Mississippi State University School of Architecture Emeritus Professor Dr. Michael Fazio video for the Fred Carl Jr. Small Town Center's 40th anniversary (2019).
TRANSCRIPT:
The Small Town Center had it's origins really in some thinking about how the whole school was gonna be organized because being a five year program, we decided early on that the fifth year would not be here but would be somewhere else in the state that we'd be on campus four years and of course it eventually ended up being in Jackson where most of the architects are but the original idea was that there would be a center in Jackson because that was the largest city, there would be a center on the Gulf Coast where there was kind of a continuous urban development and then there would be a third center in North Mississippi and of course they're not any big cities, there's not a Golf Coast, so what was this gonna be? And it was always vague, but one idea was that it was gonna be in a railroad car. That the railroad car was gonna move around from town and so somehow take advantage of the small town nature of Mississippi. The visionary for the Small Town Center was one of three original faculty. So when it began, we had a Dean, we had three faculty members, we were all young, we were all in our late twenties, early thirties and the youngest of the group was Jim Barker, who went on to be eventually Dean here, he was Associate Dean here for along time, he was a Dean here, went on to Clemson became a Dean there, eventually became the President of the University and served them extraordinarily well over a long career. But Jim was the one who had the idea that small towns shouldn't be inseparable from this program, and he's absolutely right about this, Mississippi is essentially a state made of small towns. And small towns by definition do not have the resources, particularly design resources that are available in larger cities. His idea was to bring those design resources to those towns. The Small Town Center was to be the instrument of carrying out his vision. Of course we had no model for this. The only model we could think of was in those days it was fairly popular in cities to have an urban store front, where designers would be available to provide services, not competing with professionals, but at a lower rate for people who couldn't really afford all the professional services. The idea was that The Small Town Center would make those services available in the same way, but in smaller communities. In the beginning, course we had no particular space to operate out of, we had no permanent staff. The first several projects were done through funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. The original publication was a little book still around, rare, but still around, called The Small Town is an Art Object. It speaks for itself I think. It tried to analytically explain the structure of a small town, what were it's peculiar design and planning problems and what sort of methodology could be used to address those. Likewise, and Jim Barker was instrumental in that publication, one that I worked on as well. Another early publication by Bob Craycroft, who was an early faculty member, and his publication is also NEA funding, dealt with the history and design sensibilities of the Neshoba County Fairgrounds unique kind of, I guess we call urban phenomenon even though it's located in a rural site. Early on, we were also looking just a way to put ourselves on the map. Somehow, and I don't remember specifically the idea, although I suspect it was Jim Barker once again, the idea of the old 19th Century Chautauqua movement. The Chautauquas were, they were kind of lyceum programs that moved around from town to town. You get everything from formal speakers to magicians, just about everything. We called ours Chautauqua in Mississippi and it became really more the typical kind of gathering of scholars where they read papers. We made, having no idea the first year what would happen, we made an initial call for papers nationally, and low and behold there were all of these people in an age long before social media, who had a common interest and no place to come together to talk about that interest, being the design of small towns. We assembled a group of people here. We had the standard paper readings and meals and conviviality and also got on a bus and traveled around and looked at communities. I don't remember specifically, but the Chautauqua went on for ten or fifteen years and eventually, I mean it accomplished it's original purpose and that was to make Mississippi state known as the place where this kind of thing was going on, there was this kind of interest. It also produced a large body of paper, many of which we published. The results were cumulative.
- In the past 40 years, the Carl Small Town Center has provided design assistance to communities across the state of Mississippi. The following projects you're about to see are just a fraction of the community served in a small percentage of the impact made. These projects all started in The Small Town Center and over time communities have taken the recommendations, tweaked them and made them their own and made them come to life. This is by no means an exhaustive list of projects, but a sampling of communities we've served over the last four decades. Our hope is that you will see the meaningful design impact that we have made, and will continue to make in the future.
- The Okolona Downtown Park was a result of two separate needs. One was the need for a community to have a collaborative project on which it could work and devote some time and energy. The second was the need for our students to have design build projects that they could work on in a hands-on way.
- Doing your job, and trying to help us have something to look forward to in the future, it means a lot.
- One way that Okolona was able to benefit, was that they had a derelict sight in the middle of their downtown, and this project turned that from an eyesore into an asset.
- I think you all are doing a marvelous job and we hope that the community will really appreciate this project because you all are putting in the sweat and effort and the expertise that is needed to move this town forward. We really thank you for it and we .
- We had to take some risks. I think the risks are worth it. We'll gain the reward of an enhanced standing in the community, especially if our activism and our leadership and our knowledge make the quality of life better for the community. If we want more respect, if we want more influence, we've got to be willing to take more responsibility.
- The Small Town Center has been and is and will be important I think because Mississippi is not unique in this fact, but Mississippi is largely a place of small towns. These places need design assistance. These places have unique urban situations, most obvious is the courthouse square, it's one of the great urban configurations and the delivery of design services to these communities is a worthy task.