Slavery in the City

Architecture and Landscapes of Urban Slavery in North America

Clifton Ellis, Rebecca Ginsburg, Clifton Ellis, Rebecca Ginsburg

• Publisher: University of Virginia Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780813940052
• eBook ISBN: 9780813940069
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: History of Architecture

Countering the widespread misconception that slavery existed only on plantations, and that urban areas were immune from its impacts, Slavery in the City is the first volume to deal exclusively with the impact of North American slavery on urban design and city life during the antebellum period. This groundbreaking collection of essays brings together studies from diverse disciplines, including architectural history, historical archaeology, geography, and American studies. The contributors analyze urban sites and landscapes that are likewise varied, from the back lots of nineteenth-century Charleston townhouses to movements of enslaved workers through the streets of a small Tennessee town. These essays not only highlight the diversity of the slave experience in the antebellum city and town but also clearly articulate the common experience of conflict inherent in relationships based on power, resistance, and adaptation. Slavery in the City makes significant contributions to our understanding of American slavery and offers an essential guide to any study of slavery and the built environment.

INDEX

Italicized page numbers refer to illustrations, and properties named for individuals or families are indexed by surname.

abolitionist movement, 10, 34, 125; British, 35, 48; dates of abolition in northern states, 52–53, 156

Adams, John, 29

African Americans, 67n23, 107; in alley houses after the Civil War, 115; enslaved, 11, 117, 119, 127, 132; middle-class, 14. See also free blacks/people of color; slave resistance; slavery, urban; slaves

African American studies, 153

African Burial Ground, in Manhattan, 53

African customs, retention of, 77–78, 131, 134

African Voices of the Atlantic Slave Trade: Beyond the Silence and the Shame (Bailey, 2005), 157

Aiken-Rhett House (Charleston), 98

Aleck (enslaved brick mason in Galveston), 108

Alexandria, Virginia, 21, 32

Allen, Richard, 108

Allen, George, house of (Houston), 115–16, 116, 118

Allston, Elizabeth Waites, 100–102

Allston, Henry, 100, 101

American Revolution, 11, 20, 29

American studies, 2, 153

Anderson, F. M., 108

Anderson, Jinny, 109, 110

Annapolis, Maryland, 11, 12, 19, 34, 42; Judge John Brice house, 26; brick houses of elites, 73–74; cellar kitchens in, 26; comparison of outbuildings with Wye Hundred, 76; contrast with Charleston, 83, 84–85; cooking and laundering arrangements, 26–27; English country towns as model for, 20–21; Federal Direct Tax (1798) in, 69, 70–71, 76; gentry of, 71; geography of, 71; “hiring out” of slaves in, 79–80; Christopher Hohne house, 74; map with property lines and buildings, 71, 72, 73; Richard Owens house, 78, 79; population (1800), 71, 75, 76; Absalom Ridgley house, 74, 75; John Ridout house, 22, 26, 71; Ridout Row, 73, 74

Annapolis Lot Histories and Maps, 70

Arcadia (Trelawny Parish, Jamaica), 44 archaeology, 2, 10, 69, 130–32, 136, 154

architecture/architectural history, 2, 5, 8, 10,...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Studying the Landscapes of North American Urban Slavery
• Architecture of Urban Domestic Slavery in the Chesapeake and Jamaica: Comparative Evidence
• “Appropriated to the Use of the Colored People”: Urban Slave Housing in the North
• Close Quarters: Master and Slave Space in Eighteenth-Century Annapolis
• Understanding Antebellum Charleston’s Backlots through Light, Sound, and Action
• Urban Sites of Slavery in Antebellum Texas
• Slavery in Knoxville, Tennessee: In, but Not Entirely of, the South
• Henry, A Slave, v. State of Tennessee: The Public and Private Space of Slaves in a Small Town
• Conclusion: Directions for Future Studies of North American Slavery
• Selected Bibliography
• Notes on Contributors
• Index