VIEWPOINTS

Home is All Around
— Destiny Kirumira

Revealing the architecture of Black space-making in Montreal

This photograph of a young girl posing in front of the Negro Community Centre (N.C.C.)[1] radiates an almost palpable presence (figure 1).[2] Her posture looks comfortable, and her essence presents the building and surrounding space as a safe and joyous place. From this image, it is not hard to believe that many Black Montrealers considered the N.C.C. their “second home.”[3] For them, "it was the one place where [they] felt loved, understood, accepted and free of racial discrimination and bias."[4] However, the significance of the N.C.C. goes beyond the atmosphere and extends to the architecture it produced.

To shine a new light on the architectural significance of the N.C.C., I will employ bell hook's concept of homeplace as a lens from which to analyze the building’s architecture. Through this framework, I expose the historical lineage of homeplace and how it has manifested in contemporary settings, as evidenced by the architecture of the N.C.C. building. Furthermore, this reframing allows us to reconsider reinterpreting the role of architecture in Black space making.

The N.C.C. as Homeplace

The concept of homeplace comes from hook's seminal essay Homeplace: A Place of Resistance, where she defines homeplace as the single "site where one could freely confront the issue of humanization, where one could resist."[5] hooks roots the concept of homeplace in the understanding that the North American landscape is anti-Black and therefore necessitates resistance to ensure Black survival through acts and efforts that center the humanization of Black people.[6] Based on hooks' definition, the N.C.C. immediately stands out as a homeplace. 

For starters, the creation of the N.C.C. could easily be considered an act of resistance. The N.C.C. was established during a time when the Black community in Montreal experienced economic and social discrimination, resulting in the need for mutual support.[7]

Furthermore, the programs N.C.C. offered focused on addressing legal and social issues, housing, employment, and immigration problems to combat the racial discrimination Black people in Montreal faced.[8] Overall, it aimed to alleviate social and economic conditions among Negroes in Montreal and promote racial advancement.[9] However, what made the N.C.C. a true homeplace is that it went beyond its long list of programs and facilitated a place concerned with protecting and supporting Black life. It offered younger children a place to invest in their talents, play, and explore Black expression (figure 2).[10] It opposed the assertions of inferiority produced by systemic mechanisms of oppression by offering programs that hindered its crippling effects, and often its leaders and volunteers interjected directly into matters of racial injustice.[11] By framing the N.C.C. as a homeplace, we get a sense of the climate of injustice in Montreal at the time and the extent to which the Black community worked together to break down those barriers.

The N.C.C. as Black Architecture
By categorizing the N.C.C. as a homeplace we can look at its form as part of a long architectural lineage linked to the construction of homeplace. To trace this lineage, we must return to the very first homeplace created by enslaved Africans after being brought to North America. After being kidnapped and traversing the Atlantic in the disease-infested, cramped, and inhumane conditions of the slave ships, this first group of Africans built what could only be considered the first iteration of their homeplace.[12] Despite their differences in tribe, clan, and even religion, as a unified group, under the worst circumstances, they built amongst themselves dwellings that resembled what they made back home.[13]

This next evolution went beyond traditional African building forms and the foreign materials of the North American environment and became a historical hybrid architecture of sorts. The most recognized of these hybrid forms is the Shotgun house, as Michael Vlach studied as an example of a distinctly African American architectural form.[14] Therefore this stage encompassed the melding of two distinct architectural forms into one new hybrid architecture.[15]

We can consider the final stage in the evolution of constructing a homeplace to be that of repurposing modern architectural forms and systems of construction for Black cultural expression.[16] This last evolutionary step often has been referred to as "Black architecture," defined by Mitchell as "any architecture undertaken for the purpose of the individual and/or group empowerment of African Americans.”[17] When we look at the N.C.C. from the vantage point of this lineage, rooted in the definition of homeplace, the N.C.C. building embodies the characteristics of this last evolutionary step.

Despite the N.C.C.'s humble beginnings in the basement of the United Union church, the organization eventually found its permanent home in the Methodist church on Coursol street (Figure 3), in a three-story, 75 x 165' Romanesque Revival building.[18] Initially built in 1890, the building's architecture communicated spiritual grandeur through its corner towers and semi-circular arches.[19] When the N.C.C. added a gymnasium to the fourth floor of the building between 1955 and 1957, the building, architecturally speaking, went from a Romanesque building to a hybrid-modern structure.[20]

This hybrid architecture produced through the gymnasium enclosed in the concrete box peeking out of the Romanesque church embodies more than the practical need for flexible recreational space (figure 4).[21] As the church's program changed from a religious institution to a Black community centre, the architecture started constricting the magnitude of Black space-making and home-making. The contrast produced through this hybrid form delineates the physical presence of Blackness within the white landscape. A close-up image of the east elevation of the N.C.C. taken in 1973 highlights the contrast between the original stone facade and the smooth concrete addition. The evidence of it being Black architecture is in its ability first to repurpose and then augment its physical environment to suit Black needs of practical and cultural advancement. By altering the building, particularly externally, the N.C.C. not only carved out a space for Black Montrealers in the fabric of the white landscape but also brought physical visibility to the Black community.

Acknowledging the existence of homeplaces in our diasporic landscape allows us to protect and preserve the architectural contributions of Black communities. Additionally, reflecting on the creation of a homeplace enables us to locate ourselves within Black phenomenologies that transcend space and time. As is evidenced by the little girl in front of the N.C.C., having a homeplace is essential to Black joy and rest. And while hooks did not leave an architectural blueprint, it is clear what a homeplace consists of. Simply put, "it is a space where we return for renewal and self-recovery, where we can heal our wounds and become whole."[22]

References

[1]  The use of the term Negro in this essay is not an attempt to elicit the contemporary use of the term nor is it in any way excusing the historical use of the word. Instead, the term is only presented to draw attention to the inherently racist context Black Montrealers were living in thereby bringing attention to Canada’s racist past.

[2] The images left blank in this essay were difficult to gain copyright access to and therefore are not included in this publication. The decision to still include their descriptions and locations in the archive is to draw attention to the numerous images and documents connected to Black histories in archives that are never made public due to systemic barriers and copyright issues. Their omission continues to render Blackness invisible within diasporic contexts and presents specific narratives within public memory. The very “whiting out” or redaction of pertinent information concerning diasporic Black life continues to be a challenge for contemporary scholars.

[3] Adrienne Connelly, “This Place Has History Like Ghosts: The NCC/Charles H. Este Cultural Centre, Montreal,” Montreal as Palimpset II: Hauntings, Occupations, Theatres of Memory, September 2009, 25, https://cityaspalimpsest.concordia.ca/palimpsest_II_en/papers/Adrienne_Connelly.pdf.

[4] Geoffrey Vendeville, “From the Archive: One-Time Pillar of This City’s Black Community Is in Limbo,” montrealgazette, accessed September 27, 2022, https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/from-the-archive-one-time-pillar-of-this-citys-black-community-is-in-limbo.

[5] bell hooks, “Homeplace: A Site of Resistance,” in Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics (New York: Routledge, 2015), 42, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315743110.

[6] hooks, 46.

[7] Dorothy W. Williams, The Road to Now: A History of Blacks in Montreal, Dossier Québec (Montreal: Véhicule Press, 1997), 66–67, http://bvbr.bib-bvb.de:8991/F?func=service&doc_library=BVB01&local_base=BVB01&doc_number=007800529&line_number=0001&func_code=DB_RECORDS&service_type=MEDIA.

[8] Connelly, “This Place Has History Like Ghosts: The NCC/Charles H. Este Cultural Centre, Montreal.”

[9] Williams, The Road to Now: A History of Blacks in Montreal, 66.

[10] Shirley Gyles, Voices of Little Burgundy, n.d., Concordia Special Collections Archive.

[11] John E. Parris, “Correspondence from John E. Parris to Vera Danyluk,” April 21, 1995, F013-004, Folder 35, Concordia Special Collections Archive.

[12] W.E.B. Du Bois, “The Home of the Slave,” in Cabin, Quarter, Plantation : Architecture and Landscapes of North American Slavery, by Rebecca Ginsburg and Clifton Ellis (New Haven [Conn.]: Yale University Press, 2010), 17.

[13] Du Bois, 17.

[14] John Michael Vlach, “The Shotgun House: An African Architectural Legacy: PART II (Part I Appeared in the January 1976 Issue),” Pioneer America 8, no. 2 (1976): 70.

[15] Homi K. 1949- Bhabha, “Signs Taken for Wonders: Questions of Ambivalence and Authority under a Tree Outside Delhi, May 1817,” in The Location of Culture (London ; Routledge, 1994), http://www.gbv.de/dms/bowker/toc/9780415054065.pdf.

[16] M. Jeff Hardwick, “Homesteads and Bungalows: African-American Architecture in Langston, Oklahoma,” Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture 6 (1997): 29.

[17] Melvin L. Mitchell, The Crisis of the African-American Architect: Conflicting Cultures of Architecture and (Black) Power, Rev. 2nd ed. / (New York: Writers Advantage, 2003), xiii.

[18] Connelly, “This Place Has History Like Ghosts: The NCC/Charles H. Este Cultural Centre, Montreal,” 6.

[19] Connelly, 6.

[20] Jarold Dumouchel, “The Negro Community Center | Urbex Playground,” Urbex Playground, n.d., https://www.urbexplayground.com/urbex/negro-community-center.

[21] Bhabha, “Signs Taken for Wonders: Questions of Ambivalence and Authority under a Tree Outside Delhi, May 1817,” 162.

[22] hooks, “Homeplace: A Site of Resistance,” 49.

* Figures describe unavailable images that call attention to the influence of records in the creation of dominant narratives over time.

Destiny Kirumira is a second-year Ph.d. candidate at the School of architecture student at McGill University, researching the architecture of Black settlements in Canada. In addition to her research, Destiny is also a visual artist interested in using Black portraiture to address Anti-Blackness.

Guest Editor: Ipek Türeli