March Progress Report on the Architectural Drawing Collection

for a larger image of this segregated doctor's office, click here.

Last month the archives ran statistics on the first 1,000 drawings arranged in the Gregson and Ellis Collection. Four weeks later we've now run statistics on our first 1,400 processed drawings, and some interesting data has begun to show up.

The current processed collections span the date range of 1946 to 1966. While racial segregation was a part of everyday life in Georgia during this time period, only 12 of the 119 buildings in our current sample specifically note segregation in their plans. When the architects were designing a building that was whites only, no mention of segregation was needed for the builders. Only when a building was intended for mixed-use or exclusively for non-whites was a mention of race made in the plans. Of the twelve buildings with racial notation, nine are medical facilities, two are educational facilities, and one is a special purpose building (a slaughterhouse in Milledgeville). While many of our commercial, residential, and religious structures in the collection were no doubt segregated as well, no notations exist on any of these types of drawings so far. Thus as statistics are drawn from the data, we can only confirm that approximately 10% of the structures were segregated. It will be up to students, researchers, and historians using the drawing collection in the future to tell us more about these buildings and their place in the history of building design and use.

for a larger image of this segregated hospital kitchen, click here.