Techwood Tour with Laura Benedict (Charles Palmer's granddaughter)

On April 25, 2019, Christina Crawford and Chris Sawula (pictured below) met Laura Benedict, Charles Palmer’s granddaughter, for a walking tour of the one remaining building at the Techwood Homes site. The L-shaped building (currently empty), originally held social and administrative programming for the housing project and two-story units accessed from paired stoops with wrought iron detailing. Small private yards were accessed from the back doors. The building provides an excellent sense of the rich materiality of the architecture and the generous landscaping of the original design, circa 1935-36. Thanks to Laura for being game to tromp around the site, and for the photos!

 

Christopher Sawula presents ATLHousing at the 2018 Bucknell University Digital Scholarship Conference

Emory Art History Visual Resources Librarian and ATLHousing Project Coordinator, Chris Sawula, presented the project in October at the 2018 Bucknell University Digital Scholarship Conference, which focused this year on Expanding Access, Activism, and Advocacy. His talk discussed Atlanta Housing Interplay as a model for a published, digital monograph that will bridge the gap between traditional print scholarship and interactive online projects. He explored the issues of platform, publishing, and target audience and talked about striking a balance between academic research and public history. Chris’ presentation can be found on the Bucknell Digital Commons. Thanks to Chris for doing the good work to get the project out there!

Galloway wins Alan Rackoff Prize + shares work at Emory Undergraduate Research Partners Symposium

Emory sophomore Sam Galloway, Christina Crawford's Undergraduate Research Partner for 2017-18, was winner of this year’s Alan Rackoff Prize for Undergraduate Research. Sam's paper, “Welwyn Garden City: A Green Solution to Interwar Housing,” was the result of his extensive research in the Charles F. Palmer Papers in the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library at Emory. Sam combed through the archival materials Palmer brought back to Atlanta from his 1934 and 1936 trips to England to visit slum clearance and social housing sites. Because Palmer was particularly taken by Letchworth and Welwyn, Sam's paper sought to understand how and in what ways the original Garden Cities might have affected Atlanta's first public housing projects. Congratulations to Sam for his award, which comes with a monetary prize of $1,000, and an invitation to attend the Emory Libraries’ Undergraduate Research Award Ceremony. 

In addition, Sam presented his research at the Undergraduate Research Partners Poster Symposium on Monday. See photos of him here with his engaged interlocutors.

Success at Atlanta Studies

Congratulations to graduate student participants Kelsey Fritz, Tosen Nwadei, Courtney Rawlings, and Will Ulman for their presentations at the Atlanta Housing Interplay panel at last Friday's Atlanta Studies Symposium. We had fantastic attendance, engagement from the audience, and post-symposium feedback. Now that the semester is done, the work of polishing the texts into publishable form begins! [Thanks to Professors Astrid Eckert and C. Jean Campbell for the photos.]

Atlanta Housing Interplay at the Atlanta Studies Symposium

Students in the "Mastering the Archive" seminar will be presenting in Session 1 of the sixth annual Atlanta Studies Symposium, held at the Robert W. Woodruff Library at Emory University on April 20, 2018. Come hear their excellent presentations from 9:30-11:00, Rose Woodruff Commons Conference Room, 10th Floor of Woodruff Library.

2018 Atlanta Studies Symposium, Emory University

Panelists for the session include: Kelsey Fritz, Courtney Rawlings, William Ulman, Laney Graduate School; and Tosen Nwadei, Goizueta Business School.

The theme of the 2018 symposium is “Atlanta: City + Region.” The  Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC) projects that the 20-county Atlanta region will grow by 2.5 million to more than 8 million people by 2040. Around 8% of ARC-forecasted growth will occur within the current City of Atlanta boundaries. We cannot plan for this growth without considering the historical context of the city and region, including policies determining—and sometimes limiting—the flow and connectivity among people, jobs, cars, and other transit options through the region. Having this context creates a platform to discuss lessons learned from the past and present to plan for regional growth in a more equitable and sustainable way.