Project Details

The architecture of education is well documented by notables such as Henry Barnard in the early 20th century and Horace Mann in the 19th century. However, very little has been written regarding the period just before Mann. In 1770, education begins to take place outside of the home. Through the American Revolution questions about boys and girls’ education arise and labels for the purpose of a woman in society develop such as Republican Motherhood and Republican Womanhood. This project examines three female educational environments between 1770 and 1830. Martha Jefferson’s fashionable French convent school, the Abbaye de Pentemont, under constant construction from 1747 to 1790, is explored for its neo-classical palatial architecture. Closer to Jefferson’s Southern home, the Moravian Female Academy, committed to equality in education and community values, was founded in Winston-Salem, North Carolina in 1772 and expanded into its own building in 1805. Lastly, the study visits Miss Sarah Pierce’s pious and pioneering Protestant school from 1792, later to become the Litchfield Female Academy in Connecticut.

These three schools vary widely in culture and design. Yet, there are common physical and pedagogical themes that begin to arise from this Revolutionary period. Some examples of themes include: the significance of status and class; the question of form versus function; architectural symbolism and identity; beliefs about what skills women should be taught and the curriculum they desire, need, and deserve; the fusion of religion and education and its architectural evidence; the power of one zealous woman and female accomplishment in adversity; the camaraderie and mentoring that develops among female students far from home; the concern for safety both regarding the building’s construction and the women’s moral protection; and despite the intense surveillance, the local male/female antics that ensue around the architecture of these women’s educational spaces. Although, Thomas Jefferson and others of this era saw female education as primarily a means to marriage, it is clear that the architecture of these three buildings from the late 18th and early 19th century sought so much more. Evident in their physical and social environments are lasting elements of motherhood, womanhood, and citizenry, as well as independence, spirit and personal pride.