sharing her first-hand accounts of completing her dissertation and later, working in this powder blue dwelling that helped introduce co-ed living to the University of Alabama.

On the way to and from the Kilgore House, we made progress on gathering footage for our music video, this year's class project. While last year's class made a short film, we will try our hand at unveiling our growing knowledge of American urban living, nineteenth century style, in a video. We will see how it all goes. By the way, we have a new student. I look forward to Caroline's contributions to this course!

 Next week, we will visit Gorgas House, which in some ways feels like a book end to today's campus tour. While the Kilgore House was constructed in 1890, the Gorgas House opened in 1829 while the University of Alabama was still being organized (the University opened in 1831). 

Stay tuned for more details about the Gorgas House and how its opening coincided with the emergence of urban life in the United States, according to Gunther Barth who looks at America's initial urban life almost as an abstraction, bearing no real start date. While exploring the arrival of apartment houses, metropolitan newspapers, department stores, baseball and vaudeville houses, he is able to see it emerging between the 1830s and 1910 give or take a decade.  He writes that unlike churches and schools, these institutions had a uniquely urban prong. Next week, we will return to Barth to understand his methods in making such a claim. Is it possible to insert higher education as seen, above all, in Tuscaloosa into his narrative?