Under seige Construction and care at the Fannie Wall Children's Home and Day Nursery

Under seige

Construction and care at the Fannie Wall Children's Home and Day Nursery

Gutman

Marta

Gutman, Marta

Author

University of California, Berkeley

Center for Working Families

University of California, Berkeley. Center for Working Families

Sponsor

text

working paper

Berkeley, CA Center for Working Families, University of California, Berkeley 2002 2002 monographic

Berkeley, CA

Center for Working Families, University of California, Berkeley

2002

monographic

English eng

English

eng

electronic application/pdf 57 p. born digital

electronic

application/pdf

57 p.

born digital

Civic infrastructures need care, as well as people themselves. This observation animates the story of the Fannie Wall Children's Home and Day Nursery, an orphanage and daycare center, established in 1918 by African-American clubwomen in Oakland, California. In this paper, I use visual and archival resources and oral histories to probe the history of the institution and its ties to other twentieth-century charities. My analysis highlights the changing landscapes of urban architecture and the effects of ideology and inequality on caregiving. Only one of the privately run charities discussed in the paper still stands: the St. Vincent's Day Home. The others were destroyed in the 1960s by urban renewal programs that devastated West Oakland, the historic center of African-American life in Oakland and the site of the Fannie Wall Home. This study underscores the point that we need to widen our horizons when thinking about care. The actual sites, the architectural settings where care takes place, create an indispensable and fragile physical scaffold for care giving and community building -- a charitable landscape that is threatened and is itself in need of care.

Marta Gutman is a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Working Families. She is an historian and licensed to practice architecture in New York State.

Berkeley Center for Working Families Working Paper No. 32

Berkeley Center for Working Families Working Paper

No. 32

Use of this resource is governed by the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons "Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States" (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/)

wfn_bwpaper_25.pdf

MChB English eng

MChB

English eng

English

eng