Back of the Big House: The Architecture of Plantation Slavery
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Overview
Splendid. Using photographs and drawings from the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) dating back to the 1930s, oral histories of former slaves taken by the Federal Writers Program, antebellum travel accounts and agricultural journals, modern agricultural histories, and the vast literature on the history of slavery, Vlach deftly weaves an account of plantation life in the slave's territory, back of the 'Big House.
Design Book Review
Behind the "big houses" of the antebellum South existed an entirely different world, socially and architecturally, where slaves lived and worked. Vlach has chosen over 200 photographs and drawings from the Historic American Buildings Survey of the 1930s--an archive that has been mined many times for its images of the planters' residences but almost never for those of slave dwellings.
Synopsis
Exploring the structures and spaces used by slaves on antebellum plantations, Vlach shows how slaves subtly appropriated this landscape as their own. These newly claimed spaces fostered a feeling of community that served as a seedbed for further resistance and for the invention and maintenance of a distinctive African American culture. 206 illustrations. A New York Times Notable Book.
Library Journal
This important and pioneering study explores the scene behind the plantation houses of the antebellum South where slaves lived and worked. Taking advantage of the extensive collection of drawings and photographs from the Historic American Buildings Survey, Vlach (American studies, George Washington Univ.) vividly depicts the architectural settings of plantation slavery: the yards, smokehouses, slave cabins, barns, stables, kitchens, and other outbuildings that defined the cultural landscape. Oral histories from former slaves recorded during the 1930s and 1940s, as well as period accounts, provide powerful depictions of how African Americans transformed those settings to serve their particular needs. Highly recommended for social and architectural historians alike.-- H. Ward Jandl, National Park Svce., Washington, D.C.
Editorials
From the Publisher
Interweaves contemporary reports, oral histories of former slaves and archaeological evidence of surviving outbuildings in an unemotional but powerful manner.New York Times Book Review
A book that is at once album, introduction, and overview of the complexity and diversity of southern plantation architecture.
South Carolina Historical Magazine
This is a solid piece of documentation which forcefully illuminates a neglected yet pivotal aspect of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century reality.
Maryland Historical Magazine
One of the most user-friendly studies of African-American material culture ever written.
American Historical Review