Architectural Legacy of Wallace a. Rayfield
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€32.50
A01=Allen Durough
Alabama architect
Albert Irvin Cassell
Architectural activism
Author_Allen Durough
Black Alabama architect
Black architects
Black churches
Black communities
Black history
Category=AMB
Category=JBSL
Church architecture
Civil Rights Movement
Community-centered design
desegregation
early twentieth century architecture
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
HBCUs
Historically Black Colleges and Universities
J. Max Bond Jr.
Jim crow
John A. Lankford
John S. Chase
Moses McKissack III
Norma Merrick Sklarek
Robert R. Taylor
Southern architecture
Tuskegee Institute
urban planning
Vertner Woodson Tandy
Wallace A. Rayfield
Product details
- ISBN 9780817316839
- Weight: 499g
- Dimensions: 180 x 231mm
- Publication Date: 20 Jun 2010
- Publisher: The University of Alabama Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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In the early 1990s, while cleaning out the barn on his property in Bessemer, Alabama, Allen Durough discovered the remnants of the lifework of African American architect Wallace A. Rayfield, including several hundred of Rayfield’s drawings, floor plans, business advertisements, family portraits, and graphic art pieces. This book gathers that priceless material legacy into a cohesive whole, reproducing 159 illustrations that document Rayfield’s life and work on two continents. Born in Macon, Georgia, in 1873, Rayfield apprenticed as a young man with the noted architectural firm A. B. Mullet and Company in Washington, DC, before attending Howard University, Pratt Polytechnic Institute, and ultimately graduating with a bachelor of architecture degree from Columbia University. He returned south to teach at the Tuskegee Institute and then to establish W. A. Rayfield & Co., Architects, in Birmingham, Alabama. From there he designed buildings for construction across the south (many by mail order) and even in Africa. Rayfield specialised in church architecture, and many of his designs were for black congregations within the state, most notably the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. But he also designed schools, office buildings, and private homes. After falling into bankruptcy during the Great Depression, he died in obscurity. Durough includes catalogue-style descriptive entries and illustrations of Rayfield’s designs for six types of structures: residences, churches, schools, commercial buildings, fraternal buildings, and barns. These entries contain location, commissioning data, and brief structural notes, providing a useful resource for architectural historians and preservationists. A listing of the 359 known Rayfield structures detail their locations in 19 states, plan date, building type, and name. Also included is a biographical sketch of Rayfield, an overview of his publications, and a survey of his professional artwork and advertisements.
