An American “Garden” in an Oriental “Desert”: The Modernity of Timber at the Syrian Protestant College of Beirut

Abstract

This paper explores the role of timber in articulating a modern American project in nineteenth-century Lebanon. It focuses on the architecture of the Syrian Protestant College in Beirut, an educational institution founded by American missionaries of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in 1866. The paper examines the evolving role of timber within this foreign missionary project—deployed in multiple forms and scales—and traces the shifting values ascribed to its use. I argue that the missionaries used timber to elaborate specific relationships towards students and the city, reflecting cultural, racial, and religious notions of superiority, carving out an American “garden” in the “wilderness” of Ras Beirut. I analyze these theological aims and their practical application through the conceptual lens of Edward Said’s “modern Orientalism”. The deployment of timber as a claim-making and space-making device frames the construction of the Syrian Protestant College as a modern, imperial project.