IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2020 - 12

metropolitans felt during this period
is evoked with fictional works that
examine the relationship between
the American frontier and skyscrapers. These authors struggled with
the vanishing superiority of whiteness as cities like New York and Chicago grew taller, arguing that the
chaos of cities muddled distinct categories of race. In response to this
confusion, these authors - both

It is "seeing" that is most
compelling when analyzing
the relationship between
architecture and race.
using the Metropolitan Life Building
as their setting - imagined how
methods of racial detection could
adapt in fictionalized versions of
the frontier. In George Allan England's The Last New Yorkers, the
skyscraper evolves into a "fantastical refuge" for racial perception
that was not possible in the real
world where huddled masses at
the base of a tall building blurred
racial characteristics.
However, in Murray Leinster's
The Runaway Skyscraper, bureaucratic and legal procedures, like the
infamous one-drop rule, become
new forms of racial classification
that survive when visual detection
fails after the Met Life Building travels backward in time, forcing the
time-travelling workers to work collectively. The new forms of racial
detection become potent when it is
discovered that an office worker,
one who was instrumental in procuring the land that the skyscraper
would be built upon, is Jewish. The
ethnicity of this character is not

12

of the country. The novel Passing
by Nella Larsen attempts to reposition cities as disrupters of racial
classification as the characters in
the story deal with passing - the
ability of a member of one racial
group to be accepted by another,
usually undetected. However, the
relationship between skyscrapers,
racial mixing and perception is difficult to parse out in this section:
Passing appears to be more of a
commentary on race and modern
cities than race and skyscrapers.
Besides one scene featuring
prominently a fictionalized version
of Chicago's Drake Hotel, skyscrapers in this story function, Brown
writes, as a "background catalyst"
that affects the foreground of the
novel, especially at the conclusion
in which one of the characters who
had been passing her entire life
falls from the sixth floor of a tall
apartment building. Before falling,
her white husband confronts her
about her true racial identity, suggesting that only in an intimate setting was racial distinction truly
possible. Passing expressively narrates the shock many urban dwellers
felt as modern technology changed
cities rapidly, and unexpectedly,
and skyscrapers represented this
disorienting phenomenon.
Despite the chaos American skyscrapers seemed to wreak in some
texts, a group of black writers in the
twentieth centur y appeared to
embrace the stupefying effects of
this architecture by gauging its
effects on black American culture.
Despite being well-known for his
ground-breaking work in sociology,
W.E.B. DuBois also wrote a series of
science fiction short stories that
incorporate the dizzying visual
influence of skyscrapers. In his
"The Princess Steel" a white couple
visits a black sociology professor in

readily perceived visually, only his
name and his penchant for "avarice"
in business dealings - a pernicious
stereotype Brown acknowledges
that is easily detectable through
facial characteristics - are used to
classify him as nonwhite.
On the opposite of side of the
"weird," realist authors, like William Dean Howells and Henr y
James, oppose the dizzying effects
of skyscrapers by rediscover ing intimate spaces.
Both authors used domestic scenes to retreat from
cities, reestablishing traditional methods of racial
detection - easily identif iable visual characteri s tics - as the norm in
ed it or ia l s a nd f ic t ion.
Howells's work reveals a
growing concern for the
diminishing ability to perceive racial differences from a
skyscraper's vantage points, an
act that would be more attainable
at a smaller scale, like at a diningroom table. Although James is also
concerned with blurred racial distinction, his work focuses on the
possible extinction of racial categories brought on by less intimate
buildings, like skyscrapers.
Brown discusses miscegenation
in a few texts, exploring the way
writers alluded to racial mixing to
describe their perception of tall
buildings. In Louis Sullivan's Kindergarten Chats, the architect uses
the word "miscegenation" to refer to
past architectural styles. Sullivan
hoped to "discourage" eclectic
architecture to establish an "honest" and specifically American
architecture in which skyscrapers
were a key component. However,
this structural honesty, as Brown
reads, reflects the language of scientific racism as Sullivan argued for
a "virile" architectural style capable
of reflecting the "white" superiority
IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

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IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2020

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