Interior Design: Carol M. Highsmith’s Hallways of America

I work every day with a heartfelt commitment to document the living history and built environment of our times. I consider my work an indestructible record of our vast nation, including sites that are fast fading, even disappearing, in the wake of growth, development, and decay.

“I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don’t have complete emotions about the present, only about the past.”
— Virginia Woolf, The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Volume Three: 1925-1930

 

Carol M Highsmith, America, photography, hallways

Hallway at the Capitol, Nashville, Tennessee.

In the 1980s, photographer Carol M. Highsmith began documenting the Willard Hotel in Washington D.C. This Beaux-Arts building was in a dreadful state, rotten floors, crumbling walls, with “rats as big as cats” and old tramp wandering round setting fires on the sixth floor.

Highsmith’s photographs led to the building being saved and reopened in 1986. With no consideration to making money or even eating, Highsmith was driven by the thought “[I]f this can happen to America’s Main Street, what other buildings are decaying that we don’t even know about, and who’s documenting them?”

The majority of our life is lived undercover – in homes, workspaces, shops, bars, restaurants, clubs, banks, churches, hospitals, and prisons. For the past thirty years, Highsmith has been documenting “Disappearing America” capturing as much of the country and its buildings before they are gone.

I work every day with a heartfelt commitment to document the living history and built environment of our times. I consider my work an indestructible record of our vast nation, including sites that are fast fading, even disappearing, in the wake of growth, development, and decay.

Among the many thousands of photographs Highsmith has taken is a series of pictures documenting halls in buildings across America. These photographs unpick a secret narrative of how architecture shapes the way we behave in buildings.

The hall at the Capitol, Nashville, Tennessee looks like the interior of a church. Its high, solemn walls impose reverence. The subdued lighting looks like a cross. The hallway at the Ed Edmondson Court House, Muskogee, Oklahoma, looks like a row of pews outside of a confessional. Witnesses called to ‘fess their sins before a judge passes sentence. The long austere white prison corridor with its high windows reminding inmates of the life going on without them. All of these spaces have been designed with the intention, as Goethe once noted about classical architecture, of giving people “a higher conception of themselves and a sense of the truly noble.”

Carol M Highway, America, photography, hallway, prison

Hallway at the abandoned Eastern State Penitentiary, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

 

Carol M Highsmith, photography, America, courthouse, hallway

Hallway at the Alton Lennon Federal Building, U.S. Courthouse, Wilmington, North Carolina.

 

Carol M Highsmith, America, photography, hallways, Washington DC

Hallway at the Library of Congress, Thomas Jefferson Building Washington D.C.

 

Carol M Highsmith, America, photography, hallways,

Hall where the Charters of Freedom are displayed at the National Archives, Washington D.C.

 

Carol M Highsmith, America, photography, hallways, West Virginia

Hallway at the Greenbrier Historic Resort Hotel, built in 1858 near the White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia.

 

Carol M Highsmith, America, photography, hallways, courthouse, Oklahoma

Hallway at the Ed Edmondson Courthouse U.S. Post Office and Courthouse, which occupies an entire block between West Broadway,West Okmulgee Avenues and Fifth Street, Muskogee, Oklahoma.

 

Carol M Highsmith, America, photography, hallways, prison, Philadelphia

Hallway at the abandoned Eastern State Penitentiary, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

 

Carol M Highsmith, America, photography, hallways, US Treasury Dept, Washington DC

Hallway and staircase at the U.S. Treasury Department building, Washington D.C.

 

Carol M Highsmith, America, photography, hallways, Federal Building, Texarkana

Hallway at the Texarkana U.S. Post Office and Federal Building.

 

Carol M Highsmith, America, photography, hallways, UK Ambassador, Washington DC

Hallway at the Chancery and Residence of the Ambassador of the United Kingdom, Washington D.C.

 

Carol M Highsmith, America, photography, hallways, Courthouse, Wheeling

Hallway and new addition to the Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse, Wheeling, West Virginia.

 

Carol M Highsmith, America, photography, hallways, Pennysylvania

Hallway at the Robert N. C. Nix Federal Building, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

 

Carol M Highsmith, America, photography, Federal Building, Philadelphia

Hallway at the Robert N. C. Nix Federal Building, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

 

Carol M Highsmith, America, photography, courthouse, Cincinnati

Hallway at the Potter Stewart U.S. Post Office and Courthouse, Cincinnati, Ohio.

 

Carol M Highsmith, America, photography, hallways, courthouse, Texas

Hallway at the Jack Brooks Federal Building, Beaumont, Texas.

 

Carol M Highsmith, America, photography, courthouse, Chattanooga

Hallway at the Joel Solomon Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse, Chattanooga, Tennessee.

 

Carol M Highsmith, America, photography, hallways, court house, North Carolina

Hallway at the L. Richardson Preyer Federal Building and Court House in Greensboro, North Carolina.

 

Carol M Highsmith, America, photography, courthouse, Birmingham, Alabama

Hallway at the Robert S. Vance Federal Building and U.S. Court House, Birmingham, Alabama.

 

Carol M Highsmith, America, photography, self portrait, Washington DC

Carol M. Highsmith self-portrait at the Willard Hotel, Washington D.C. 1980.

 

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