building the american landscape - Univerza v Novi Gorici

from East to West and including approximately 1,000 km of plantations along the
Mississippi river 33 .
However, the scenarios of the plantations also included different settlement types.
The main building was the owner’s house, often studied by historians of
architecture as an isolated building. However, around the plantation house there
was usually an ornamental garden, cared for by professional gardeners, and a series
of outbuildings, such as the cookhouse, the washhouse (laundry), the smokehouse,
the milkhouse (dairy), and a cistern [Figure 19] .
Some structures were quite common, such as the carriage house and blacksmith,
others, such as a small schoolhouse for the owner’s children, chapels,
representative offices for business relationships, were quite frequent, but without
recurrent schemes. The house of the overseer and the slave quarter naturally
played an important role in the working of the plantation 34 . The materials used for
all the residential buildings were sometimes bricks or more often wood. Further
away, there were vegetable gardens, orchards, haylofts and corrals for the animals.
To complete this overall view, there were various agricultural structures, laid out
according to the needs of the plantation, in which to store materials and tools
required to cultivate the products of the plantation 35 . The plantation papers
represent a primary source for the interpretation of the cultural landscapes of the
South. These include various types of documents, such as diaries, letters, notes,
sketches and drawings of the plantations, land surveys, notary deeds and
inventories, all of which are evidence showing the purchase of trees and
ornamental plants.
A study by Suzanne Luise Turner 36 , professor of landscape architecture at Louisiana
State University, highlighted the importance for landscape history of numerous
33 For the data on this page see JONES, A., Maldwyn, The Limits of Liberty American History 1607‐
1992, London, Oxford University Press, 1995 [first ed. 1983] p. 1 (It. tr. Storia degli Stati Uniti
d’America. Dalle prime colonie inglesi ai giorni nostri, Milano, Bompiani, 2011, p. 113)
34 See PHILLIPS, B. Ulrich, American Negro Slavery, Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press,
1966
35 See VLACH, John Michael, Back of the Big House, The Architecture of Plantation Slavery, Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1993
36 TURNER, Suzanne L., “Plantation Papers as a Source for Landscape Documentation and
Interpretation: The Thomas Butler Papers”, published in Bulletin of the Association for Preservation
Technology, Vol. 12, No. 3, 1980, pp. 28‐45
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