BURIED


Historic Resuscitations and Design Scenarios at the Shockoe Hill African Burying Ground


Richmond, Virginia


Thesis work by Hannah Jane Brown towards completion of a Master's of Landscape Architecture with advising from Beth Meyer

PROJECT STATEMENT

On June 12, 2022, a DHR historic marker for the burial ground was revealed. The burial stones visible at in the background are the protected Hebrew cemetery, the downslope portion of which occupies land that was previously part of the African Burying Ground. The road and grass at the foreground are part of the African Burying Ground as well.
How might memorial landscapes contribute to present struggles for justice?
In allyship with a coalition of activists and descendants, this project develops interpretations and memorial designs for The Shockoe Hill African Burying Ground in Richmond, Virginia. The burial ground, where an estimated 22,000 African Americans were buried between 1816-1879, is not recognizable as an important site of memory. The site has experienced “racialized purposeful forgetting”, a term planning historian Andrea Roberts uses for the intentional suppression of Black belonging from narratives and places.
The work contributes to the resuscitation of the burial ground by interpreting the burial ground’s historic and spatial context. I propose Shockoe Valley as a Black cultural landscape that connects the burial ground to Shockoe Bottom, site to the first African Burying Ground and Lumpkin’s Jail auction house. This urban network will strengthen site memorialization by contextualizing it within a larger landscape and historical narrative.
The project develops three memorial landscape designs for the city-owned parcel. The designs are conceptually distinct, and evolve from historical inquiry, site readings, and varying approaches to memory and memorial. All emphasize the importance of memorials as social spaces that create opportunities for lived practices of memory making and keeping.

CURRENT SITE CONDITION

Site and Vicinity Plan: Historic extents of the burying ground as defined by descendant Lenora McQueen through historic research are indicated.

SITE MODEL:

MADE FOR REPRESENTING SITE WITH NON-DESIGN STAKEHOLDERS

HISTORIC RESUSCITATIONS

THE WORK CONTRIBUTES TO THE RESUSCITATION OF THE BURIAL GROUND BY INTERPRETING THE SITE'S HISTORIC AND SPATIAL CONTEXT
The burial ground has been rendered invisible, including name changes or exclusion from maps, as well as physical alterations like topographic manipulation and the routing of multiple roads through the site. Episodes of destruction were not incidental, but rather align with the growth of African American political power.

SITE FORENSICS

A MASSIVE AMOUNT OF CUT AND FILL HAVE SHAPED THE BURYING GRUOND OVER TIME. ONE METHOD FOR RECOVERING WHAT HAPPENING IS TO STUDY THE PHYSICAL LANDSCAPE.

LIFE-FULL HISTORIES

Referencing Sylvia Wynter, McKitterick states a mandate to seek out secretive histories that are not invested in rehearsing lifelessness. Journalist, abolitionist, and future landscape designer Frederick Law Olmsted’s 1853 account of witnessing two burials at this site, as recorded in Cotton Kingdom, offers one such account. Outside the tall walls of the nearby cemeteries and partially hidden by the valley’s topography, the burial ground afforded a relatively secluded space where African American gathering was permitted. Olmsted recounts, upon a coffin being buried, a member of the burial party descending into the woods and returning with beech branches to mark the head and foot of the grave.
Map included in Olmsted's 1853 Cotton Kingdom, recounting his travels
All collages are original drawings, created from artworks by Jacob Lawrence, Clementine Hunter, and Ellis Wilson

CULTURAL LANDSCAPE - SITE INTERPRETATIONS AND NEW METHODOLOGIES

Like memory, landscape is dynamic and shaped by active material processes. Owing to the site’s steep terrain, the dynamism of landscape processes, and a history of extreme topographic alterations, the material remains of people buried here have eroded, moved, and sedimented beyond the original extent mapped by descendants. Its boundary with the valley is ambiguous and thick. This reading is a methodological innovation for cultural landscapes. It focuses on the dynamism of the material landscape which is often a marginal focus in human-centric cultural landscape research. The divisions between land and human history ignore complex, socio-ecological interactions that shape landscapes and meaning.

ON MEMORIALS

I became interested in the site’s duality as a burial ground and future memorial, wondering what is being memorialized and what the appropriate relationship to ground may be.
From the start, this project has worked from a central research question -- how might sites of memory contribute to present struggles for justice?
I hypothesize that memorials may contribute to present struggles for justice as landscapes -- social spaces of encounter, spaces to be together. Significant sites are presence-ed through spatial practices of memory making and keeping. This is how memory is held and renewed.
In addition to harm-based accounts of racialized purposeful forgetting, I have strived to focus on a desire-based framework, as articulated by Indigenous studies scholar Eve Tuck. Katherine McKittrick’s thinking and writing on Black geographies as sources of practice of Black life, built in relationality and creativity have been essential.

DESIGN IMAGINARIES: URBAN SCALE


I propose a re-centering of Shockoe Valley as a connective landscape. Based on fieldwork and topographic readings, I propose Shockoe Valley as a Black cultural landscape. The valley connects important African American cultural landscapes. Through the valley bottom, it is just one mile walking from Shockoe Hill to Shockoe Bottom African Burying Ground and Lumpkin’s jail. This walk could connect the burial ground to the Slave Trail. The valley is also a fugitive landscape -- on rail lines running through the valley, Henry Box Brown shipped himself to freedom, and numerous enslaved persons made their way to the James River and stowed away on ships headed North. The valley also holds more recent histories of urban renewal. Gilpin Court, west of the burying ground, was Richmond's firth urban renewal project, with 17th street, along what is now Oliver Way Hwy, its second. This urban network will strengthen site memorialization to tell a larger story.
Left: Walk through the valley, 1 mile between the two African Burial Grounds, Middle: 20th century urban renewal, Right: Re-centering the Valley

DESIGN IMAGINARIES: SITE SCALE


The project generates three site readings and three site design proposals: the political landscape, the archival landscape, and the threshold landscape.
Representation Sets
Each of the three proposals had a uniform communication set, including:
  1. site observation annotation
  2. site interpretation and concept diagram
  3. 1/32" plan
  4. 1/8" hand drafted section and details
  5. 1/32" physical model as well as additional, proposal specific models and drawings

THE

POLITICAL

LANDSCAPE



Scenario:
  • gas station and billboard removed
  • ground plane strategically and selectively disturbed
  • design expands to include public streets and sidewalks
Section looking northeast. Fifth Street is shown on the left. Widened sidewalks and street tree plantings bring the public realm of the street and sidewalk into the space of the burial ground. The city-owned parcel is nested within a series of enclosures that evoke sacredness. The aboveground ossuary structure is shown here as well.
Fifth Street. The retaining wall along the Hebrew Burial Ground is updated into an interpretive feature. The street is narrowed to 35', the same width as Hospital Street. Sidewalks are widened and distinguished through a specific planting and paving language.
Ossuary. I propose an above ground ossuary situated on the footing of the gas station (in this scenario, removed). The structure adopts a vault form derived from traditional, submerged ossuaries. The extended roof space creates two-levels of space.
I-64 walkway. I propose an elevated walkway that sits on the interstate pylons. The pathway leads to an overlook that places an emphasis on the historic burial ground extents. Another fragmented wall could stand here to mark the edge.
Tree planting detail. Given this is a burial ground, breaking the ground plane is not taken lightly. Here, I speculate on a design detail, a traditional construction set drawing, and how it may vary for such a site.

THE

ARCHIVAL

LANDSCAPE


Scenario:
  • gas station and billboard retained and appropriated. other found materials are retained and incorporated.
  • billboard space rented and used by burial ground
  • soil disturbed during widening of I-64 is retained on site
Soil as an archive, a socio-ecological record of burial and rituals of commemoration.
Section looking northeast. Fifth Street is shown on the left. The drawing cuts through the plaza, the headstone and burial mound, as well as the woodland condition beyond. The retained billboard is shown in the distance.
1/4" section transect model through the plaza, figurative headstone, and landform.
Eastern edge of the landform with a bench nestled behind. A path of embedded railway ties creates the final division between landform and woodland.
In this design scenario, the billboard is retained and appropriated.

THE

THRESHOLD

LANDSCAPE


Scenario:
  • protocols developed and approved for intensive cut and fill, and earth moving
  • the valley is treated as a network, that connects this site to other African American cultural landscapes
Section looking northwest (see Fifth Street viaduct in the background). The hillside is modified by a series of retaining walls and pathways. Hand-drafted.
The top-most retaining feature contains an ossuary with the path widening into a plaza.
Section looking northeast. Fifth Street appears on the left. The upper-most portion of the site is flattened, tilted plane, maintained as closed cropped grass. This "void" speaks to the attempted erasure of the site and nestles ceremonial spaces into the hillside and valley.
The tilted plane landform at the top of the site.
Early concept drawing. The site is oriented to the valley, a significant Black cultural landscape.
A series of retaining features and paths as they step down the north slope. The axo begins on the left with the tilted plane landform, shows the ossuary and plaza, as well as the path and hillsides retained and stabilized with thicket plantings. Hand-drafted.

BIBLIOGRAPHIES

ONGOING (ALWAYS)

I organized initial research through a series of hypotheses nested under the central research question - how might memorials contribute to present struggles for justice?

FINAL PRESENTATION BIBLIOGRAPHY - KEY TEXTS


Gundaker, Grey, and Tynes Cowan. 1998. Keep Your Head to the Sky. Interpreting African American Home Ground. Charlottesville, London: University Press of Virginia.Gundaker, Grey, and Judith McWillie. 2005. No Space Hidden: The Spirit of African American Yard Work. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.Olmsted, Frederick Law. 1861. The Cotton Kingdom. A Traveller’s Observations on Cotton and Slavery in the American Slave States. New York: Mason Brothers; [etc., etc.,]. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/007667737.James E. Young. 1999. “Memory and Counter-Memory.” Harvard Design Magazine no. 9 (Fall). http://www.harvarddesignmagazine.org/issues/9/memory-and-counter-memory.Davis, Ujijji. n.d. “The Bottom: The Emergence and Erasure of Black American Urban Landscapes.” Avery Review. Accessed April 9, 2021. https://averyreview.com/issues/34/the-bottom.Harney, Stefano, and Fred Moten. 2013. The Undercommons. Fugitive Planning & Black Study. Wivenhoe, New York, Port Watson: Minor Compositions.McInnis, Maurie D. 2013. “Mapping the Slave Trade in Richmond and New Orleans.” Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum 20 (2): 102–25. https://doi.org/10.5749/buildland.20.2.0102.Ayers, Hannah, and Lance Warren. 2021. How the Monuments Came Down. Field Studio. https://www.pbs.org/video/how-the-monuments-came-down-widbkc/.Grandison, K. Ian. 2015. “The Other Side of the ‘Free’ Way: Planning for ‘Separate But Equal’ in the Wake of Massive Resistance.” In Race and Real Estate. New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199977260.003.0012.
The Political Landscape
McKittrick, Katherine. 2013. “Plantation Futures.” Small Axe 17 (3): 1–15.Nader, Laura. 1972. “Up the Anthropologist: Perspectives Gained From Studying Up.” https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED065375.Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. 1995. Silencing the Past. Power and the Production of History. Boston, Mass: Beacon Press.Jackson, John Brinckerhoff, Ervin H. (ed) Zube, and Ervin H. Zube. 1970. Landscapes: Selected Writings of J. B. Jackson. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.Smith, Ryan K. 2020. “Disappearing the Enslaved: The Destruction and Recovery of Richmond’s Second African Burial Ground.” Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum 27 (1): 17–45.
The Archival Landscape
Rainville, Lynn. 2014. Hidden History. African American Cemeteries in Central Virginia. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.Hood, Walter. 2001. “Storing Memories in the Yard : Remaking Poplar Street, the Shifting Black Cultural Landscape.” In Sites of Memory: Perspectives on Architecture and Race, by Craig Evan Barton, 1st ed. Democracy and Urban Landscapes. New York: Princeton Architectural Press.Goffe, Tao Leigh. 2019. “‘Guano in Their Destiny’: Race, Geology, and a Philosophy of Indenture.” AMERASIA JOURNAL 45 (1). https://doi.org/10.1080/00447471.2019.1617625.Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1966. The Savage Mind. The Nature of Human Society Series. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Way, Thaisa. 2013. “Landscapes of Industrial Excess: A Thick Sections Approach to Gas Works Park.” JOURNAL OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE 8 (1). https://doi.org/10.1080/18626033.2013.798920.Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. 1995. Silencing the Past. Power and the Production of History. Boston, Mass: Beacon Press.Hutton, Jane Elizabeth. 2020. Reciprocal Landscapes: Stories of Material Movements. Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, New York, NY: Routledge. http://proxy01.its.virginia.edu/login?url=https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781315737102.Bennett, Jane. 2010. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham: Duke University Press. http://RE5QY4SB7X.search.serialssolutions.com/?V=1.0&L=RE5QY4SB7X&S=JCs&C=TC0000392898&T=marc.Hartman, Saidiya V. 2008. “Venus in Two Acts.” Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism, June. https://proxy01.its.virginia.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsmzh&AN=2009297077.
The Threshold Landscape
McKittrick, Katherine. 2013. “Plantation Futures.” Small Axe 17 (3): 1–15.McKittrick, Katherine. 2006. Demonic Grounds: Black Women and the Cartographies of Struggle. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. http://RE5QY4SB7X.search.serialssolutions.com/?V=1.0&L=RE5QY4SB7X&S=JCs&C=TC0000136726&T=marc.Tuck, Eve, Mistinguette Smith, Allison M. Guess, Tavia Benjamin, and Brian K. Jones. 2014. “Geotheorizing Black/Land.” Departures in Critical Qualitative Research 3 (1): 52–74. https://doi.org/10.1525/dcqr.2014.3.1.52.Davis, Ujijji. n.d. “The Bottom: The Emergence and Erasure of Black American Urban Landscapes.” Avery Review. Accessed April 9, 2021. https://averyreview.com/issues/34/the-bottom.Ueland, Jeff, and Barnye Warf. 2006. “Racialized Topographies: Altitude and Race in Southern Cities.” Geographical Review 96 (1). https://proxy01.its.virginia.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsjsr&AN=edsjsr.30034004.Roberts, Andrea Raye. 2020. “Haunting as Agency.” ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies 19 (1): 210–44.