The National Building Arts Center presents this virtual program. Registration required.
November 13, 1-3p.m.
Built in 1860 and lost to a devastating fire in 2017, the James Clemens Jr. House had many lives. It was a splendid Palladian country villa engulfed by the growing city. The house was the largest dwelling with all of its ornament made of cast iron. Later the house was a convent with school, and a portal for Chinese immigrants coming to the Midwest. Toward the end, the Clemens House was wrapped up in a notoriously scandal-ridden speculative real estate scheme. And, on top of those, the dwelling was the vision of an enslaver and Confederate sympathizer who reminds us of the unresolved legacies of race and the Civil War in the US.
The National Building Arts Center (NBAC) today holds a collection of the original two-story cast iron loggia (or front porch) of the Clemens House, including all of the columns. How do these artifacts animate a complex and sometimes-problematic past while also attesting to older ways of fabricating architectural art? This webinar will explore the history of the house and NBAC's responsibility to conserve and curate its remains. Central to the discussion will be recent work to create a photogrammetry model of the house as well as display of some of the columns in a public exhibition.
Join us and you may conclude that a cast iron column is never just a cast iron column.
The Presenters:
Michael R. Allen is a Visiting Assistant Professor of History at West Virginia University.
Alan Yang is a student at Washington University in St. Louis and research intern at the National Building Arts Center.
