WHAT IS "IT" ABOUT ALABAMA'S HISTORIC BUILDINGS?

Alabama Heritage, Spring 2005 by Kaufmann, Thomas

WHEN ERROL ELYNN WAS CAST IN The Adventures of Robin Hood (a 1938 film which also featured the master archery skills of Alabamian Howard Hill), it was said that he won the starring role over other talented actors because he possessed the coveted "it" quality of the silver screen. The notion of this virtue implies something indefinable, mysterious, yet obviously appealing all at the same time. Being an axiom also for objects of art, the "it" quality exists for architecture as well; without a doubt, Alabama's historic buildings possess this prestigious quality, which can be traced to a harmony of proportions based-instinctively or with conscious deliberation-on the proportions of the human body.

Alabama has long enjoyed a great tradition of building from the earliest examples of folk vernacular architecture, such as the simple two-story farmhouses known as "Ihouses," which dotted the antebellum landscape. Early settlers built structures that were not only practical but ruggedly beautiful as well. Alabama builders were people exercising powers of wonderful aesthetic sensibilities in the erection of these simple structures. They possessed an intrinsic sense of arrangement and proportion. Even asymmetrical solutions reveal a definite sense of order. Some Alabama builders studied pattern books, which were based upon "rules for architecture"-the ancient systems of geometry codified in Roman times by the architect Vitruvius. Gaineswood, the magnificent Greek Revival mansion in Demopolis, provides a good example of an edifice built closely to the ancient rules of proportional ratios, visible proof of their appreciation by its owner-builder, Nathan Bryan Whitfield.

Not all early Alabama builders were as familiar with the classical ratios for creating architecture and interior spaces. But when informed builders departed from strict adherence to the classical rules of proportion-such as the formalism of the "Palladian" Belle Mont in Tuscumbia-the results are still beautiful and intriguing. With their mixed influences and often fanciful excesses, the popular Victorian and Late-Empire styles in Alabama placed less emphasis on the strict rules and formulas of classical architecture, but architects and builders always referred to the human figure as the primary index for creating dramatic architectural effect.

Professional architectural education in Alabama was born around the turn of the century at Auburn and Tuskegee, and the general adoption of the classically influenced "Beaux-Arts model" for teaching architecture in the United States refined and disseminated the study of classical proportion. New York became the "vertical Europe" of the Gilded Age in America, ruling out any fair domestic comparisons of architectural scale, opulence, and grandness. However, if comparisons are made based upon the merits of excellent architectural grammar and composition, proportion, and appropriate ornamentation, it remains that architectural essays executed in Alabama by Warren, Knight & Davis; Wallace Rayfield; or Frank Lockwood-just to name a few-are as interesting and as good as those by the more famous New York architects such as Charles Pollen McKim, Richard Morris Hunt, or Cass Gilbert-proving the maxim that "size doesn't always matter."

As a southern commonwealth, Alabama has a unique bound-volume legacy in several chapters of American History: The Old Southwest, King Cotton, The Civil War, The Industrial Age, Civil Rights, and The Space Age, and so much more; and it has the architecture to prove it. There are still many significant treasures from each and every important period of our architectural history, the outward and visible symbols of our state that make us who we are-a great people, with a great history and heritage like no other.

Thomas Kaufmann is the Designer for the Alabama Main Street Program at the Alabama Historical Commission in Montgomery.