Memorialization Work w/ Burt Pinnock

 This life matters.  What am I going to do about it if we can put ourselves there at any given moment and sort of sometimes not be overwhelmed by the enormity of it all.  I think it helps us sort of inch forward. 

Welcome to Tangible Remnants.  I'm Nakita Reed. And this is my show where I explore the interconnectedness of architecture, preservation, sustainability. Race and gender. I'm excited that you're here. So let's get into it.  Welcome back. This week's episode is with Burt Pinnock. Bert is one of the most sought-after preservation architects in Virginia, especially for memorialization work.

And I am super grateful to have met him in recent years.  We discuss his background and experiences growing up in Tuskegee, Alabama before he moved north to Southern Virginia. He's had a fascinating career so far, with the opportunity to focus architectural conversations on the importance of contextualizing race and history, as well as the need for inclusive and collaborative approaches to memorialization. 

Burt was a joy to talk to, and we covered a number of topics in our conversation. We meandered a little bit, but it was just a fantastic time.  Some of the things that still stick with me from this conversation is the idea of staying present and acknowledging the work of people whose shoulders you're standing on, or as Burt says, thousands of people doing really hard work for decades. 

We also talked about how having open and honest conversations about race and history is necessary for progress and understanding in this country. Now, more than ever.  For those of you who will be attending the NOMA conference this fall, Burt and I will be there. So be sure to say hello. When you see us in Baltimore,  head over to the Instagram account for the podcast at Tangible Remnants to see photos of the various projects that we discuss. 

Now before we jump into the episode, let me give you a little more context on Burt. Burt Pinnock, F A I A, NOMA, is Principal and Chairman of the Board at Baskerville in Richmond, Virginia.  Bert's passion for design has created award-winning work time and time again, from historic sites and cultural institutions to forward-thinking companies and foundations. 

He previously served as Chair of the Commonwealth of Virginia Art and Architectural Review Board and Vice Chair of Richmond's 300th Anniversary Board. He is a co-founder of Storefront for Community Design, amongst many other notable board and community engagements. For Burt, architecture isn't a job, it's his personal contribution to the well-being and vitality of our communities. 

This is a super insightful and inspiring episode, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. So without further ado, please enjoy this conversation between me and Burt Pinnock.  I am so excited to be able to chat with you and that we are doing this. Burt, how about you introduce yourself?  I'm Burt Pinnock.

I'm an architect and principal and chair of the board at Baskerville in Richmond, Virginia.  I'm originally from Tuskegee, Alabama, and have, through some circuitous, twisting, turning way, have ended up in Richmond.  I did not realize you were from Tuskegee. I was there recently at the career fair at the university.

That's my first time ever going to Tuskegee and the university and all that. So, that's awesome. Yeah. So wait, what was it like growing up in Tuskegee?  Oh, man, it was, you know, I talk about it a lot now in the work I do, but, you know, it was Tuskegee was at 8, 000 people, you know, my, my parents were university folk kind of thing, and 99.

8 percent black kind of thing, you know, my family wasn't part of the great migration back then. So that's just where we were. It was a kind of a bubble. You know, in that respect, but I, you know, the cool thing is that the chapel on the campus of Tuskegee by Paul Rudolph. Yeah, that was.  The cool thing. I love that space.

And the chaplain who was like a 70-year-old guy at the time,  he would let us just run wild in that building just because it was so cool. Right? And I just thought, Oh, man, this is this is this is the bomb. But yeah, and then I was in, uh,  10th grade is 10th grade with my dad came home and says, we're moving to Blacksburg, Virginia. 

Where is that?  Wait, I lived there for a very little bit. And the name is a little bit of a misnomer because there's not that many black folks.  No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We went to visit. The first time I went to visit, my father took us up and it was April. And I remember distinctly it was snowing and that was only the second time I had seen snow because it had dusted once in Tuskegee and you know, it was like, and yeah, it was, um, I went from being, you know, all black high school to quite the opposite, you know, and it was, it was a little bit of culture shock. 

I believe it because those are very different towns. Oh, 100%, 100%. And, but you know, when I got ready to finish high school, I said, I'm going into architecture. It was like, Virginia Tech costs 3 cents a year, and it's number five in the country. And so if you go anywhere else, you're stupid. Right. So, so, all right.

Well, I went to Virginia Tech. That worked out. That worked out so well. But yeah, so my husband also went to tech for his master's. And so we ended up living in Blacksburg for a little bit and Blacksburg was culture shock for me because I had, so I finished my master's living in Philadelphia and then my husband started his master's and Blacksburg.

So going from Philadelphia to Blacksburg was also quite different,  but Blacksburg still has a very special place in my heart. And wow, it does. It's just, you know, I go back, I get to go back every now and then and do a thing, but it's just still kind of. There was a guy I lived with my sophomore year off campus, and he said, look, Blacksburg is kind of like a cruise ship.

It's in the middle of the ocean. Nothing affects it. And you just, it's not the world. It is a cruise ship. Okay, 

that is such a good analogy for that. Oh, my goodness. So then your background that also then makes sense.  I'm loving that we're talking and seeing more of the connections of kind of you being able to navigate some of the work that you're doing now. Because kind of growing up in Tuskegee, then going more so to an all white environment and being able to have those conversations across different races, different time.

I would love for you to talk more about the work that you've been doing around telling more narratives and memorializing some of the enslaved people.  Sure. Yeah. And again, sort of, you know, I would say, you know, growing up in Tuskegee,  there was a little statue in the middle of the town square, which I paid zero attention to, right.

You know, my parents bought us like the black encyclopedia, right. When we were kids. So, you know, Mary McLeod Bethune, I knew who that was, you know, and Paul Robeson, I knew who that was because that was just part of what my parents taught us. I didn't know that this was a low Confederate monument. It wasn't part of the lexicon, it wasn't part of the education. 

And so it was only really after I left in my adult years and doing this work, it was like, Oh my God, the town square is owned by the daughters of confederacy and this town, which is mostly poor as dirt.  Is responsible for maintaining this by law. I'm like, what?  Yeah. So when I bopped around after, well, before graduating, kind of went over to Europe and did some stuff and went to New York and landed in Richmond.

Because I had 300, a truck and a dog, and that was as far as I could get.  I mean, to be fair, that is a good distance away from Blacksburg. So, you know.  And it's somebody who would let me stay with them with my dog. That's just like,  there you go. Well, you know, I, I started the basketball in the early nineties.

And I tell the story of, you know, I had just started when I came out of the office one day and the flood wall in Richmond, giant flood wall, runs like the James River in downtown had just been finished. And there was a giant banner of Robert E. Lee on the flood wall, along with other historical banners.

And it had been firebomb, right? Somebody took a Molotov cocktail kind of thing. And this local reporter caught me coming out of the office and asked me what I thought about it.  I had just gotten a job. I had an old truck, I had a dog that needed to go to the vet, and I'm like,  I got some real-world problems.

I don't know anything about this.  Well, fast forward.  It has permeated my life.  It really has.  It has permeated my life.  But, you know, get the, starting that work in Richmond meant I was. At the time I started my own firm after about six years of Baskerville and so I was one of three black-owned architecture firms in Richmond, Virginia,  and started working with what was then called the Richmond Slay Trail because we had a contract with the city and the commission.

Responsibility was to elucidate and educate around the history of slavery in Richmond and at the time, and well, we're still learning more and more and more, but at the time it was like, these are the things we start to know. So,  we, we worked on just these historic markers for the slave trail,  and then that turned into doing what's called the reconciliation plaza for the slave commission. 

And then in that, in the course of that work, learning more about really the history of Chaco Valley, the history of the domestic slave trade in Richmond, Virginia, the magnitude of it, the meaning of it. And so in the, In the early 2000s, I guess,  there was an initiative to turn Main Street Station if you don't know which one, Main Street Station is iconic, sort of early 20th-century rail station, and it had suffered a fire and been abandoned, and the city thought, we'll turn it into the bus transfer station, right?

And we'll do all this stuff well to do a historical analysis, right? The only entity in the city that had any kind of property was a slave trail commission.  And that's when doing the research understood that most likely in this site are the remains of some of the notorious slave traders,  you know, from Antebellum, Virginia. 

Including what is known as Lumpkin Slave Jail. And so they were able to one,  halt that project, which would have been truly invasive in the site and do the phase one archeology on the site. So we were involved with that project and to excavate down 16 feet and understand what this history was and walk upon it was transformational.

I think that's not hyperbole.  And so, yeah, that's, I guess that's the genesis of, of, of getting into this, this work kind of thing. So,  sort of memorialization work started there, and it's just grown. We are,  A very small percentage. So when somebody says I need the opinion of a black architect, well, there's two of them I know of.

And so I'm going to ask Burt,  okay, let me speak, let me speak for all the black people.  Cause clearly that's what we do. All right. 

So, yeah. So then, you know, I think having worked with some folks who were not University of Richmond, they contacted us when the university found the remains of a burial ground in the midst of its campus, and there was a burying ground that had been desecrated more than once. So going back to the research back in the fifties, they found when they were putting in a steam tunnel, there were remains that were disturbed and removed.

And so there were little records like that, little notes here and there.  And so then president Ronald Crutcher, you know, we're going to do something about this.  And he was, I think, yeah, Ronald Crutchfield was the first black president of the University of Richmond.  And so, obviously, he sort of felt the weight of dealing with that.

So, folks that I had known in the city who are now U of R contacts because we want to do something here. We need to do something here.  And also about that time, we pursued the memorial at William and Mary. It's called hearth and got to work with,  I keep calling him the kid, but he's a grown man. But the kid that won the competition,  it Wilson, if you hear me, well, I'm sorry.

I know you're a man, but you know,  twice your age 

and working on that was, was a phenomenal experience. And so it's just, it's continued to just go from there. And like you and I met at Noma. Yes, and one of the things that I'm excited about meeting you at NOMA, so one, we overlapped a little bit on the Jackson project, project in Richmond. So basically I learned of you from the Moon Sisters, which was amazing because I was like, wait,  I was like, how do I not know this man?

This is he's doing this amazing work. There's not that many black architects in Virginia doing preservation. What how do I not know this man?  So then like seeing you at Noma, I was like, oh my gosh you we need to talk. How are you? What's going on?  It was very cool and so seeing the the work in the That you've done on the Jackson project and how that has evolving.

That's also been super fascinating. So, I guess, do you want to touch on that a little bit?  I mean, so, yes, Sisha Moon and Sisha and Anjali. I met Anjali through her work with and creation of the Africana Film Festival in, in Richmond. And then when they created the Jackson Project and Sisha Nanjali's goal of, you know, being designed by Blacks, built by Blacks, you know, led them to reach out to Burt.

I said, you're Black, you're an architect.  We did it as part of  The firm's 5 percent program. So I got involved with them and, and seeing their vision. And when they, you know, one of the things we want to do is bring back to assets that are no longer in Jackson Ward, like the Skipwith Roper Cottage, you know, which is, you know, was owned by,  it was the first,  owned by a black man.

And it had been moved.  When 95 came through, so yeah, I was just excited to, to engage with them because just seeing the work that they were doing was like,  so it's turned into a fantastic.  I think somewhat reciprocal relationship kind of thing. We're trying 1 of the other projects that we're doing. Is the relocation of what's called the Emily Winfrey Cottage, who Emily Winfrey was an enslaved woman and upon emancipation, she was gifted the cottage by her former enslaver kind of thing.

And the cottage has survived, it's been moved, and we're finally moving it back to its original location.  Close to its original location,  but then talking about the function of it, you know, working with Angela, it's just like, can we create, you know, a scholar-in-residence kind of program within this space?

And I didn't know at the time that we were moving the college to pretty much their original homestead on the south side of Richmond in Manchester. So, yeah, we grew up along this corridor. Oh, my God. Okay. Yes. So. There's so many things that we, we, we want to do together. And Astrid, when Sisha said, do you want to have dinner with Ava DuVernay?

I'm like, wait, what did you mispronounce her name? 

Just let me grab onto your coattails and I'll drag me. I had such respect. I was just talking to Anjali, you know, about an initiative. She's trying to start on the North side of Richmond as well. So I, this is a relationship. I hope that.  Will go on for a long time and just trying to sort of enrich the black history and black experience of Richmond.

Yes, absolutely. Yeah, I was involved on the very, very front end for a little bit in terms of trying to be like, well, what is the kind of look like? What is the existing 1? And then be like, oh, you know, well, recreation is also one of the secretary of interior standards, reinterpretation, like we don't have to reuse what's there.

So super excited that they connected with you and excited to see all the work that's happening.  And so then we've talked a little bit about all of the work that you're doing in Virginia. What about some of the work that you're doing in other parts of the country?  Yeah, actually, I'm talking to you from Buffalo, New York, because we just interviewed for what's called the 514 Memorial.

If you remember a couple of years back,  514, there was a massacre at a top supermarket here. And so the city and the state and the community are seeking to create a memorial. So I met a colleague at NOMA, actually,  who said, Hey, we would We would love to team up with you to do this.  That's super interesting.

Cause I feel like that's the one of the first memorials I've heard of. And that's not necessarily memorializing the enslaved, but also memorializing still like a more recent tragedy.  I'll be honest, I just, I don't know how to feel about it. You know, it's, I know that like, for example, There's a memorial at Mother Emanuel in Charleston that's, that's under construction kind of thing.

I think at one point, I just think like, God, how many of these are we going to have to do?  But when I put it in the context of, I would say, Black people being continuously robbed of identity to the point of also being murdered, right? I was like, this, this is,  Still part of this same damn narrative. Yeah, unfortunately.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And we're working right now also with Wake Forest University there, because actually was connected through University of Richmond, Ronald Crutcher's former chief. Staff is now at Wake Forest and she reached out and said, would you look at this with us?  So we did. And I think, you know, how we've come to approach this as a process.

We're not doing anything. Until we talked to everybody and so, you know, like at the University of Richmond that lasted because it happened during COVID that lasted 2 years of engagement right now awake. We've spent last the last semester in the 1st part of the semester,  just doing continuous public participation and. 

We did the same thing at Emory in Atlanta. We competed for the design of the Memorial and we lost to Walter Hood.  And I said, all right, I'm going to just take being in the presence of Walter Hood as a win. So it's like a different strata, 

but you know, so we've had early conversations with Clemson about this and actually, we'll meet with you and  As well, but I think it's hopefully the process that speaks to folks and like, I love that you're building on a body of knowledge and really coming up with. not quite a toolkit, but being able to have these different conversations.

I think I've said in a couple of, you know, my presentations and one of the things that I've enjoyed about the way that you communicate about these very complex histories and somewhat painful histories as well, is that it's really just, here are the facts. Let's talk about what happened and let's have a conversation about where we go from here.

In terms of engaging, particularly white folks, black folks, everyone in between. How has that conversation gone? Or what's some of the pushback that you've gotten when you've been presenting just the facts of history of this is what's happened. This is where we are. Yeah. You know, essentially what we try to do is  Meet with people who are already in some sort of tribe in their group, like Black Student Alliance or the Alumni Association or Faculty, Staff, Senate,  where people have already a rapport amongst themselves and hopefully are more accepting of hearing things.

And responding,  and there was a, there was a real hard lesson. I learned at Emory when we had this session with the hourly workers, you know, the food service and custodial staff,  and we set the session up.  And when they arrived, they wanted to know, why is the president not here?  You know, why is there not somebody else?

Because the response was. The authority of this universe here, the people who can actually make this happen aren't in the room, so is this valid? That was interesting.  I find that in the genuine conversations, and the groups will range from 3  or 4 people to 50 or 60 people. Most responses are ready to hear it. 

And one of the things we also want to make sure we do is we give people an opportunity to respond in any format that they want, whether it's right there in the room,  whether it's through online in real-time,  or even post-meeting for instruction. So, it is,  and what we always say to our clients to the administration's kind of thing is,  I know you have a timeline,  but let's just recognize that this is going to take the time that it takes. 

Because you really do want people to have ownership and authorship in this process.  Sometimes that's heard and received. Sometimes it's like, nah, I can't.  We need this by Friday. Let's go. 

Have there been any instances where you've had to diffuse situations or had to kind of help people be heard or communicate across more emotional bounds?  Yes. Yes.  And in our toolkit, I carry a box of tissues for mostly for myself,  but,  but also, I mean, I think that, you know, there have been instances where some black folk who are hearing this for the first time in a certain circumstance get just angry, right?

Right. And that grows.  And I think it's, it's not about sort of diffusing it as much as it is. Letting it filter into the space so that everybody can hear and understand this isn't a,  an attack and we're not accusing white folks in the room of nothing,  just let it happen because this, this is not easy and anger is often the correct emotion to feel when you are hearing a lot of.

The things that have happened, so you pretend like you're not angry, going to not going to help. But you're right. Being able to process it and diffuse it through. That's super fascinating when I'm in the office and 1 of my brothers will call me. And folks hear me on the phone is like, oh, you just turned into Burt from Alabama and we can hear it.

So there are times when that has to come right now. Right. Talking to folks like.  Let's get right here. Understand exactly what you mean.  Sometimes that code-switching has to happen, 

but I mean, I learned a lot. I do sometimes just go sit with my mom for a couple hours because she'll just let me say what I need to say.  And that's probably the saving grace for me.  Yeah,  that's fair. I'm glad that you have  her to be able to be that saving grace because the work that you're doing, and every time I'm listening to one of your presentations, I'm always impressed by just how heavy it is.

And how you're able to work through it because it's having conversations about race,  particularly in mixed audiences can be uncomfortable, but it's also what is needed to be able to have conversations about what is our future going to look like talking about the past doesn't change what happened. But it helps us create a better future. 

I have a 41-year-old son. He's 41. And he won't mind me telling you the story, but in the midst of the summer of 2020, after the murder of George Floyd,  and that really was a time when, when, you know,  I thought I was just losing it. One more person asked me, sort of, you know, what's this about, kind of thing. 

But at the same time,  my son had a drug problem.  And he reached out to me for the first time in months and said, help me and I just put everything down and I said, okay, I'm going to focus on the life in front of me that matters.  I was like, okay, if, if we can just get ourselves in a mindset of,  I'm looking at Nakita right here in front of me, this,  this life matters. 

What am I going to do about it?  If we can put ourselves there at any given moment and sort of sometimes not be overwhelmed by the enormity of it all.  I think it helps us sort of inch forward.  Yeah, absolutely. And knowing that we don't have to, nor can we solve the problems of the world, but we are in the world and we can solve the problems that we actually have control over right now.

Oh my gosh, Burt, this is so amazing.  Because it's a lot, I feel like, particularly at this moment in time, when the world feels a little bit more like a raging dumpster fire than it has in the past. Yes. Yes. Like it is difficult and has been difficult to stay positive, optimistic, but what you're saying in terms of focusing on this moment right now, not catastrophizing in terms of the worst thing that could happen in the future.

Not being too focused on all the worst things that happened in the past, just what is it in this moment?  There's some sort of agency over that can make the next day feel better that sort of thing That's been a lot of my focus personally of like trying to stay present And just day by day,  I assume, by the way, you'll be making it to Baltimore this year for Noma.

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I'm, I'm trying to drag as many of the studio there as I can and sponsor a booth so that, you know, we can have some presence. Yeah, it's going to be great for everyone who's listening. Noma is in Baltimore this year in October. It is going to be a ridiculously good time if I do say so myself.

I work in Baltimore and I know the city is amazing. So I'm very, I'm just looking forward to having lots of other people come experience the city. It's going to be a good time.  They're always great, man.  Right. It really is.  Well, I hear that you recently launched the Chaco project in Richmond, Virginia. I would love for you to talk more about that.

Yeah. You know, that's what I talked about sort of just that, that starting in this work in Richmond back in the day in Chaco. And this is  really culmination of thousands of people doing really hard work for decades. Quite honestly,  and I would say that, you know,  it's been fits and starts because there was never alignment with what needs to happen, how it needs to happen.

Who's the author? This kind of thing. And and so about a year ago, after the most recent iteration.  That was worked on was a museum in a particular site, and then it had environmental issues and so we were, we were hired to just create a master plan,  you know,  absent a museum, absent an interpretive center, absent some other components,  but knowing that all of those things are there and all of these folks who have. 

Really work so hard for either the whole thing or the piece of it was like, this is a both and conversation. This is not an either-or right.  And I think when we reached the idea of the Chicago project being like.  Our Smithsonian,  this overarching institution that is a combination of all these different parts and pieces of narratives, not only in Chaco Bottom but the University of Richmond, you know, the East Marshall Well Project in Richmond, the Winfrey Cottage, the Chaco Hill African Burying Ground, Evergreen Cemetery, these are all parts of a continuous narrative.

So let's think of them under this umbrella.  And it was that these 10 acres in Chaco Bottom are our national mall.  So there's room for all of these stories, all of these initiatives. All of these narratives to happen in this space.  So that was sort of the premise we started working under eight months ago. 

And  Tuesday was the public unveiling. And to the point I was making earlier, I think everybody saw themselves in it.  So it was like,  okay, we got 50 million to get started. Let's go. Oh, love that. I'm gonna put links in the show notes to it. So people can kind of see more about the project, figure out how to get involved and all that good stuff.

And I think this is also part of the, I remember seeing kind of screenshots of there's a billboard in Richmond now, which is kind of talking about. No.  Yeah. Yeah. Is that part of it or no?  Well, in, in the, in the idea of the, the umbrella of the Shaco project, yes. But one of the confusion is the Shaco Hill African buried ground is not in Shaco bottom.

It is actually the second municipal burying ground for Black folk enslaved and free established in Richmond.  That one, the majority of that is under an interstate exchange. Yeah.  It was the largest one. I think it was estimated about 22, 000 internments there and standing in the space of this is a billboard,  along with an old gas station, along with the interstate. 

Got you. Yeah. So then that's what I've been seeing on Instagram then. Okay. Yeah. Got you. All right. We'll put links to. The project so people can see what we're talking about.  Wow. Well, I'm excited that it's launched though, because hearing you say that it's the culmination of thousands of people doing really hard work for decades.

Like, that's a fantastic way to say it and to honor all of the work that's gone into all of the layers of history in Richmond.  Thank you so much for listening. Links to amazing resources can be found in the episode's show notes. Special thanks to Sarah Gilberg for allowing me to use snippets of her song Fireflies from her debut album, Other People's Secrets, which by the way, is available wherever music is sold. 

If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe to the show.  And now that Tangible Remnants is part of the Gable Media Network, you can listen and subscribe to all network partner content at gablemedia. com. That's G A B L media. com.  Until next time, remember that historic preservation is a present conversation with our past about our future.

We don't inherit the earth from our parents, but we borrow it from our children. So let's make sure we're telling our inclusive history.  I saw the first fireflies.  Summer,  right then  I thought of you.  Oh, I could see us catching them and setting them free.  Honey. That's what you do. 

That's what you do to me.