This is an open dance floor next to Pat’s Hall in Fredericksburg, Gillespie County. It is a concrete floor, 120’ in diameter, under a live oak tree in the centre. This is the link, in my mind, between the very early settler dances on wagon sheets and the wooden platforms built in the shade under the trees, and the octagonal halls. Did the big, wheeling two-step circling around the halls come from dancing around a tree? Is the developmental history of the dance hall actually dependent on the developmental history of dancing, rather than on construction technology?
inventing a building typology Stephanie White
T exas dance halls were in their heyday from the 1890s to the Second World War; every small rural community had one. While many are still in use for vast country weddings, church suppers and dances, an equal number can be found storing hay on a farm, or boarded up and rotting, or gone — just a trace on the map: at the end of Tin Hall Road is just another muddy field. A typical hall is a large single room, about 6000 ft2 with a tall roof volume ventilated with louvred lanterns. The floor is raised off the ground on piers, shuttered window openings are without glass. Interior walls are unlined, uninsulated, a bench runs around the perimeter often up on a step, the exterior is painted white. Outside is a beerstand with deep eaves shading counters made by the let down shutters. There is a substantial barbeque pit, often roofed. Sometimes there are shade arbours over picnic benches. Once in a while there are separate kitchens. All this sits in a field, with companionable live oak trees nearby. Dance halls were the sites of courting, weddings and wakes — the milestones in a rural community’s life. Stories of bands that played till 4am and by 5 everyone was out in the fields offer brilliant sun- filled slices of a rural Texas life almost completely dominated by nature, the seasons, climate, weather and the agricultural calendar. Early German and Czech settlers danced on canvas stretched out on the ground. A bit more permanent was a moveable wooden dance floor in the shade of an oak tree. Then came a roof to keep the rain and sun off the floor, then the walls. Two shapes: rectangular and polygonal; a bit barn-like but with clear spans for
untrammelled dancing. Trusses spanning 70’ made of 1 x 6s, the odd 2 x 6, inventive, lightweight, elaborate, decorative, home made. Vernacular buildings manage a tight fit between function and form with the most ingenious construction ideas. They really do make us question the over-engineered standards to which we have to build simple wood frame buildings today. Few halls have airconditioning, floors wear out, roofs need attention; increasingly old halls are replaced by modern metal buildings with HVAC plants. The 20th century obsession with revolutionary progress must be set alongside evolutionary vernacular building practices. Architecture and architects’ desire to be instrumental in social, cultural and political change, rather than mere accommodation marks the difference. These community halls are, above all, accommodating. Perhaps the cultural revolution that is the act of emigration, with all the difficulties that face the immigrant, extinguishes the desire for revolution in architectural form. The building at the heart of these communities evolved in small clear steps, never exceeding the grasp or the capacity of that local pool of builders. Dance halls in central Texas evolved over about fifty years until the point where American society began to change rapidly: television, the emptying of the rural hinterland, changes to farming practice that needed fewer people, rising education levels — tight rural communities loosened their hold on their territory.
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ON SITE review 5
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