Informal Social Spaces

and Patterns of Density in

the Southern
Plantation Economy
sarah simonson
thesis research
fall 2011

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abstract
paper
explanatory diagram
annotated bibliography
proposal
program
master plan
cultural
social space
makers space
delta maps
tutwiler maps
demographics
Third places are consistently frequented social spaces that are distinct from work
and the home. These informal places rely on accessibility and convenience and are
sensitive to uctuations in density patterns. The development of automobile culture
and changes in attitude towards privacy contributed to a decline in dense, walkable
communities. This lower density led to a decrease in certain types of social
environments that sociologists point to as evidence of an overall decline in informal
social spaces.
In the Mississippi Delta, a plantation economy led to clusters of small communities
that were never convenient or accessible to one another. As a result, the informal
social spaces simply adapted to the needs of the community and were located in or
near centralized places of utility such as commissaries and train depots. In recent
decades, fundamental shifts in social structures and economics have lead to the
abandonment of the centralized environments built in the early twentieth century.
Instead, the informal centers of the Delta have relocated to gas stations and other
spaces that are attached to the highway transportation network. In many cases, the
formal centers and the centers of tourism have remained in place leading to the
creation of three separate public centers of town. A more clear connection between
these public centers while respecting the informal social traditions of daily life would
serve to strengthen small Delta communities with few resources.
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My aunt Louella, aunt Mary Ella, aunt Nicklesh,
aunt Virginia, and aunt Prissy would get together
in the winter and go from house to house quilting,
helping each other with their quilts.
I could see the things they were doing, and it
inuenced me to do it.
mary lee bendolph
gees bend alabama
Our experiences in and around the built environment can be grouped into
three categories: the domestic, the productive, and the social. Each experience type
plays a unique and integral role in human sustainability and fulllment
1
. The domestic
involves the activities in and around the home while the productive is focused in the
work environment. The third category, the social space as an easy and accessible
function of daily life, is as distinct and important as the home or workplace for the
sustainability of healthy communities.
As societies evolved and changed over time, the level of cultural emphasis on
the third place has also evolved. In ancient Rome, the third place was highly designed
and realized in the form of large public baths; in eighteenth-century England, it
appeared as the more casual and intimate coffeehouse. The country store served not
only as a place of commerce for frontier America, but also as the primary hub for social
interaction. These places all have common threads that have little to do with their
outward appearance and function, and instead touch on an emotional response and
feeling of sameness that exists across regions and cultures.
In recent decades, informal social spaces have been documented and studied by
an array of sociologists and cultural geographers. In particular, Dr. Ray Oldenburg has
noted a decline in the types of spaces that he and others have identied as informal
social spaces, or in his terms, third places.
2
He argues that the development of
automobile culture and changes in attitude towards privacy have contributed to a
decline in walkable communities where visiting a social space was both convenient to
1
Oldenburg, Ray. The Great Good Place, 15.
2
Oldenburg, Ray. The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and
Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community. Philadelphia: Da Capo Press, 1999, xxix.
the home and easily accessible on a daily basis.
3
While this shift in density, economic
layout, and transportation systems has resulted in a decline of some of the specic
kinds of places of Oldenburgs focus such as the neighborhood bar, informal social
spaces are not experiencing a complete decline. As opposed to disappearing, as
transportation systems and density cause a loss in accessibility, informal social spaces
experience an organic change in form and location in order to remain accessible to their
community.
A aw of Oldenburgs research is that he almost entirely focuses on urban
communities that have always enjoyed a relatively high density. In order to study how
density loss can affect informal social spaces, it is important to also study communities
that are low density yet have a vibrant network of informal social spaces. In the
Mississippi Delta, the easily accessible was never a xture of the environment as the
plantation economy lent itself to small communities spread out over hundreds of miles
4
.
Due to its physical layout and the complex economic difculties of the region, the social
spaces have often been the plantation commissaries, train depots, and cotton ginning
facilities whose primary function was not as a social space. In the current economy,
Delta communities are experiencing a near abandonment of the environment built as
the community center. Instead, the public center has often been relocated to modern
places of utility such as gas stations which operate along the current transportation
network and are therefore most accessible to the greatest number of people.
3
Oldenburg, Ray. The Great Good Place, 3.
4
Aiken, Charles S. The Cotton Plantation South Since the Civil War. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1998, 364.
Physically, successful third places need to be both accessible and available
5
.
The location has to be convenient and easy to get to from either an individuals home,
their work, or both. While Oldenburg equates the accessible with walkability, proximity
to a transportation network and a place of utility addresses accessibility in communities
with low density. Coupled with location, the hours have to be long in order to create the
greatest ease of accessibility and a sense of uidity in the people and activities. A
patron should be able to go alone at almost any time of day with the assurance that
other people will be there. Third places also tend to keep a low prole, which is one of
the reasons that it can be difcult to asses and discuss the importance a particular third
place has within a community
6
. They tend to be not constructed as social spaces but in
many instances were establishments designed to meet other needs and were
commandeered into an involuntary social space.
A nal attribute of third places involves the patrons themselves. There is always
a collection of regulars that are the people that make the places come alive
7
. They feel
at home in the third place, and set the tone of social interaction. While regulars are an
integral component, there is an acceptance that newcomers are also essential to the
sustainability of a place, and navigation of the inroads is routinely performed.
Whether they are located in an urban or a rural environment, central to the
creation and sustainability of third places is the unplanned meetings between people
8
.
In urban communities, the adoption of modern zoning has altered the ways in which
5
Oldenburg, Ray. The Great Good Place, 32.
6
Oldenburg, Ray. The Great Good Place, 36.
7
Oldenburg, Ray. The Great Good Place, 34.
8
Oldenburg, Ray. The Great Good Place, 22.
individuals interact with the community by creating separate land use districts that
remove the commercial from the residential, and as an unintended consequence
permanently altered the informality of the third place
9
.
New communities that proliferated after World War II throughout the United
States were largely low in density and completely un-walkable
10
. According to
Oldenburgs argument, the physicality of suburbia with its large private spaces that have
to be reached by car are antithetical to regular informal meetings
11
. As the suburbs
emerged, the categories of built environment experience were reduced from a three to a
two-step model of daily routine that excluded the informal meeting as well as the third
place
12
. While he has noted that this two-step routine has led to the disappearance of
the third place, it has in many instances simply shifted to a new type of environment.
Utilitarian places where the social aspect is secondary such as with barbershops, gas
stations, and laundromats are now primary third places in communities due to their
centrality and necessity - everyone in the community frequents them, regardless of their
proximity. Places where the social aspect is more apparently primary such as bars and
cafes have become spaces of formal interactions that are planned or invited as people
are now required to drive to nd them.
In the Mississippi Delta, the development of the large scale plantation and
the labor force necessary to run the production inherently created collections of
9
Arendt, Randall. Rural By Design: Maintaining Small Town Character. Chicago:
Planners Press, 1994, 3.
10
Oldenburg, Ray. The Great Good Place, 3.
11
Oldenburg, Ray. The Great Good Place, 7.
12
Oldenburg, Ray. The Great Good Place, 8.
communities with a lack of urban density. Whether the plantation as an economic
system is extinct as in the Georgia Piedmont region or still a functioning entity within the
economy as it is in the Mississippi Delta, its legacy is present in its effects on economy,
social structures, and the political system
13
.
While variation in community layout typologies has coincided with changes in
agriculture, labor systems, and transportation, the Delta as a whole has always on some
level been made up of a collection of small towns and hamlets. The cultural and
economic entity that is the Delta is not actually the Mississippi delta in a technical sense
but an alluvial plane that contains the delta of a major tributary of the Mississippi River,
the Yazoo
14
. It is bounded in the west by the Mississippi River and in the east by vast
bluffs that run the length of the state from Memphis through Greenwood. It is a
collection of 17 counties of low population that contain communities that vary in size
from 37,000 in Greenville to the 800 residents of Tutwiler. Many communities hover
below the 500 mark
15
. Due to a pattern of settlement and density patterns that do not
follow that of either the city or the small town, Oldenburgs assessment of disappearing
third places does not apply.
The Deltas history of settlement and community layout typologies becomes a
three phase story of shifts in labor force, social struggles, and transportation networks
16
.
13
Aiken, Charles S. The Cotton Plantation South, 364.
14
Cobb, James C. The Most Southern Place On Earth: The Mississippi Delta and the Roots of Regional
Identity. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
15
U.S. Census Bureau. Selected Economic Characteristics of Tallahatchie County, Mississippi.
Generated by Sarah Simonson using American Fact Finder. <http://factnder.census.gov> (15 October
2011).
16
Aiken, Charles S. The Cotton Plantation South, 10.
The rst phase of slave holding plantations is that which is most common in the
American consciousness of Mississippi cotton and planting history. The Delta was
originally settled by Americans in the 1830s. Settlement remained at a relatively low
ebb through the 1860s due to the difculty of obtaining and clearing the Deltas land
17
. It
was a costly production to clear and drain what amounted to swampland, which led to
settlement by a small number of wealthy, slave-owning planters who were already
established elsewhere, frequently from outside of the state
18
. Many of them ran their
productions remotely. Moving production to the Delta was considered a huge gamble
and was unpredictable, but it could produce huge returns on investment
19
There are several characteristics that distinguish a plantation from other
agricultural production typologies. First, as shown in its early settlers economic prole,
plantation agriculture requires high capitalization due to the necessity of large
landholding and a large labor force. It also relies on a highly specialized, singular crop
such as cotton, and a skilled labor force to tend that crop. It requires careful
management year round which, along with the large labor force, requires an intricate
system of management
20
. All of these factors contribute to a geographic form that
spatially differentiates it not only from the variety of urban typologies, but from many
agricultural typologies as well.
In the Old South phase of slave-holding plantations, the Mississippi Delta was
made up of a small number of high-volume plantations inhabited by large numbers of
17
Cobb, James C. The Most Southern Place on Earth, 7.
18
Cobb, James C. The Most Southern Place on Earth, 23.
19
Cobb, James C. The Most Southern Place on Earth, 28.
20
Aiken, Charles S. The Cotton Plantation South, 5-7.
black slaves as a labor force. These settlements were almost exclusively located along
river fronts which acted as highways through the Delta wilderness
21
. According to the
1860 census, the majority of Delta residents owned more than 50 slaves
22
. Each
plantation was centralized in a nucleated pattern of housing with the overseers or
landowners as the center of community. The labor force was housed in rows that were
relatively close to one another. However, at the start of the Civil War, this phase of
development was really just beginning for the area. It was far more established in other
regions of Mississippi, such as the Natchez region that lay south of the Delta. There
was, however, very high optimism for the Delta at the start of the war. The early settlers
had proven the fertility of the land while the newly established local governments were
making moves towards centralized ooding control through a levee system
23
.
Due to the scattered population and the low infrastructure, social spaces tended
to be located in more temporary conditions. The brush arbor became an important
feature of the early Delta landscape, particularly in its use during church services. It was
a wallless structure that was built as a temporary pavilion, sometimes for traveling
preachers. They were also used by slaves to conduct illegal church services.
The period of Reconstruction from the close of the war until the 1870s marked a
major fundamental shift in the South and the beginning of the second phase of the Delta
economy. In the Delta, as in other areas heavily dependent on the plantation economy,
the emancipation of the slaves caused a struggle to develop to sort out the demands of
21
White, Paul. The History and Development of the Mississippi Delta Economy. Business Perspectives,
Summer-Fall 2009 v20, 71.
22
Cobb, James C. The Most Southern Place on Earth, 31.
23
Cobb, James C. The Most Southern Place on Earth, 29.
both the newly freed slave population and the wealthy planters in need of a reliable
labor force
24
. Within the Delta, the geography of communities changed as the plantation
developed into a large-scale system of tenant farming. Several arrangements emerged
to mitigate between the desires of the black community to assert themselves as
freepeople and the wealthy planters who feared losing their labor force. The most
prominent of those arrangements was some form of sharecropping. Without any
resources, entering into a farm renting agreement was often the only option that a freed
slave had
25
. The agencies created through federal reconstruction encouraged these
agreements.
These new tenant farms eradicated the nucleated plantation typology. Instead of
dense housing arranged around the managerial quarters, the sharecropping population
scattered across the land. Fueled by a desire for personal freedom and a view of the
rented farm as symbolic of personal ownership, the population of the delta shifted into a
highly scattered pattern of occupation
26
. The change in layout typology was so swift
and so severe that by 1910 there were almost no artifacts from the rst phase of the old
type of plantation system
27
.
Another feature of this new landscape was a shift in transportation systems. As
settlement moved inward, railroads began to be developed as a new primary
24
Cobb, James C. The Most Southern Place on Earth, 46.
25
Berlin, Ira. The Making of African America. New York: Penguin, 2010, 101-102.
26
Aiken, Charles S. The Cotton Plantation South, 19-20.
27
Aiken, Charles S. The Cotton Plantation South, 39.
transportation system to move goods in and out
28
of the Delta
29
. Also as a part of this
scattering, furnish stores and plantation commissaries appeared in towns and in the
countryside at strategic locations such as crossroads. As the tenant farming economy
developed further, centralized shared ginning facilities also developed
30
. This created a
landscape where tenant farmers lived far apart from one another but had to travel to buy
supplies, gin their cotton crop, and socialize. Countryside juke joints were created in
the tenant farmers homes as a scattered population sought a centralized gathering
place. On certain nights of the week, the furniture in the house would be moved out of
the way and neighbors would gather to fry sh and dance to live music. Occasionally
these informal dance halls and barrooms would relocate to outside facilities, most of
which were also far out in the countryside and not located in town.
The outbreak of World War II marked the third shift in the Delta settlement
patterns. Several developments in the plantation economy led to a mass exodus of the
black population from the rural South into the urban North that came in several waves.
First, the arrival of the boll weevil as a crop destroyer caused mass panic, even as it did
not create the amount of damage in the Delta as had been feared. Then, the advent of
the rst world war caused a need for industrial laborers as production increased and
many men were sent overseas. This sudden need for laborers was also caused by the
sudden loss of European immigrants to ll those slots. A third factor was the initiation of
the Agricultural Adjustment Act in 1933. As a result of that act, in 1934 only 1/4th of the
28
Berlin, Ira. The Making of African America, 114.
29
White, Paul. The History and Development of the Mississippi Delta Economy, 71.
30
Aiken, Charles S. The Cotton Plantation South, 59.
crop produced in 1933 was planted. Feeling both a push and a pull to leave the
plantation region, tenant farmers left the South.
The Mississippi Delta adopted mechanization in agriculture quickly. The relative
speed with which the Delta planters were willing to adopt new technologies cemented
their future role as the foundation of the Delta economy while other plantation areas
were forced to diversify. Whether the labor force migrating caused a need for
mechanization or mechanization created a job vacuum, plantations remain the driving
force of the Delta economy while no longer providing signicant numbers of jobs. With
the loss of tenant farming, the modern Delta physical landscape began to resemble that
of the Old South more closely than that of the New South. There was a reemergence of
the life in a centralized location - the town center - as plantation commissaries and
furnish merchant stores closed
31
. There also emerged a new transportation system in
the highway that affected the layout of businesses, homes, and social spaces. This new
density level and transportation system led to the creation of informal social spaces
along the highway network in places of high trafc such as the gas station.
Viewed on the surface, Oldenburgs argument appears valid. As populations
grew more reliant on automobiles and lived in a more suburban typology walkable
neighborhoods vanished. With them, some kinds of social spaces that were dependent
on foot trafc disappeared. However, that does not mean that all informal social spaces
disappeared. Low density environments such as that of the Mississippi Delta have a
wide variety of informal social spaces even as their communities are almost entirely un-
31
Aiken, Charles S. The Cotton Plantation South, 110-111.
walkable. As the community layout and transportation networks changed over time the
social spaces changed with them in order to remain accessible and relevant.
highway structure railroad structure river structure
transportation
systems
residence
infrastructure
management
work space
brush arbor juke joint
gas station
informal
social spaces
slave quarter typology tenant farm typology small town typology
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settlement
layout
Aiken, Charles S. The Cotton Plantation South Since the Civil War. Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1998.
Aiken gives an economic history of southern plantations through the lens of
cultural geography. He discusses the settlement patterns of people in the primary
regions of United States plantation development: Georgia, Louisiana, Texas,
Alabama, and Mississippi. He discusses the Yazoo River Basin in Mississippi
extensively and compares it to the other regions in both its successes and its
faults. The Yazoo Delta is unique from the other plantation regions in that the
plantation owners were quick to adapt to larger changes in labor movements and
technologies such as the in the shift from tenant farming to wide-spread
mechanization. This exibility and vision for the future allowed the planter class
of that region to be particularly successful while other plantation regions were
forced to abandon large-scale farming altogether.
Arendt, Randall. Rural By Design: Maintaining Small Town Character. Chicago:
Planners Press, 1994.
This book is an urban planning manual with a focus on small towns in the United
States. In the rst half of the book Arendt gives a detailed description of a variety
of planning issues that are relevant to both small towns and larger cities on the
neighborhood scale. The second half of the book offers a list of precedents and
explains what was and was not successful about them. One failing of the book is
that it almost exclusively discusses small towns that have some amount of wealth
and the economic support of a centralized tourist district with businesses. There
is not a lot offered for the discussion of small communities that do not have the
benets of such an economic system.
Berlin, Ira. The Making of African America. New York: Penguin, 2010.
Berlin gives an account of African American history through the lens of four great
migrations: the forced migration from Africa during the slave trade, a forced
transfer to the interior of the United States from its coasts, the great migration of
African Americans from the rural South into the more urban North that occurred
after World War I, and the recent migration back into the Southern states. The
sections that discussed the Great Migration of the 1910s and 1920 was relevant
to the discussion of labor systems and the shift from tenant farming to
mechanization.
Cobb, James C. The Most Southern Place On Earth: The Mississippi Delta and the
Roots of Regional Identity. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
This is the most detailed history of western settlement of the Mississippi Delta
region in existence. The discussion of Mississippi life prior to 1800 is not of any
relevance here: it is exclusively a discussion of plantations and the people who
own them and work in them. Due to its specicity, it is becomes a dialogue about
the relationship between the black and white communities of Mississippi and how
the tension between black labor and white ownership drove much of its history
and culture.
Francaviglia, Richard V. Main Street Revisited: Time, Space, and Image Building in
Small-Town America. Iowa City: University Of Iowa Press, 1996.
Francaviglia studies the cultural idea of main street in the United States over
time, particular in smaller towns. He discusses its signicance not only as a the
center of commerce and a crossroads of transportation, but also as the focus of
civic identity.
Mathur, Anuradha and Dilip da Cunha. Mississippi Floods: Desiging a Shifting
Landscape. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001.
This is a discussion as to how the lower Mississippi River ood protection
systems should be addressed. The authors use detailed graphics in order to
discuss the inherent conicts between human desires for ood control and
environmental issues.
Oldenburg, Ray. The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair
Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community. Philadelphia: Da Capo
Press, 1999.
Oldenburg coined the term third place in order to describe places that he saw to
be as integral to daily life as home or work but was often neglected in the greater
consciousness of American culture. He believes that the rise of suburban life and
the decline of walkable communities has also led to a decline in third places.
However, he neglects to consider the rural areas of the United States which have
never been walkable yet still have a vibrant and varied culture of informal social
spaces.
Vieyra, Daniel L. Fill Er Up: An Architectural History of Americas Gas Stations. New
York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1979.
This is a history of the American Gas Station as told through its built
environment. It discusses the cultural value of stations in the United States and
how their design directly reects specic branding considerations of a small
handful of gas companies. The multi-use function of the gas station and its tie to
our modern transportation system lends itself well to spontaneous interaction
among neighbors and as an accidental third place.
White, Paul. The History and Development of the Mississippi Delta Economy. Business
Perspectives, Summer-Fall 2009 v20 p70-76.
This article gives a brief but thorough timeline of the Mississippi Delta economy
and its possibilities for the future. White believes that while the plantation is still
the largest cultural force of the Delta, it is and no longer can be the primary
economic driver. There is a recent push by some organizations and small
communities to tap into a small but growing tourist market that is largely tied to
blues tourism and the casino industry.
Whyte, William H. The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces . New York: Project for Public
Spaces Inc., 2009.
Whyte employed practical observation methods to attempt and identify why some
urban public spaces are successful and why some seemingly are not. He rst
suggested a list of criteria to dene the characteristics of a successful public
place such as the ratio of women to men and the ratio of people to seating areas.
He discussed Seagrams Plaza in New York City at length and detailed why he
believes it to be a successful plaza and what about it makes it successful. He
goes into both specic design considerations such as the edges of fountains
being comfortable for seating as well as more managerial considerations such as
friendly security policies that encourage loitering.
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Shed get four frames and get a needle and
thread, and shed get her quilt top and spread it
across on top of it, and hook the quilt up to the
frame. Shed have four nails up in the loft of the
house and then she had four strings on them.
Shed get the four strings and roll it up to the
frame to hold it up. Then when night came, we roll
the quilt up in the loft so you could walk up under
it.
mary lee bendolph
gees bend alabama
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source: u.s. census
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175 miles
The Mississippi Delta has always been a
loose, low-density network of relatively
small towns whose inhabitants are
completely reliant on large transportation
networks for work, living supplies, and
socializing. The communities are far
enough away from one another that
accessibility through walking was almost
never an option.
1865 1930 2011
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After several decades of reliance on the
vast river network, a rail system was
implemented that complemented the
tenant farming system of the new south.
As the Delta transitioned from tenant
farming to mechanized labor systems,
new highways were built that rendered
the rail system mostly obsolete. Most of
the rail depots were forced to close,
including the one in Tutwiler, Mississippi
which closed in 1929.
sources: 1930 railroad commissioners map &
ms department of transportation
In the 1930s, the federal aid highway
system drastically changed the Deltas
transportation network. However, due to
the low density, residents continue to
travel long distances for work. The
change in transportation network also
changed the kinds of social spaces that
are accessible and convenient.
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12 7%
19 8%
18 8%
47%
0 - 10 minutes
20 - 30 minutes
10 - 20 minutes
30 - 60 minutes
commute time to work in tutwiler mississippi
source: u.s. census & federal aid highway system
progress map 1930
1930
1927
2011
demolished
As the rail depots disappeared, building
patterns aligned with the new highway
system.
source: sanborn fre insurance map 1927 &
u.s. geological survey 2011
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As the primary transportation system
transferred from rail to the highway, the
informal social spaces moved with it. As
that transition took place, a formal
community center was constructed on a
lot located between the built downtown
and the gas station that acted as the
public center as a hang-out.
source: personal observation & feld interviews
3 november 2011
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tourism
formal
informal
0
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There are two historic markers in the
original downtown area which are heavily
marketed and act as a steady but small
tourist draw. This, combined with the
transportation shift, has resulted in 3
spheres of activity in 3 separate locations
in and around Tutwilers downtown.
source: personal observation & feld interviews
3 november 2011
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formal
tourism
informal
Overall , the Delta has experienced a
signicant and steady decrease in
population following the great migration
and job-loss due to mechanization.
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source: u.s. census
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Due to movement after the transition
away from tenant farming, the population
of Tutwiler has been varied but steadily
increasing. Therefore, the abandonment
of the built downtown cannot be
attributed to population loss. However,
viewed alongside the larger trends of the
Delta, population stagnation and
decrease is inevitable.
source: u.s. census
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A more clear connection between the 3
spheres of activity would be benecial to
the residents of small towns with low
resources as well as the tourists, both
economically and socially. This can be
achieved through thoughtful master
planning.
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A quick master planning study should be
performed of Tutwilers primary public
zone which consists of all three activities:
formal, informal, and tourism.
0 500 1000 2000 1 mile
The resulting plan will include spaces for
multi-use where all 3 spheres of activity
can occur together rather than
separately.
Quilting has long been a social activity for
women, and in Tutwiler it has been used
successfully to improve the economic
standing of an existing group of quilters
who are interested in passing on their
local quilting traditions.
As part of this recommendation a quilting
center will be proposed. The center con-
sists of two parts: one is a more private
space for the quilters themselves which
will use a historic building that is no
longer in use, and the other is a more
public space that will act as a quilt
museum and library with a specic focus
of Mississippi quilts. The second building
will be placed in a lot that is currently
empty. In between is a greenspace
where the depot used to be located that
now houses the historic markers.
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10 30 60
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Quilting Museum & Library
10,000 square feet
lobby/front desk area :: 500 square feet
classroom / film screening room :: 1,000 square feet
storage :: 100 square feet
seating
podium / stage area
library :: 1,400 square feet
reading room :: 300 square feet
stacks :: 1,100 square feet
gallery / museum :: 3,500 square feet
storage :: 500 square feet
museum oor :: 3,000 square feet
archive :: 2,000 square feet
reading room :: 300 square feet
oral history recording booth :: 75 square feet
documentary lm recording booth :: 125 square feet
equipment room :: 100 square feet
employee work area :: 200 square feet
offices :: 990 square feet
3 ofces @ 120 square feet :: 360 square feet
kitchenette / breakroom :: 300 square feet
meeting room :: 300 square feet
building support :: 570 square feet
janitor :: 20 square feet
restrooms :: 400 square feet
mechanical :: 150 square feet
Quilt Studio & Social Space
4,800 square feet
main quilting space :: 3,050 square feet
storage for supplies
storage for nished quilts
coat closet
display for nished quilts
teaching space 700 square feet
childrens playspace :: 500 square feet
kitchenette :: 300 square feet
building support :: 250 square feet
restroom :: 100 square feet
storage :: 50 square feet
mechanical :: 100 square feet
Early study for the spaces required of
quilt frames and the quilters themselves.
twin 50 x 52
6 people
double 83 x 106
8 people
queen 90 x 106
8 people
king 107 x 108
10 people
sitting
standing
2

quilt frame
supply table
seating
quilt frame
supply table
3

Early study of the different levels of

personal space and social space.
public space 25
social space 12
personal space 4
intimate space 1.5
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Then we went to see the exhibit. When I got to
see my great-grandmothers quilt, I cried. I cried
to see our history and our past up on those walls,
and realizing that mama and my aunts had left a
legacy. They were gone. And then to see her quilt
hanging on the wall, it was so beautiful. When she
had died, she was just mama, but now she had
been reborn as someone who people were
respecting.
louisiana p. bendolph
gees bend alabama
Mississippi Main Street is a program of the National Trust which is a
community-driven, holistic approach to downtown revitilization that
encourages economic development within the context of historic preservation.
They utilize what they term as a four-point approach to community design:
organization of community members towards the same goal, promotion of the
commnunitys unique assets, design which capitalizes on those assets, and
economic restructuring which strengthens a communities existing economy.
Their methods regarding historic preservation, promotion, and design are
the most applicable to this project.
Master Plan
The first phase of the project design
will involve a quick evaluation and
list of recommendations for
downtown Tutwiler. This process
will follow the methods of previously
established programs that address
the needs of small-town and rural
communities.
The Small Town Design Initiative is a program of Auburn Universitys Urban
Studio which seeks to address the modern issues of the rural town centers of
the South that are brought on by large-scale changes to the economy and
population shifts. They recognize that small towns rarely have access to
professional assistance or good inforation regarding design and planning that
is applicable to their particular community. They implement a six-step method
of community education, documentation of current assets, community
visioning, design, documentation and presentation, and follow up. Their
methods regarding documentation of current assets and design are most
applicable to this project.
The Mississippi State University Community Action Team was invited by
Clarksdale Revitilization, Inc. to provide rst impressions and design sketches
for downtown Clarksdale as it begins a transition from an agriculture-based
economy to a tourism-based economy. Their recommendations involved a
series of short-term and long-term goals including a rehabilitation of the
facades of downtown buildings. Similar in structure to the Small Town Design
Initiative, the Clarksdale recommendations are most signicant in that they
address the same economic transition as Tutwiler and that they are
geographically similar.
Cultural Context
Any intervention of the existing
downtown must respect local
cultural considerations
architecturally as well as
sociologically. These projects took
different aspects of the local
architecture and used elements of
those apects without simply
providing exact copies.
Supershed & Pods
Newburn, Alabama
1997 - 2001
Rural Studio
International Civil Rights Museum
Greensboro, Alabama
2010
The Freelon Group
Harris (Butterfly) House
Masons Bend, Alabama
1997
Rural Studio
material use:
corrugated metal
material use:
wood & screen
The shed the most basic
form of shelter and is a
common feature of the
rural landscape. Here it is
used to provide the
primary protection from the
elements and give greater
exibility in the built form of
to a series of smaller
buildings.
This museum is housed
in an old Woolworths
department store. The
architects identied
what was most
historically signicant
about the building,
retained it, and then
celebrated them while
adding new elements.
Cultural Context
Some vernacular typologies of
Mississippi are the I-House and the
cotton gin. Effecient houses that are
designed to handle the extreme
heat and humidity of Mississippi
have always been a feature of the
landscape. Communal ginning
facilities as well as individual gins
belonging to large plantations are a
feature of every Delta town.
Mississippi houses of early western
settlement were organized around a
central hallway which was sometimes
enclosed but was also often left open in
order to allow for cross-ventilation.
The planters cabins almost always included
an exterior portico that acted as a entryway
and provided sun protection.
Cotton gins have always been a xture of the
Delta landscape. Often clad in corrugated
metal, they include a large open structure to
house the ginning equipment and a covered
area for vehicles to make deliveries and pick
up the ginned cotton.
Single-File I-house Double-File I-house
Dog-Trot House
Planters Cabin
Cotton Gin
Social Spaces
Several different methods of
addressing how to combine
practical daily use with social
spaces exist, including using social
space as a pathway, as a
destination, and as its own entity.
Infowash
Delisle, Mississippi
2006
SHoP Architects
The Commons
Gilbert, Arizona
2007
Debartolo Architects
Masons Bend Community Center
Masons Bend, Alabama
2000
Rural Studio
The infowash combines a
laundrymat, an ofce for disaster
relief, and an outdoor social space.
All three of the program elements
are housed under one roof, but are
kept separate from one another.
This student union has a
centralized social space
as a destination that is
approchable from all
directions and has other
program elements such
as a bookstore and a cafe
located along the various
entry sequences.
This community center is
designed to house a social
space as well as a satellite
ofce for a traveling doctor
and library. The more
formal program is housed
seperately, but the social
space also functions as the
primary circulation.
a
b
c
Makers Spaces
Spaces designed for craftsmen tend
to be large, well-lit rooms that have
secondary spaces spinning off of
them. One exception is the market
typology where customers
wandering through the space is
beneficial.
Artists Colony Market
Budapest, Hungary
Competition Entry
Atelier Architects
Burnie Makers Market
Burnie, Tasmania, Australia
2009
TERROIR Architects
Weaving Studio
San Juan Island, Washington
2010
Prentiss Architects
This studio space is centrialized and
serves as the main space in the
building and as the connecting
piece for all of the support spaces.
a
b
c
d
e
This artists market integrates
into the regular street
circulation of the city and
encourages browsing.
This is a combination of
craftsman spaces and
spaces for selling nished
works. The different art
forms and sales rooms are
separated into different
wings by program.
primary
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My life is different now. When people used to
come here in Gees Bend, sometimes they would
buy quilts from me. They didnt ask me what I
charge for my quilts. They just give me what they
want to give me. Id get ve or ten dollars for a
quilt.Things have changed a whole lot for Gees
Bend in the last few years. I can give more than I
ever gave in my whole life.
And now my quilts have more feelings than they
ever had, because the world can see and I can
share them with the world.
mary lee bendolph
gees bend alabama
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source: us department of agr cu ture
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source: us census
downtown tutwiler, mississippi
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The site is located in the central
Mississippi Delta which is in the
northwest side of the state. The
Delta is not actually a delta
really an alluvial ood plane of
the Mississippi River.
alluvial valley of the mississippi river
The regular ooding of the
alluvial valley made the region
both attractive and unattractive:
the regular ooding allowed to
land to be extremely fertile. This
resulted in a tension between
ood control and ecology.
meander scars of the mississippi river
Early western settlement was
open only to those wealthy
enough to be able to clear the
land and address the regular
ooding. Once ood control
systems were established, it
allowed greater numbers to
migrate to the area.
illustration of the 1874 ood of the mississippi river
A major ood in 1927 caused
the federal government to take
control over a consolidated
ood control system.
1927 ood of the mississippi river
Regular ooding over an
extended period of time has
created an almost completely
at landscape.
topography of tutwiler mississippi and surrounding area
Tutwiler is located 20 miles
southeast of Clarksdale which is
considered a major town in the
Delta and is the main destination
for blues tourism.
topography of tutwiler mississippi and surrounding area
Settlement in Tutwiler was brought
about by the placement of a rail
depot at the turn of the 20th
century.
rail map of mississippi 1865
The loss of the rail depot in Tutwiler
in 1929 caused the center of town
to lose focus and become largely
abandoned.
a high resolution digital copy is on order from
the University of Alabama Department of
Archives & Special Collections
railroad commissioners map 1919
a high resolution digital copy is on order from
the University of Alabama Department of
Archives & Special Collections
The informal public center of town
shifted from the environment built
for that purpose into an area
alongside the highway.
federal aid highway system progress map 1930
compiled from multiple sanborn re insurance maps, 1927