Biltmore Manor: A North Carolina Excursion

This past week, I was fortunate enough to be able to tour Biltmore Estate, the previous home of the Vanderbilt family. It is one of the largest residential complexes in the United States, with many bedrooms, banquet halls, living rooms, and much much more. I went on the trip with my family and the estate has something for everyone, including a candy store, bookstore, and greenhouse. 

I would love to come back and do a whole other series on the lighting fixtures at Biltmore Estate.

A photo of the Vanderbilt family at the same entrance we just walked through.

Leather tooled walls of the breakfast room.

Also on display at the manor, were intricate and beautiful reproductions of the clothing of the Vanderbilt family and their guests. This collection was created by a costume design company in England. The reproductions were based on photos of the Vanderbilt family, as clothing is very delicate and wouldn't have survived. 

African-American Architects: William Sydney Pittman

William Sydney Pittman (April 21, 1875 - March 14, 1958) was an African American Architect from Alabama. He is known for being the first practicing African-American architect in the state of Texas. He was also the first African-American in the nation to win a federal contract to design a building in 1907. He is also notable for being both the mentee and son-in-law of Booker T. Washington. 

Source: Dallas Observer

Pittman graduated from the Tuskegee Institute in 1897 and Drexel Institute, where he earned degrees in architecture and mechanical drawing. Pittman designed two buildings for the Kentucky Normal and Industrial Institute for Colored Persons (now Kentucky State University), the Trade School Building and Hume Hall. After completing his work at Kentucky Normal and Industrial Institute, he received a letter of endorsement from the Kentucky Superintendent of Education.

Hume Hall
Source: Delcampe.com

He was also employed by the African-American architect John Lankford. William Pittman designed churches, schools, libraries, commercial buildings and fraternal buildings. Some examples of his work are the Allen Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church, Garfield Elementary Public School, and the Washington D.C. 12th Street Y.M.C.A, and the building for the Grand United Order of Oddfellows (Negro). 

Allen Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church
Source: Wikipedia

One of his most famous buildings is the Knights of the Pythias Temple in Dallas, Texas which was the first major commercial structure built for African Americans, by African Americans, and with African American money. It is now the only building downtown to hold that distinction. It provided office space for prominent African American professionals, such as lawyers and doctors, and the top floor was used for social activities. The Colored Carnegie Library of Houston, located in Houston, Texas was the first library for African-Americans in Houston.

Pythian Temple
Source: Flickr

African-American Architects: Plympton Ross Berry

As part of my Virginia Database of African American Architects class, we are supposed to write short wiki articles on 3 African-American architects. My 3 architects were Plympton Ross Berry, Wallace Augustus Rayfield, and William Sidney Pittman. This was a great learning experience for me, because I love history, and it helped open my eyes to the history of the people who blazed a trail for me to become what I am today. It's like a connect the dots of African-American history, especially with Pittman and Rayfield, for reasons that you will read later. I would have to say my favorite of the architects I researched is Berry, just for all he accomplished in his life, and all through his own merit as well as for his philanthropy, which I don't really get into in the article. 

Source: Ohio Memory

Plympton Ross Berry (1834 - May 12, 1917) in Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania, and was born a free man of color. His family moved to Lawrence County Pennsylvania when Plympton Berry was six, and the family were the first African Americans to live in the New Castle area. 

It is not known whether or not Plympton, known to all as “Ross”, had any formal schooling. We only know that he was trained at an early age to become a bricklayer and by the age of sixteen was a master brick and stonemason. Also at the age of sixteen, he constructed the Lawrence County Courthouse, which he completed in 2 years. Berry did a lot of work for the cities and counties in that area, making an opera house and a city jail for Youngstown city. Berry also had the distinction of designing and constructing Youngstown, Pennsylvania’s first mansion, as well as its reconstruction when it burned down a few years later. 

Berry soon had his own construction company, and he employed several white workers in a time when a black man supervising whites was rare. In addition, when local members of the U.S. Colored Troops returned from the Civil War, Berry offered them training and jobs with his construction company. Berry also owned his own brickyard, where he made his own bricks which were said to be unique in color. There are now 65 structures attirbuted to Plympton Ross Berry as either the brick mason, architect, or builder. He continued working until the age of 82.

Top 10 Architecture Memes

I got the idea for this post after my friend Rodg posted this meme on his Facebook page. 

I thought, "There are probably plenty of architecture memes out there, does anybody ever try to find them?" So I sought and I found quite a few, some of them specific to certain design programs that nobody outside that studio would understand. So here are my personal top 10 list or architecture memes. Enjoy

Enough said.

The things that you think in the middle of a structures final.

Zaha Hadid is not even bothered.

Frank Gehry, describing his design process

Architecture professors

Hipster Ariel

You can read my post on all-nighters here.

High Expectations Asian Father can apply to African parents too.

There were a lot of these "What I think I do" memes, so it was hard to narrow it down, so I included two! 

Bonus!