by Cynthia Young
Contributing Editor

Summary: After years on the drawing board, the Alex Haley House and Museum designed by Louis R. Pounders, FAIA, of Askew Nixon Ferguson Architects (ANF Architects) has begun construction of a new interpretive center, situated just behind the best-selling author’s boyhood home in Henning, Tenn. The center will provide interpretive education, interactive exhibits, and artifacts from Haley’s life set in an engaging facility design that spotlights the setting where Haley first heard the family stories that sparked his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Roots: Saga of an American Family.

As a child growing up in Henning, Tenn., in the 1920s, Alex Haley would sit enthralled on the front porch of his grandparents’ home listening to his maternal grandmother, Cynthia Palmer, tell stories of his African ancestors who had come to America as slaves. They including Kunta Kinte, a young man captured near his West African village and transported on a slave ship to America in the 18th century. These stories later inspired Haley to write about his ancestry in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book Roots: Saga of an American Family, published in 1976. A year later, Roots became one of television’s most popular television series.

Now, just behind this modest turn-of-the-century bungalow, the Alex Haley Interpretive Center is emerging, a visitor center designed to enhance the purpose of this historic site.

Historic house as focal point
The Alex Haley Interpretive Center, designed by Louis R. Pounders, FAIA, of Askew Nixon Ferguson Architects (ANF Architects), sits on a one-acre site directly behind the house where Haley spent many a summer day. On the drawing board since 1994, when Pounders performed some preliminary design work, the project was recently reactivated and given additional state funding. The new facility is scheduled to open in May 2008.

The Tennessee Historical Commission operates the Alex Haley Home and Museum as a state historic site. The first state-owned historical site devoted to African Americans in Tennessee, the house was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. Since then, it has attracted scholars, schoolchildren, and visitors from around the world. It is also the best-selling author’s resting place. Haley, who died in 1992, is buried in the front yard of his ancestral home.

The center’s one-story, 6,500-square-foot design focuses visitors’ attention directly on the Haley House itself. On entering the lobby, visitors encounter a sightline of the house through the wall of windows that is created by the building’s angled wings. The center’s public spaces also open onto this central lobby with its framed view of the historic home.

The center was designed to mirror the style of the 10-room house built by Haley’s grandfather, Will Palmer, in 1919, and employed the same kind of brick as in the original house.

Strengthening sustainability
ANF Architects carefully sited the new building to preserve the existing trees and provide indigenous landscaping that will include removing an existing parking lot to create a new event lawn between the interpretive center and the house. ANF employed such sustainable strategies as using green building products, employing very little glazing on southern exposures, shielding the east and west glass walls with deep roof overhangs, utilizing HVAC and electrical equipment and controls to minimize energy consumption, and causing minimal disruption to the site and natural drainage patterns. A standing seam galvalume roof, galvanized steel structure, CMU walls, and treated wood siding also insure long life and low maintenance.

Inside, an exhibit gallery created by Natural Concepts Exhibits will feature mementos from Haley’s career, including his Pulitzer Prize, which will be publicly displayed for the first time. Exhibits will focus on the aspects of Haley’s life leading up to the writing of Roots and include a recreation of his grandparents’ front porch and voice-overs of the stories Haley heard growing up. A recreation of a slave ship will also be an important part of the exhibit.

Access to the historic site will be through the interpretive center building. Walking tours of the historic house will assemble in the lobby, then visitors will cross a boardwalk spanning over a natural drainage swale to begin their docent-led tour on the back porch of the restored house. After the tour, visitors will walk back to the interpretive center to conclude their visit.

The project’s design is an innovative interpretation of the overall architectural and educational goals for the site. Although years in the planning, the Alex Haley Interpretive Center will soon showcase the life and career of one of Tennessee’s most renowned writers.