Isle Of Palms Magazine April 2018

12 www.IsleOfPalmsMagazine.com | www.ILoveIOP.com | www.IOPmag.com own as a registered architect. “I always wanted to work one-on-one with my clients. I didn’t want to work for a big firm. It didn’t matter if I was designing the White House or a doghouse. I enjoy figuring out needs and parsing through the process to provide a quality product,” he said. During his stay in Kentucky, in the early 1980s, he did the design work at a plant owned by a French cheese manufacturer, Fromgeries Bel, in Leitchfield. Since the scientist in charge of quality control was from India, his main partners in the project spoke three different languages – four if you consider English spoken in New York and English spoken in rural Kentucky to be two different dialects. “It was a diverse group but a lot of fun,” he said. Crouch explained how he discovered a major issue that had to be resolved before the project could be completed. “It takes a lot of water to make cheese. They would flush the plant, pipe the excess water up a hill and spray it onto the ground,” he said. “I asked the scientist to test the water for E. coli. The readings were up and down, depending on the day of the week. That’s when I realized there was a leak under the slab of the building.” When he asked to see the blueprints, he discovered that they were in French and in meters instead of feet or yards. Despite the language issues, the project was completed and Fromgeries Bel continued to produce The Laughing Cow cheese wedges and Mini Babybel waxed semi-soft cheese in Leitchfield, Kentucky. Crouch and his wife eventually returned to the New York area, planting temporary roots in Stamford and then Old Greenwich, Connecticut. He worked part of the time with a firm and part on his own. When they moved to Isle of Palms, Crouch was with Cummings & McCrady, which gave him the opportunity to design restoration and other work at Penn Center, on 600-plus acres along Cowan Creek on St. Helena Island, near Beaufort. Penn Center was established in 1862 by Pennsylvania Quakers who wanted to teach freed slaves life skills such [ Feature ] A house Crouch designed on Driftwood Lane in Isle of Palms, and currently under construction, is “incredibly energy efficient.” The Gantt Cottage, where Dr. Martin Luther King stayed when he visited Penn Center. Funds are currently being raised to restore the building and make it a living museum experience. as trades, math, how to run a farm and how to be a midwife – basically how to exist as free people. Early in the Civil War, the Union Army occupied Port Royal and freed as many as 10,000 slaves. The facility later was a vocational school. Today, “its mission is to preserve the unique history, culture and environment of the Sea Islands through serving as a local, national and international resource center,” according to a lengthy report prepared by Crouch in 2009. At the time, he was on his own again, leaving Cummings & McCrady after a five-year stint there. His work at the Penn Center included making the Frissell Community Center handicapped-accessible and restoring a dilapidated shed where slaves had learned the wood trades, the Jasmin Cottage and a dairy barn. Penn Center played another key role in American history in the 1960s, when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and members of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference used it as a training site and as a retreat for strategic planning. Dr. King stayed at Gantt Cottage, and Crouch pointed out that plans have been completed for its restoration. He said the building will look like it did when Dr. King was alive. “It’s a great place in American history. It was one of the only places blacks and whites could meet together and not get shot,” Crouch said. “It’s a spectacular place and an Photo by Thomas Runion. Photo courtesy of John Crouch.