Clay Lancaster's Kentucky: Architectural Photographs of a Preservation Pioneer
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University of Kentucky UKnowledge Architecture University Press of Kentucky 3-30-2007 Clay Lancaster's Kentucky: Architectural Photographs of a Preservation Pioneer James D. Birchfield University of Kentucky, [email protected] Click here to let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Thanks to the University of Kentucky Libraries and the University Press of Kentucky, this book is freely available to current faculty, students, and staff at the University of Kentucky. Find other University of Kentucky Books at uknowledge.uky.edu/upk. For more information, please contact UKnowledge at [email protected]. Recommended Citation Birchfield, James .,D "Clay Lancaster's Kentucky: Architectural Photographs of a Preservation Pioneer" (2007). Architecture. 6. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_architecture/6 CLAY LANCASTER'S KENTUCKY This page intentionally left blank CLAY LANCASTER'S KENTUCKY Architectural Photographs of a Preservation Pioneer , James D. Birchfield Foreword by Roger W. Moss The University Press of Kentucky Publication ofthis volume was made possible in part by a Library ofCongress Cataloging-in-Publication Data grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Birchfield,]ames D. Clay Lancaster's Kentucky: architectural photographs ofa Photograph on p. II by Lisa Basch, courtesy ofWarwick Foundation. preservation pioneer / James D. Birchfield; foreword by All other photographs courtesy ofthe University of Kentucky Roger W. Moss. Library's Special Collections. p.cm. ISBN-IJ: 978-0-8131-2421-6 (hardcover: alk. paper) Copyright © 2..°°7 by The University Press of Kentucky ISBN-10: 0-8131-2421-2 (hardcover: alk. paper) I. Architectural photography-Kentucky. 2. Lancaster, Clay. 1. Title. Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth, serving Bellarmine TR659.B56 2006 University, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern 779'·4769-dc22 2006012091 Kentucky University, The Filson Historical Society, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University, University ofKentucky, University ofLouisville, and Western Kentucky University. All rights reserved. Designed by Todd Lape / Lape Designs Editorial and Sales Offices: The University Press ofKentucky 663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008 www.kentuckypress.com Member ofthe Association of American University Presses II 10 09 08 07 543 21 FOR MARTHA CONTENTS FOREWORD BY ROGER W. Moss [ ix ] ACKNOWLEDGMENTS [ xiii ] INTRODUCTION [I] PHOTOGRAPHS [II] BOOKS BY CLAY LANCASTER [ 129 ] FOREWORD In a candid moment, many architectural historians will to perpetuate his diverse interests, including his devotion admit to an early career of trespass and housebreaking. to Kentucky's architectural heritage. As I remarked at No less a figure than the renowned author John Harris, the Warwick Foundation's inaugural event in 2003, "You aBE, former head of the Royal Institute of British could have dropped Clay Lancaster anywhere and he Architects Drawing Collection, even subtitled his 1998 would immediately start surveying the local architecture autobiography Confessions of a Country House Snooper. and collecting early glass-plate negatives. And if there And since I'm among friends, I might as well admit to was no indigenous architecture, he would whip out his my own career of crime in the 1950S when, like Clay sketch pad and invent some." I might have added that Lancaster two decades before, I jumped many fences to his surveying would most likely include taking informal reach abandoned houses in danger of being torched by photographs such as those reproduced in this book. vagrants or pulled down by a farmer's tractor. Our in For architectural historians like Clay Lancaster, a tent was not felonious; we certainly weren't there to wrest sharply focused, unretouched photograph is documentary mantels from chimney breasts or gouge out H-L hinges. evidence ofthe highest order. A "document," according to On the contrary, we were in search of something more my desktop dictionary, is something that "furnishes con precious: visual memories ofauthentic historic buildings clusive information or evidence, as an original, legal, or untouched by vandalizing modernizers, well-intended official paper or record." Antiquarians have been docu restoration architects, or overzealous decorators. These menting buildings photographically since Louis Daguerre memories, often reinforced by quickly snapped photo (1789-1851) discovered the process that carries his name. graphs, colored our careers as researchers, authors, and Back when photography -required bulky cameras, glass educators. plates, and long exposures, many ofthe earliest surviving As James D. Birchfield traces in the following intro images are of buildings, probably because they could be ductory essay, Clay Lancaster was infected by a love of captured in bright light and didn't fidget. architecture at an early age, a gentle madness from which By the mid-nineteenth century, photographers in he never cared to recover. Whether in Kentucky, New Europe, Britain, and America were purposely creating York, or Nantucket-all places he lived during a long and documentary photographs ofancient buildings that were active life-Clay made a major contribution to the study being demolished to make way for underground sew and preservation ofthe local architecture. Following his ers, subways, and grand boulevards. (There was even a death in 2000, his estate created the Warwick Foundation Society for Photographing Old London Relics in the ix 1870S and 1880s that produced large-format prints ofen and drawings in the world, housed at the Library of dangered structures.) Photographers and social reform Congress. ers such as Jacob A. Riis (1849-1914) produced documen As important as HABS has been in recording the tary images that revealed the unvarnished truth of the architectural patrimony ofAmerica, the program under squalid New York City slums occupied by newly arrived standably focused-until fairly recently-on the key his immigrants. Horrified by what he saw, Riis dedicated toric monuments in all the states and territories. There his life to bettering the living conditions of the poor. was no budget or staff to produce measured drawings Likewise, William H. Jackson (1843-1942) captured the and photographs of the thousands of rapidly disappear phantasmagoric wonders of Yellowstone in Wyoming ing vernacular buildings found throughout the older to convince a doubting Congress that such an extraor settled states such as Kentucky. This is why Clay's pho dinary place actually existed and deserved protection as tographs are so important. He did more than document America's first national park. In the age before digital the obvious high-style structures, however. Many build manipulation, the photograph did not lie. ings that we treasure today were unappreciated in the By the late 1930S, when Clay began recording the 1930S and 1940s, as Clay's photographs ofthe John Pope work ofJohn McMurtry for his master's thesis, photo Villa in Lexington (pages 35-36) and Pleasant Lawn in graphic documentation ofvernacular architecture for its Woodford County (pages 62-63) graphically illustrate. own sake was under way. The invention ofroll paper film His photographs often poignantly remind us of the ter and inexpensive cameras in the 1880s benefited both the rible losses in the years before the founding of the Blue tourist and the architectural historian. Large, heavy cam Grass Trust, such as Mount Airy in Woodford County eras, tripods, and specialized knowledge of chemicals (pages 50-51) and the more recent vandalism at Mount for plate preparation and development were no longer Brilliant and Plancentia in Fayette County (pages 48-49). required. As Mr. Birchfield points out, historians such Can any preservationist look at this sorry litany of lost as Henry Chandlee Forman (1904-1991) and Thomas Kentucky without shedding a tear? Tileston Waterman (1900-1951) were already prowling Even when the buildings that Clay photographed the back roads and byways of Maryland and Virginia, more than sixty years ago do happily survive-now in the informally recording abandoned and endangered manor hands of house-proud owners-we still treasure Clay's and plantation houses. Waterman published his Domestic photographs for the record oforiginal features that may Architecture ofTidewater Virginia in 1932, and Forman's have been lost, changed, or obscured in the process of Early Manor and Plantation Houses of Maryland ap turning these buildings into twenty-first-century homes. peared in 1934. Both these landmark books would have Restoration architects, architectural historians, and own been known to Edward W. Rannells at the University ers of Kentucky's historic buildings will particularly ap of Kentucky, who suggested that Clay write his thesis preciate Clay's photographs ofephemeral details such as on John McMurtry, a topic that required a daunting chimney caps, porch steps, garden walls, and fences. amount of original research and photography. In addi Mr. Birchfield correctly points out that Clay did tion, Forman and Waterman were contemporaries and not see himself as a professional photographer. He cer friends ofCharles E. Peterson (1906-2004), who drafted tainly did not expect to publish these images; they were the New Deal scheme to employ out-of-work architects site-visit field notes to jog his memory or to be used that became the