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How to be Intelligent

12/22/2016

Quilt from Acacia Collection

I met Carroll Greene at the Unitarian Universalists Church of Savannah. He was a gentle intelligent humble man. As so many with Carroll he made me feel I was his best friend. We were on an antiracism team together. I through the years began to piece his significant career together. He had come to Savannah as a consultant and found the area so rich with unexplored African-American heritage he stayed. He had worked with the Smithsonian Institution and many African-American heritage museums. But besides our enlightening conversations my fondest memory was a dinner he had invited my family to. I had never been to his home before, a brownstone on Oglethorpe Street. I had heard a lot about his Acacia Collection and he wanted to show me it. I had not realized the collection was resting all through his house when I had brought my six year old son. He had prepared us a good and comfortable meal that we ate surrounded by his collection. The whole time I watched over my son to make sure he did not break any of his beloved collection.
After we ate he took us around the room and showed us various pieces that were one of a kind. Many of the items had been made by slaves or Blacks who lived during reconstruction times. He says they were the art of making-do. While the slaves and free blacks did not always have much they took what they had and made practical but beautiful objects. Baskets made of soda bottle tops, used matchstick art, carved canes, corn shuck and reed storage baskets, and other objects were part of the collection.
I had been so engaged in his collection and the stories he told about each item that I had forgotten my son. So I looked around the room worried but luckily he had fallen asleep on the sofa. Carroll seeing this took off of a clothes rack a quilt he only a few moments ago had said was over a hundred years and made by a master quilter and tucked my son in covered by this precious quilt. When I protested Carroll smiled at me and said, ’These items are beautiful but they are also made to use.’ It was then I realized the greatness of the man who stood before me.
I was later to know the quiet radicalism of Carroll. He was at the forefront of the reclaiming of the black history and promotion of black history museum and cultural center movement. In 1967, he co-curated "The Evolution of Afro-American Artists: 1800-1959" with Romare Bearden (of Harlem Renaissance fame) at the College of the City University of New York. He would later describe in another Romare Bearden’s exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, as “an affirmation, a celebration, a victory of the human spirit over all the forces that would oppress it.”
The next year he began a fellowship in Museum Studies at the Smithsonian Institution, where he played a role in adding to the museum's collection of African American artifacts. The radical idea he had was that there was a continuity of crafts, folklore and art of slaves and free persons in the United States from their heritage from Africa. While this may seem a no brainer today it was not necessarily so in the sixties.
He made two contributions while at the Smithsonian Institution. He published the book American Visions, Afro-American Art. He played a vital role in adding to the museum’s previously meager collection of African-American artifacts. He conducted oral history interviews with such noted African-American artists as Jacob Lawrence. The second thing he did was to go throughout the United States, cataloging museums dedicated to African American heritage. Savannah’s own Virginia Kiah Museum was one of the museums being cataloged. This cataloging of the museums was the first attempt to recognize the emergence of an attempt to preserve and recapture a history that had been previously ignored.
Carroll also was a mentor to various Black artists. Keith Cardwell, is a freelance photographer and curator. He was the first British photographer whose works were shown in Castro's Cuba. Carroll Green and I talked for hours and hung out together. He was Mr. Cool. My Cuban portfolio owes so much to his generosity of ideas and sense of humor. Another artist who he impacted was Jonathan Greene. Greene wrote extensively of the Gullah artist Jonathan Green, whose work he called “the most ambitious artistic expression of Sea Islands culture ever successfully undertaken.”
Carroll was also the founding director of the Banneker-Douglass Museum in Annapolis, Maryland. The museum continues today. On its website it says it is ‘the State of Maryland’s official museum of African American heritage, the Banneker-Douglass Museum serves to document, to interpret, and to promote African American history and culture (particularly in Maryland) through exhibitions, programs, and projects in order to improve the understanding and appreciating of America’s rich cultural diversity for all.’
In 1988 Carroll came to Savannah to collect and study African-American heritage in our coastal region. While here Greene curated several shows at the Beach Institute in Savannah. His most prominent curatorial work which you can still visit was the Ulysses Davis Folk Art Collection. He was honored for that work with the W.W. Law Legacy Award.
While he was here he increased his collecting he was a founding member, curator, and executive director of the Acacia Collection of African Americana, which he formed in 1989. He was the driving force behind the Acacia Collection, a wide-ranging assortment of African-American artifacts including arts and crafts, furniture, pottery, musical instruments, quilts and tools. Part of the collection was displayed for years at the Owens-Thomas House slave quarters here in Savannah. Today the collection is held by the Slave Art Museum in Charleston.
Carroll died in 2007 here in Savannah in his home. Savannah’s famed Dr. Walter O. Evans, one of the nation’s foremost collectors of African-American art, said that Greene “was extremely important. He was a giant in the field, a leading proponent of African-American art long before it was a fashionable thing to do. He was someone whose opinion I deeply respected.” He was also a giant of a man who never lost his touch of humanity.

Carroll Green

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A Gaffe, A Paradise, and a Gift (cont.)

12/9/2016

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Jekyll Club Hotel

I have started this piece in the Short Stories Page. So to get to the beginning you will need to go to the Short Stories Page. Hope you enjoy

A Gaffe, A Paradise, and a Gift (cont.)

After that brief interlude I want to take you back to Gould Cottage. Jason "Jay" Gould (May 27, 1836 – December 2, 1892) made his vast fortune in the railroads and speculation. He has been referred to with Rockefeller, Carnegie, and JP Morgan as a ruthless robber baron of the Gilded Age. His son born in 1870s in New York was Edwin Gould.

Edwin was not comfortable with being an heir to one of the great nineteenth century fortunes. He dropped out of his father’s alma mater Columbia University. This caused estrangement with his father. To further this fracture with his father he refused to join the family business. Instead he struck out on his own and quickly was worth over a million dollars. After this he made his grand return to the family business and at the age of twenty-seven inherited his father’s estate with this and his own fortune; Edwin was one of the wealthiest men in the United States.

But Edwin was a far cry from the stereotype of the robber baron. He recognized his wealth afforded a chance to help those who were not as fortunate as he. He was inspired by his mother-in-law Hester Shrady’s work with the Messiah Home for Children. Edwin began making contributions of various sorts to charitable organizations. Sheltering Arms Children’s Services was one of the first children’s homes to benefit from his involvement. He would often make surprise visits to offer tickets to the circus and ice cream during the hot summer months.

But as is often the case it was tragedy that struck his own life that caused a deepening of his commitment to helping children. His son Edwin Gould Jr. was staying at the family’s cottage at Jekyll Island. He was accidently shot while on the Island. He died from the gunshot. The family would never return to the island that had given them such great pleasure. Later during the funeral services, a basket of roses arrived from the children of Sheltering Arms, that he had so often as benefactor arrived, with one rose from each child at the home. This one simple act stirred the heart of Edwin Gould that he determined to devote his fortune and his time on the behalf of children. He established the Edwin Gould Foundation for Children to make this happen in perpetuity.

Gould Cottage here in Savannah dates to the 1930s when millionaire Edwin “Jay” Gould of New York City and his Gould Foundation for Children donated the land to the Savannah Female Orphan Asylum for a children’s nursery. As part of the gift he required an autonomous local group take charge of the day to day running of the facility accountable to the executive office of the Foundation in New York City.

The cottage was built for $50,000 and as previously said designed by Cletus Bergen. It was operated locally by The Julia McLeod Chapter of The Kings Daughters & Sons for barely a year before the Gould Foundation took the reins and began managing the home. It was reported by the foundation in 1947 “continues to do a worthy piece of work without much trouble to us. Reports are received each month of their meetings and very little is ever requested. The Board consists of young, married women, who seem to take a keen interest in the home.”

The home in 1949 was closed and has been used by the former Parent and Child Inc., Union Mission and currently a private school, Habersham School. As for the foundation it continues to this day in New York City doing cutting edge children’s services.

As for me I continue to retreat to Jekyll Island which continues to prove there is never a bad time to be had at Jekyll. Also long ago I blasphemed the ‘Dean of Savannah Architects” at a dinner party. And finally today through all these wandering words I have wrote I hope I have made amends.

Jekyll Island Beach

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Savannah Architects: Hyman Witcover

12/3/2016

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Bnai Brith Synagogue

Hyman Wallace Witcover was born July 16, 1871 in Darlington, South Carolina. At the age of seventeen he moved to Savannah to work as a draftsman for noted Savannah architect A. S. Eichberg. After two years he had become an architect. This would begin one of Savannah’s most illustrative architectural careers.
Witcover was not only an accomplished architect but one of Savannah’s great citizens. He would serve on the board of Mickve Isreal Synagogue and the original board of Savannah’s public library. He would serve in the Georgia Hussars as a private. But his most prominent civic life was as a freemason. Which we will talk about later.
His first major project was Sacred Heart Catholic Church on Bull Street. It is a fine example of his Gothic architecture. During this same time period he designed The Jasper Spring Memorial in honor of legendary Revolutionary War hero Sgt. William Jasper. With these introductions to the Savannah community his career was off to a grand and long start.
He would design the Bull Street Library, Chatham Armory (which now houses Brighter Day Natural Food Store, Sentient Bean, American Legion, and a Local 911 restaurant), and the Kehoe House. His designs for homes in the downtown Savannah area were so prolific that in 1903 the Morning News wrote ‘nearly all the new homes were designed by Witcover and his brand of attractive architecture’.
Because Witcover was one of the first American born Jewish architects it is no surprise that he was selected to design the Moorish Bnai Brith Jacob synagogue (today the Savannah College of art and Design student center). His most known work is City Hall built in 1913 in with a Beaux Art Design. It was heralded as one of the best City Halls in the South. This is his drawing of the proposed City Hall that mesmerized Savannahians.
His Freemason career grew throughout his life. He became the leader of the local chapter and later was voted the Active Sovereign Grand Inspector General of Georgia (I am told this is as important as it sounds). While leading the Freemasons he designed the Scottish Rite Temple on Bull Street. But his career in the Freemason world expanded as he was elected in 1923 the Secretary General of the Supreme Council of the national Freemasons in DC. This position led to his moving to DC. A DC paper wrote of the Secretary General Witcover “one of the most brilliant men the fraternity ever produced in the South.” He would design Scottish Rite Temples throughout the South including but not limited to Jacksonville, Montgomery, and Jackson, Mississippi.
Witcover died on October 2, 1936 in DC. His funeral was held at the All Souls Unitarian Church. He is buried there in the Lincoln Cemetery. Various Savannah groups such as the Library wrote letters to the editor extolling his contributions. His legacy today can be seen throughout Savannah.

Savannah Scottish Rite Temple

Sacred Heart Catholic Church

Chatham Armory

City Hall

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Historical Ruminations

How to be Intelligent

A Gaffe, A Paradise, and a Gift (cont.)

Savannah Architects: Hyman Witcover

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