Under seige

Abstract

Civic infrastructures need care, as well as people themselves. This observation animates the story of the Fannie Wall Children's Home and Day Nursery, an orphanage and daycare center, established in 1918 by African-American clubwomen in Oakland, California. In this paper, I use visual and archival resources and oral histories to probe the history of the institution and its ties to other twentieth-century charities. My analysis highlights the changing landscapes of urban architecture and the effects of ideology and inequality on caregiving. Only one of the privately run charities discussed in the paper still stands: the St. Vincent's Day Home. The others were destroyed in the 1960s by urban renewal programs that devastated West Oakland, the historic center of African-American life in Oakland and the site of the Fannie Wall Home. This study underscores the point that we need to widen our horizons when thinking about care. The actual sites, the architectural settings where care takes place, create an indispensable and fragile physical scaffold for care giving and community building -- a charitable landscape that is threatened and is itself in need of care.