decolonizing architecture + epistemology

a closer look at Catt Hall, Iowa State University

In 1893, Agriculture Hall housed the agriculture, horticulture and veterinary sciences departments on Iowa State University’s campus. The hall was renovated in 1995 and renamed Catt Hall in honor of Carrie Chapman Catt. The designers of the structure was Josselyn and Taylor of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The intended purpose of the building “was built to allow one to drive a team of horses in, unload horticultural supplies into the basement and drive out the other side.”1 Outside the steps of Catt Hall lay the Plaza of Heroines, which are bricks that honor women who have impacted society such as women like Oprah Winfrey, Eleanor Roosevelt, Barbara Mack and Carrie Chapman Catt whom which today’s liberal arts college is named after.

Carrie Chapman Catt is known to be “a suffragist and peace activist who helped secure American women the right to vote.. she also became involved with the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), and, an outstanding speaker.”2 Her contributions to women’s suffrage has been recognized nationally and celebrated. Through one of her great speeches in the South to gain followers, Catt stated that ““White supremacy will be strengthened, not weakened, by women’s suffrage.”3 This comment has been overlooked in history and has been addressed by the students of Iowa State University for the administration to reconsider honoring Catt without addressing her blatant racism. Catt Hall is a “center helps women with their Ready to Run Iowa, which is a group of workshops held every two years to help teach women how to run for any kind of political office and also by offering students the chance of showing leadership when it comes to politics, public service and women’s issues.”4

Imagine sitting in a center that hosts workshops for young women to succeed when the woman that is being honored by the university has encouraged hatred and racism. Similar to Trump’s statement telling the Proud Boys “to stand by and stand back” during a presidential debate. To stand for feminism should imply standing against sexism and sexist acts which are rooted in systemic injustice.

Storytelling as a tool rights and “rewrites” the wrongs of history and giving agency to those who have been silenced. Linda Tuhiwai Smith discusses that “Writing or literacy, in a very traditional sense of the word, has been used to determine the breaks between the past and the present, the beginning of history and the development of theory.16 Writing has been viewed as the mark of a superior civilization and other societies have been judged, by this view, to be incapable of thinking.”5 Furthermore the unearthing of “the colonial past is embedded in our political discourses, our humour, poetry, music, story telling and other common sense ways of passing on both a narrative of history and an attitude about history. The lived experiences of imperialism and colonialism contribute another dimension to the ways in which terms like ‘imperialism’ can be understood.”6 If we could begin to think through architecture as a form of storytelling, we can see how it draws structure from context which includes its surroundings, the communities and its moment in time.

Catt Hall

Architecture consists of historical, social and environmental contexts. By examining the history of Catt Hall and Catt’s comments on white supremacy, we can reveal the thick injustice that exists. By speculatively ripping apart pieces of a building we can begin to see slivers of his- tory embedded into that context. In the last and final image, we can see that the erased history can surface and be celebrated by casting a banner over buildings that carry problematic histories and have not acknowledged them. White supremacy is rooted in hatred and perpetuates the power and privilege that is driven by racism. Car- rie Chapman Catt’s contributions to the suffrage is not inclusive and makes feminism exclusive only to white women, forgetting and can- celling women of color.

1-3Michals, Debra. “Carrie Chapman Catt.” National Women’s History Museum, www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/ biographies/carrie-chapman-catt.
4 Ap, AP. “Suffragette’s Racial Remark Haunts College.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 5 May 1996, www. nytimes.com/1996/05/05/us/suffragette-s-racial-remark-haunts- college.html.

5-6 Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples by Linda Tuhiwai Smith, 1st Edition. Cram101 Inc., 2013.a