Model Schools in the Model City

In Amber N. Wiley’s capable hands, the school buildings of Washington, DC, past and present, classical and brutalist, become metaphor and monument to African Americans’ quest for full citizenship rights (or a lack thereof). In beautiful prose and a profusion of images, she illuminates the connection between the built environment and the sociopolitical relations that gave rise to it.This is how architectural history should be done.

Model Schools for the Model City is a far-reaching, original, and (at times) personal story about architecture, education, and urbanism in Washington, DC. Although the federal government consistently obstructed progress in the overwhelmingly Black capital city, Black Washingtonians nonetheless managed to create spaces for their children to learn. Although Wiley chronicles many frustrations across the decades, she also showcases the ambition and inventiveness of parents, teachers, and architects through close readings of school buildings. Her engaging study brings to light previously underexamined intersections of design pedagogy, community activism, and Black heritage. Unaffected by fleeting academic trends, Wiley’s deeply researched and intelligent book will be an enduring contribution to architectural history.

With vast ambition and the urgency of personal history, Model Schools in the Model City reveals a truth hidden in plain sight: the struggle for equal access to public education—long a route to freedom for Black Americans—was a battle over buildings. The power to shape the architecture of schools in the nation’s capital, Amber N. Wiley compellingly argues, determined who would have access to the fundamental rights of democracy. This book is a stirring lesson in how the built environment records the hopes and frustrations of its society.