Official Blog of the Society of Architectural Historians' Study Tour Program

Bauhaus 1919-1933: Worshops for Modernity

2010-01-19T16:18:00.005-06:00

On January 11th, Providence Station was officially ranked in my mind as among the coldest places in southern New England, due mostly to the fact that its platforms are designed like an industrial wind tunnel, which not only compresses the gentlest breeze into a gale-force punch in the eye, but also encourages stiff numbness of the social variety among its human inhabitants. But I did not much care, because I was embarking on a journey to New York, where I would be included in a SAH Study Tour of exactly the sort my Ph.D. research requires: a guided presentation of the MoMA’s exhibition Bauhaus 1919-1933: Workshops for Modernity. I was so thrilled about my destination, and so grateful for the graduate student Fellowship that was making it possible, that no amount of skinning wind or number of “Rhode Island Smiles” could faze me.

Taking the Amtrak to New Haven and there switching to the Metro-North commuter rail is not only the cheapest way to ride the rails from Providence to NYC, is also means that one arrives in style, greeting the city in the lustrous Grand Central Terminal, rather than scurrying through the sordid Penn Station.

I emerged from the frenetic netherworld in the early evening, and promptly strolled to the Flatiron District before heading over and up to 230 Fifth, a rooftop bar that affords one a view of the upper Manhattan skyline at an unbeatable price: free!

There I camped out under a heat lamp to review my notes on a couple of the MoMA exhibition’s catalog essays, which had been kindly provided by SAH so that everyone could read up and make the most of the Study Tour. After soaking up the view (and a beer), I packed up and headed to the hotel for an early night. It was, after all, very cold–and I did not come to New York to play.

After a morning review session over coffee at a friendly breakfast joint down the street from my hotel, I rode the No. 6 subway up to the 51st Street Station. This left me a number of blocks east of the MoMA, of course, but it seemed like a fine idea to take the scenic route on foot, hitting a few Bauhaus-relevant New York landmarks before stepping into the exhibition.

I strolled passed the 1952 Lever House and, more importantly where the day was concerned, former Bauhaus director Mies van der Rohe’s 1958 Seagram Building. In some ways, I suppose, this enormous structure represents the terminal point on a historical axis that runs through its architect’s rather dramatic life, much of which would be delineated, or at least touched upon, in the Bauhaus exhibition down the street. Visiting this historic building on the morning of the Study Tour put a strong whiff of destiny in the air.

I followed my nose a few blocks west, and it took me to another landmark skyscraper, this one by Mies van der Rohe’s very own protégé, Philip Johnson. Of course, Mr. Johnson was a central figure at the MoMA, and was instrumental in linking the institutional DNA of the MoMA and the Bauhaus–so his ghost would also be joining me on the Study Tour. I glanced up and did my very best to photograph the immense form of his 1984 AT&T Building (now the Sony Building), ironically one of the most dramatic opening salvos of the Post-modern movement. The structure seems literally to be wearing a funny hat to spite the stern, self-serious Seagram Building a few blocks over (which, of course, Johnson had played a role in developing long before he flew the orthodox Modernist coop).

Finally, after a few more conscientious wanderings, I arrived at the MoMA, which looked quite dignified in the morning light, save for the UTZ Quality Foods truck parked suspiciously outside (it appears that even the city’s intellectual elite cannot cleave themselves from Cheese Crunchies®, or resist the siren’s song of Pork Cracklins®–though I do not judge!). If this was a surveillance station, those responsible could not have picked a less likely vehicle.

Upon entering the MoMA, I was at first puzzled as to which group was mine–but a few well-placed inquiries proved fruitful, and in no time I was properly situated.

It was a thrill indeed to commence the Study Tour. Ever since falling in love with Barry Bergdoll’s 19th-Century Architecture survey book while earning my MA at the Savannah College of Art and Design, I have wanted to meet him, and now I was face-to-face with not only him, but a number of distinguished scholars with whom I would enjoy sharing an elevator, let alone an entire day of inquiry and discussion.

This particular tour was not only a rare privilege because it was led by the curators of the Bauhaus exhibition, but also because it transpired on a day during which the museum is closed to the public. Such peace and quiet–so eerily remarkable in the always-popular MoMA–ensured that everyone could be heard all of the time, and was more than accommodating to the moments of quiet observation and contemplation that we were encouraged to seek out along the tour.

We were offered a statement of introduction at the threshold, which not only addressed the art historical material in question, but also offered some comments as to the methodologies used to construct and frame the exhibition.

Afterwards, Bergdoll led us into the first room of the exhibit itself, where Leah Dickerman–his fellow curator and lead contributor to the excellent, voluminous catalog–spoke to us. Unfortunately, I was not allowed to take photographs of the exhibit itself, due to the image rights retained by lending institutions.

There are many stories told by this exhibition. Even the enormous catalog cannot do justice to all the strands and traces, all the lives and relationships, ideas and sympathies, that made and unmade and remade the Bauhaus through its many years as one of the most important pedagogical institutions of the 20th century. Of course, different interests draw different highlights out of the material. I was personally delighted to see so much of Paul Klee’s work set in the context of the classroom, cast in a new light provided by the work of his students in addition to and aside from that of his already famous colleagues. I was also amazed by the large and diverse number of architectural drawings of a particularly ecclesiastical nature that suggested a number of the different Bauhaus-fostered theories of modernity were seen, at least in part, as new religious structures. Seeing the “Romantic” or “African” chair was also incredible–this piece’s importance as the “primitive” starting point for a famous diagram illustrating a Bauhaus-exclusive evolution of the chair speaks volumes about some of the stranger (and perhaps less palatable) theories regarding phases of workshop “progress” and their cultural equivalencies around the world.

It was certainly a comprehensive, all-star show: Breuer was there, and Moholy-Nagy, and Meyer, and the Gropius family. But one of the aspects that I most enjoyed was the presence of the students. So often, the Bauhaus comes across not as a school, but rather as a super-group or dream-team of Modernist designers. There is no question that its roster reads like a Who’s Who of mid-20th century Modernism. But I tend to favor the argument that it was as a school that the institution has had its deepest and most enduring effects on our planet. For this reason it may be somewhat ironic that the Bauhaus failed to produce a crop of graduates that could rival its professors in terms of the quality of their work (which, of course, may say something about the quality of their professors’ educations, which were largely not conducted at the Bauhaus). Rather than a crack student body, the school produced a potent body of pedagogical methods and philosophies that have been adopted, to a greater and/or lesser degree, by thousands of institutions of higher learning all over the world. In the end the Bauhaus was, perhaps, an exemplary school for teachers, first and foremost. But at least this exhibition dragged the students, eternal interns though they may be, out onto the stage, and presented them less like anonymous sounding boards for the genius of their tutors and more like real people who were part of a complex, nuanced community that changed over time. This was one of the most refreshing aspects of the exhibition, and it was reinforced in the Study Tour.

We were spoken to briefly by Jerry Neuner, the exhibition designer, and given a presentation of historical context by Juliet Kinchin.

Then we were taken to the archives, where we were not only presented with a special view of the MoMA’s courtyard by dimming twilight, but also a special collection of drawings from the Mies van der Rohe collection, thoughtfully pulled from the shelves and presented by Barry Bergdoll and Dietrich Neumann. As if the private, personal tour of the exhibition was not intimate enough, we finished the day by pouring over a series of small-scale drawings and discussing their context in the history of Mies as an architect and, indeed, as a real human being. His affection for nature is, for example, much more evident in some of his softer drawings than at, say, the Seagram Building.

Finally, glasses of wine and more chatting rounded the evening off upstairs in the library. The MoMA staff could not have been more courteous and kind. Our group was excellent, and our Study Tour guides were literally the best one could ask for (one cannot ask for much more than the curators when setting off on a special exhibition tour). After the evening wound down, I sprinted to Grand Central to catch a train to New Haven, so that I could catch a train to Providence.

The wait was not too terribly long in the middle, and I always enjoy the great hall in Cass Gilbert's 1920 Union Station, even in the quiet hours of the New Haven night. And anyway, as the Fellowship recipient for this fantastic SAH Study Tour, I had much to think about, and much for which to be grateful.

Day Two ~ October 9, 2009 "Day in the Life: African American Education: Bootstrap to the Legacy of HBCUs, 1867 - Present"

2009-11-06T22:24:00.014-06:00

Grace Lynis Dubinson

On day two, the pace of the tour accelerates. This is a feel good day, where we continue to explore the city of Atlanta and then travel west after lunch to spend time in Tuskegee Alabama.

The theme was centered around a day in the life of African American Education, from 1867 – present. Our real time exploration in the built environment introduced us to the legacy of Alonzo Herndon; Atlanta University Center (AUC): Spelman, Morehouse and Clark Atlanta University; Booker T. Washington High School and Tuskegee University. Traditionally African American educational institutions are referenced as Historically Black Colleges and Universities and the familiar acronym (HBCU). The tolerance for the soul aesthetic exhibited in designated Greek recreational areas, was of special interest to first time visitors to the HBCU campus.

The day began warm, muggy and overcast. However as we drove west to Alabama, the sun burned off the clouds and by time that we arrived in the town square of Tuskegee AL, the temperature was 89 degrees!

This was my first visit to the Tuskegee University and the campus well exceeded my expectations, it was impressive. Many of the structures that were built before WWII, were designed by African American architect Robert R. Taylor. Founded Tuskegee Institute in 1880 and dedicated to a mission of vocation, in the early years students apprenticed in a variety of building trades. While providing their labor in the construction of many historic resources on campus, the curriculum benefited both the student and growth of the institution.

After reviewing my photographs I realized that while at Tuskegee University the majority of my images of the built environment we of Robert Taylor buildings.

With our cameras in our hands, we walked, then walked, then walked some more and took pictures every step of the way. By days end we were exhausted, had covered seven institutions and a lot of ground. Yet despite our fatigue, the group had bonded and on the ride from Tuskegee to Montgomery, we realized that yes indeed, our time was grand!

Thrasher Hall roof ornament.

Historic Thrasher Hall next in line for much needed renovation and TLC.

Awaiting much needed repair, Thrasher Hall is still a grand and formidable structure.

The Administration Building roof gables and chimney masonry design are favored by local birds.

North elevation of the Administration Building.

Administration Building north elevation. Thrasher Hall bell tower is seen in the far distance along the east elevation.

Restored parapet of White Hall.

White Hall, south elevation.

White Hall.

White Hall, north elevation.

Stain glass window in The Chapel, circa 1969.

Dorothy Hall, west elevation, .

Dorothy Hall, 1901, north elevation.

I am admiring the condition of George Washington Carver's typewriter.

This is the George Washington Carver Museum, we had fun here!

The next few images attest to my affinity to signage.

U.S. Coast & Geodetic survey sidewalk marker, located in Tuskegee AL town square.

Fred Gray, represented Mrs. Rosa Parks who refused to give up her seat to a white man on a city bus, the action that initiated the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Gray was also Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s first civil rights lawyer.

Dell explained the twenty first century significance of the Gray Law Center building location on the Tuskegee AL town square. Wow...that was hot! Both the temperature and what Dell said. The exploration of the Civil Rights Movement while navigating the built environment was a really great experience. Who would have ever thought it? As I reminisce and write this missive, I am peachy keen!

Perhaps this street sign at the intersection of North Main Street and East Rosa Parks Avenue can be interpreted as a progress marker in the incremental dismantling of Jim Crow mandated legislation and restriction.

Tuskegee courthouse, west elevation.

Close up of rooftop griffin.

Courthouse rooftop bell tower adorned with corner griffins and banner weathervane.

Courthouse, south elevation, Tuskegee AL.

Cornerstone, Booker T. Washington High School, Atlanta Public schools.

Entrance foyer Booker T. Washington High School with pre WWII bas relief murals.

Booker T. Washington High School, Atlanta, first public secondary school built for African American students in the Georgia, 1922 - 1924.

Looking through the sculpture on the Clark Atlanta University campus, the front gate of Spelman College can be seen in the far distance.

Trevor Arnett Hall, Clark Atlanta University.

Wright Hall, Clark Atlanta University

Clark Atlanta University.

Alonzo Herndon Home, built from 1907 - 1908, this was my first visit to the mansion. I was extremely moved by this early twentieth century representation of business acumen and hard work. The architectural designs for the construction of the house, are attributed to Adrienne Herndon, Alonzo's wife. Mrs. Herndon was also a professor of Drama and Elocution at neighboring Atlanta University.

Day One ~ October 8, 2009 The Awakening: What is What and Who was Who in Atlanta.

2009-11-06T16:16:00.018-06:00

Grace Lynis Dubinson

The Society of Architectural Historian Study Tour Fellowship has awarded me the opportunity to enhance my understanding of the significance of architectural structures and commemorative monuments. These memorials appear in abundance across the southern landscape, depicting a plethora of activity marking the struggles of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. As we began our journey I was not sure of what to expect, however I remember that my enthusiasm and excitement grew with every step that we took on our ambulatory review through history.

For over thirty years I have loved Atlanta. In return, Atlanta has loved me. For the past six years this is where I live. Embracing my ideal of a southern lifestyle, I jokingly refer to myself as a New Yorker in a self imposed exile, who just happens to reside happily in Atlanta, while living an adventure in reverse migration, albeit this adventure is a circa twenty first century sojourn.

My acquaintance with Atlanta extends back to my childhood, when I enjoyed the occasional vacation in Atlanta, with my family. My father belonged to a national professional organization and during the 1970s the local Atlanta chapter would periodically host the annual convention. As a child, I knew very little about Civil Rights struggles, movements or memorials, beyond the whispered angst and vague details surrounding the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., eavesdropped from adult conversations. In hindsight, I realize that my parents, who were second generation northern born Southerners, fastidiously protected their children from the hostile realities of segregation, discrimination and Jim Crow legislation. Consequently, my memories of traveling south were limited yet warm and to Atlanta specifically, my recollections of the landscape and character of the people were both vivid and fond.

Therefore as we toured the twenty first century built environment of monuments, memorials and structures which significantly inform Atlanta’s place within the Civil Rights Movement, it soon became apparent that our exploration of the nuances of representation would prove to be a comprehensive journey indeed. After I reviewed my photographs for day one, I realized that my taste in building styles was surprisingly influenced by fondness for historic structures. Additionally, the photograph inventory confirmed my affinity for cornerstones, signage and any tableau that attractively displays the written word.

Above and below, cornerstones for the Wheat Street Baptist Church , 365 Auburn Avenue.

Nothing really historically significant about this sign, I just liked the name "Soul Food Museum".

First Congregational Church cornerstone.

Partial sign identifying Thornton Dial as the Sculptor that designed "The Bridge".

We topped off the day at “The Bridge” memorial, designed by Thorton Dial to commemorate John Lewis’ participation in the Selma to Montgomery March, Bloody Sunday and his activism, political influence and service in the Freedom Parkway controversy. We were met by Robert M. Craig, Architectural Historian from Georgia Institute of Technology, he graciously discussed the details of citizen resistance to urban renewal, and ensuing debates surrounding the construction of Freedom Parkway.

The Bridge, located in John Lewis Plaza at the junction of Freedom Parkway and Ponce de Leon Avenue, is a massive structure that is difficult image to capture in its entirety.

The First Congregational Church, 105 Courtland Street.

You caught me resting my feet and sitting in a window well in front of the Auburn Avenue Research Library. Fondly known as the AARL, this is decidedly one of my most favorite places in all of Atlanta! The archives has several processed collections that document regional African American influences second to none in the U.S. South. As is quite apparent by the look on my face, I was all tuckered out and attempting to rest up for at least another two hours of exploration. Regardless of how tired I was, we had a blast.

These ruins of the original Atlanta Life Insurance building are still very architecturally appealing.

The main structure of the Odd Fellows Building was completed in 1912, the auditorium partially visible on the left side was completed two years later in 1914.

Architectural Historian Dell Upton (low left corner) shares information with the group about the architectural design and features of the Odd Fellows Building, (circa 1912 - 1914) located at 250 Auburn Avenue.

The Prince Hall Masonic Hall, 332 -34 Auburn Avenue, (circa 1937 – 1941) boasts arched window frames visible on the lower level. Masonic medallions and signage date stamp are displayed in the masonry between the upper floors of the facade and near the roofline on the parapet.

At the end of a long and hot day in Atlanta, the alley housing restoration team is seated in the shade on the porch and glimpses of the downtown Atlanta skyline, are visible on the left, in the near distant background.

The alley houses adjacent to the Dr. M.L. King Jr. birth home were undergoing restoration. We were advised that the garage in the foreground is an original structure that would also be renovated after the restoration of the alley houses is completed.

The rear view of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. birth home, located at 501 Auburn Avenue (circa 1895).

A portion of our group as we listen to the National Park Service Ranger in the rear yard, as the tour of the Dr. Martin L. King Jr. birth home comes to an end.

Civil Rights Memorials- A word of thanks

2009-10-19T18:23:00.002-05:00

Martin J. Holland

As a young scholar, interested in writing on the topic of memorials and concerned with guaranteeing an equitable and pluralistic society, this tour was simply incredible. My thanks to all the staff of the Society of Architectural Historians for administrating the study tour fellowships. This is a truly worthwhile program and I would strongly encourage other young scholars and graduate students to apply for a traveling fellowship, especially when the tour’s content is related to your own scholarship or interests. I also have to thank Perdita Welch and Allison Larkin of International Seminar Design Inc- they were able to get the study tour group in places normally completely inaccessible to members of the general public. I also have to offer my deepest thanks to Abigail Van Slyck, the SAH representative who also attended the tour for keeping everything running smooth, and for asking some wonderfully probing questions. The group members of the study tour themselves were incredible, thank you for your companionship and your conversation. I learned a lot from your comments and from your expertise.

I must also offer Dr. Dell Upton a huge thank you for not only the countless hours that he spent organizing the tour, but also sharing his research with us. As a graduate student working away on a dissertation, I learned an amazing array of techniques concerning the built environment from Dr. Upton’s keen observations and methodology.

Lastly I have to thank all of you, the general membership of the SAH, for your generosity and financial support in establishing these travelling fellowships. For years I have witnessed first hand the slow but constant withering of resources available to students in post secondary educational institutions. The ability for the SAH to offer not one, but three fellowships to new scholars and graduate students is nothing short of remarkable, and a testament to the quality of you the members of the SAH. I know that many of you are probably suffering from donor fatigue, but to have attended this particular tour, and to have witnessed both the tragedies and the triumphs of the civil rights movement has been nothing short of life changing for me. For the opportunity to attend this tour, I am in your debit.

P.S. Thanks to everyone who followed me on Twitter- and I again apologize for some of the spelling mistakes, next time I will bring along a blackberry with an actual key board rather than my overly touch sensitive iphone! Keep looking for updates on Twitter as well!

Best regards,

Martin

Civil Rights Memorials- Day Four

2009-10-19T15:44:00.016-05:00

Sunday October 11, 2009

By Martin J. Holland

Despite being a Sunday, our last day of the study tour was as full and busy as the other days. We started our day visiting the Bethel Baptist Church, which was subject to three separate bomb attacks during the 1950’s and 1960’s. The first attack on the church and its pastor, the Rev. Fred Lee Shuttlesworth, occurred in the early hours of Christmas Day 1956. An explosive device made up of some nineteen sticks of dynamite was placed between the small alley between church and the parsonage, just mere feet from the bedroom of the pastor. The resulting explosion, while completely destroying the parsonage, left the reverend unharmed. The church sustained heavy damage, with all of its windows broken, and structural repairs required before services could be once again conducted. The attack on the church caused the congregation to establish a round the clock watch on the church and a security detail for their pastor, out of fear for his life. Such precautions proved wise as the church was again attacked in 1958, when another explosive device was left on the eastern side of the church. This time, thanks to the quick and brave actions of the guards, disaster was averted. The guards were able to defuse the majority of live explosives, and throw the remaining nine sticks of dynamite away from the church’s foundation into an adjacent, open field. The resulting explosion still smashed the windows of the church, but given the placement of the bomb, and the fifty-four sticks of dynamite that it originally contained, catastrophic structural damage that would have demolished the church was avoided. With this second attack on the church, local neighbors and members of other churches in Birmingham started to volunteer to augment the churches security. The last attack occurred when six sticks of dynamite were thrown from a speeding car, landing on the main entrance landing at the front of the church. Once again, there was significant damage to the church, but thankfully no loss of life.

Our hosts for the tour of Bethel Baptist were Mrs. Hightower and Deacon Stone, both long term members of the church, who held us riveted not only with their knowledge of these horrific attacks, but their incredible sense of optimism. Despite continual harassment by the police, and attacks on their church, they noted that a large majority of the congregation never waivered in their struggle for equality. While some members were open about their concern that the moral and political stance that the church was taking would “get them all killed”, the church did not abandon the cause, or lose members.

While Bethel Baptist Church building is currently in disrepair, they have already plans for a complete restoration that should get underway within the year. Members of the congregation built a larger church just a block away that is twice the size of the location we saw, and their numbers of the congregation continually grow. I was able to record a snippet of the oral history that Deacon Stone and Mrs. Hightower provided on my smart phone, which I have posted below in a movie format. Sorry for the poor quality of the audio.

Photo: The exterior of the church as it stands today. The parsonage used to stand directly adjacent to the western wall of the church that we see above.

This image, taken from A Walk To Freedom, The Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth and the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, 1956-1964 by the Birmingham Historical Society shows how close the parsonage was to the church. Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth is in the upper right hand of the photo.

The above photo, also from A Walk To Freedom, The Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth and the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, 1956-1964 by the Birmingham Historical Society shows the destruction of the first bombing against Bethel Baptist Church.

Photo of Mrs. Hightower and Deacon Stone.

After we left Bethel Baptist Church, we toured the predominately African American neighborhood nicknamed “Dynamite Hill”. It seems that those who were unwilling to recognize racial equality, and resorted to violence and intimidation were not below planting explosives at private residences. “Dynamite Hill” received its name from the seven separate attacks using explosives within the neighborhood in 1957 alone.

We left the neighborhood to go to the Sixteenth Avenue Church prior to their Sunday Service being held. The Church was under construction from 1909 through to 1911, and was designed by Wallace A. Rayfield and Company. It was also the site of a bombing in 1963, and unlike Bethel Baptist church, there were causalities from this terrible incident. Four young girls, Addie May Collins, Carol Denise McNair, Carole Rosmond Robertson, and Cynthia Diane Wesley were all killed when the ten sticks of dynamite planted by the Ku Klux Klan exploded during their Sunday school service.

In response to the attack, and the considerable anger that was felt by both black and white residents of Birmingham, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stated: “We must not harbor the desire to retaliate with violence. The deaths may well serve as the redemptive force that brings light to this dark city.”

In 2008, the church established a memorial to the four girls.

The role of the Sixteenth Avenue Church within the struggle for civil rights cannot be overstated, and a key factor of that critical role had to do with the church’s physical location. Sixteenth Avenue was a racial dividing line within the city of Birmingham, and the church was directly on that invisible, but very real line that segregated blacks from whites. As a result, it became a natural starting point for protest marches, and in May of 1963 was the point of origin for the Children’s Crusade. The crusade was organized to show the world the extent of racial segregation within Birmingham, and how even young African American children would be arrested if they merely walked over to the southern side of Sixteenth Avenue into Kelly Ingram Park.

Photo: The Sixteenth Avenue Baptist Church.

Kelly Ingram Park was named after the first white sailor to perish in World War I, and while it was far removed from white neighborhoods, it was directly adjacent to a large African American neighborhood and business district. Despite of its location, it was on the other side of the color line, and forbidden to be used by Birmingham’s black community. To protest racial segregation, it was also the site for some of the most disturbing imagery to come out of the civil rights movement. White police with batons in hand met many of the protesters, as did snarling police dogs, water cannons, and tear gas. These troubling events are now all recognized in Kelly Ingram Park with the following memorials.

Photo: "Dogs"/ "Foot Solder Tribute".

Photo:"Firehosing of demonstrators"

Photo:"Praying Ministers"

Photo: "Martin Luther King Jr. Monument"

Photo: "The Children's March"

Photo:"Police Dog Attack"

We then had an hour or two to visit the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute located on the northeast side of Sixteenth Avenue. The Institute is a wonderful resource and places the visitor directly into the historical and cultural context of the early stages of the civil rights movement. The institute also has on display the jail cell where on the night of April 16, 1963 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. pens his famous “Letter from the Birmingham Jail” which was a response to white clergy criticizing the efforts of the civil rights movement as “unwise and untimely”.

Our last destination for the tour was the 4^th Avenue business district, which served as the economic and cultural center for African Americans in Birmingham. Predominately occupied with black owned businesses, it was much like Auburn Avenue in Atlanta, where monies generated within the district stayed within the area to help foster and reinforce economic opportunities for the black middle class. Arthur George Gaston, a wealthy and talented black entrepreneur, was directly responsible for at least four separate businesses within the district, including a hotel, radio station, insurance company and funeral home. The business district, like many downtown areas in many American cities, has unfortunately fallen upon tough times. Dr. Upton provided an incredible amount of detail to not only the architectural history of the buildings that we were seeing, but a rich and textured social history as well.

Photo of Dr. Upton in front of AG Gaston’s hotel.

Dinner was also a special occasion, as for our last night we were served a traditional southern dinner that included collard greens, fried chicken, sweet potatoes, macaroni and cheese. All of this feast was prepared by Chef Clayton Sherrod, who also treated us with a reflection of his own experiences growing up in Birmingham during the civil rights struggle, and how he soon learned that he could not remain silent when he saw injustice in the world and how he could not let others determine the course of his own life. The meal, and his presentation, were excellent.

Civil Rights Memorials- Day Three

2009-10-19T14:26:00.015-05:00

Saturday, October 10, 2009

By Martin J. Holland

We had a special treat arranged for us this morning- Perdita Welch had been able to arrange a visit inside Mrs. Rosa Parks’ home at the Cleveland Courts public Housing in Montgomery, Alabama.

Photo: The Rosa Parks' home.

The Cleveland Courts were constructed in the early 1940’s to counteract the lack of affordable and adequate housing in the south. The apartments still serve as public housing today.

Photo: Interior shot of Mrs. Rosa Parks’ home.

We then visited the “Brick – A - Day” church, also known as the First Baptist Church of Montgomery, which played a central role in the struggle for equality during the civil rights era. The “Brick - A – Day” nickname came from the donation of home-made bricks made by the congregation membership to the rebuilding efforts after a fire destroyed the church in the early nineteen hundreds. The reconstruction effort lasted for five years, from 1910 to 1915 when the church was finally completed. Reverend R.D. Abernathy, a central figure of the civil rights movement, and close friend to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was also the pastor of this church from 1952 to 1961.

While there, we had the good fortune to have an organ recital performed for us by Mrs. Essley Gomiller. She served as the church’s organist for some forty-nine consecutive years. I was able to record a small snippet of the tail end of the recital. Please click on the image below this entire post to play the movie.

Photo of interior of the First Baptist Church of Montgomery.

Photo of exterior of the First Baptist Church of Montgomery.

Our next stop was the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church, which is located just a stone’s throw from the State capital. This proximity is of critical importance, as Dexter Avenue has had a very troubled and difficult past. On the low end of the street, a slave auction market was established just after the founding of the city, and the site of the church itself was once the headquarters of a slave trader.

Photo of the State Capital and a memorial recognizing the swearing in of Jefferson Davis as President of the Confederate States of America on February 18, 1861.

Photo of Dexter Avenue King Memorial Church.

Dexter Avenue Church had its first worship service in 1889 on Thanksgiving Day, but its planning can be traced as far back as 1877. The church had been without a minister since 1953 when Rev. Vernon Johns left Montgomery. However, R.D. Nesbitt Sr. one of the church’s deacons had heard of a powerful, young preacher in Atlanta who he wanted to bring to Montgomery as the church’s new pastor. That young preacher was Martin Luther King Jr., and he was barely twenty-four years old. The Dexter Avenue King Memorial Church was also the only church that Dr. King ever pastored.

It was also in the church’s basement that the decision to launch the Montgomery Bus Boycott was made on December 2, 1955 a day after the arrest of a young seamstress named Rosa Parks. Originally intended to last just a single day, the boycott lasted three hundred and eighty one days, and involved the creation of ride sharing for some forty thousand African Americans day.

Photo: Interior of the Dexter Avenue Church.

Just up the street from the historic Dexter Avenue Church is the Civil Rights Memorial Center, whose outside memorial was designed by Maya Lin in 1989. The memorial is to the forty plus people who lost their lives in the fight for desegregation, and to the landmark legal rules that officially ended the discriminatory practice on a national level.

Photo of The Civil Rights Memorial designed by Maya Lin.

Our last stop in Montgomery was to visit the parsonage that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called home while he was the Pastor at the Dexter Avenue Church. The home, on South Jackson Street, was squarely located in the center of the black middle class neighborhood of Centennial Hill. The home, built in 1912 became the parsonage used by Dr. King when he accepted the pastoral responsibilities of Dexter Avenue church in 1954. If you look closely at the photograph of the exterior of the home, you will notice that the windows of the left hand side do not match the windows on the right. The reason that this is the case is that on the evening of January 31, 1956 a bomb was thrown onto the porch and the resulting explosion destroyed the windows and damaged much of the exterior of the home. Despite shrapnel being stuck in the interior walls, thankfully no one was injured despite Mrs. King and her children being present in the home at the time of the bombing.

Photo of Dexter Street Parsonage Museum.

Photo of the bombing plaque.

We left Birmingham for Selma, but just outside of the city limits of Birmingham we stopped off at a roadside memorial dedicated to Viola Liuzzo. Viola Liuzzo was a housewife from Detroit Michigan who, after seeing the police brutality that met the first effort of African Americans to walk from Selma to Montgomery on March 7, 1965, decided that she had to drive to Selma to offer any assistance that she could. While driving local protest organizers home along highway 80, a car containing four Ku Klux Klan members (one of whom was a police informant) open fired on the vehicle, killing her instantly. The memorial was paid for by the SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference) and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and was completed in 1991. Due to numerous defacements, including the painting of the Confederate flag on the memorial, a fence was established around the memorial’s perimeter in 1999.

Photo of Viola Liuzzo Memorial.

As we entered the city limits of Selma, we stopped briefly at the memorial park on the far side of the Edmund Pettis Bridge, where the SCLC established a series of memorials to the key figures in both the national and local civil rights movement.

After a walking lecture provided by Dr. Upton in downtown Selma, we stopped by Brown Chapel African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) (1869).The church was the starting point of the protest march against discriminatory voter registration procedures, which resulted in massive disenfranchisement of African American voters. The protest march was to start in Selma, and go all the way to the state capital of Montgomery. On March 7^th, 1965 these protestors were met by local police enforcement with tear gas, billy clubs, dogs, and mounted horsemen who beat them mercilessly in front of national media. That particular Sunday became to be known as “Bloody Sunday”, and drew national and international attention to the plight of African Americans in the south. Blacks exercised their right to vote during reconstruction, however in the early part of the twentieth century, state officials saw to it that they were systematically purged from the state and local voter rolls. Practices such as severely limited hours for voter registration, poll taxes, and intense literacy requirements dropped the number of eligible black voters from some 164,000 immediately after reconstruction to a mere 3000 in 1965. In the single month following the passage of the civil rights act of 1965, more African American voters registered to vote within the state of Alabama than did so in the previous sixty-four years.

Photo of the exterior of the Brown Chapel AME Church in Selma.

Photo of the interior of the Brown Chapel AME Church in Selma.

Our last stop of the day in Selma was at Live Oaks Cemetery, where we met a self described historian and preservationist by the name of Patricia Goodwin. The cemetery was dedicated in 1829, and provides the final resting place for many confederate solders, and at least one large confederate memorial is present. Ms. Goodwin told us of difficulties that she experienced with her efforts to place a memorial to Nathan Bedford Forrest within the city of Selma, and she viewed the predominately African American city council as being the major detractors of her efforts. For half an hour the group listened to her descriptions of the events that led up to the memorial’s placement within the cemetery, but it became clear that her central role in the fundraising and the construction of the memorial made the events that she experienced incredibly personal. When she was challenged on some of the basics regarding the life of Nathan Bedford Forrest, such as his involvement with the formation of the Ku Klux Klan, and the possibility that he served as the first Grand Wizard of the group, she denied any involvement that he had with the Klan. When asked about a particular inscription on the memorial that refers to him as being a “wizard in the saddle”, Ms. Goodwin stated that that term was used by one of his former foes, out of respect for Forrest’s military prowess. Walking under live oaks draped with large tufts of dangling spanish moss I was struck that despite the end of the civil war some one hundred and forty four years ago, many of the wounds are still festering.

Mrs. Goodwin in front of the Nathan Bedford Forrest Memorial.

Civil Rights Memorials- Day Two

2009-10-18T20:31:00.010-05:00

Friday, October 9, 2009

By Martin J. Holland

We started today looking at the benefits of the wealth generated along Auburn Avenue in Atlanta. Our first stop was the Alonzo Herndon Museum Home.

Photo: The Alonzo Herndon Home

Herndon first made his money through being a barber, and slowly, through hard work, started to own a series of barbershops throughout the southeast. His most famous location was in downtown Atlanta on Peachtree, where he employed some twenty-six African American barbers to cut the hair of his powerful white clientele. The wealth that he earned through his establishment went back into the black community, and assisted him in amassing prime real estate locations in the south, and also providing the capital necessary to start Atlanta Life insurance.

Our tour then took us through the educational institutions that were established to teach the young minds of the rising black middle class. Clark Atlanta University, Spelman College, and Morehouse College were founded to address the necessity of providing excellent post secondary education to African Americans, so that those students would become the next generation of community, political and business leaders. Remember at the time of their respective founding, no black students were allowed to attend post secondary educational institutions in the south.

Photo: Martin Luther King Jr. statue at Morehouse College.

Photo: Sisters Chapel at Spelman College.

We also had a brief visit to Booker T. Washington High School, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. went to high school as a young man. Again, because of racial segregation, King had to travel miles to attend this all African American high school, even though there were numerous white high schools that were much closer to where he lived.

Photo of "Lifting The Veil" at Booker T. Washington High School. ( A copy of statue of the original statue is at Tuskegee University.)

We then departed Atlanta for Tuskegee, home of the famous Tuskegee Airmen, and the Tuskegee Institute founded by Booker T. Washington (now Tuskegee University).

Photo of Tuskegee Town Square.

We then walked the grounds of Tuskegee University, including the George Washington Carver Museum. The history of the University is fascinating. Lewis Adams, who recognized that while slavery had been abolished by the emancipation proclamation acts of 1862 and 1863, noted that freed slaves often possessed little formal education or marketable skills to support themselves or their families. Adam’s strong lobbying of the State of Alabama’s democratic party resulted in the establishment of the Institute in 1881, and he hired the young Booker T. Washington to serve as the first president of the school. The school proved to be a critical destination for many African Americans, as the school not only provided formal education, but also real world, “hands on” experience. Many of the buildings on the grounds were designed by the first African American architect in the United States, Robert Taylor, who had graduated from MIT in 1892, and the labor for the construction came from the Institute’s student body.

Photo of student laborers constructing a building at the Tuskegee Institute.

After a long, and full day, we headed to our next destination, Montgomery Alabama.

Civil Rights Memorials- Day One

2009-10-18T12:03:00.011-05:00

“Sweet Auburn”

Thursday, October 8, 2009

By Martin J. Holland

As we gathered for lunch at the Hampton Inn and Suites in downtown Atlanta, Dr. Dell Upton gave a wonderfully insightful lecture on memorials and the act of commemoration as a foundation to what we were about to experience over the next four days. Of particular interest was his observation that memorials often reflect the social, cultural and historical perspective not of the time that they were supposed to be marking, but rather of the current conditions of when they were actually being established. Thus memorials to the civil rights era that were constructed in the late twentieth century reflect the ideals and perspectives of the 1980’s and 1990’s that were interpretations of the civil rights movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s. Applied on a broader level, Upton’s observation explains a great deal why sites like the World Trade Center Memorial in New York City, or the Memorial to Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania are still so hotly contested, and their cultural meanings still uncertain.

Professor Upton also noted in his lecture how the traditional forms of memorialization seem to be strangely out of place for the civil rights movement. In a systematic approach, Upton showed numerous examples of traditional memorial statuary, and revealed their reliance upon metaphors of military prowess and conquest for their meaning. The seated equestrian, the heroic lone figure, the group action pose— all find their respective origins in military conflict. Dr. Upton wondered just how appropriate such visual metaphors were for a movement that practiced nonviolence, and saw great success in mundane, yet critical actions such as voter registration, community organization and peaceful acts of civil disobedience.

Photo: Dell Upton giving his introductory lecture.

After the lecture and a substantial lunch we headed off to Auburn Avenue, which was and remains a center of black middle class life and culture. The act of racial segregation, combined with discriminatory business laws that intentionally restricted access to capital for African Americans, made Auburn Avenue a central node for the black middle class. It was here that Atlanta Life was based, an insurance company established by Alonzo Herndon in 1905 to provide African Americans with financial tools and security similar to those enjoyed by their white middle class counterparts. Professor Upton showed members of the study tour the numerous and complex spatial interrelationships that black businesses utilized before the civil rights movement to ensure that monies generated by black owned businesses would stay within the African American community, and how black reinvestment into Auburn Avenue was an absolute necessity given the overtly hostile attitudes and discriminatory practices by whites towards black owned businesses.

Photos: Atlanta Life then and now.

Auburn Avenue was also the birthplace and the final resting place of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. We toured the home where he was born, and noted how, on that particular section of Auburn Avenue, there were a range of housing stock that encompassed the urban poor through to the wealthy. Our docent for the tour of Dr. King’s birthplace told the story that when Martin Luther King Jr. was a child, he saw first hand the wide financial disparity experienced by African Americans on this very street. On one side, small, two room, “shotgun homes” were the dominant housing stock, while on the other side of the street,large mansions were the norm. This inequitable relationship within the African American community stayed with Dr. King, and was a constant reminder of not only how far African Americans had come, but also how far was still left to go.

Photo: Dr. King's Birthplace in Atlanta.

Photo: Small, shotgun homes on Auburn Ave.

Photo: The upscale homes just across the street from King's birthplace.

Photo: The tombs for Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife, Coretta Scott King.

Civil Rights Memorials

2009-10-17T10:31:00.003-05:00

Civil Rights Memorials and African-American Urban Landscapes in the Twentieth Century South.

October 8-12, 2009.

By Martin J. Holland

This is the first of three accounts by SAH fellowship recipients discussing the recent SAH study tour that examined civil rights memorials in the South. For those of you interested in a day by day, moment by moment account of what we saw, I would strongly suggest that you subscribe to Twitter, and sign up to get tweets from the SAH_Study_Tour which will not only provide you with what occurred from October 8-12, 2009, but with any luck, all future SAH study tours as well. It is a great way to feel part of a Society of Architectural Historians tour, even if you are unable to attend.

The Legacy of Daniel Burnham: Architect and City Planner

2009-08-26T14:03:00.013-05:00

Catherine Boland

The Legacy
August 9, 2009

It’s difficult to believe how quickly this tour has gone by! On our final day, we took a look at the legacy of the 1909 Plan of Chicago.

We began our day with breakfast at the SAH Headquarters, the Charnley-Persky House (Sullivan, 1892). I was amazed by the striking interior space and spent a great deal of time exploring the house.

View from ground level

Stairway to second level

Enjoying the balcony of the Charnley-Persky House
From left to right: Kristen Schaffer, Peter Ambler,
Jonathan and Linda Lyons, William Mullen

Then over to the Madlener House for a lecture entitled “Planning Then and Now” by Robert Bruegmann of the University of Illinois at Chicago. Robert traced the development of city planning in Chicago from the 1909 Plan to the Chicago Metropolis 2020 plan. Since Burnham, the efforts moved away from the City Beautiful and became more concerned with housing and transportation in the 1930s and 1940s. Movements against urban renewal grew strong in the 1950s and 1960s. Issues of historic preservation became a concern and in 1968, the Chicago Landmarks Commission was established. The 2020 Plan returns to some of Burnham’s ideas (e.g. transportation) but also tackles issues such as school systems and social reforms. Robert’s lecture led us to think about Chicago as representative of other American cities.

Our next talk was on “urban nature.” Sally A. Kitt Chappell of DePaul University delivered a lively commentary on Burnham’s legacy of the green space in the city. One of the things that struck me was Charles Graham’s renderings of the World’s Columbian Exposition and his focus on the public spaces. I was reminded of something Kristen had spoken about on our first day of lectures – Burnham wanted to make his buildings a wall for the street. With this in mind, it is easy to see just how important public space was for Burnham. Sally highlighted the ways in which green space had a positive effect on the city: wasteland became recreation areas, vacant lots and rooftops became gardens, median strips became places for greenery, etc.

Sally A. Kitt Chappell

Dennis and Sally share a laugh

Following her lecture, we went on a walking tour of Lincoln Park, one of the city’s oldest designated open public spaces (est. 1864).

Entrance to Lincoln Park (from the base
of Saint-Gaudens’ Lincoln statue)

Our first stop in the park was the Chicago Historical Society (Graham, Anderson, Probst and White, 1932) and we admired the ceremonial entrance facing the park. We strolled past the Prairie-style Café Brauer (Perkins and Hamilton, 1908) on the way to the Lincoln Park Conservatory (Silsbee and Bell, 1894).

Lincoln Park Conservatory

Café Brauer

The formal gardens in front of the conservatory contrasted with the informal “Grandmother’s Garden” across the street. The conservatory was another world in itself with ferns, palms, orchids and other exotic flowers (even including a confined Venus fly-trap).

Inside the Conservatory

The final stop on the walking tour was the Alfred Caldwell Lily Pool (Alfred Caldwell, 1937), another perfect example of a green space where one could escape the congestion of the city.

Alfred Caldwell Lily Pond

Me in front of the Lily Pond

After a few hours of free time (and a few cool drinks to escape the day’s heat!), we reconvened below the Wrigley Building for a River and Lake Sunset Cruise with commentary by Phil Gruen.

Tour coordinator Phil Gruen (with microphone) and members of SAH

Wrigley Building

View from the Chicago River

Being on the water allowed me to think about the ways in which the relationship between the natural and built environments is such an integral part to the fabric of the city. The city continues to develop, a fact that was evident in the growing number of skyrise developments along the waterfront.

As we glided out onto Lake Michigan and saw the expanse of the city, I thought about the development of Chicago – how far it has come since Burnham’s Plan. The cruise was such a fitting end to our study tour and I would like to thank SAH for the opportunity to be a part of such a wonderful learning experience.

The Legacy of Daniel Burnham: Architect and City Planner

2009-08-26T13:25:00.015-05:00

Catherine Boland

The Plan
August 8, 2009

After focusing on Daniel Burnham’s architecture during yesterday’s activities, today we focused on Burnham’s 1909 Plan of Chicago. Carl Smith of Northwestern University led the morning’s lectures. He stated that what was novel in Burnham’s plan was the idea of the beauty and health of a city as being integral to a city’s financial success. This progressive proposal -- that a great space makes great people -- was the impetus for the City Beautiful movement and the Plan of Chicago.

Carl outlined the six main issues of the plan:
- Development of the lakefront
- Creation of highways outside of the city
- Improvement of railways
- Systematic arrangement of avenues and streets
- Acquisition of an outer system of parks
- Development of centers of intellectual and civic life

Burnham tried to reconcile different interests and address pertinent issues as he considered the long-term development of the city of Chicago.

Following Carl’s lecture, Dennis McClendon provided us with a closer look at the Plan through the use of lantern slides of city and area maps and Guerin’s renderings. Dennis spoke about the reasons why the plan succeeded - mainly because of its limited scope (it wasn’t trying to address all social issues) and by promotion (through the use of Guerin’s renderings, publications, etc.). These lectures were a great foundation for the afternoon’s motor coach tour where we were able to see the Plan in action.

The planned itinerary became a little more sporadic as we tried to beat the traffic caused by Lollapalooza and the Chicago Bear’s Family Day. I did not mind at all – it was great to see the city alive with people.

Passing under an elevated rail track

We started at “Museum Campus” which contains the Field Museum (D.H. Burnham and Co.; Graham, Burnham and Co., Graham, Anderson, Probst, and White, 1912-20), the John G. Shedd Aquarium (Graham, Anderson, Probst, and White, 1929) and the Max Alder Planetarium (Ernest Grunsfeld, 1930). From here, we took photos of the city and were able to see just how much of the city was extended into the lake by means of landfill.

View from Museum Campus

Tour participants taking in the sights.

Dennis was a whirlwind of information – he knew something about everything we passed, not just areas relating to the 1909 Plan. The motor coach took us past areas we had seen during the morning’s lectures. One area that particularly stuck in my mind was Ogden Avenue, the only diagonal street executed from the Plan of Chicago. It was meant to extend from Lincoln Park to Old Town but over time it had been abandoned. By 1993 it was pushed back to Chicago Avenue. We were able to see its ghost running through a corner park and small residential street.

In addition to the planned diagonal avenues, major streets were widened to accommodate traffic. The widening of these streets, such as Western, Damen, and Ashland avenues, was executed unlike the planned diagonal avenues. Dennis pointed out that most of the remaining buildings on those streets had facades from a later period.

We drove through Lincoln Park on the way to Graceland Cemetery, where Burnham was laid to rest after his death in 1912. I was struck by the beautiful lakefront and green spaces as we left the noise and congestion far behind. The difference was incredible and yet we were only a mile out of the city. The skyscrapers loomed in the distance but it felt as if we were a world away.

Graceland Cemetery

John Notz met us at Graceland Cemetery to give us a tour. He was involved in the restoration of Burnham Island on Lake Willowmere in the cemetery.

Burnham Island

Not only was the cemetery a peaceful setting, but it also contained some beautiful mausolea and headstones. In addition to Daniel Burnham, other prominent individuals laid to rest in Graceland include John Wellborn Root, Marshall Field, Ludmig Mies van der Rohe, Louis Sullivan (who also designed two mausolea in the cemetery) and William Holabird.

Ryerson Mausoleum by Louis Sullivan

Getty Mausoleum by Louis Sullivan

We drove back into the heart of the city to Wacker Drive, where we were able to see how traffic was divided into the double-decker road system. Freight traffic was meant for the lower level of the drive while the upper levels were reserved for pedestrian and automobile traffic.

Keeping on topic with the transportation in the city, we stopped into Union Station to admire the original waiting room (Graham, Anderson, Probst, and White, 1916-25).

Original waiting room of Union Station

The space was grand and monumental. In the Plan, Union Station was part of the effort to place rail stations near the proposed civic center. Today, most of the station’s activity happens in the newer building that faces the Chicago River. It seemed there were plenty of people, however, who were enjoying the space of the original waiting room.

One of the completed projects from the Plan was the straightening of the south branch of the Chicago River – an astonishing undertaking. We drove over the straightened section and saw the area that was intended to become the site of a consolidated rail facility. The consolidation of the rail companies into one large facility was never realized.

The straightened section of the south branch of the Chicago River.

The motor coach tour was an excellent complement to the day’s lectures. We were able to see what parts of the Plan were realized, such as the widening of streets and lakefront expansion, and what aspects of the plan never came to pass.

The Legacy of Daniel Burnham: Architect and City Planner

2009-08-26T11:07:00.021-05:00

Catherine Boland

The Architecture
August 7, 2009

The Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, located in the Albert F. Madlener House (1901-2), provided the setting for our lectures each morning. The first day of the tour began with a welcome from the Executive Director of SAH, Pauline Saliga, and from the tour coordinator, Phil Gruen. After an introduction to the weekend’s events, we were treated to a lecture from Kristen Schaffer of North Carolina State University, one of the leading Burnham experts. Her talk focused on the relationship between Burnham’s architecture and his city planning. Kristen proposes there is continuity in his buildings and his city plans – the provision of public space. Burnham favored the hollowed square plan with an atrium in the center was exemplary of Burnham’s attitude of the public nature of private space. It was this attitude that extended into his plans for the city.

After lunch, we were joined by geographer and historian Dennis McClendon to take a walking tour of Chicago’s Loop, the city’s downtown center. The rainy weather did not stop Dennis and Kristen from providing an intriguing commentary as they took us on a tour of significant Burnham buildings that illustrate his philosophy of urban architecture.

Our first stop was the Rookery (Burnham and Root, 1885-89). For a building of such great height (eleven stories), the foundation needed to be solid enough to rest on Chicago’s marshy soil and was therefore made of interlinking concrete and iron. The more traditional façade features a Romanesque entry arch, rustication and terra cotta ornament.

The Rookery

Detail of the Rookery

La Salle Street Entrance

with Richardsonian Romanesque Arch

It was in the interior, however, that we were truly able to understand Kristen’s commentary on the public nature of private spaces. As we entered into the atrium, we were struck by the openness and airiness of the space. Despite the dreary day, the amount of light filling the space was incredible.

Atrium of the Rookery

The atrium was renovated by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1907. The original iron staircase, railings and supports were encased with gold-incised white marble. However, one iron support is exposed to allow visitors to imagine what once was. After seeing a photo of the original atrium and seeing the exposed support, I can’t help but feel that the atrium lacks the airiness that Burnham and Root intended.

Light fixture by Frank Lloyd Wright

Original iron support exposed

One of the most thrilling parts of the tour was the private viewing of the office of Burnham and Root on the eleventh floor of the Rookery. The original fireplace, where the well-known photograph of the two architects was taken, remains in situ.

Burnham and Root in

their Rookery Office

We were also able to enjoy a viewing of the banking hall of the Illinois Merchants Bank (Graham, Anderson, Probst and White, 1923-24) thanks to Ed Hirschland and the Bank of America. This banking hall is now closed to the public but would have once been a ceremonial space for those entering conducting banking business. The bank became known as “Chicago’s Temple of Commerce,” a fitting title for the neoclassical-inspired design. The Grand Banking Hall on the second floor displays a frieze of eight murals by Jules Guerin (1924), who was the principal renderer for Burnham’s 1909 Plan of Chicago. The murals exhibit the foundations of various countries’ economies and in the background are the buildings of the White City of the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893. This was a poignant backdrop for a building by Burnham’s successors.

Running between raindrops, we headed over to the Monadnock Building (Burnham and Root, 1889-91) to marvel at the load-bearing masonry construction. The enormity of the six-foot-thick base of the building was best observed from the interior where you could see the thickness of the walls from the interior storefronts. Instead of an atrium, light would have filtered through the vertical shafts containing iron staircases.

Monadnock Building

The exterior of the building tapers inward
as it reaches the cornice and then bows slightly outward.

The unornamented façade features bay

windows that provide light on the interior.

We admired the facades of a number of other buildings, including the Fisher Building (D.H. Burnham and Co., 1895-96) and the Old Colony Building (Holabird and Roche, 1893-94), before heading over to the Reliance Building (Burnham and Root, 1890-91; D.H. Burnham and Co., 1894-95).

The Old Colony building undergoing

a much needed cleaning.

Reliance Building

Detail of façade of the Reliance Building

Instead of a structure focusing on walls and mass, the Reliance Building features volume and glass. The curtain wall and large plate-glass Chicago windows give the building an airiness not seen in the exterior of the previously seen Burnham designs, but rather an airiness often experienced in the atria of those buildings.

The desire to get out of the rain took us into the Marshall Field and Company Store (D.H. Burnham and Co.; Graham, Burnham and Co., 1892-1914). The store was converted into a Macy’s into 2005, much to the chagrin of Chicagoans. The stone façade gave no indication of the two striking atria on the interior. The south side atrium features a mosaic dome by Louis Comfort Tiffany and the north side atrium topped with a skylight.

South side atrium

North side atrium

Here, we were able to understand Burnham’s ideas of public space even more fully. Shopping at Marshall Field’s (or, dare I say Macy’s) becomes a ceremonial event and a place to see and be seen, just as banking became a ceremonial event in the Illinois Merchant Bank.

With the walking tour coming to a close, we briefly looked at the People’s Gas, Coke and Light Building (D.H. Burnham and Co., 1910-11) and the Railway Exchange Building (D.H. Burnham and Co., 1903-04) before heading to the Cliff Dweller’s Club at 200 S. Michigan Ave. for a private screening of clips from Judith Paine McBrien’s upcoming Burnham documentary, Make No Little Plans: Daniel Burnham and the American City. The film will be premiered in the Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park on Wednesday, September 2, 2009 at 7.30 PM.

Views from the Cliff Dweller's Club

We ended our day with dinner at the Cliff Dweller’s Club, thanks to SAH member, John Notz. From the terrace, we took in striking panoramic views of the city. We were also able to enjoy the sounds of the city, thanks to the Lollapalooza Festival in Millennium Park. It was a wonderful end to a stimulating day. Starting the tour with Burnham’s buildings provided some insight into his work and his ideas that were a necessary preparation for the following day: looking at the plan itself.

The Legacy of Daniel Burnham: Architect and City Planner

2009-08-26T10:55:00.002-05:00

The Legacy of Daniel Burnham: Architect and City Planner
Chicago Study Tour, August 7-9, 2009
Catherine Boland

On the occasion of the 100-year anniversary of Daniel H. Burnham’s Plan of Chicago, there is perhaps nothing more fitting than a tour celebrating Burnham and the Plan – its precedents, execution, and legacy. This three-day excursion was coordinated by Phil Gruen of Washington State University and included lectures, tours, and commentary by Kristen Schaffer, Dennis McClendon, Sally A. Kitt Chappell, Carl Smith, and Robert Bruegmann. Tour participants were immersed in the architecture of Burnham and his contemporaries and his successors. Discussions focused on the reasons why some elements of the plan, such as lakefront expansion and development of the arterials of the city, were realized, while others, such as the creation of a civic center and the consolidation of railways, were not. Over the course of the three day tour, we moved from a focused study of Burnham’s architecture, to his 1909 Plan of Chicago, and finally to planning in general. Throughout these three days, tour participants were able to experience the city of Chicago not only through our own eyes but also through the eyes of Burnham.

Home Delivery Part V: Burst*008 and a Concluding Note

2009-01-22T17:35:00.003-06:00

{Looking from the interior of the Burst*008 house towards the porch}

{From top to bottom: The Burst*008 house, System 3 and the Micro-Compact House as seen from the third floor of the Cellophane House}

For the last stop on the tour we were again fortunate to have the architects explaining the design process to us. Burst*008 (designed by Douglas Gauthier and Jeremy Edmiston) is another triumph of the possibilities of computer-aided design and building. The house structure is comprised of multiple interlocking plywood ribs that could be compared to a kite or accordion. This structure can be shipped flat to the site and then expanded easily, and become stable once the "skin"--i.e. the external surfaces of the house are stretched over it. The interior layout of the house is conceptualized along three living zones: an outdoor deck; living/ dining/ and kitchen zone; and smaller spaces including the bath and storage areas. These zones also have different requirements in terms of ventilation and light which are accounted for in novel ways by the design of the structure. The first prototype of this house, Burst*003 was built as a summerhouse for a family in Australia and from the walk-through it was apparent that the house was an elegant solution that combined the ethos of prefabrication with pragmatic needs for a modern lifestyle.

In conclusion, it must be said that Home Delivery was a remarkable exhibition which took the viewer through a truly inspiring history of the modern pre-fabricated home. It is not enough to say that the exhibition delivered on account of the historical as well as geographical range of its examples, but also that it did so with an elegance that allowed the visitor to relate to this rich history with an immediacy. Indeed, so many of the examples shown at the exhibition brought into sharp focus various contemporary concerns regarding rapid urbanization, over-population, environmental degradation and sustainability. It would not be too presumptuous to say that Home Delivery impressed upon each of its visitors the solid notion that the question of mass-produced housing has been a key note in the imaginary of modern, post-modern and contemporary architecture, and that it will continue to pre-occupy the minds and talents of architects for many generations to come.

Home Delivery Part IV: System 3 and Digitally Fabricated Housing for New Orleans

2009-01-22T17:16:00.003-06:00

{Left: Detail from the Digitally Fabricated House for Post-Katrina New Orleans/ Right: Front facade of the Digitally Fabricated House}

{Left: Staircase of the System 3 house--in case the units are stacked on top of another/ Right: Looking from inside the living space of the System 3 House--from left to right: the micro-compact house, the Cellophane house and the Digitally Fabricated House}

System 3 (designed by Oskar Leo Kaufman and Albert Ruf/ KFN Systems) is a single-level dwelling unit that debuted at the Home Delivery exhibition. The house is a combination of modular systems (such as the kitchen and the bathroom module) and other elements (walls, interior partitions, etc.) that can be packed and shipped flat. Like the other examples in the exhibit, System 3 continues to respond to contemporary concerns of mass-produced housing such as sustainability, flexibility and cost-efficiency while trying to maintain a superior level of craftsmanship--which was demonstrated by the clean lines of the architectural design and the precision of the interior and exterior details.

Responding to the post-Katrina housing crises in New Orleans, Professor Larry Sass and his students at the School of Architecture at MIT, came up with the Digitally Fabricated House (DFH). Capitalizing on the speed and precision of laser-cutters, the prototype for this type of housing takes on the vocabulary of a typical shotgun house and also gestures to Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown's notion of a "decorated shed." The design also took into consideration the lack of resources in a post-disaster site, which meant that although the individual pieces of the house are produced via a laser-cutter, they can be put together without nails or complicated construction equipment. Indeed, the project designers claim that the entire house can be erected on-site by 5 people using only rubber mallets and bowtie fasteners in under a week.

Home Delivery Part III: Cellophane House and Micro-Compact House

2009-01-22T16:15:00.003-06:00

{Top: Architect James Timberlake speaks to tour participants about his design for the Cellophane house/ Center: Looking into the "living" space of the Micro-Compact House/ Bottom: The Cellophane House as seen from the patio of Burst *008}

Perhaps the most novel aspect of the exhibition were the five full-scale replicas of prefab houses erected on a 54th street lot in Manhattan. The first stop on the second half of the tour was the Cellophane House (designed by Kieran Timberlake Associates) where James Timberlake who led tour members through the house cited inspirations for the design as ranging from Le Corbusier's L'Espirit Npuveau (for its attempt to deliver modular living to an occupant); Buckminister Fuller's Dyamaxion House (as a provocation to lifestyle norms); Jean Prouve's Maison Tropicale (for its innovation in terms of assembly and disassembly); and Phillip Johnson's Glass House and Richard Meier's glass condominiums in New York (for their expansive use of transparent surfaces). Even as it draws upon these influences the Cellophane House also responds to contemporary issues such as green building practices, sustainability, and the recycling of buildings materials. The house itself is designed in what the architects call "chunks"--prefab components which are then bolted onto the structural steel-frame via moment connections. 70% of the Cellophane house was erected in 6 days and the rest of the construction was completed over the course of two weeks.

Micro-Compact House (Horden Cherry Lee Architects) was a 76-square foot gem in the middle of the 54th Street lot. Envisioned as temporary housing unit for the global traveler, student or single urban resident, the brushed aluminum surfaces and the modular design which lends itself easily to stacking of multiple units of the house belie influences from the British high-tech movement (Richard Rogers and Norman Foster) as well as the Japanese metabolists (such as Kisho Kurokawa's Nagakin Capsule Tower in Tokyo). At a total 76 square-feet, Professor Barry Bergdoll suggested that the Micro-Compact House might be considered the ideal dwelling of the future designed for the "person who could give up all possessions because they had e-mail."

Home Delivery Part II: Pre-Fab Housing as Social Intervention

2009-01-22T15:34:00.004-06:00

{Top: Jean Prouve's Maison Tropicale rebuilt in New York, 2007 (www.djhuppatz.com)/ Bottom: Teddy Cruz's housing project for the U.S.-Mexico border (Estudio Teddy Cruz)}

The modern history of mass-produced housing is also of course a social history, where house designs responded to larger political, environmental and cultural shifts. For example, Walter Gropius' design for Copper Houses was aggressively marketed to German Jewish emigres to Palestine, many of whom could not take any money out of the country. The Copperhouse Co. argued that the house was light enough to be carried to Palestine and if it was seen by the home-owner as inappropriate or unnecessary the kit could be melted down and the copper sold for cash.

Jean Prouve's prefab houses: the Maison Tropicale and Maison Coloniale were shipped to the Congo and other French colonies, reminding us of the ways in which architectural forms have served not only in the transfer of technology but also in that of establishing cultural distinctions and setting social norms. The picture of the Maison Tropicale posted above is from D.J. Huppatz's blog on culture and architecture, where he has written an interesting piece on the building's recent "discovery" in the Congo and its appearance as modernist art object in New York in 2007.

The prefabricated dwelling unit has also been a constant trope within the various dystopic visions of the modern city. Archigram's Living Pod; Peter Cook's dwelling units in the Plug-In City ann Richard Rogers' design for Dupont--the Zip-up House are only a few of prefab designs attempting to wrestle with the anxieties of over-populated, polluted and chaotic urban centers. A contemporary rendition of these schemes can be seen in California-based architect Teddy Cruz's project: Manufactured Sites--for houses along the U.S.-Mexico border. One part mass-housing scheme and one part social-commentary on the co-dependence of U.S.'s high-luxury economy and unregulated Mexican labor, the project appropriates the border as a space where detritus from the First World is trafficked and revalued as elements of housing in the "developing" world.

Home Delivery Part I: A Story of Scientists, Inventors, and Architects

2009-01-22T15:13:00.006-06:00

{Images: Top: Interior of the Lustron House (www.ohiohistorycentral.org)/ Bottom: Buckminister Fuller's Dyamaxion House (www.tslr.org)}

Home Delivery is a two-part exhibit: The first part took place within the MOMA building and incorporated plans, models, and design solutions of prefabricated housing schemes while the second part comprised of 5 full-scale examples of prefab houses that were erected on a lot on 54th Street in mid-town Manhattan. Our tour led by the curator, Professor Barry Bergdoll, began in the MOMA with the first part of the exhibition, where it quickly became clear that the history of modern dwelling is not just one fashioned by architects, but a story whose cast of characters includes inventors, scientists and corporations. For example, the exhibition showcases Thomas Edison's designs for a poured concrete house that used a standard, reusable concrete mould. Edison's prefabricated house design came on the heels of that other American icon of mass-production--the Model-T car, and was later followed by Buckminister Fuller's inventions for the Dymaxion and Wichita Houses. These were the first pre-fab houses that featured standardized services (kitchen, bathroom, etc.) were modular elements as well.

Early kit houses manufactured by Sears Roebuck & Co. were very popular in the early 1930s and companies like Lustron, which utilized technology from an armaments factory were able to popularize the prefab house even further. This legacy is carried on today with the Japanese design company, Muji offering prefab houses for around U.S. $ 115,000.

Kahn Tour: Illumination. J. Tobias

2008-09-13T11:06:00.061-05:00

Despite his pronouncements on "silence and light," in his 1931 sketching article Kahn is surprisingly silent about light.

The works we visited, however, speak volumes. Compare, for example, a modest early building and two major, later works: the Trenton Bath House (1954-1959), Yale University Art Gallery (1951-1953), and the Yale Center for British Art (1974-1977).

The bath house was designed for summer use, and the strong, high light of July emphasizes the structure's mini-monumentality. Here one can imagine the legendary light of Greece, recalled by the bath house's cruciform plan, open promenade, and central fountain (now lost).

It should be noted here that Anne Tyng played a significant and under-appreciated role in the bath house design, contributing among other things geometry and the elegant corner entries to each changing room, all of which underpin the light effects. An associate recalls that "...Kahn was having trouble with the design [and] Tyng was heard calling...that she 'had something." Kahn walked over and...'immediately saw that Anne's design was it." (See Carter Weisman. Louis I. Kahn: Beyond Time and Style, p. 93.)

Entering the changing room at Trenton, Tyng's corner entries transition beautifully to the shade and cool of the changing area (while eliminating need for doors and their maintenance). Yet the skylight brings in a soft light (eliminating the need for fixtures, too). In contrast, sharp slivers of light pierce the rough concrete walls, stabbing through the gap between walls and floating roof.

How different from Kahn's museums at Yale, especially the diffuse glow in the galleries of the Yale Center for British Art. Natural lighting was a shared goal with the clients. In fact, it was a requirement for the painting galleries. The desire for a domestic scale was also a factor (presumably the corresponding light effects were desired as well). In the preliminary phase of the design, Kahn visited homes of patron and collector Paul Mellon, as well as the Phillips Collection, a house-museum in Washington, DC. The YCBA glow is the product of the large-span skylights and their deep pyramidal wells. The 20-foot spans help to break the spaces up into room-sized galleries, but moveable, floating partitions and louvered windows keep the feeling open and of course, light. The skylights illuminate the top galleries and atrium. In turn, atrium overlooks allow light to enter galleries on lower floors. White oak panels and smooth concrete complete the effect.

In this rendering I tried to capture the glow and minimal shadows. Watercolor is an excellent medium for exploring light effects, for its luminous quality comes from the paper's reflectiveness. Watercolor filters this light like stained glass, unlike opaque media.

Kahn's sketching article features mostly pastels and charcoals (all reproductions are in black and white, unfortunately). His European pastels express the feel of light on rough materials, and they seem a particularly appropriate choice for eroded stone and sandy landscape. (An aside: these sketches are striking for areas of vibrant color. Less well known is that in later life, cataracts affected his color vision. After treatment, Kahn declared, "I haven't seen colors in years!" (Weisman, p. 86)).

The raw concrete of the Yale Art Gallery evokes the feeling of ancient stone, but without the bright light of their sites. The somber feeling is much different from the YCBA. At the Gallery the low, heavy concrete ceiling grid (innovative though not structural) and peripheral windows strongly absorb light. Here material spends light, leaving little for art. (Apparently there was enough light to spend some of the art materials, however--several works have been damaged over the years). The one exception is the well-known barrel stairwell, with its side-lit skylight. Here the light is diffused by glass block and curving walls. The light penetrates down several floors, giving a sense of ascent and descent.

As a student of museum history, i wonder if Kahn knew of historical precedents in natural lighting for museum galleries. Certainly he experienced the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (Frank Furness, 1876). Did he visit Memorial Hall in Fairmount Park, the glass-domed remainder of the Centennial Exhibition (H.J. Schwarzmann, 1876)?

One wonders in particular if he was aware of John Soane's inventive use of indirect light, in his wonderful house-museum (1792-1824) or at the Dulwich Picture Gallery (1814), known as the first purpose-built art gallery. Probably not. His influences tended to be ancient and his guidance internal. According to several sources Kahn said, "I am an interesting kind of scholar because I don't read and I don't write."

One imagines that Kahn would have appreciated Soane. Both architects were intuitive and idiosyncratic. Both sought the sublime. Both appreciated but transcended ancient precedents. Both were influential teachers. And they both developed unprecedented techniques for indirect natural illumination.

Someday I hope to visit the Kimbell (1966-1972), known as Kahn's greatest achievement with light. What is the combined effect of Texas sun, barrel vaulting, and Kahn's ingenious skylights? How does this change our perception of the works on view? And can I sketch in the galleries?

On this note I end these posts on "The Value and Aim of Sketching." I hope they've conveyed some of the value of the SAH Kahn Tour.

Image (top): Jennifer Tobias. Trenton Bath House.

Image (second from top): Jennifer Tobias. Yale Center for British Art.

Image (third from top): Jennifer Tobias. Yale University Art Gallery.

Image (fourth from top): Memorial Hall, 1875 (H. J. Schwartzman, 1876).
Image (bottom): Dulwich Picture Gallery (John Soane, 1814).

See Louis Kahn. "The Value and Aim in Sketching." T-Square Club Journal of Philadelphia. May 1931, 18-21.

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Kahn Tour: Narrow Views. J. Tobias

2008-09-13T10:53:00.008-05:00

No object is entirely apart from its surroundings and therefore cannot be represented convincingly as a thing in itself...

What about when the object surrounds you so tightly you can't represent it convincingly as anything?

Kahn's Richards Medical Building at Penn (1957-1965) is a hard building to love. It's also a hard interior to draw. Why? The interior is so tight that it lacks vantage points. And forty years on, it's even more crowded, with mystery machines lining the halls.

This helps to explain why most published images are exteriors (see the 1991 Kahn exhibition catalog and the documentary My Architect, for example.) One exception is the view looking out from a floor-to-ceiling hall window and into a cantilevered lab space. It was the only interior published in an entire issue of the MoMA Bulletin devoted to the building (most other images concern structure). The same image is reprinted in the 1991 book, also the only interior view.

This made the behind-the-facade tour a rare and intriguing opportunity, And the interior is fascinating, especially the labs. Such as a "vintage" model, decommissioned to redirect the building's limited air supply to working labs, such as a lively one we visited. It would be fun to return and sketch the ghostly abandoned lab, its notoriously inefficient windows looking out on to a rusticated pile nearby. A modern ruin.

A hard building to love--but its caretakers seem to. The way one might love an Edsel. Maureen Ward, Director of Facilities Planning and Space Management at the Medical School, even jokes with her counterpart at the Salk Institute (1959-1965), Richards' well-behaved younger brother: there Kahn had a chance to work out all the kinks.

Image: [Malcolm Smith or George Barrows]. Bulletin of the Museum of Modern Art. v. 28, n. 1, 1961, p. 22.

Quotes from Louis Kahn. "The Value and Aim in Sketching." T-Square Club Journal of Philadelphia. May 1931, 18-21

Kahn Tour: Deep Structure. J. Tobias

2008-09-11T14:53:00.031-05:00

While Kahn understood that "Drawing is a mode of representation," he saw photography as a means of "imitating exactly:" "Photographs will serve you best of all, if that is your aim."

Today we tend to think more critically about photography as an imitator of reality. We're more likely to see it as just another mode of representation, a "truth effect." We intuitively understand drawings as representations, but most of us learn about architecture through photographs, and it's easy to forget that they, too, are interpretive. As a librarian, scholar, and sketcher, visiting the sites of iconic photographs allows me to compare representations with subjective reality. Visiting Robert Venturi's "Mother's House" (1959-1965) was a chance to experience a much-photographed work that directly engages the notion of architecture as image and sign.

Bill mentioned that Venturi's design drawings tend toward fully-formed elevations, rendered quickly and in rapid succession (so unlike Kahn's searching, mutable charcoals). True to form, the Vanna Venturi House facade is at first glance a flat image, an iconic gabled house. And its published imagery responds in kind, invariably represented by a frontal photograph. (Notably, several in the tour group had themselves photographed straight-on in front of the house).

Published photographs of the Venturi facade are often juxtaposed with an oblique view of the rear, which of course complicates and contradicts the facade. Ironically, the complexity of the back makes it hard to illustrate frontally. Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to draw it. The challenge would have been to communicate its volumes within the limits of a frontal view, making a joke of his joke. I like to think the architect would appreciate it.

I approached the facade from a literally different angle--the sharpest I could find. The diagonal lines of the result remind me of Ed Ruscha's gas station prints, as in Standard Station (1966). Ruscha is contemporary of Venturi and similarly interested in popular imagery. In this series Ruscha exaggerates the machine aesthetic and corporate symbolism of the American gas station (think Walter Dorwin Teague), stretching it into the hard-edged Pop of strip culture. The artist and architect remind us that three dimensional buildings are always/already also two-dimensional signifiers.

A particularly complex space I'd like to have taken more time to untangle is the front window/overhang/ledge. Is there even an architectural term to describe it? It sneaks up on you, hidden behind the broken pediment and cross beam. Yet it heralds the spiral vortex around which the house spins, bringing you up the stairs in a dance with the chimney. Here's my take from second floor, heading up to the stair to nowhere.

Unlike most of the works we visited, in person I found the experience had a sort of photographic quality, as if I could only see it through the filter of published imagery. Perhaps this is because one tends to stand at photogenic vantage points, as if the building was designed for (or through) them. Living there might feel different, but as a guest I couldn't kick back in front of the fireplace.

In their works Venturi and Ruscha (as well as cultural studies theorists) ask, To what degree is subjectivity influenced by culture, specifically media culture? Am I me or mediated? The architect and artist most likely believe in mediated individuality. Kahn no doubt believed in pure subjectivity, especially as expressed through sketching, where "...the presence of our own individuality causes [things] to appear differently than it would to others."

Image (top): Rollin LaFrance. Robert Venturi. Vanna Venturi House (1959-1964).

Image (middle): Jennifer Tobias. Robert Venturi. Vanna Venturi House (1959-1965).

Image: (bottom): Jennifer Tobias. Robert Venturi. Vanna Venturi House (1959-1965).

Quotes from Louis Kahn. "The Value and Aim in Sketching." T-Square Club Journal of Philadelphia. May 1931, 18-21.

Kahn Tour: Rowhouses and Estates. J. Tobias

2008-09-11T06:29:00.060-05:00

...not only pompous estates but the monotonous repetitions of the row house, should arrest our attention.

Kahn grew up in such Philadelphia row houses, moving seventeen times in two years (usually due to trouble paying rent). Kahn's moving personal story is well known, but class-oriented analysis of his oeuvre arrests little attention from the scholarly community. Perhaps this is because many of us (self included) speak from its upper end.

Kahn may not have built "pompous estates," but private houses are a significant part of his legacy. (His work in south Asia also involves social stratification, but on a scale I'm ill-qualified to address.)

In these terms, one sees striking differences between an early public project and several private homes we visited. The former is a product of the Depression era, when public housing was one of few opportunities for first wave modernists to test their ideas on a large scale. Many of Kahn's later, private houses reflect post-war prosperity and the luxuries it afforded.

In the public realm, Kahn assisted Alfred Kastner with the Jersey Homesteads in Roosevelt, New Jersey (1935-1936) and his Architectural Research Group proposed a garden city development to replace a South Philadelphia slum (1933), one perhaps not so different from the Northern Liberties of his childhood.

Public projects were ideal testing grounds for "machine housing," ostensibly efficient, low-cost, construction based on industrial principles. Machine housing, however, is different from a machine aesthetic, its much-criticized assimilation into upper-class lifestyles.

Both housing types are a function of class. From this perspective, one can analyze how modernist precepts are applied differently for different social strata. While Kahn is considered primarily an expressionist, his expressions draw upon the "deep structure" of the modernist language. Analyzing the relative application of machine production and machine aesthetic is one way to see this in play. In spareness, for example.

All Kahns works lack ornamentation, of course. But where is this driven by efficiency and where by aesthetics? In the Homesteads, spareness reflected the goal of making homes affordable for textile workers. They could choose between twelve models, but those models were chosen for them.

On the other hand, the spareness of the Margaret Esherick House (1959-1961), especially its interior, evokes the rigorous spareness of traditional Japanese architecture. Esherick could choose any form (and architect, for that matter). She chose and underwrote the craftsmanship required for Kahn's design.

Another manifestation is scale and its expression in program (functional spaces and their spatial arrangement). Quite simply, the Homesteads are small and private houses large. As a result, program was scaled accordingly. In one of the Homesteads we visited, the entry, living room and dining room are "open plan," the modernist way of saying "no walls."

On the one hand, Modern materials enabled larger spans and the elimination of interior bearing walls, so the open plan offered light, air, and flexibility unknown in traditional construction. But in the Homesteads, this meant an entryway separated from the living room by only a change in flooring material. In Kahn's private houses, including Esherick's, entries take many elegant forms sensitive to transition from exterior to interior.

In his 1931 article on sketching, Kahn states that

The simplest form, be it but a moulding, is only part of a creative process. It is the interwoven relation of that moulding to the rest of the creation which makes it significant.

In modernist terms, each element of a work is correctly considered in relation to the material and metaphysics of "the rest of the creation," or in Kahn terms, to its "will." As a whole, his works certainly reflect these notions. What the child of North Philly row houses could not have seen then, and perhaps never saw, is that the expression of will (both spirit and clients') is partially determined by socioeconomic factors.

Image (top): Alonzo D. Biggard. Frankford Elevated, Site of Bent 68, West Side of Front Street [Department of City Transit-1598-0], (1915). This and other excellent historic photos of Philadelphia are found at PhillyHistory.org.

Image: (second from top): Jennifer Tobias. Esherick House (1959-1961).

Image (middle): Arthur Rothstein. New Jersey homesteader in her living room. Hightstown, New Jersey. (1936).
Image (bottom): Russell Lee. Nathan Katz's apartment, East 168th Street, Bronx, New York. Mr. Nathan Katz is an accepted applicant to Jersey Homesteads (1936).

Quotes from Louis Kahn. "The Value and Aim in Sketching." T-Square Club Journal of Philadelphia. May 1931, 18-21.

Kahn Tour: Scumbling the Small Stuff. J. Tobias

2008-09-10T15:38:00.131-05:00

To make a sketch...requires...the making of many impressions and notes 'on the job.' You must then get away from it all to work over and crystallize your thoughts in order to develop the picture in the form of a readable design.

On a study tour, time really is of the essence. The pace forces one to both slow down (observe) yet speed up (get impressions). Here are two takes on Kahn's Jesse Oser House (1940-1942). The first is "on the job" (With tour manager Kathy Sturm in the foreground, keeping us on schedule). The second follows "get[ting]away from it all" and developing the drawing into a "readable design."

There is no value in trying to imitate exactly...We should not imitate when our intention is to create--to improvise...I have learned to regard it as no physical impossibility to move mountains and trees, or change cupolas and towers to suit my tastes.

In this spirit I can exaggerate perspective, manipulate shadows, and literally furnish the mise en scene. Scholarship requires getting the facts exactly right. Drawing requires no footnotes. But Kahn knew that interpretive drawing must, in the end, respect the subject:

I try in my sketching not to be entirely subservient to my subject, but I have respect for it...

Any study tour shifts, like a drawing, between the "big picture" and telling details. It would have been a pleasure to linger on the idiosyncratic details of the Furness library at Penn--its crockets, wedge mouldings, and patterned brickwork. But the situation called for the big picture, with the rest improvised later, if the drawing "wanted" it. Furness invented a formal grammar all his own, so can't I riff on it a bit?

I try to evolve a composition, and make every sketch count for as much value to me as may be gotten out of a design problem.

Site visits are an excellent way to study details. Archtiecture may start with a room, as Kahn would say, but it ends with building codes, HVAC, and electrical outlets. Consider the air vent detailing in the cupola of Temple Beth El (1966-1972). Two practicing architects in the tour group were disappointed by the execution: surely Kahn wasn't responsible! Based on their observations, I indicated the vents but downplayed them. Or should they be drawn as they appear?

Images (top): Jennifer Tobias. Jesse Oser House (1940-1942)

Image (middle): Jennifer Tobias. Frank Furness. Fisher Fine Arts Library, University of Pennsylvania (1888-1891).

Image (bottom): Jennifer Tobias. Temple Beth El (1966-1972).

All images .

Quotes from Louis Kahn. "The Value and Aim in Sketching." T-Square Club Journal of Philadelphia. May 1931, 18-21.

Kahn Tour: Time and Materials. J. Tobias

2008-09-10T09:09:00.032-05:00

As is well known, Kahn suffered facial burns as an infant, transfixed by the glowing embers of a coal fire. According to family accounts, the three-year-old scooped embers into his apron and they burst into flames.

In his oracular style, Kahn said that "material is spent light." I think of the glowing coals as the reverse: light is spent material. Or rather, the glow is the material in the process of being spent. The word "transfix" incorporates this moment of transformation: trans (motion) plus fix (stasis).

Did I learn that as a child, Kahn used this coal for drawing, for lack of other material? (Paging a volunteer fact checker--I think it's in My Architect). His use of soft charcoal (and carpenter pencil) is also well known. With this ever mutable powder, he could explore an idea and wipe it away in an instant, or push it around with his fingers like a sculptor with clay. See, for example, his perspective of the unbuilt Mikveh Israel Synagogue (1961).

Perhaps it's no accident that Rodin is a recurring theme in Kahn's biography and article. He writes, "The drawings this great sculptor made took form with his eye on the final results in stone."

In situ drawing, on the other hand, deals with the final results, the (literally) concrete. Here materials spend light on actual mass and volume. The hard lines and colored washes of my tour sketches try to reflect this.

During the tour someone quoted...someone...who said that Kahn worked on a project until he got fired. In this spirit, his drawings are not so much unfinished as transfixed.

Image: Jennifer Tobias. Trenton Bath House (1954-1959).

Rodin quote from Louis Kahn. "The Value and Aim in Sketching." T-Square Club Journal of Philadelphia. May 1931, 18-21.

Kahn Tour: "The Value and Aim in Sketching." J. Tobias

2008-09-09T14:19:00.026-05:00

In 1931 the young Louis Kahn published his thoughts on "The Value and Aim in Sketching." (T-Square Club Journal of Philadelphia. May, 1931. p. 18-21.) Sketching my way through the SAH Louis Kahn tour presented an opportunity to reflect upon these Values and Aims.

In his article Kahn states, "The capacity to see comes from persistently analysing our reactions to what we look at..." My entries here analyze some of my reactions in words and images. The process has helped me to "see" Kahn better. Perhaps blog readers will see something new in Kahn, too, or have reactions of their own.

Image: Jennifer Tobias. Center City, Philadelphia. near Kahn's office. PSFS Building in background. August 2008.

LOUIS I. KAHN STUDY TOUR: CONTEMPORARIES: Photos and Text by Amber Wiley

2008-09-09T01:34:00.012-05:00

While on the Kahn tour we had the pleasure of visiting architectural works by persons associated with Kahn, either by virtue of collaboration, education, or simply overlapping periods of significant work in Philadelphia and its suburbs. We looked at the work of many of his contemporaries including Robert Venturi, I.M. Pei, Mitchell/Giurgola, Joel Levinson, and GBQC.

Main entrance to the Cooper House

The Cooper House (1961) by architecture firm GBQC was particularly impressive because of the intense geometry and radial symmetry that ruled the plan of the house. Spaces intertwined and flowed into each other, leaving the visitor guessing at each turn. The tour group was treated very warmly by the owners, who provided refreshments and a chance for the group to utilize and admire the backyard landscaping and beautiful wooded scenery.

Robert Venturi discussing his design for the Vanna Venturi House

Equally gracious was Pritzker Prize winning architect, teacher, and theorist Robert Venturi at the Vanna Venturi House (Venturi & Short, 1959-64). Venturi greeted the tour group by speaking about his inspirations for the house and design details, and how the house related to the development of some of his theoretical paradigms in the polemic Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (1966). We toured the exterior as well as the rarely seen interior of the house.

Front elevation of Vanna Venturi House

Row of townhouses designed by Pei

Society Hill Towers

Two of the first projects we viewed on the tour were the Bingham Court Townhouses (1962- 67) and Society Hill Towers (1964), both by I. M. Pei. The group was provided a private tour of a type “A” Bingham Court Townhouse (1962-67) and a brief overview of the Society Hill Towers (1964) which were built as part of an urban renewal design aimed at increasing and improving residential occupancy of the surrounding area.

Kurtz House

Joel Levinson outlining his design for the Kurtz House

The Kurtz House (1969-71) (also known as Arbor House) by Joel Levinson was a palace of surprise. Nestled in the Latham Park community just outside Philadelphia, Levinson designed an unconventional house for the Kurtz’, inspired by a variety influences, including Quaker meeting houses, Japanese shrines, and Alvar Alto’s country estate. Architect Joel Levinson lead the tour of the house, and explained his design process which resulted in the seamless integration of interior and exterior spaces by creating a trellis structure that wrapped around the whole house, screening yet not crowding nor suffocating it.

The "Red Room" seen from the exterior

Finally, we stopped briefly at the Penn Mutual Life Insurance building (1970-75) by the firm of Mitchell/Giurgola. The Penn Mutual building was a particularly interesting example of façadism, where the architecture firm not only added to the 1913 neoclassical office tower designed by Edgar Seeler (later expanded by Ernest Matthewson in 1931), they also kept a pre-existing façade intact. The scale of the Penn Mutual tower dwarfs the previous façade, however the inclusion of the façade in the final design reminds one of the scale and architectural vocabulary of early Philadelphia.

Excellent example of façadism at the Penn Mutual Tower

LOUIS I. KAHN STUDY TOUR: INSTITUTIONAL WORK: Photos and Text by Amber Wiley

2008-09-08T20:54:00.015-05:00

Institutional, Community, and Religious Work

Kahn drawing of the Yale Center British for Art with context of Paul Rudolph's Art and Architecture Building (1963)

During the tour we traveled to New Haven to view some of Kahn’s most famous institutional work. Carter Wiseman led us on tours of the Yale University Art Gallery and the Yale Center for British Art, with a quick trip to the archives of Sterling Memorial Library to view original drawings by Kahn and Paul Rudolph.

Interior perspective of the Art and Architecture Building

Main entrance to the Yale University Art Gallery with "T" shape motif appearing in fenestration

The Yale University Art Gallery (with Douglass Orr, 1951-53) is considered by many to be Kahn’s earliest substantial commission. The Yale University Art Gallery (YUAG) was the first of three art museums that Kahn would design, and was dramatically different from the context of buildings on the Yale campus, many of which were designed by James Gamble Rogers in a neo-Gothic vocabulary. The main façade of the YUAG is highly simplistic, with string coursework that runs the length of the building, slightly mimicking the levels of articulation in the adjacent original 1928 “Tuscan Romanesque” building by architect Edgerton Swartwout.

Tracery detail of Swartwout building

One of Kahn’s major innovations in the YUAG was the use of the tetrahedron ceiling design that housed the electric and ventilation systems. The YUAG originally included art and architecture studios as part of its building program.

Study tour participant and Yale architecture alumnus Marc Goldstein discussing his memories of working within the space of his former studio, now the gallery archives

The building underwent extensive renovation by Polshek Partnership, LLP, which was completed in 2006 and brought the building closer to Kahn’s original vision.

Detail of Richard Serra’s "Stacks" (1990) sculpture in a courtyard re-opened for the renovation

Stair detail in the YUAG

Jewish Community Center Bath House

We also visited the Jewish Community Center Bath House and Day Camp (1954-59) outside Trenton, New Jersey. A guided tour of the site revealed extensive neglect as evidenced by the water damage, deterioration, and patina on the exposed concrete surfaces of the building. Immediate plans for restoration of the building were outlined on the tour. This icon of modernism was simple and elegant, with a cruciform plan, a central atrium, and four square concrete block rooms. Each room was topped with a pyramidal roof. This building displayed ingenuity in its simplicity, and was the point where Kahn crystallized his ideas about “served spaces” and “spaces that serve.”

Detail of exterior conditions of Trenton Bath House

I discovered myself after designing that little concrete block bathhouse in Trenton.

Richards Medical Building main façade

It was the Richards Medical Building (1957-61) on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania that was a true breakthrough for Kahn in the form of critical acclaim in and outside of the architectural sphere. Some of the major themes that characterized Kahn’s work were evident in our guided tour: heavy external massing that clearly demarcated “served” and “servant” spaces, rigid geometrical structural systems, refinement of exposed materials, and the dissolution of the corner. Kahn’s use of concrete cantilever technology in the medical labs allowed for the creation of a space that did not depend on structural support at the corner, hence the ability to leave large expanses of glass meeting at a point on the far end of the lab.

Lab ceiling structural system of interlocking concrete beams

Erdman Hall main entrance

Erdman Hall (1960-65) at Bryn Mawr College is a dormitory on the women’s liberal arts campus. Here Kahn created the major spaces by designing a plan of intersecting diamonds, putting the service areas in the middle, and stringing the student rooms around the periphery of the building. Kahn used slate on the exterior, a choice that made the building fit with the rest of the campus' color palette, while setting a direct precedent in contrast to the medieval Gothic aesthetic that pervaded the campus.

Central pavilion in Erdman Hall

Temple Beth-El Synagogue

The Temple Beth-El Synagogue (1966-72) in Chappaqua, New York is clad almost completely in wood with concrete framing, a testament to its design inspiration- the wooden synagogues in Europe that were destroyed during the Holocaust. Kahn abstracted the shape of the typical wooden synagogue to geometric simplicity, literally resting the elevated square roof and walls of the sanctuary on massive concrete pillars, creating a dialogue of light, weight, and gravity between the upper and lower parts of the sanctuary.

Detail of interior sanctuary beam

Yale Center for British Art

The Yale Center for British Art (Kahn, 1969-74; Pellechia & Meyers 1974-1977) was completed after Kahn’s untimely death. It is very much a jewel of a building that not only speaks to its surroundings with street level shops that invite pedestrians in, but also creates the soft ambiance of an old English country house on the interior. Kahn delivered his signature flood of natural light in the form of two major interior courtyards, one at the entrance and one that is located deep within the museum and is flanked by archival and research centers.

View of interior courtyard and exterior of stairwell

View across interior courtyard

Contrasted with the Yale University Art Gallery, the Yale Center for British Art had a softer palette of materials. The YUAG was constructed of brick, concrete, glass, and steel, while the Yale Center for British Art utilized marble, white oak, and Belgian linen.

Galleries in the Yale Center for British Art

LOUIS I. KAHN STUDY TOUR: RESIDENTIAL WORK: Photos and Text by Amber Wiley

2008-09-07T20:45:00.012-05:00

Mallach House

Kahn’s career in residential work began with the Jersey Homesteads project (1935-36). This was a collaborative effort with Alfred Kastner, who served as principal architect of the project. Kastner, a German immigrant, was strongly influenced by the Bauhaus aesthetic. Various forces shaped the development of the neighborhood which was an initiative of Roosevelt’s New Deal era, created under the New Deal Resettlement Administration. The visionary for the development was Benjamin Brown, and the main developer was Rexford Guy Tugwell. The Jersey Homesteads project is regarded as part of the greenbelt movement, an idyllic suburban movement that had at its basis a rejection of the city for the bucolic effects of the country, with strong moral undertones.

Ben Shahn House

Jersey Homesteads was considered a “social experiment in cooperative living,” where families who previously resided in unfavorable conditions in tenement filled New York were relocated to rural New Jersey with the promise of a better life, a better house, and the security of a job. Part of the development’s main appeal was the creation and inclusion of a garment factory and farm, and the families paid $500 for their share in the co-op.

Roosevelt School Mural by Ben Shahn

The Jersey Homesteads became a miniature haven for various artists during the New Deal era. Muralist Ben Shahn was one of the first and most prominent artists to move into the development. We toured the house where he lived with his family, and his son, sculptor Jonathan Shahn, was an extremely gracious tour host, and was particularly descriptive about life in the house and its development, including the George Nakashima additions (1960 and 1965). We also toured the Mallach House, and visited the Roosevelt School. The Roosevelt School design was based on preliminary sketches by Kahn, and included a large mural by Ben Shahn in the lobby. The Jersey Homesteads were renamed Roosevelt, New Jersey in 1942 in honor of Franklin D. Roosevelt after his death.

Oser House

One of Kahn’s next major residential commissions was the Oser House (1940-42). Kahn designed the Oser House in the Philadelphia suburban community of Elkins Park. Here we saw the beginning of Kahn’s architectural vocabulary for his residential projects. Most of these projects were made of intersecting and/or joined cubes, and the massing of this project was particularly simple, with the two main volumes being co-joined cubes, one of local masonry and the other of wood. The wooden section was later expanded.

Wharton Esherick House

Wharton Esherick House Workshop

We also viewed the Wharton Esherick House and workshop in Malvern, Pennsylvania. Wharton Esherick was a painter turned sculptor who worked mainly out of his home studio. Kahn designed Esherick’s workshop (1955-57) in a manner very much unlike any of his other major commissions. While certain aspects of design motif remain – heavy massing, geometricality – the rest is an experimentation in color and bold, sharp angles, actually echoing the eccentric Wharton Esherick House itself. The studio is turned away from the driveway, but the rear elevation is what reveals the Kahn hand more dominantly- a façade full of windows that flood the interior with natural light.

Margaret Esherick House

Kahn designed another house for a member of the Esherick family, the Margaret Esherick House (1959-61) in Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania (not far from George Howe’s High Hollow country house). Margaret Esherick, the niece of Wharton Esherick, commissioned the house as a residence for a single woman without a family, therefore the program of the building was different from many of Kahn’s other residential ventures. The building was divided into two main spaces, clearly articulated in the façade, with a two story living room which was programmatically divided from the kitchen and private living spaces by the centrally located stairs. Several of the best features of the Esherick house included the breezeways afforded by large windows, the kitchen designed by Wharton Esherick, and the “T” motif that was seen in everything from the smallest details to the fenestration pattern on the façade.

Rear elevation of Margaret Esherick House

Fisher House

Side elevation of Fisher House

The Fisher House is a demonstration of Kahn’s maturation with the use of wood and stone in his residential work. The group toured the exterior of the house, and was highly impressed with the simple volumes and intense detailing in the wood work. The use of wood, however, became problematic for the residents when woodpeckers began to destroy the exterior.

Rear elevation of Fisher House

Korman House

Rear elevation of Korman House

The Korman House was the last house Kahn designed, and fittingly the last house the tour group visited. The Kormans were exceedingly welcoming, and gave a tour of the house, citing influences, inspirations, and the vision that they shared with Kahn for the creation of the house. Kahn designed a house program that fit the characteristics of the family- Kahn was interested in creating a home that embodied the values and priorities of a young family with three active sons. Continued themes at the Korman House included a tight integration and contrast of materials- wood and brick in this case, the “T” shape motif in the fenestration, an efficiency of space, as well as an abundance of light on the interior of the house.

Dining room in Korman House

LOUIS I. KAHN STUDY TOUR: METHODS: Photos and Text by Amber Wiley

2008-09-05T10:24:00.012-05:00

Expression in Drawings, Models, Articulation, Materials

Tour leader Bill Whitaker explaining breadth of archival materials to group

During various parts of the trip we looked at the methods of expression that Kahn employed to transform thoughts and ideas into physical manifestations of architectural grandeur and modern monumentality. These included drawing and model making, close assessment of the materials selected and the way that Kahn exploited the properties of the materials in careful articulation for his designs. The opening reception for the study tour took place in the Architectural Archives at the University of Pennsylvania, the largest repository of archival materials related to Louis I. Kahn. Tour participants were greeted by Julia Converse, director of the archives, and tour guide William Whitaker, and were exposed to many background details of Kahn’s life and practice including his conceptual drawings, plans, elevations, and models of various projects, as well as Kahn’s personal affects such as his passport, luggage, early sketches from childhood, and college transcripts. Bill Whitaker spoke about Kahn’s childhood, as well as his study habits, while displaying original early sketches and Kahn’s college transcript from Penn, which was filled with “D’s” – an abbreviation for “Distinguished.”

A small sampling of collection sketches, elevations, and plans

The group inspected drawings from Kahn that highlighted his geometrical approach to spatialization and aesthetics- everything he produced was rhythmically regulated by shapes such as triangles and trapezoids. Members of the group discussed to what extent they believed Anne Tyng influenced Kahn’s geometrically driven drawings. Whitaker also displayed drawings from Robert Venturi to show the sharp contrast in drawing methodologies and how they visualized building- Venturi’s drawings offered deeper colors and a more energetic, looser stroke of the hand. Examination of Kahn’s drawings also showed the progression of his drawing hand, from extreme rigidity in earlier architectural drawings to a burlier and livelier mark later in life.

Model of Trenton Bath House which displays both the exterior massing and the reflected interior

There were also numerous models on display in the archives, from miniatures of the Trenton Bath House and Day Camp (1954-59) to the Salk Institute (1959-65) and beyond. These models allowed visitors the opportunity to see the three dimensional massing of buildings on the tour, as well as those that we would not visit.

Model of project showing highly expressive experimentation in geometry

Kahn’s ability to articulate space took on various shapes and scales in his work. Some themes included heavy external massing that clearly demarcated “served” and “servant” spaces, rigid geometrical structural systems, refinement of exposed materials, and details of high quality craftwork, which was essential to Kahn. This was seen very clearly in the details of the woodwork in many of his residential projects. The following images highlight particularly intriguing examples of this in the Margaret Esherick House (1959-1961).

M. Esherick House stair wall detail

The "T" form was carried out throughout the design of the Margaret Esherick house, repeated in the exterior fenestration and in varying iterations on the interior.

Railing detail on second floor of the M. Esherick house

Detail of handrail

The handrail of the Margaret Esherick house exhibited the richness and natural variance in material that Kahn would have appreciated and exploited. Such attention to material quality and articulation was not confined to interiors. At the Fisher House (1959-67) Kahn used subtle variations in wood joinery to add texture and complexity to the wooden shutters.

Detail of Fisher House window shutters

Another residential project where Kahn's careful hand and attention to geometric simplicity and rich layering is apparent is the Korman House (1971-1973). The kitchen counter top is buffed to a smooth shine and the wooden components are so closely matched that it is hard to determine the grains of separate pieces of wood. However, upon closer observation it is apparent that Kahn wanted to reveal the hidden secret by adding detailed joinery articulation on the side of the counter top.

Detail of counter top in Korman House

Interlocking wooden pieces in handrail in Korman House

Finally, throughout the tour we continued to return to the idea that materiality was of supreme importance to Kahn. Additionally, Kahn enjoyed employing contrasting materials in his various works, and preferred highlighting the raw essence of material over haughty applied ornamentation.

Exterior detail of Temple Beth El Synagogue (1966-72)

Interior detail of Yale Center for British Art (Kahn, 1969-1974; Pellechia & Meyers, 1974-77)

Exterior detail of Oser House (1940-42)

A famous Kahn quote succinctly reveals his thought process in regards to material choice and the articulation of the materials.

To express is to drive. And when you want to give something presence, you have to consult nature. And there is where Design comes in. And if you think of Brick, for instance, and you say to Brick, ‘What do you want Brick?’ And Brick says to you ‘I like an Arch.’ And if you say to Brick ‘Look, arches are expensive, and I can use a concrete lentil over you. What do you think of that?’ ‘Brick?’ Brick says: ‘... I like an Arch.'

Korman House exterior - nature meeting design

Kahn used light with materials as a transcendental, pliable force which had a profound effect on the way the interior of spaces were experienced and perceived.

Yale University Art Gallery stairwell (Kahn and Douglass Orr, 1951-53)

All material in nature, the mountains and the streams and the air and we, are made of Light which has been spent, and this crumpled mass called material casts a shadow, and the shadow belongs to Light.

Small light detail in the Richards Medical Laboratory stairwell (1957-61)

One of the biggest problems with materials and carefully articulated details, however, is determining how their aging process will transpire over time. We saw that in both situations of interior and exterior maintenance, vigilant attention to the needs of these materials was required to guarantee the lasting beauty of the simplicity of the materials. If not properly and regularly cared for, a building’s gradual deterioration could begin to mask some of the material qualities that made it a true work of art.

Shadow of Korman House

LOUIS I. KAHN STUDY TOUR: CONTEXT: Photos and Text by Amber Wiley

2008-09-04T00:55:00.028-05:00

Historical and Geographical

Independence Hall

The tour began in the city of Philadelphia, childhood home of Louis I. Kahn, where he received his education at the University of Pennsylvania, and spent much time in his personal practice and teaching at Penn. The Philadelphia neighborhood where Kahn grew up was an industrial community filled with factories, brick buildings, and smoke stacks, which had a profound influence on his design.

First Bank of the United States

The larger urban context of Philadelphia also encompassed a high concentration of colonial row houses and courtyards such as those found in Society Hill, monuments to the American Revolution such as Independence Hall (1732-56), and the oldest and most high profile banking institutions including the First Bank of the United States (1794-97) by Samuel Blodgett, Jr., and the PSFS Building (1929-32) by George Howe and William Lescaze, considered to be the first International Style skyscraper.

PSFS Building/Loews Philadelphia Hotel

PSFS Building second floor lobby, now reception hall

The tour group had the pleasure of staying at the Loews Philadelphia Hotel in the adaptively reused PSFS building, and visited many of the monuments mentioned. The visits to these historic sites and buildings as well as those designed by Kahn’s predecessors such as Frank Furness and George Howe helped the group understand some of his earliest inspirations in Philadelphia.

Exterior rustication detail of Fisher Fine Arts Library

The opening dinner was held at the Fisher Fine Arts Library (1888-91) designed by prominent eclectic Philadelphia architect Frank Furness. Furness’ method of exhibiting the intrinsic qualities of industrial materials and ability to create spaces that contradicted traditional architectural vocabulary by making playful breaks and highly imaginative gestures was noted as an influence on Kahn, who spent many hours in the library as a student at Penn. The spatial organization and programmatic features of the Fisher Library's interior reminded many of the tour participants of the Kahn masterpiece, the library at Phillips Exeter Academy (1967-72).

Reading room detail

Above is an example of a whimsical gesture- a snail-like accoutrement guarding the interior of Furness’ library. Many of the details in the space were particularly animated and fanciful.

"Conversation Hall" where dinner reception was held

While at the library the tour group was surprised by a visit with Nathaniel Kahn, son of Louis Kahn who wrote, directed, and produced the Oscar nominated documentary “My Architect” (2003). Nathaniel Kahn shared some of his thoughts and memories of his father with the group, and discussed briefly Louis Kahn’s teaching techniques.

Nathaniel Kahn speaking to tour group

The study tour included a walking tour of the Independence Hall area and the Italianate gem of the Athenaeum (1845) by John Notman, as well as the Philadelphia’s Society Hill neighborhood, which boasts the country’s largest concentration of 18th and early 19th century buildings.

Anthenaeum of Philadelphia

The tour of the Athenaeum highlighted its collections, which included plans and elevations for various Kahn projects and an introduction to the Philadelphia Architects and Buildings online database.

Map and atlases on hand for viewing at the Athenaeum

The Society Hill tour emphasized its greenways and courtyard houses which had a very distinct human scale that was pedestrian friendly and reminiscent of similar areas in other pre-Revolutionary cities such Annapolis and Baltimore.

Typical Society Hill row houses

Finally, the tour group enjoyed a visit to George Howe’s “High Hollow” (1916) country house nestled away in the Chestnut Hill neighborhood of Philadelphia.

High Hollow front elevation

High Hollow carriage house

Philadelphia is known for its proliferation of exuberant suburban country houses, and this is a well composed articulation of Howe's work. Howe was one of the leading architects in the early to mid-twentieth century, and had collaborated with Kahn on wartime housing projects throughout Pennsylvania. The visits to works by Kahn’s predecessors and examining the urban fabric of Philadelphia added depth and a foundation to historic and geographic context of the study tour.

THE ARCHITECTURE AND LANDSCAPES OF LOUIS I. KAHN STUDY TOUR: Photos and Text by Amber Wiley

2008-09-03T22:14:00.011-05:00

July 30 - August 3, 2008

Study tour participants at Kahn's Korman House (1971-73)

This five day tour was a highly concentrated in depth look into Louis I. Kahn the architect, the teacher, and the man. The tour provided analysis of Kahn’s life and work, from his theories on materiality and form, to his influences and collaborations. The tour was led by William Whitaker, the extremely knowledgeable and competent collections manager of the Architectural Archives of the University of Pennsylvania, which houses the largest repository of materials related to Kahn. Tour participants were thoroughly engaged and enthusiastic about the tour, which spanned four states- Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut- and included various examples of Kahn’s work over his lifetime. This study tour report will be divided into five different themes. These themes are special areas of interest that the tour participants were exposed to on the tour which added depth and understanding to the work of Louis I. Kahn. They are: Context, Methods, Residential Work, Institutional Work, and Contemporaries.

Amber N. Wiley
Richard Hubbard Howland Fellowship Recipient

All photographs are by the author and are covered under a Creative Commons license.

14 July 2008

2008-08-24T19:15:00.010-05:00

Estates and Gardens of Chicago's North Shore
Baird Jarman

Rather than slackening our pace, the fourth and final day consisted of the greatest number of buildings yet, quite a few of them being recently conserved or currently undergoing restoration. We began with Wright’s spacious Usonian house built in 1951 for Charles Glore. Here the main entrance brings visitors into a central corridor connecting perhaps the two most distinctive features of the house, its dramatic hanging staircase and the polygonal living room with a second floor balcony. Steps also lead gently downward to a wide expanse of patio.

Beside the entrance to the Charles Glore House (1951) by Frank Lloyd Wright

The 1929 James R. Leavell House, a medieval-revival manor designed by Anderson & Ticknor, features a balconied great hall with large exposed wooden beams adjoining a stone turret stairwell and a half-timbered inner courtyard. Additional plans for expanding the estate were abandoned after the Wall Street crash later that year.

The James R. Leavell House (1929) by Anderson & Ticknor

Beyond a winding path through woodland designed by Warren Manning, we next came upon the striking entrance to Wyldwood with its steeply pitched entrance gable of diamond-patterned brickwork above an imposing wrought-iron gateway decorated with signs of the zodiac by the medievalist metalworker Oscar Bach. Behind this imposing doorway lies an octagonal reception area floored in medieval-revival tiles. Appearing as a cottage from the front, the 1916 house by architect Harrie Lindeberg opens out onto lakefront property at the rear, where it takes on the character of a large Tudor manor house.

The entrance to Wyldwood (1916) by Harrie Lindeberg, metalwork by Oscar Bach

The rear facade of Wyldwood (1916) by Harrie Lindeberg

We lunched at Glen Rowan, the Barnes estate, designed by Shaw in 1908 and now owned by Lake Forest College. Built of red brick, the plan features a wide, barrel-vaulted, central hallway that segues at the rear of the house into a far less formal Arts & Crafts study with Mercer tiles incorporated into the fireplace surround.

The patio at Glen Rowan (1908) by Howard Van Doren Shaw

Returning to the lakefront again, we visited Bagatelle, home of the architect Edward Bennett. Born in England and trained at the Ècole des Beaux-Arts, Bennett designed this homage to eighteenth-century French classicism for his own family in 1916 after moving to Chicago. His International Style studio, built behind the house in 1930, demonstrates his newfound interest in modernism.

Bagatelle (1916) by Edward Bennett

After returning to Lake Forest College for a quick peek at the Romanesque-revival Durand Institute by architect Henry Ives Cobb in 1892, we proceeded to the Lawrence Williams House, designed by Walter Frazier in 1928 as a compact cottage with a steeply pitched gable and surrounded by garden landscaping by Thomas W. Seyster.

The Durand Institute at Lake Forest College (1892) by Henry Ives Cobb

The Lawrence Williams House (1928) by Walter Frazier

We then proceeded to the astonishing array of gardens at the restored John T. Pirie estate, anchored by a brick house designed in 1904 by Marshall & Fox that is surrounded by landscapes created by Rose Standish Nichols.

The John T. Pirie Estate (1904) by Marshall & Fox

One of the garden axes at the John T. Pirie Estate

Our tour concluded with a festive dinner at the 1928 Deerpath Inn, modeled on the mid-fifteenth century Manor House of Chiddingstone.

13 July 2008

2008-08-24T18:40:00.010-05:00

Estates and Gardens of Chicago's North Shore
Baird Jarman

Our third day began at Ragdale, architect Howard Van Doren Shaw’s own home begun in 1897 in an Arts & Crafts style. The stucco exterior with its crisp geometric forms as well as the wood-paneled rooms on the ground floor have a great deal in common with Voysey’s iconic estates in England’s Lake District. Ragdale was always a hub of artistic activity—Shaw’s mother Sarah Van Doren Shaw was a painter, Shaw’s wife Frances Wells Shaw was a poet and playwright (for whom he designed an open-air theater on the estate in 1912), and his daughter Sylvia Shaw Judson was a sculptor. Appropriately the estate is now a residential artists’ retreat.

Ragdale (1897) by Howard Van Doren Shaw

We next toured one of the landmarks of the second wave of mansion building, the 1928 Noble Judah estate, a Tudor Revival manor by Philip Goodwin, who would design the Museum of Modern Art in New York City a decade later in a far more modern idiom. After exploring the interior we moved to the well-kept axial formal garden where we posed for our group portrait.

The Noble Judah Estate (1928) by Philip Goodwin

The garden of the Noble Judah Estate

We then explored the house and lunched in the garden of Shaw’s 1909 House of the Four Winds, built for Hugh J. McBirney. This structure is an atypical design for Shaw in that it draws upon an unusually wide variety of design motifs, leading some architectural historians to speculate that Adler rather than Shaw was chiefly responsible for handling the commission. As we walked through the house, both Italianate and Moorish prototypes were mentioned in conjunction with the massing and layout of the house and gardens—and inside Macintosh, Voysey, and Luytens were all cited as possible influences for the entryway, hall, and living room.

The House of the Four Winds (1909) by Howard Van Doren Shaw

From the garden at the House of the Four Winds

Our next stop was the Gothic Revival church built in 1888 by Cobb & Frost as the campus chapel for The Young Ladies’ Seminary of Ferry Hall. After the school ceased to operate in the 1970s, this ecclesiastical edifice, along with the large dormitory adjacent to it, was eventually creatively adapted for reuse as domestic structures.

The Ferry Hall Chapel (1888) by Cobb & Frost

We next visited Campbell, designed by architects Walcott & Work with a landscape created by Root & Hollister, which was erected in 1929 just before the onset of the Depression.

Campbell (1929) by Walcott & Work

Then we toured a major commission for David Adler from 1923, just before the second wave of estate building swung into high gear. A decade after leaving Shaw’s firm to start his own partnership (with Henry Dangler), Adler designed the Carolyn Morse Ely House in Lake Bluff, which is based upon the 1787 hunting lodge at Versailles, the Pavillion de la Lanterne.

The Carolyn Morse Ely House (1923) by David Adler

We ended our day at a gathering of the Lake Forest-Lake Bluff Historical Society in the shoreline garden of a 1970 house by Roy Binckley on the same grounds where leading Chicago architect Daniel Burnham had designed a home for Stanley Field called Lakelandwood in 1913 (now destroyed). By the edge of the bluff, Arthur again lectured on the history of the area, this time dealing more specifically upon aspects of the local preservation movement.

The old Stanley Field Estate with a 1970 House by Roy Binckley

12 July 2008

2008-08-24T17:38:00.017-05:00

Estates and Gardens of Chicago's North Shore
Baird Jarman

Day two began with visits to two major Prairie School homes by Frank Lloyd Wright. With Arthur’s voice whispering in our ears through radio headsets, we tiptoed around the Ravine Bluffs Development in Glencoe, where Wright designed a half dozen homes in 1915. We wended our way over Wright’s ravine bridge—his only bridge—to the Sherman Booth House with its dramatic setting along the edge of a wooded gorge and its striking interior woodwork.

Bridge entrance to the Ravine Bluffs Development (1915) by Frank Lloyd Wright

After this we traveled to the 1901 Ward Willets House in Highland Park, widely regarded as Wright’s first Prairie Style home, where we discussed the history of the house, its ongoing conservation, and its design innovations. Here Wright created an open plan with four arms branching out from a central brick hearth with multiple fireplaces. Art-glass windows are set into door frames that open onto a porch and allow the wall to disappear, thereby linking indoors with outdoors. A low-pitched, hipped roof with deep cantilevered overhangs appears here in Wright’s first fully realized vision of the Prairie Style.

The Ward Willets House (1901) by Frank Lloyd Wright in Highland Park

During the rest of the day we encountered our first structures by some of the leading, Chicago-based, domestic architects of the Country Place Era, such as Howard Van Doren Shaw and the brothers Irving and Allen Pond. We began with a ‘sawdust tour’ of the James Ward Thorne estate, designed by Otis & Clark in 1912, which is currently undergoing extensive renovation. While lunching we explored Shaw’s 1916 Market Square, an eclectic but largely Tudor Revival mixed-use development opposite Lake Forest’s railway depot.

The Lake Forest Market Square (1916) by Howard Van Doren Shaw

From this iconic suburban city beautification project we transitioned to a fine example of a Downing-inspired Italianate villa, the 1860 Devillo R. Holt residence, called the Homestead. An influential early figure in the Lake Forest community, Holt succeeded in having all businesses pushed west beyond the original railway boundary of the suburb. It is thus ironic that some people have explained the strange fact that the Homestead is a masonry structure covered with wooden clapboards as a subtle form of advertisement for his lumber business. In the library of the Homestead, a design debate over the likely date of an unusual set of built-in bookshelves displaying both Eastlake and Gothic Revival features was settled by trip participant Beverly Brandt, whose book on turn-of-the-century design criticism, The Craftsman and the Critic, will appear in print this fall.

The Homestead (1860) in Lake Forest

Next we viewed Thalfried, the 1909 Wheeler House, with its unusual pairing of high wainscoting and low Gothic arches, and where we first saw Pond & Pond’s distinctive, diamond-pattern, window sashes. After working in Chicago for William Le Baron Jenney and Solon S. Beman, in 1885 Irving K. Pond started an architectural firm with his brother Allen B. Pond. In addition to settlement houses, most notably Hull-House, Pond & Pond designed several elegant North Shore estates that blend Arts & Crafts influenced brickwork and woodwork with a more sparse, geometric, modernist façade treatment.

The Wheeler House (Thalfried, 1909) by Pond & Pond

Following a serendipitous stop at the Charles Dyer Norton House, we ended at Adler’s luxurious William E. Clow, Jr. House, with its Vienna Secession styling, high ceilings, expansive mirrors, and creative use of floor levels within a hilly lot. This structure is a fascinating example of Adler’s creativity and his ability to overcome difficult challenges with the site plan, namely a busy road adjacent to the property and a steep incline. A low wall covered with Greek key designs along the high-ground defines the perimeter of a courtyard for croquet while successfully screening off nearby road traffic. The Doric temple fronts that face onto this green space are actually the second floor of the structure, which is built into the hill. The main entrance, around the corner, brings visitors in on the lower floor of a two-story brick manor.

The William E. Clow, Jr. House (1927) by David Adler

10 July 2008

2008-08-22T12:21:00.021-05:00

Estates and Gardens of Chicago's North Shore
Baird Jarman

Our trip commenced with a witty and informative dinnertime lecture about North Shore history by tour leader Arthur H. Miller, Archivist of Lake Forest College. Calmly ignoring a violent thunderstorm, he discussed topics ranging from the role of the Presbyterian Church in the settlement of Lake Forest to the heavy summertime demands on the local water supply created by the popularity of extensive landscape gardening to the vogue for English-style country life that established polo and fox hunting in the greater Chicago area in the 1890s.

Arthur also discussed the enormous impact of income-tax rate changes upon the viability of operating large residential estates, noting that most of the structures on our itinerary were built during one of two periods. A first wave of large estate building lasted from 1896 to 1916, when the upper tax bracket jumped from 15% to 67% to finance World War I. A shorter second wave occurred after the highest bracket fell below 50% in 1924 and lasted until 1932 when the rates were again hiked (from 25% to 63%). Even the wealthiest families found it increasingly difficult to maintain large estates following the Great Depression. At the outbreak of World War I the top bracket paid merely 7% income tax, but from 1936 through 1981 the rate stayed above 70%. The peak years for the abandonment, repurposing, and demolition of North Shore country estates came from 1951 to 1963, when the rate stayed above 90%. Conversely, in the period since 1987, when the top rate has remained below 40%, many of these estates have been restored and refurbished.

Thursday’s downpour cleared the way for great weather during our four travel days, and with the midsummer landscapes in full bloom the tour was like stepping into the scenic pages of Arthur’s book, Classic Country Estates of Lake Forest: Architecture and Landscape Design 1856-1940, coauthored with Kim Coventry and Daniel Meyer.

11 July 2008

2008-08-22T10:26:00.025-05:00

Estates and Gardens of Chicago's North Shore
Baird Jarman

We spent most of our first full day exploring the extensive grounds at Crab Tree Farm, a dairy in Lake Bluff whose early history proves instructive regarding development in the region. Grace Garrett Durand, wife of Chicago broker Scott Sloan Durand, originally operated a successful hobby farm in Lake Forest that she named after its location along Crab Tree Road. The couple commissioned a Shingle Style main house from William Carbys Zimmerman in 1896, the same year that Cyrus McCormick, Jr. commissioned his own Shingle Style home, Walden, which ushered in a new era of landed country estates on parcels of land much larger than the approximately four-acre lots typical in the original 1857 Lake Forest plan. Expansive estates soon infringed upon Durand’s growing dairy operation, which earned complaints from her new neighbors about unpleasant odors. In 1905 the Durands bought another dairy farm on the current site and shifted their base of operation. In 1910 a large fire destroyed the extant wooden farm buildings एंड the following year they hired Solon Spencer Beman, known for his design of the planned workers’ village of Pullman, to create a courtyard surrounded by new fireproof structures.

The Entry Drive at Crab Tree Farm

These five courtyard buildings, designed in a style variously characterized as either South African or Scandinavian, have steel frames and walls assembled from terracotta blocks coated with concrete and stucco. The roofs are cast concrete tinted to resemble terracotta. Four of the five buildings, including part of the large central structure with the clock tower, house an outstanding collection of American and English Arts and Crafts furnishings. Crab Tree Cottage, filled with a great deal of Gustav Stickley furniture, also displays TECO and Grueby ceramics as well as English designs ranging from Morris and Voysey textiles to de Morgan ceramics.

The main Farm House at Crab Tree Farm (1911) by Solon Spencer Beman

Nearby the courtyard a bungalow was built in 1993, modeled on drawings by Harvey Ellis that appeared in the December 1903 issue of Stickley’s magazine The Craftsman. The basement of this Ellis house contains a cross-section of English Arts and Crafts design, including chairs by Pugin, Baillie Scott, and Macintosh as well as metalwork by Dresser, Ashbee, and Benson. Contemporary art also appears at the farm; the old grain silos now serve as installation spaces and one wing of the bell-towered farmhouse serves as a large shop with woodworkers in residence.

The Ellis House at Crab Tree Farm (designed in 1903 by Harvey Ellis, built in 1993)

Departing from the Craftsman vein, we then visited two small and significantly older structures both relocated to the eastern stretch of the farm, a rebuilt medieval brick English hermitage with a newly thatched roof and a recently conserved 1830s log house moved from its original site along Green Bay Road.

Medieval English Hermitage

1830s Log House from Green Bay Road

In the afternoon we visited the restored Art Deco gem, the Colonel Robert Hosmer Morse House, built in 1931 by Zimmerman, Saxe & Zimmerman (the Chicago-based firm of the aforementioned W. C. Zimmerman in partnership with his son and son-in-law). Our hosts discussed the lengthy restoration process the house required, including the painstaking refurbishment of scores of light fixtures and etched-glass mirrors. Built adjacent to a golf course, the 25-room mansion was built to entertain, with a locker room for golfing groups in the basement as well as several moderne drink-mixing closets scattered about the house despite its Prohibition Era origin.

Colonel Robert Hosmer Morse House (1931) by Zimmerman, Saxe & Zimmerman

Returning to the Crab Tree Farm estate in the late afternoon, we further explored a medley of architectural treasures on an 11-acre tract of land sold by the Durands to Helen Bowen and William McCormick Blair in the 1920s. Here the Blairs hired David Adler to build them a large house in an early American colonial style, with walls of limestone and white shingles (the wooden shingles are unpainted on the roof and in the dormers).

William McCormick Blair House (1926-28) by David Adler

A walled garden designed by Ellen Biddle Shipman nestles into the west-facing side of the house, where it is sheltered from the lake, which is visible over a bluff to the east. In addition to numerous outbuildings, the estate also contains a Georgian tennis house designed by Adler shortly after the main house.

Shipman Garden at the William McCormick Blair House

Tennis House on the William McCormick Blair Estate

The Blair estate also contains a cottage with neoclassical and Tudor period rooms across from an eighteenth-century Palladian folly (all relocated from parts of the United Kingdom).

The Palladian Folly

The day concluded with two lakeshore sites bearing remnants of the great McCormick family estates, Walden and Villa Turicum. Both houses were designed by East Coast architects, respectively Jarvis Hunt and Charles Platt. Only the Ravello terrace remains of Walden, built in 1896 for Cyrus McCormick II and torn down in the 1950s. An elegant, glass-walled, New Formalist house by New Canaan architect John Black Lee was built beside the Ravello in 1960.

The Ravello at Walden (1896) by Jarvis Hunt and Warren Manning

Perhaps the most famous of the Lake Forest mansions was Villa Turicum, whose tragic history mirrors the troubled life of its owner Edith Rockefeller McCormick. Along the shoreline sit the stairways, cascade, and garden urns that once decorated the lakeside grounds of the majestic mansion. The house had an astonishingly short life as an active home. Platt continued to work on the estate and its sprawling grounds (including a polo field and acres of gardens) for over a decade, from 1908 to 1918 (the house was completed in 1909), but after 1912 Edith Rockefeller McCormick allegedly spent only one night on the property. The house itself was demolished in 1965, but not before a group of investors hoping to repurpose the property lost a sizeable investment.

The remnants of the Villa Turicum water cascade (1909) by Charles A. Platt

2008-07-31T17:58:00.010-05:00

Naples and Campania, Day Eleven
23 May 2008

Mia Reinoso Genoni
miagenoni@post.harvard.edu

(Photo by Peter Goltra.)

We started our last day with a huge bite of 18th-century Campanian architecture: the palace at Caserta. It was begun in 1752 for Charles of Bourbon, who wanted his own Versailles, despite the fact that at this point the idiom of the great French palace was out-of-date. He asked Luigi Vanvitelli specifically to imitate it. Among other quotations, we also see traces of the Royal Palace of Madrid and the Palazzo Farnese in Caparola; Charles was the son of King Philip V of Spain and Elizabeth Farnese.

(Photo by Marilyn Schmitt.)

The spectacular grand staircase is the most inventive element of the palace, though it too is reminiscent of the Royal Palace of Madrid.

(Photo by Peter Goltra.)

The garden complex is also based on Versailles. The grand scale is a clear symbol of power and authority - only the wealthy and powerful can afford to use land gratuitously, as opposed to productively, and to maintain it.

(Photo by Peter Goltra.)

On the other end of the spectrum is San Leucio, located about 35 km northwest of Caserta. This complex was conceived of as a grand utopian experiment, another of my favorite topics. In his Enlightenment-tinged vision, Charles' son Ferdinand IV imagined a silk factory with a commune for workers, in which everyone would have their own home with a loom and a courtyard and everyone would also receive an education. In keeping a typical and wonderful utopian conceit, the area was to be called "Ferdinandopolis." Some of his vision was completed; the ideal plan was begun by Francesco Collecini in 1789, and the factory and some of the housing were built.

Now on site is a silk production museum, which delighted and amused us greatly.

(Photo by Peter Goltra.)

However, we had to cut our visit short because we were racing against the clock to get to Sant'Angelo in Formis before a scheduled afternoon wedding. We just made it, as the presence of the flower girl in the doorway suggests. The Romanesque church made our haste worthwhile, however. Built on the ruins of the Temple of Diana Tifatina, it was given to the Benedictines of Montecassino, who rebuilt it in 1072-86/7.

Part of the fame of the building is its narthex, with its early pointed arches. The actual date of the structure is currently a matter of great debate. Here you can also see some of narthex frescoes with scenes from the lives of Anthony and Paul the Hermit.

The frescoes are clearly related to Montecassino. It is assumed that Desiderius created the program; the artists are likely among those he brought back from Constantinople to work on the great monastery.

(Photo by Peter Goltra.)

Although the left apse cycle is lost, the right one remains: the Virgin Mary with Christ Child and Two Angels over Martyred Female Saints. In the foreground the wedding band is setting up - a wonderful vision of the continued use of the church throughout the millennium.

(Photo by Helen and Fraser Muirhead.)

That night we toasted Naples and Campania from La Fenestella, looking out over the Bay of Naples at Vesuvius. She kindly did not erupt during our visit, which probably means I should get to work on an SAH guglia. Ciao, Napoli e Campania! Mille grazie SAH e Scott Opler!

2008-07-31T15:50:00.014-05:00

Naples and Campania, Day Ten
22 May 2008

Mia Reinoso Genoni
miagenoni@post.harvard.edu

On our final day in the city of Naples, we returned to the via Tribunali area, with a first stop at the Cappella Pontano. As I have a great fondness for small, harmonious, classicizing chapels, I found this building to be utterly enthralling. It is a sepulchral chapel commissioned by the Neapolitan humanist and soldier-politician Giovanni Pontano, built in 1490-2. Such a monument actually commissioned by the humanist himself is unusual, and Pontano put his knowledge to great use. In his own work Pontano wrote that the best way to celebrate during one's life is through a triumphal arch motif, the use of which is apparent here. Also evident is that the structure follows Vitruvius' prescriptions for small temples: it is rectangular, erected on a podium, and features a facade punctuated by pilasters, seen also in the following detail:

In many ways we can think of the chapel itself as a built treatise, a concept of particular interest to me. The exterior also features a series of classical epigraphs...

while the interior has epitaphs both classical and of his own composition; the latter primarily express his sorrow over the death of his wife, their sons, and his friends. The altar also features Madonna and the Two Saint Johns, a fresco by Francesco Cicino da Caiazzo.

We moved on to San Domenico Maggiore, a building that, like the Cathedral of Naples, truly deserves the name "complex." The main church was built by Charles II in 1238-1324. The Angevin structure incorporated San Michele Archangelo a Morfisa, and continued to grow with the addition of a vast theological complex. Such was its renown that scholars such as Thomas Aquinas and Giordano Bruno came to lecture.

(Photo by Peter Goltra.)

As seen here, the interior is of a scale and structure most commonly found in cathedrals. The interior went through a Baroque renovation, and the "restoration" by Federico Travaglini, of 1850-3, stripped down the decor and replaced it with the Neo-Gothic creation seen in this image. The only Baroque elements that remain are the floor, the ceiling of the nave, and the balustrades of the chapel. In its original Angevin incarnation, the interior would have resembled that of San Pietro a Maiella (see entry for 19 May/Day Seven).

The Dominican church also became home to numerous funerary monuments, dating from the 14th to the 19th centuries, including tombs of Angevin and Aragonese rulers. Depicted here is the Tomb of Diomede Carafa, in the Chapel of the Crucifix. It dates to 1470-1, and is often cited as the first "completely" humanist tomb in Naples. It deviates from the Angevin model, replacing the baldachin motif with a Romanizing round arch with pilasters, a la Andrea Bretagno. The chapel received its name because it houses the crucifix through which God is believed to have spoken to Thomas Aquinas, saying "You have written well of me Thomas."

(Photo by Peter Goltra.)

The Sacristy contains an amazing 10 tombs of Aragonese and Spanish rulers and 35 dignitaries, all around the walkway. Included among these are Ferrante d'Aragona and Giovanna II of Aragon. In addition, the floor holds the 19th-century funerary slab of the first Catholic Bishop of New York, Richard L. Concanen, who died in Naples shortly after his consecration, while waiting for his transportation to arrive. Neapolitan drivers are clearly hell-bent on no such occurrence ever happening again, to which anyone who has navigated amongst the maniacally speedy citizens can attest.

(Photo by Peter Goltra.)

Similarly to the Cathedral complex, in the Piazza San Domenico we find the Guglia di San Domenico, begun in 1656 in thanks for deliverance from the plague of that year. It was designed by Cosimo Fanzago, and finished in 1727 under the first Bourban king, Charles III. Saint Dominic himself crowns the spire.

Continuing with our Neapolitan Day of the Dead, we visited Sant'Angelo a Nilo, home to to the serene and powerful Tomb of Cardinal Rinaldo Brancacci. It was built in Pisa by Donatello and Michelozzo in 1426-8, and shipped to Naples. I was ecstatic to visit this work, as I have studied it extensively but had not yet had the chance to see it. The tomb is very similar to that of (Antipope) John XXIII in the Florence Baptistery, also built by Donatello and Michelozzo. At the same time, the tomb exists in a dialogue with Neapolitan monuments - which is very clear when one has the chance to examine all of them in person. As with the Tomb of John XXIII, we see a lunette above a sarcophagus with three figures below.

(Photo by Peter Goltra.)

That said, the floor-standing baldachin type is also very typically Angevin. Unlike either Angevin monuments or that of John XXIII, the baldachin takes the form of a round arch; this arch appears again in the Tomb of Diomede Carafa in San Domenico, but without the baldachin.

(Photo by Peter Goltra.)

Likewise, the three figures of the lower register are found throughout Angevin funerary monuments and in the Tomb of John XXIII, but here we see a trabeated-like structure with caryatids, akin to the one in the Monument to Ladislao in San Giovanni a Carbonara. I've always loved the pillows given to the caryatids to aid them in their support of the heavy burden of the tomb.

(Photo by Peter Goltra.)

Gesu Nuovo is across the street from Santa Chiara - a great study in contrasts. Built by the Jesuits in 1584-97, it incorporated the late-quattrocento Palazzo Sanseverino di Salerno. The Renaissance portal is still visible.

(Photo by Peter Goltra.)

The interior features a buoyant use of triumphant arches, clearly indebted to St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.
The power and joy of this motif is evident throughout the church - including the ceiling.

(Photo by Peter Goltra.)

We ended our day at the Cappella Sansevero. It was founded in 1590 as the family chapel of the Sangro, and was renovated completely by Prince Raimondo di Sangro di Sansevero from 1749-71. The interior is filled with a intricate iconographic program of Raimondo's devising that is related to family imagery and lore. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take pictures inside, but once again we can turn to youtube to remedy the situation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tPyysZOE48

2008-07-31T14:05:00.010-05:00

Naples and Campania, Day Nine
21 May 2008

Mia Reinoso Genoni
miagenoni@post.harvard.edu

(Photo by Helen and Fraser Muirhead.)

Moving outside the city walls, on Wednesday we started our day at the mid-14th-century Augustinian monastery of San Giovanni a Carbonara. The original site was home to many bloody tournaments, and the name "Carbonara" also reveals its earlier medieval identity as a town dump.

(Photo by Peter Goltra).

The church features numerous tombs, including the Monument to King Ladislao, located just behind the altar at the end of the nave.

(Top two photos by Peter Goltra.)

As these details show, the architectural idioms employed in this tomb are related to the political moment in which it was created. King Ladislao dies in 1414, leaving Joan II Anjou Durazzo as the shaky head of an Angevin kingdom threatened by a range of foes and "pretenders" to the crown. She commissions this tomb in 1428, dying herself in 1435 after having adopted Alfonso I. Because of the tenuous hold of the Angevins, the tomb is primarily constructed in a purposely retardataire way, to suggest connections to earlier Angevin monuments. As you can see in the first two details here, the upper levels of the tomb are medievalizing, reminding one of the portal of Sant'Eligio and the Tomb of Mary of Hungary in Santa Maria Donna Regina Vecchia. Here we see statues of Ladislao and Joan Enthroned, as well as Ladislao on horseback; as equestrian statues are not typical of funerary monuments in churches, it is clearly a statement of power. Fascinatingly, it is only in the lowest register, here pictured in the third detail, that we start to see a classicizing structure. It is a trabeated structure - a flat coffered vault - and harkens to the Temple of Mars Ultor in the Forum Augustus, as does the later Succorpo chapel in the Cathedral of Naples.

(Left photo by Helen and Frasier Muirhead.)

There are also two tombs in adjoining chapels that reveal the changing languages of and imagery employed in funerary monuments in Renaissance and Baroque Naples. Behind the altar is the circular Chapel of Caracciolo del Sole. It features the tomb of Sergianni Caracciolo (here on the left), who was Grand Senechal and Joan II's lover. The tomb, created by Andrea da Firenze, dates to 1441. To the left of the altar is the 16th-century Chapel of Caracciolo di Vico, containing the Tomb of Galeazzo Caracciolo (here on the right).

(Left photo by Marilyn Schmitt.)

It was appropriate that we chose to visit San Giovanni a Carbonara today, as it was also the visit of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Fulfilling a campaign promise to hold his first cabinet meeting in Naples, he came to address the issue of garbage strike, so it was a very Carbonara day. On the left is a photo of the garbage outside our hotel, which miraculously disappeared right before his arrival, and on the right is one of the many posters of protest.

(Photo by Peter Goltra.)

Avoiding the protesters and the rain, we turned to Santissimi Apostoli, a splendid church reconstructed by Francesco Grimaldi starting in 1610, for Cardinal Ascanio Filomarino. At this time it became a Theatine structure, as is San Paolo Maggiore.

(Photo by Virginia Jansen.)

Of greatest interest in the church is the Filamarino Altar, created by Francesco Borromini for Cardinal Filamarino. The Cardinal had very strong ties to the court of Pope Urban VII, and wished to create an altar testifying to his Romanness. This altar is the only work by Borromini in Naples, and in many ways it was a trial run for his work in the Oratorio in Rome. He signed it in c. 1640.
Our final stop on a day filled with Berlusconi-induced detours was Santa Maria la Nova. It was originally built in 1279, created to house the Franciscan friars displaced by Charles of Anjou's construction of the Castel Nuovo. In the 16th century it was completely remodeled. We were not allowed to take pictures of the interior, but many reproductions exist, primarily of the famous ceiling that contains 46 paintings, which in essence serve as examples of work by the most important Neapolitan school artists before Caravaggio's arrival.

2008-07-31T12:06:00.023-05:00

Naples and Campania, Day Eight
20 May 2008

Mia Reinoso Genoni
miagenoni@post.harvard.edu

Moving away from the via dei Tribunali toward the waterfront of Naples, we began the day with a trip to Sant'Eligio. Founded in 1270, it was designed for French nationals who had been injured during Charles of Anjou's 1266 and 1268 battles of conquest. The church eventually also served as hospital and cemetery. The portal is well known as being perhaps the "purest" example of what is known as "French Gothic" in Naples, with its slender colonnettes topped with crockets.

(Left photo by Peter Goltra.)

Because the interior underwent many renovations and was heavily damaged in World War II, its character is less coherent or definable, but the space retains a feeling of sanctuary.

(Photo by Peter Goltra.)

Near to Sant'Eligio is Santa Maria del Carmine, whose origin is also linked to Charles' conquest. It was erected on the site where Conrad Hohenstaufen was beheaded after losing the 1268 battle, built in this location in part to commemorate the victory and in part to purify the land. Very little of the original Angevin decoration and articulation remains; the facade seen here is 18th century.

(Left photo by Peter Goltra.)

A Carmelite church, it is also famous for its so-called Brown Madonna, housed in the center of the apse behind the altar. The Carmelites were an Eastern order, and the icon Byzantine, leading to its moniker.

(Photo by Peter Goltra.)

Moving across town, we visited Santa Maria della Concezione a Montecalvario, the only church on the tour that dates wholly to the 17th and 18th centuries. Reconstructed completely by Domenico Antonio Vaccaro, the church typifies the Neapolitan Barochetto style: fluid, light, and playful, in some ways a mix of the earlier Baroque and what would be Rococo. The design is a circle with a Greek cross within it, making it octagonal and allowing for eight chapels.

This view of the dome gives an excellent sense both of the beauty, lightness, and gaiety of the space, as well as of its structure.

(Photo by Peter Goltra.)

Continuing along the via Toledo, we came to San Giacomo degli Spagnoli, the church founded in 1540 by Peter of Toledo, known as the "Urban Viceroy" for his many projects in the city. Of particular interest is the tomb of Peter and his wife Maria, pictured here. It was created by Giovanni da Nola, starting in 1539, with full assembly in 1570. The front features the couple in prayer along with a triumphal frieze depicting Holy Roman Emperor Charles V's entrance into Naples.

(Photo by Peter Goltra.)

Heading southeast from via Toledo we went to the Castel Nuovo, one of the highlights. Of all the sites on tour, it is the one with which I was most familiar beforehand, and it was sheer joy to visit it again. The Castel Nuovo was founded by Charles of Anjou in 1279 and then rebuilt by Alfonso I (the Magnanimous) of Aragon in the mid-15th century. It earned its name because there were already two royal castles, but Charles felt that the Castel d'Ovo was too isolated along the shore and the Castel Capuano was too far from the shore. Alfonso I increased the fortifications, and built the fantastic classicizing entryway, the so-called "Aragonese Arch."

Its majesty cannot be captured in a picture this size. Alfonso I was adopted by the last Angevin queen, Joan II Anjou Durazzo, during a power struggle. He was a lover of Antiquity and already knew many of Naples' humanists before he came to power. Credited with working on the arch are a gamut of sculptors, including: the Milanese Pietro di Martino, the Dalmatian Francesco Laurana, the Roman Pietro Taccone, Isaia da Pisa, the Lombard Domenico Gagini, Andrea dell'Aquila, Antonio di Chelino, and the Catalan Pere Johan.

The most fascinating element for me has always been the brilliant incorporation of the triumphant arch motif: the Aragonese Arch harkens to classical arches (the Arch of Trajan in Beneveto and the Arch of the Sergii in Pula), the medieval Gate of Frederick II in Capua, and to the new humanism of the Italian Renaissance, all in one fell swoop.
New to me was the Room of the Barons, so-called because the feudal lords who had conspired against Ferrante I were arrested in it. Here we have a view of the spectacular vaulting of the octagonal dome.
We ended our waterfront day at the Castel del'Ovo, seen here in romantically stormy circumstances. The fortification dates back to an Early Christian hermitage, and the building underwent a series of additions and renovations, including under Angevin and Aragonese rule. The legend of this "Castle of the Egg" is that Virgil, who was believed to have powers with which he could protect the city, hid a magic egg in a secret dungeon. This local myth remained so powerful that when one of the arches crumbled during the reign of poor beleaguered Joan II, she had to announce that she had personally cared for the egg in order to ensure the safety of the castle and maintain order.

2008-07-31T09:00:00.026-05:00

Naples and Campania, Day Seven
19 May 2008

Mia Reinoso Genoni
miagenoni@post.harvard.edu

(Photo by Peter Goltra.)

Monday morning we returned to sites in Naples, beginning with the Cathedral complex. Pictured here is the current entrance, facing the via del Duomo. Incorporating Early Christian and medieval structures with medieval and Early Modern decoration, the building is a tour of Naples in and of itself. In 1294, Archbishop Filippo Minutolo and King Charles II of Anjou began the building campaigns of the complex; as is evident from the chapels, renovation and expansion continued well into the Baroque.

(Photo by Peter Goltra.)

The cathedral complex includes one of the first Early Christian churches, built shortly after the Edict of Milan. The 4th-century Basilica of Santa Restituta is now accessed through an entrance halfway down the left aisle of the main cathedral. The Basilica, however, has a north-south orientation, which allowed its original entrance to face the decumanus.

(Upper photo by Peter Goltra.)

One reaches the 4th/5th-century Baptistery from the right side aisle of Santa Restituta. The mosaics are of extremely high quality and are deeply classicizing.

(Photo by Peter Goltra).

The main cathedral, dedicated to the Assumption, is oriented east-west, so that the altar is in its traditional location to the east, but the building now interferes with the Hippodamus plan of the city. The height of the nave and transept was changed by the addition of a gilt wooden ceiling in 1621, while the presbytery and apse were rebuilt in the 17th and 18th centuries.

(Two left photos by Peter Goltra.)

One of the chapels to the right of the altar is the late medieval Minutolo family chapel. It has some fine frescoes, including a wonderful Quo Vadis? scene, as well as fabulous crockets (left). The 1402 tomb of Enrico Minutolo (center) was the setting for Boccaccio's story of Andreuccio da Perugia in the Decameron. Immediately to the left of the entrance there is an eye-catching fresco of Mary Magdalene (right), an image which today suggests the combination of Lady Godiva and a hair shirt.

Under the altar is the Chapel of the Succorpo, or Crypt of San Gennaro. It is all'antica in form and structure, quoting the Temple of Mars Ultor in the Forum Augustus and utilizing a trabeated support system. It was built at the behest of Cardinal Oliviero Carafa, to house the bones of San Gennaro and to be the cardinal's own eternal resting place. The Succorpo is thus both a reliquary and a funerary chapel, as well as a stunning example of Neapolitan classicisizing architecture. Pictured here is the 16th-century Roman sculpture of Oliviero Carafa, with the family stemma visible above.

(Photo by Peter Goltra.)

The Treasury is directly opposite Santa Restituta, reachable via an entrance in the middle of the right aisle of the main cathedral. It was built in response to a terrible plague that rampaged through Naples in 1526-7; begun in 1608, this chapel was dedicated to their patron saint, San Gennaro, and two medieval chapels were demolished for its construction. Francesco Grimaldi designed the space; Cosimo Fanzago created the gilt brass gate; it was frescoed by Domenichino and Giovanni Lanfranco; and it features painting by a number of masters, including Jose de Ribera.

(Photo by Peter Goltra.)

In front of the original entrance to the cathedral, in the Piazza Cardinal Sisto Riario Sforza, now stands the Guglia di San Gennaro, a votive spire typical of Naples. It was erected in response to a Vesuvian eruption of 1631. Designed by Cosimo Fanzango in 1637, it was completed in the 1650s. The dome of the cathedral complex is just visible in the upper left of this image. Across the street (via dei Tribunali) is the church of Pio Monte di Misericordia, which houses Caravaggio's spectacular Seven Works of Mercy of c. 1607, dating to his first stay in Naples. Tragically we were not allowed to take pictures, but there is a short, grainy video on youtube that is of some aid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JepeR1syo00

(Photo by Peter Goltra.)

North and just slightly west of the Cathedral are the churches of Santa Maria Donna Regina, Vecchia and Nuova. Pictured here is the entrance to SMDR Nuova. The original church was created under the patronage of Queen Mary of Hungary, begun in 1307. It was enlarged in the 17th century, and, somewhat bizarrely, in the campaign of 1928-34 G. Chierici separated it into two churches, the "old" and "new".

One reaches SMDR Vecchia through a separate entrance via a classicizing courtyard. The church consists of a single nave with a truss roof, which is now hidden by a 16th-century ceiling, and has a polygonal apse, as seen here. SMDR was created for the Clarissans. As such, it had two audiences, as was also true of Santa Chiara. Here we see a different solution to this problem of two audiences, both of whom needed to face the altar, but one of which needed to remain invisible:

(Photo by Peter Goltra.)

This view is taken from an angle, just in front of the apse. Here we see the nun's choir is actually elevated over the rest of the congregation, so that the Clarissans could celebrate mass but remain hidden. In the 1992 Gesta article "Hearing is Believing: Clarissan Architecture," Caroline Bruzelius suggested that perhaps it was more important that the nuns were able to hear the mass, as opposed to seeing it; although they would have faced the altar, the height of their choir may well have precluded any view of it. At the bottom right of this image we see part of the tomb of Mary of Hungary...

(Photo by Peter Goltra.)

seen in full in this photograph. It was built after her death in 1323, by Tino di Camaino, and became an important model for Angevin tombs.

At the far west end of the via Tribunali, down the road from the original cathedral entrance and Pio Monte, we find the oddly difficult to photograph church of San Pietro a Maiella. It is dedicated to Pietro Angeleri, a hermit who lived on the Maiella, and who became Pope Celestine V. Tragically for him, he was better suited to being a hermit than a pope. He abdicated, fleeing to Montecassino, where, legend has it, Benedict arrested and then later poisoned him. The church dates to c. 1313-4, and is of interest in part because, as this view of the left aisle shows, it retains its original medieval facing. San Domenico, which we visited on the 22nd (Day Ten), had a similar appearance before it was stuccoed.

I happen to be interested in images of the Madonna del Latte, and was quite taken with this one: the Madonna del Soccorso, attributed to an anonymous quattrocento painter, and located between the first and second chapels to the left of the presbytery.

(Photo by Peter Goltra.)

Our last architectural stop for the day was San Paolo Maggiore, located on the via dei Tribunali back towards the Cathedral complex. It is Theatine, that is to say, a church of the Order of Clerks Regular (founded 1524). Francesco Grimaldi, who was a member of the Confraternity, designed it in the early 17th century. It was built on the site of an ancient temple, and the elevation of the staircase coincides with the height of the podium of the temple. The portico of the temple was incorporated into the facade, set back a bit, but a 1688 earthquake caused it to collapse. All that remains are the two columns still standing, seen in the photo above, and...
in this detail. San Paolo Maggiore is the only church reproduced by Palladio, no doubt in large part due to this adept use of spolia.

A number of the great Baroque masters active in Naples also contributed to the decoration and articulation of San Paolo Maggiore, including Francesco Solimena, Domenico Antonio Vaccaro, and Ferdinando Sanfelice.

We had the remainder of the afternoon to ourselves. Some of us went to the Archaeological Museum, where we were treated to wonders like the Farnese Hercules, one of my favorite works. The size! The scale! The power!

(Photo by Peter Goltra.)

In this, and other stolen moments, others went to Capodimonte - pictured here is the Porcelain Room.

2008-07-30T17:39:00.023-05:00

Naples and Campania, Day Six
18 May 2008

Mia Reinoso Genoni
miagenoni@post.harvard.edu

Sketch of Amalfi Cathedral by Jacob Albert.

We had something of a lazy Sunday on the Amalfi coast, relatively speaking. In the town of Amalfi itself we focused on the beautiful medieval cathedral, and also spent time just enjoying the area.

(Photo by Peter Goltra.)

Amalfi Cathedral dates to the 10th through 12th centuries. It is a double cathedral complex, incorporating the earlier Church of the Crucifix as well as the main cathedral of San Andrea. In 1206 Amalfi acquired relics of St. Andrew, probably due to the 1204 Sack of Constantinople, and from this point onward was very invested in the apostolicity of the site. The facade pictured here was rebuilt in the late 19th century.

(Photo by Peter Goltra.)

Like so many Campanian churches, San Andrea underwent a series of renovations throughout the centuries.

The Church of the Crucifix primarily functions as museum now, and from it you enter the Crypt of St. Andrew:

(Photo by Peter Goltra.)

an elaborate space of apostolic celebration.

(Photo by Virginia Jansen.)

Of primary interest in the Amalfi Cathedral complex are the campanile and, especially, the Cloister of Paradise. In this view of the campanile framed by the arches of the Cloister, we see a melange of styles similar to that of the Salerno Cathedral.

The upper register of the campanile is particularly playful and successful.

The stepped arches and moldings of the Cloister are clearly influenced by the strong Islamic presence in this area; in addition, these structures are easy to mass produce and are light, making them an ideal solution for building upon a mountain.

Of greatest import in regards to the Cloister (1266-8) are its origin and function. Bishop Augustariccio requested its creation, in order to have a cemetery for illustrious citizens - hence the name "Cloister of Paradise." Caroline Bruzelius spoke of her recent research on the topic, conveying her belief that at this time cathedrals such as Amalfi were competing with the monastic orders for the burial of the noble and wealthy. In this way the Cloister must be considered along with the Camposanto in Pisa, for example. For those not lucky enough to be on this trip, you can read about these ideas in greater detail in her new essay "The Dead Come to Town: Preaching, Burying, and Building in the Mendicant Orders," just published in The Year 1300 and the Creation of a New European Architecture, and/or await Bodies, Building, and the Medieval City, currently in progress.

(Photo by Virginia Jansen).

Continuing up the mountain, we came to the town of Ravello, perched atop a cliff. Here we were treated to the magnificent Villa Rufolo (1260), belonging to a family of great wealth that was described by Boccaccio, a family that first profited from and then were persecuted by the Angevins.

In the original phase of profit, the Villa, with its exquisite and extensive gardens, was built as a pleasure palace to delight the senses.

Also in Ravello is the Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta, founded by the first bishop of the city, Orso Papirio, in c. 1086-7.

One of the highlights here is the Byzantinizing ambo built by Constantino Rogadeo in 1130, featuring before and after pictures from the story of Jonah and the whale.

The cathedral is also dedicated to a local saint, Pantaleone, and our visit happened to coincide with his feast day, here documented in photos by Virginia Jansen (above) and a short video by Peter Goltra (below):