Above Photo: The college occupies the 1897 Charleston City Railway Car House.
The American College of the Building Arts (ACBA) in Charleston, S.C. is the seat of a renaissance in education. The college, opened in 2005, is creating “educated artisans” – modern-day Leonardo da Vincis.
“Students complete an integrated liberal arts curriculum, where both academic and artisan courses build upon each other,” a college brochure states.
Already, ACBA students have attracted the attention of master artisans in Europe. The prestigious Fondation de Coubertin in Saint-Rémy-lès-Chevreuse, France, has awarded two students scholarships to further their artisan and academic training. “It’s the Rhodes scholarship for artisans,” according to President Colby M. Broadwater III, a retired three-star general. Just 30 students a year, from France and foreign countries, are awarded this 11-month scholarship.
Here are some of my pictures of the college and the students’ and professors’ works, which exemplify one of Leonardo’s sayings, “Knowledge of the past and of the places of the earth is the ornament and food of the mind of man.”
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- A still life in a corner of the drafting room.
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- Students made this iron gate for a house featured in PBS’s This Old House.
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- A student-made Art Nouveau door awning.
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- Iron rocks.
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- Man is the measure of all things.
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- The library’s rose window, carved in stone by Professor Simeon Warren, awaits its student-made stained glass inserts.
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