Jessica Larson

This dissertation examines the architecture of charitable and reform institutions built to serve Black aid recipients in Manhattan between the Civil War and World War I. Due to the gendered nature of reform work, it was the decisions of Black women that guided these buildings' designs, choices in siting, and services offered. In altered buildings and purpose-built structures, Black women—some formerly enslaved, some from the elite—provided services to poorer women, men, and children; they adhered to the “politics of respectability” in expecting architecture would forge race pride and express their aspirations for inclusion in American public life. These women built churches to serve established congregations and new arrivals, institutions to care for children and the elderly, experiments in low-income housing, and more. To contend with absences in the architectural record, which has historically obscured Black women's contributions to the built environment, I incorporate the analysis of fine art and visual culture to present a fuller view of the Black urban experience in late nineteenth-century New York City.

The art and architectural history of Black New York City has concentrated on Harlem in the interwar years as a site that was uniquely positioned to foster the proliferation of Black culture. My dissertation inserts the earlier contributions of Black women into the architectural history of New York City and articulates how the later success of Harlem called on nineteenth-century spatial practices. By situating the placemaking efforts of Black reformers alongside the established history of the city’s urban development, this project expands the architectural understanding of Manhattan’s history to underscore the ways Black women labored to build a city in which they could prosper.