More Than a Handsome Box by christian unverzagt

MORE THAN A HANDSOME BOX

EDUCATION

ARCHITECTURE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

1876-1986

NANCY RUTH BARTLETT

THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN COLLEGE OF ARCHITECTURE AND URBAN PLANNING ANl'\ ARBOR路 MICHIGAN

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Nancy Bartlett is associate archivist at the Bentley Historical Library, Cniversity of Michigan. In addition to her interest in architectural history, she specializes also in the history of photography. She is writing a Cniversity of Michigan dis足 sertation on the concept of patrimoine in nineteenth century France.

ABOUT THE BENTLEY HISTORICAL LIBRARY The Bentley Historical Library serves as the official archival repository of the University of Michigan. As such, it houses original records, publications, pho足 tographic prints, and drawings relating to the history of thf university's College of Architecture and Urban Planning. Almost all of the original sources used in preparing this history are located at the Bentley Historical Library. Citations to all sources used are listed in the publication's endnotes.

The University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning 2000 Bonisteel Boulevard

ISBN 0-9614792-2-1 Technology: Assembled on an Apple Power Macintosh"' 7100/ 66 using Aldus~ PageMakere and Adobe Photoshop n., Typeface: Monotype Baskerville Design/Production: Kathryn M. Ridner Printing: The John Henry Company, Lansing, Michigan Every dfort has been made to trace ownership of copyrighted material in this book and obtain permission for its use.

CONTENTS

PREFAC E

INTRODUCTION

A MOST PROPER ASSOCIATE AND GUIDE FOR YOUNG MEN

Nineteenth Century Prelude

I AM MOST DESIROUS OF GOING TO ANN ARBOR

19 06- 19 19

SUPPLYING THE MISSING ELEMENT OF SANITY

19 20 - 193 6

STILL UNCERTAIN BUT LESS CONFUSED

1937-19 64

MORE THAN A HANDSOME BOX 19 64- 19 86

PREFAC E

The education of architects at the G niversity of Michigan has a long and distinguished history. This publication is intended to celebrate that tradition and place architectural education at this institution in a broader cultural, political, and academic perspective. The University of Michigan is blessed with a fine archive, the Bentley Historical Library, a repository of memories and documents which chronicles education at the university. This essay draws from evidence within that archive to capture at least some of the salient features of the teaching of architec ture at Michigan over the past twelve decades. No history can be truly complete. This one highlights those significant events which have affected the nature of education at Michigan as well as other events which have given the pro gram its distinct character. It provides extensive citations to archival sources in the hopes that there will be those who wish to do further research on education at Michigan. This history is a tribute to the research skills of Nancy Bartlett, associate archivist at the Bentley Historical Library, who has woven a tapestry of facts to create a very legible image in both words and pictures. I personally thank Nancy for the tenacity she has brought to this project which exceeded, in great mea sure, our expectations of the work involved. She has been fully committed to this endeavor, and the quality of this publication is a tribute to her talent and dedication. I also wish to thank Kathryn Ridner from the College of Architecture and Urban Planning who contributed her expertise to the production of this publication. The inspiration for this comes from many sources. The first is Dr. Dorothy Gondos Beers, who has provided both encourage ment and support in memory of her late husband, Dr. Victor T. Gondos,Jr., B.S.Arch. '25. The Victor Gondos,Jr. Archives Fund, established in his name in 1983, helped to make this work pos sible. Dr. Gondos Beers' own commitment to preserving history was instrumental in moving this project forward. I also want to give special acknowledgement to Gilbert P. Schafer, B.S.Arch. '22, a devoted supporter of the college whose recollections of

PREFACE

his own college days inspired us to want to learn more about the origins of architectural education at this institution. Vve have tried to capture the kinds of vivid memories which were so im足 portant to Gil so that others might enjoy them as much as he. There are many faculty emeriti who helped to inspire this work as well as Deans Emeriti Reginald Malcolmson and Robert Metcalf, who deserve special credit for helping Ms. Bartlett. Nancy Bartlett has been supported by colleagues at the Bentley Historical Library. They include Marjorie Barritt, Francis Blouin, KarenJania, Kenneth Scheffel, William Wallach, and Christine Weideman. She has also received special encouragement from Professors Thomas Hille, Kent Kleinman, Kingsbury Marzolf, and Leslie Van Duzer. Professor Emeritus William Muschenheim also provided inspiration for this endeavor. Nancy has written that "his cosmopolitan love of fine design, cigars, opera, and ca足

maraderie defines for me the grandest in the word 'architect. ,,, I hope you will enjoy this tribute to architectural education at the University of Michigan.

Robert M. Beckley, FAIA Dean Summer 1995

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Mason Hall, the university 'sfirst classroom building and student housing, built in 1841 on State Street 2

INTRODUCTION When the newly-formed Board of Regents gathered for the first time in Ann Arbor, in the summer of 1837, this group of twelve men decided to establish three kinds of professorships at the University of Michigan: one in mental philosophy, a second in languages, and a third in "Mathematics in all its various branches, Civil Engineering, and Architecture,'" This idea of Michigan's first Superintendent of Public Instruction, John D. Pierce, and its elaboration by the regents for formal education in architec ture were nothing short of visionary. Dating well before the es tablishment of the American Institute of Architects in 1857, the Ann Arbor proposal had anticipated the movement to promote an institutionalized education for architects. However, the provision for a professorship in architecture at Michigan was never realized during the tenure of the creators of the university in Ann Arbor. Fully four decades would pass before formal courses in architecture were offered at the uni versity whose grounds had recently borne the fruit of a peach orchard and the golden stalks of wheat tended by the campus janitor. 2 The claim to the first school of architecture in the country went instead to Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where classes began in 1865.

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University of Michigan President's house, as drawn by Hudson River School artist Jasper Cropsey dur ing his visit to Michigan in 1855- 563

INTRODUCTION

University of Michigan's Detroit Observatory, built in Ann Arbor in 1854 and painted by Jasper Cropsey in [855 4

1871 University oj Michigan campus plan illustrating the formal symmetries of its north, south, and west sides5

The exigencies of constructing a forty-acre campus with class rooms, housing, and a suitable library preempted the notion of architectural pedagogy in Ann Arbor. Even with such practi cal matters, however, the regents initially aimed high. Both Ammi B. Young and Alexander Jackson Davis prepared drawings for the first building on campus. 3 Davis had even offered two alter native designs, in Collegiate Gothic and Classic, but the regents in the end declined these choices from the East. 4 '\That remains of the early university is instead the work of more anonymous builders. They achieved a respectable appearance for the campus, with a formal plan of paired residences at its northern and southern ends. One of these survives as the Presi dent's House. Off to the northeast is the university's observatory, whose Italianate form appealed to painter Jasper Cropsey. For its first decades, these buildings would have to suffice as Nlichi gan's best testimony to its appreciation for good architecture.

A MOST PROPER ASSOCIATE

AND GUIDE FOR YOUNG MEN

Architecture as a discipline of st!!dy was first brought to Ann Arbor by William Le BaronJenney of Chicago. With his name preceded by the proud rank of "Major," he had already achieved recognition as a leader, both from his earlier glory days as Gen eral William Tecumseh Sherman's aide-de-camp and for his new "elevator building," a precursor to his later prototypical sky scraper. This novice professor had never prepared a syllabus but he had nonetheless advocated a formal knowledge base for the architectural profession in the book he co-authored, entitled Prin ciples and Practices of Architecture. 5 Refined New Englander by birth, continental sophisticate by education, romantic patriot by war duty, and ambitious westerner by vocation, Jenney embodied the image of architect as worldly professional. The major 's appearances on Ann Arbor's campus were brief, but his few town and gown edifices were to remain signifi cant vestiges of the Cniversity of Michigan at its nineteenth century zenith, when it surpassed all other American universities in enrollment and gained its moniker as the "Harvard of the West." Unlike his Ann Arbor colleagues, Jenney never had a real home in town. His building projects in Chicago and elsewhere required his steady presence further west. Instead of walking from the nearby neighborhoods of Victorian and Greek Revival houses, he arrived by rail for classes, only to stay for two days per week before riding back to his wife, two children, and office in Chicago. The commute could not have been altogether unpalat able for one who at seventeen had sailed on his father's ship around Cape Horn to follow adventures in Chile, San Francisco, and Manila. The preparation for his Ann Arbor course work offeredJenney a diversion from his construction contracts in northern Michi gan's Manistee and in other states, where high-reaching office structures including Chicago's Portland Building (r872) and Lakeside Building (r873) and Indianapolis' Fletcher and Sharp Building (r875) were bringing him much attention.

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At a certain inconvenience, the Ann Arbor teaching fit into Jenney's great appreciation for education in architecture. Him self a graduate of Harvard University and the Parisian Ecole Centrale des Arts et Manufactures, he maintained the inquisi tive drive of an academic, which characterized his balanced commitment to edification in the classroom as well as the office. With reluctance he had turned down an earlier offer to teach ci vil and mechanical engineering and drafting at Rutgers College just after the Civil War while he was still an aide to Sherman. 6 Although he had never had an academic appointment prior to Ann Arbor, Jenney did nevertheless have the credentials of teaching his younger apprentices to help build the "bustling and undisciplined settlement on lower Lake Michigan known as Chicago."7 Jenney loved to tutor these employees, even refer ring to his draftsmen as his "students."B .Kot long before his own

assignment in Ann Arbor, he had attracted apprentices Daniel Burnham and Louis Sullivan to his office in mid-town Chicago. It was from the Portland Building that .~nney responded to an invitation to apply for employment from Universitv of Michi gan PresldentJames B. Angell; Jenney replied with wonder on -August 19, 1875 that, "the question is so new to me that I would not be willing to express myself other than in general terms" although he anticipated that, "there is an opportunity for re search and theoretical labor that does not occur in practice." He admitted that even his letter of introduction to Angell was written in haste since "I leave in a few moments for Indianapo lis where I have some six buildings in more or less progress."9 Angell had apparently learned aboutJenney from an acquain tance in Chicago, city and county surveyor C.W. Durham, who had just days earlier recommendedJenney. Durham had praised Jenney's abilities in "higher mathematics and the theory of his profession," but warned Angell that, "I do not believe that you could get him. "10 Angell had been searching already since the spring of 1875, when Cornell's president Andrew Dickson White (formerly of the University of Michigan) had offered to share with him his "candidates book."1! Even while corresponding with Jenney, Angell pursued at least one other possible candidate for the position, who was a considerably younger easterner with the literary name of Alexander Wadsworth Longfellow. > An east ern candidate, at least by birth if not by present location, would l

bear the right associations for Angell, who never consulted the new School of Architecture of the University of Illinois for ei ther more local prospects for employment or insight into how to establish a program in the Midwest. 13 After several months of apparent inactivity, Angell resumed his search in the middle of winter. He then received a laudatory letter from General Sherman about Jenney, "a most proper as sociate and guide for young men," whose "habits were excellent and manners refined and cultivated."14 Even more relevant for the Michigan appointment than General Sherman's accolades were letters from fellow architects. Architect Gordon Lloyd of Detroit added in his note to Angell that Jenney was appealing because of his "strong feeling for gothic," which Lloyd had no doubt hoped would yield Ann Arbor structures complemen tary to his own design of St. Andrew's Episcopal Church on North Division. 15 Not all his professional colleagues promotedJenney. Frederick Law Olmsted was only lukewarm about his abilities, warning Angell that Jenney "has not been a sufficient student" and that he was "still feeling his way."16 Perhaps Olmsted's reservations were the result of differing influences of Olmsted and Jenney upon Chicago's West Parks and neighboring Riverside. 17 The tighter compositions that Jenney had learned by studying parks west of Paris would not have impressed Olmsted, who nonethe less admitted to Angell that, "1 know no one likely to be avail able whom 1 would better recommend."18 To ferret out any further criticisms, Durham had gone so far as to question Jenney's neighbors in Chicago about his "moral character." The worst possi ble limi tation he could report back to President Angell was thatJenney was no active church member, so "it may be that he holds some 'crooked' views concerning spir itual matters."19 Such a suspicion could not be disregarded since the University of Michigan was just beginning to undergo a cul tural secularization under this president who as a young man had had plans to study for the ministry.20 Perhaps Jenney's intended absence from town on Sundays conveniently minimized the issue of his credence. (For a questionnaire much later in his life, he admitted that he was in fact not a member of any church.) Jenney was not at all evasive about his home life, inviting Angell to stay with him during his visit to Chicago in March of 1876.'1

ASSOCIATE & GUIDE

University Hall, the uni versity's main building along State Street, built in 1872 and altered more than once before its demo lition. In its last years it sat ignominiously behind Angell Half.?

By the first of April 1876, any possible hesitations on the part of Angell and the university's regents were overcome. Under his letterhead of "W.L.B. Jenney, Architect" the leadi_ng cA,l1didate .1_ ------"'------'---- 'V\ ~ J 1 JQJ-v formally accepted the offer of President Angelj,..,Jenney assumed the appointment approved by the regents with the general un derstanding that he would perform "such duties for the present as may be assigned him, and for such compensation for the ser vices rendered as may be arranged by the Executive Commit tee."22 Over time he would learn that "duties as may be assigned" would require just as much of his talents on the campus build ing sites as in the classroom. Eventually he would realize that these additional duties as campus architect would outlast his teaching responsibilities. Jenney 's initiation into architectural pedagogy coincided with a considerable transition in the curriculum of the University of Michigan . \Vhile searching to expand his faculty, Angell him self was still becoming accustomed to the novelty of leading a university whose administration had been his responsibility only since 1871. His skillful success in gaining the state legisla ture's permission for revenue from property mill taxes afforded a new growth for the university and allowed him to recruit new professors of homeopathy, dentistry, mining engineering, and architecture, and also to insure the expansion of instruction in

pharmacy and the literary department. The professor of arch i tecture was to serve on the faculty of the university's new School of Mines, which had received provisional funding for two years from the state legislature. Through curricular developments un der Angell's early presidency, students throughout the univer sity were able to benefit from a much greater choice of classes, and faculty, in the emerging elective system. 23 These gains were matched by losses of the university's first generation of senior faculty, several of whom left in the 1870S either for positions at peer institutions or for retirement. 24 One of those who had recently left Michigan, to return to the East, was professor of engineering DeVolson Wood, who in his 1871 report to the Board of Regents had revived the call for courses in architecture. 25 Four years later, in October 1875 , the regents recognized the "great need" for a chair in architecture and de sign. They admitted that , "we do not expect a large number of students at first in this School , but we think it will have a steady and healthy development." 26 Despite the limitations of the regents' expectations, Jenney set immediate goals in his teaching and President Angell laid out a great variety of duties for his new professor of architec ture and campus architect. The first requirement for Jenney was to prepare a series of two lectures for late afternoon meetings in the law lecture room of the university. As the printed announce ment indicated, these public lectures were to occur in the spring of 1876, months prior to Jenney's actual teaching responsi bilities. 27 Both appealed to the most general interests in archi tecture with the first one entitled ''An Introductory Lecture on Architecture" and the second one "The House and Its Furni ture." They attracted a good audience and, according to the student newspaper shortly thereafter, they "won for him the respect of students and citizens. " 28 In the months leading up to his teaching duties, Jenney laid careful and elaborate plans for the accoutrements of his class room. He wanted to create a photographic collection and architectural library for the university. As the fall semester ap proached, he submitted to Angell his suggestions for books. N one of these were actually textbooks as such since he wrote that, "I think much more information can be imparted in a giv en time by lectures- with proper notes and examinations-and

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access to a library than by text books."29 His first list focused upon illustrative books and included the titles Art Foliages; Plants, their Natural Growth and Ornamental Treatment; Principles of Orna mental Art; Free Hand Ornaments; Flore Ornementale; and Recueil of Sculpture Gothiques [sic]. Their easy accessibility was important since "they are in fact dictionaries of ornamentation" to use in the drawing room rather than in the university's library. Books on stone cutting, a subscription to London Architect, and second-hand books on Palladio would also be useful for stu dents at their drawing boards. 30 Jenney was convinced that the writings of Viollet-Ie-Duc, at least those available in English, would be highly valued sources for the classroom. 3' He also made reference to Viollet-Ie-Due's Entretiens sur l'Architecture, not ing for Angell that, "I contemplate using it extensively. "3 2 He was quite firm in insisting upon good copies of The Stones if Venice and Seven Lamps of Architecture, rather than the American edition with badly reproduced plates. Even so, Jenney recognized that by comparison with the library at Cornell the Michigan collec tion of architectural publications would be inferior for years to come. 33 Jenney also wanted to assemble the makings of an architectur al museum. He wrote to Angell in an almost telegraphic short hand that, "my desire is to make a collection of all woods-and marbles-and of such stone as are used in building in any part of the world. Later we should have collections of apparatus plumbing-gas-water-heating etc.-in actual articles-or in models or designs. I also desire a collection of fine wall papers some specimens of artistic wood-stone- + terra cotta draw ings-In fact an architectural museum to include fine drawings models photographs etc. etc." These would all contribute to the students' understanding of materials and "appliances." His own drawings, sent already inJune, were to form a part of these col lections. The university's carpenter was to build a special frame

for these using Jenney's specifications. Jenney hoped that other architects would follow his example by contributing their own photographs and drawings to the university.34 These ambitions were shaped in part by Jenney's consulta tion with his respected colleague in Boston, William Robert Ware, who had just seven years earlier begun the country's first school of architecture at MIT. At their meeting inJuly 1876, Ware had

ASSOCIATE & GUIDE

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offered to have copied the drawings he had collected in Europe, primarily from the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris.35 As fellow Harvard alumni and continental connoisseurs, Ware andJenney also agreed that casts from England and France were essential for instruction in drawing from models. The availability of any instructive architecture could not be assumed in Ann Arbor, much less than in Boston or even Chicago.

ASSOCIATE & GCIDE

The minutiae of learning tools were not left to chance either. Soon before the start of the academic year,Jenney specified with great precision the type of notebooks for all students to use in the architecture program. They were to be of paper good in quality, "very securely bound in half cow-hide- deep red with dark colored cloth sides." He even sent President Angell a sam ple of the leather and muslin to use along with a sample of the label to affix to the cover of each notebook. He anticipated that each student would require a dozen notebooks per year, to use in taking notes during lectures, "as is done in the continental schools. " 36 Jenney's wish list for classroom materials was almost obses sive in its details. By comparison the Board of Regents' goals for new architecture on campus were vast but unformed. Months before the start of classes, Jenney's employers had resolved that he should design a new library and museum building for the campus and supply them with a cost estimate. Not until fully three years later did their meeting minutes acknowledge the acceptance of working drawings.37 At the same time that the regents and the university's presi dent anticipated great developments in the size and prestige of the late nineteenth-century university, they were ambivalent about erecting architectural showcases on campus. James B. Angell had begun his presidency just a few years prior to Jenney's ten ure with an inaugural speech warning against the excesses of extravagant architecture. He had asked in 1871, "How many of our well-meaning countrymen have given their tens of thousands of dollars for the material homes of colleges and Universities, and have made no adequate provision for securing the most gifted and devoted teachers? When will even good men learn that to endow a University with brains and heart, and not alone with bricks and mortar, is the part of true wisdom?"3 8 vVhile undoubt edly sincere in his conviction, Angell the very next year oversaw the completion of the massive and matronly University Hall, whose building cost of $100,000 would not be surpassed until the construction of the university's Palmer Ward in 1903. Thirty-one years later, still president, Angell continued to pro claim publicly the virtues of economy in campus architecture. In 1902 during a visit to Johns Hopkins University he related to an audience of fellow university presidents that, "I could

not conceal my joy, in the early days of the institution [of the University of Michigan], at the self-restraint which led the Presi dent and the Trustees to content themselves with these modest homes in which this Cniversity was housed, scarcely to be distin guished from the business houses upon the streets around them, while they went scouring the world for the best men that could be found on the two continents to bring here ... Better have an Agassiz on Penikese island, with nothing but a jelly-fish before him, than to have a house full of pretended scientists, even in Kensington Museum. Abelard under his tents of osier, Socrates, bare-footed in the streets of Athens; these men were universi ties worth more than marble palaces crammed full of pedant teachers. " 39 The lesson for Jenney then was to learn to design lean cam pus structures, economical to build yet decorative in Ruskinian ornamentation and imaginative in an eclectic blending of Gothic and Italianate composition. A further complication to this chal lenge was his already busy agenda at building sites elsewhere. No doubt his obligations outside of Ann Arbor compensated for his loss of the commission to build the university's library, de signed instead by V\'are and partner Henry Van Brunt. His Ann Arbor days were so fleeting thatJenney's name never rested in any local directory of residents. His face was absent from the collection of photographs of other beloved faculty in the few surviving leather-bound photographic albums, otherwise so carefully assembled by students enamored with photographic portraits of college life. Faculty meetings were held without him. N or did he have any time for casual reading from the library's holdings either, checking out only one book during his tenure, Rawlinson's Herodotus. Probably because his students never gained a casual familiar ity with him,Jenney did not personally suffer the brunt of soph omoric humor inflicted upon his more settled colleagues. His name was not twisted in pun and his face did not appear in caricature in the student publications of the late r870s. He would otherwise seem a likely target since Louis Sullivan re called vividly around that time that , "he spoke French with an accent so atrocious that it jarred Louis' teeth while his English speech jerked about as though it had St. Vitus's dance. He was monstrously pop-eyed, with hanging mobile features, sensuous

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lips, and he disposed of matters easily in the manner of a war veteran who believed he knew what was what. "4° In his classroom, Jenney counted among his own students a total of nine young men who were working for a degree special izing in architectureY He wanted eventually for his graduates to be able to enter into architectural offices with problem-solving acumen. Their coursework would therefore focus upon projects and problems, "such as will often actually occur."4 2 For Fresh man to Senior year, the course requirements in architecture appeared in the 1876-- 77 calendar. They represented the special mixture of Jenney's values whose inspirations were derived from both the continent and the Midwest. To aspire to the image of worldly architects, Jenney's students would have to learn French as well as appreciate the contemporary association of botany with architecture. To succeed at home, these same nov ices would need to design and draw plans "so as to be readily and unmistakably understood by the mechanics who might be called to execute them."43 Jenney recognized the likelihood that his students would remain as architects in the Midwest. He campaigned for their formal training by writing in the course catalog that, "the ad vantages of obtaining an architectural education in the region where the conditions of materials, construction and ways of working closely resemble those which are found where the graduate proposes to practice are very evident to all architects and build ers. The prospect for a successful career to architects of advanced taste and skill was never more brilliant, especially in this part of the United States, where the difficulties of obtaining a pro fessional education have been heretofore so great as to put it beyond the reach of many young men."H \,yhile the requirements for admission were made quite clear in the course catalog, the end result of such a specialization were not obvious to the general student body. Their newspaper com plained that, "what degree is given to graduates in this course is not stated, and seems to be a mystery."45 Jenney himself knew that he wanted "to graduate students having at least the basis of a good architectural education. "4 6 Despite the limitations of his interaction with the campus community, Jenney did have very positive relations with both faculty and students outside of the classroom. In his ongoing

correspondence with Angell, he would mention his associa tions with other facultyY The campus athletes who formed the boating crew asked him to design a new gymnasium where they and all the other members of the campus Boating Association might train during the winter. He obliged with plans for a "plain yet handsome" wooden building measuring 40 x 60 feet, whose expense nevertheless surpassed the means of the student population and the indulgences of the regents. 48 Just to the west of State Street, the economies of architecture were much more feasible for a select group of students with their own resources. They hired Jenney to design their private meet ing hall. He provided drawings for a compact Gothic-Italianate box with elements of mystery and exclusivity in its appearance. Against a backdrop of open lawns and little foliage, this dark brick vault must have seemed forbidding to neighbors along Williams Street. Without windows for peering in or out, the build ing was a place of secret ceremony for the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity. Only well above street level didJenney allow for more fanciful ornamentation in the decorative corbels and opaque windows appearing in a progression of "ascending forms."49 Com pleted in 1879, this most inaccessible structure was eventually to become the sole surviving representation of Jenney's pres ence in Ann Arbor. The same fraternity commissioned Jenney to design a residence, later dismantled in an era less apprecia tive of the "New Gothic." Even though Jenney instructed relatively few students, many more who knew of him expressed their interest in undertaking an expedition around the world with him and Professor Joseph Beal Steere, the new professor of paleontology and curator of the university's natural history collections. So many students had applied to partake in the expedition that the two professors decided to postpone the departure in order to revise plans. 50 By the time the team left in r879,Jenney was no longer available to join in the adventure which led Steere and his five student assis tants to the Amazon. Jenney did, however, contribute to the success of Steere's ex plorations by designing a new museum of natural history to dis play the thousands of specimens of birds, reptiles, mammals, and plants brought home to Ann Arbor from exotic locations. Constructed in r880 with the regents' insistence upon fire-proof

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safety and low expenses, the museum featured fanciful beasts on its facade of brick and terra cotta and distinct interior spaces devoted to mineralogy, zoology, paleontology, botany, and even a new department of photography. At first the student critics praised the building for providing "an exception to the other wise uninterrupted ugliness which prevails in our college build ings. "5' Later its attraction was greatly diminished by structural problems in the roof. During the same hectic summer when he was planning the museum from his office in Chicago, Jenney was also sending notes to Angell about his addition to the university's depart ment of homeopathy. This second job was considered so minor that Jenney's role as architect was eventually forgotten by his successors in the university's buildings and grounds depart mentY Despite its later insignificance, the building was not without special interest for Jenney. Although he knew that his job was to "copy substantially the two wards now existing," he deliberated over how to insure good hygiene and comfort. He decided to omit any wooden tracery across the ward, since he felt that it may be "distressing to nervous patients." He feared that wainscotting might increase the liability of infection, and that windows without screens would be useless .:i3 He even sent a detailed section to Angell showing his proposal for introducing warmed fresh air into the ward, although he decided that "the question of heat at patients heads we will leave to the doctors."54 Despite his enthusiasm for design and teaching in Ann Arbor, William Le Baron Jenney was unable to continue beyond his first year in the classroom. After just two semesters, the univer sity felt forced to terminate its course offerings in architecture. A series of misfortunes seemed to conspire against the new architecture program. The most offensive was a tangled web of malfeasance created by two professors in chemistry. Their misuse of laboratory funds divided the university community and incurred the wrath of the state legislature. The reluctance of the university to respond quickly to its internal discord may have further alienated the legislators from the north who were campaigning for the transfer of the School of Mines to the Upper Peninsula. Even without unfavorable publicity and con flicting regional interests, operating funds for the university were hard to secure at the end of the 1870s. The whole country

ASSOCIATE & GUIDE

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was suffering from a depression which led the state to reduce expenditures in many areas.5" Even President Angell's salary was lowered. Jenney could not have overlooked the irony of his own record at spending far less than what was allotted for the architecture program. 56 The School of Mines, and the architecture program within it, were not abandoned without protest. Printed in the Board of Regents proceedings for October 1877 is President Angell's complaint that , "surely in the downfall of badly planned and ill足 constructed buildings, causing not only destruction of property but also of life, we are receiving eloquent appeals for the thor足 ough training of architects. We do not need to leave our own grounds to be reminded of the advantages which might accrue to us from the employment of architects of chaste and cultivated taste. "57

Just before Christmas in 1878, Jenney added his own eight pages of a "memoir," at the request of the Board of R egents. For only $5,000 per year, he estimated, the Department of Architec足 ture and Design could resume its previous activities. He too ap足 pealed to the civic responsibility of legislators to help further good architecture for its sanitary, safety, and aesthetic benefits.58

To his credit, Jenney never left any evidence of bitterness about the limitations of the university 's commitment to him. In fact, he made quite clear his eagerness to revive the teaching of architecture. Even during the busy year of 1879, as he was over seeing the construction of the First Leiter building in Chicago, he wrote to Angell that, "I am ready to do as you decide for the best, requiring but a few days previous notice."59 Despite the parsimonious constraints, the challenge of working in the envi ronment of a growing and groping Midwestern university must have appealed to the major. The university had offered him yet another type of building site upon which to expand his confi dent self expression, with the unintimidated spirit so character istic of the Chicago architects after the fire. He recalled late in life that, "what success I have had I attribute to my engineer training in the Ecole Centrale and in the war under Generals Grant and Sherman. It is a standing rule in the army- When one has orders to do anything he must find a way to do it-This was so deeply instilled in my mind that when I was ordered by the Home Insurance Company of New York to design for them a building under conditions not before presented, I invented the Steel Skeleton Construction, in order to carry out my orders. "60 A bold but sentimental leader, Jenney did not abandon Ann Arbor easily. After his short tenure as professor, he returned to oversee his few building sites and to visit friends, whose homes remained open to him. The Pond family in particular welcomed him back to Ann Arbor. Elihu and Mary Pond no doubt dis cussed the welfare of their son Irving, who began his appren ticeship as an architect in Jenney's office in Chicago. vVithin a few decades, Jenney's muse um and the Pond brothers' Michi gan Union would face one another from opposite sides of State Street. The rails from Ann Arbor to Chicago were travelled by sev eral other Michigan alumni as well. Already during Jenney 's tenure, a club known as "Michigan University of Chicago" was formed by over fifty graduates. 61 One of Jenney's students, William Augustus Otis, had impressed him so much that th e former teacher and student became partners. Otis, who like Jenney arrived in Chicago after further studies in Paris, there by achieved a higher status in his office than draftsmen includ ing William Holabird , Martin Roche, and George Elmslie.

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ASSOCIATE & GLIDE

By 1958, with the specimens long since removed to the newer and much larger museum along Geddes, Jenney's museum was ignobly levelled with little fuss. His campus buildings gone, his legacy became even less obvious. Yet at the centennial of his arrival in Ann Arbor, students of architecture celebrated his memory by decorating a wall of the college's drafting studios with a large portrait entitled 'Jenney lives."

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I AM MOST DESIROUS OF GOING TO ANN ARBOR

In September 1906, Ann Arbor's State Street was the scene of the familiar but terrifying spree of a runaway team of horses. Inside the university of Michigan's offices along that shaded and as yet unpaved street, the chief administrator was at work trying to harness the modern prospects of the new century. Elderly President James B. Angell, though just recovering from a serious operation, marvelled at the arrival of a student body numbering over 5,000; oversaw the installation of the university's first telephone system; fretted to the Board of Regents about the lack of state aid for campus improvements; and welcomed the new faculty member from the East who was to revive the university's architectural program. 62 Emil Lorch, age thirty-five and newly-wed to George Elmslie's sister Jemima, came to Ann Arbor on September 4 as the new professor of architecture. His arrival marked the beginning of the present architectural pro gram at Michigan. As he and his bride moved into their house, just one block south of campus on Monroe, Lorch's thoughts must have been occupied by his upcoming professional duties. He was aware that his new academic home had almost thirty years earlier ter minated its appointment of architect vVilliam Le Baron Jenney and his courses in architecture after only two years of funding from the state. He surely knew too that President Angell had welcomed Jenney to campus and had shortly thereafter bid him farewell, albeit regrettably. Despite the ominous precedent, the support of his contemporaries at the university and colleagues elsewhere would have reassured Lorch. He had, after all, cam paigned strongly for the position, stating in the draft of one let ter that, "I am most desirous of going to Ann Arbor and will not haggle over the salary."6 3 His eagerness and his credentials as a graduate of MIT, general assistant to the director of the Art Institute of Chicago, teaching assistant at Harvard, and assis tant professor at Drexel Institute in Philadelphia led his alma mater's F.W. Chandler to promise to "do anything I can to help you to be considered a candidate. " 64

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Among the pOSltIVe endorsements for Lorch was one enig matic letter which failed to mention his name. Louis Sullivan, in response to Lorch's request for his support for the position, considered the job but not its candidate. This omission was de spite the assurance from Elmslie to Lorch that Sullivan "says he will write to Angell a fundamental note and mention you as the party for the job."65 Instead, in his letter to President Angell, Sullivan offered his advice , and quite possibly his own services, to the university. He wrote, "I am thus taking the liberty to bring myself to your notice, because I assume that it is perhaps the on ly means by which you are likely to learn of my existence (not withstanding my international reputation as an Architect) or be put on the track of the life-thought that I have given to the de velopment of a democratic architecture in a democratic land." 66 Sullivan's solicitation might have been inspired more out of a need for income (since his business was at its lowest) than a gen uine interest in the "University of Michigan. 67 With no college de gree but plenty of seniority in apprenticing Chicago architects, he had a feisty skepticism for any architectural school system and was otherwise not adverse to voicing his contempt. 68 In the face of competition for the position , Lorch had the advan tage of support from his hometown of Detroit, where his German immigrant father shed tears at the news of his son's appoint ment. 69 The family's local connections served him well during the university's search. Among others, Regent Levi Barbour of Detroit had encouraged Lorch to apply for the position since it would give him "great pride in bringing a Detroit boy back to Michigan with the honor of a promotion. " 7° Key to his success ful bid for the appointment was the Michigan Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, to whom the university had given the responsibility of choosing the appropriate candidate. 7 ! The chapter had lobbied the Board of Regents earlier for the new position, most likely through Regent Frank Ward Fletcher since it was he who brought the issue to the board's attention. Fletcher's responsibilities as chairman of the university's Com mittee on Buildings and Grounds and his ties to the lumbering business in Alpena would have given him some idea of the is sues associated with an architectural program on campus. 72 Lorch acknowledged his indebtedness to the chapter by re sponding to its request for a written report from him only a few

weeks after he had assumed his new responsibilities. In this letter of 25 October 1906, which he described as his first written statement following his appointment , he mentioned his satisfac tion with an enrollment of twenty-three studentsJ3 His greatest challenge, he reported, was the lack of space and equipment to house even such a small group of people. He also wrote that he intended to improve the students' weak skills in drawing by organizing a "Sketch Club." At least one of these first students, Jean Paul Slusser, must have overcome any shortcomings since years after his graduation in 1909 he joined the faculty to teach drawing and painting. The composition of the student body was of great concern to Lorch. While he sought to increase the volume by sending out thousands of copies of an advertisement about the program, he was also determined to cultivate those who were, in his view, most able. 74 To a woman in Iowa, who had written to President Angell to express her interest in the new architecture program at Michigan, Lorch crafted a careful response. The draft of his letter shows his struggle to articulate a proper amount of lim ited encouragement. Between deletions and modifications, he cautioned that, "Because of the 'all-round' kind of demands made of the profession of architecture very few young women are now practicing that profession. But for those with the proper equip ment in the artistic and constructional fields, and with some business ability, there should be ample opportunity in the direc tion of house building. "7j Although they were not welcomed heartily, women did in fact appear in the architecture classrooms as soon as Lorch arrived on campus. There were varying degrees of acceptance allowing female faculty to teach freehand drawing and watercolor paint ing and coeds to hold class offices, participate in organizing festivities, andjoin the ranks of members elected to the Architec tural Honorary Fraternity, Tau Sigma Delta. 76 One of the ear liest architecture coeds, with the disarmingly coquettish name of Delight Sweney, recalled "my first morning in the engineer ing school [in 19I5J when I had to walk from one end of the building to the other. It happened that, being the first morning of the year all the doors were locked & there were billions of men standing at the doors to be let in & all staring. I can still remember how my knees banged together - how pigeon toed I

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walked - & how I got red & white by turns & wanted to run & yell. I can remember coming into the drafting room on occa sions (for almost 3 years I was the only girl) & hearing the tail end of a story or a curse & then having some shamefaced young ster come up & say 'Pat [sic], I'm awfully sorry!' & then assur ing him earnestly that it was perfectly all right! that I hadn't heard a word!"77 Miss Sweney did not graduate. She did however return to a warm and triumphal reunion, which she remembered in her response to an alumnae survey of 1924. Amid the handwritten recollections of many schoolteachers, librarians, and homemak ers, Sweney's memories of Michigan are unique: "And one of the biggest things is when I came back to A.A. last spring - first after I had gotten my architect's license + Prof. Rousseau & McConkey, Mr. Makielski, Mrs. Green & a few others congrat ulated me & seemed glad that I had it & that I was the first girl who had studied at Mich. to get it - that they still remembered me & were glad of my little success - well is it any wonder that one stands up - sticks his chest out & says - 'My college? Why my college is Michigan' & then he's off, telling about the size, the spirit, new buildings, conference championships, & old mem ories that gather in the smoke. " 78 The identity of Delight Sweney and her fellow female class mates was conspicuous even in impersonal records since their full names would appear in any listing of students who were otherwise mentioned by last name only. To compensate for their exclusion from the vocabulary and activities of the male academics, these women joined with engineering coeds once a month in their own T-Square Society, established in 1915 to "help make up for the lack of social relationships with the other women of the campus, prevented by the nature of their work." 79 Minorities were not solicited by the college either. Even though Ann Arbor's population of African Americans had increased by nearly 50 per cent between Igoo and IglO, their closest associ ation with architecture was almost entirely as construction la borers on the many job sites around town. 80 One early exception was the classmate of architecture students, Cornelius Langston Henderson of Detroit. He received his University of Michigan degree in civil engineering in IgI I and went on to design in Ig2g the first all-welded-steel factory building in the country.8'

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DESIROCS OF GOING TO ANN ARBOR

An exclusive selection of "only those men ... who are of good character" determined the membership of the architecture fra ternity on campus. 8> Sigma Upsilon was founded at the Univer sity of Michigan on April 9, 1909. The first minutes indicate the young men's eagerness to consult with Frank Lloyd Wright, George Booth, and George Mason about possible activities of the club. 83 In fact, Wright was invited to speak to the club just one month after its formation. He agreed and offered the lec ture title of "Out of an Architect's Workshop." However, he can celled his commitment via telegram at the last minute. 84 (Wright would a few months thereafter depart from Oak Park and the Midwest to join his mistress Mamah Cheney in Europe. Cheney had graduated from the University of Michigan in 1892.)85 The fraternity's subsequent efforts at camaraderie and edification were more successful. Competitions were held to design a seal

for the club and a page in the 1912 yearbook. 86 Members were also asked to choose colors for the students' requisite smock. The winning combination reflected more than one type of patriotism with "Yellow for Fresh., Red for Soph., White for Jr., and Blue for Sr. "87 Five years after its establishment, the club merged with the architectural fraternity at the University of Illinois. At a meet ing in Chicago, representatives of these two schools created a new national organization with the name Alpha Rho Chi.88 Ohio State University and the University of Minnesota reenforced the Midwestern identity by establishing chapters in 1915 and 1916 respectively. The fraternity brothers in Ann Arbor behaved as bans vivants in their antics of celebration and mockery. They reported proudly to the national newsletter about their appraisal of campus ar chitecture: "A very unique celebration was held this spring by the department to commemorate a great event. The Campus has for many years been marred by a group of old wooden struc tures adjacent to the Engineering building. The campus has been improved from time to time, but the old one story Surveying buildings with their cupolas and moss-covered roofs remained untouched, much to the disgust of the school in general and the Architectural department in particular. The Michigan Alumni will be glad to hear that they were at last removed. Hence, the celebration. It consisted of a procession which marched around

the campus at midnight, bearing a wooden effigy of one of the buildings. A chant was sung and a gong sounded at definite intervals which made it very impressive. Arriving at the newly cleared ground a ring was formed and the effigy burned amid足 not sobs-but shouts of joy that the scare-crow buildings were gone. "89 The parent of the architecture program at Michigan was the university's Department of Engineering. Having existed contin足 ually as a unit of the university since 1858, this department was a firm base for architecture (and much more established than the university's School of Mines to which Jenney had reported). Furthermore, the engineering faculty showed signs of enthusi足 asm in expanding in several directions including architecture. Just prior to Lorch's arrival, the department had built the coun足 try's first naval tank for the study of ship design and a few years later the department inaugurated the country's first academic

Albert Kahn 's Engineering Building, located at the southeast edge oj campus, served as the home Jor the architecture programJrom 1906 until the Art and Architecture Building (later renamed Lorch Hall) was built in 1928'7

DESIROUS OF GOI~G TO ANN ARBOR

program in automotive engineering. 90 The dean of the engl neering program, Mortimer Cooley, welcomed the addition of architecture to the curriculum but he did not stand in the way of the almost immediate efforts towards autonomy. He agreed to "speed the parting guest. "9 1 Less than two years after Lorch's arrival, the regents were approached by architects about the issue. It was reported in their May Ig07 minutes that, "Regent Dean read a communication from the American Institute of Architects asking that Architecture in this University be made a separate Department."9 1 The "guest" had found lodgings within the new engineering building but space was hardly ample: "The headquarters of the department were on the top floor of the west wing of the West En gineering building and consisted of a small classroom, a small drafting room and an office adjoining that of Professor Charles Denison with whom the head of Arch. shared the use and cost of a telephone which for a time the University could not afford. "93 The collection of books accumulated by Jenney were trans ferred from the General Library to the library of the engineering department, enabling the architecture students to have readier access to sources including Viollet-Ie-Duc's dictionary of French architecture. It was the only work in the set inherited fromJenney that Lorch considered particularly valuable. Lorch's modest tri bute to his predecessor was his acknowledgement of the publi cations gathered by Jenney, who died just months after Lorch's renewal of the architecture program. 94 In his personal correspondence Lorch revealed that at the out set of his career at Michigan he was uncertain of just what a formal education in architecture should, or could, provide. He wanted somehow to combine the cultural and technical work of the architecture student, and he admitted that architectural de sign was the most difficult subject to teach. 95 By offering several courses in design in that first semester, Lorch faced the chal lenge head-on. He was attempting to apply his earlier work on the abstract compositional rules of "pure design," which he had studied under Arthur Wesley Dow at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and furthered during his employment in Chicago as the assistant director of the Art Institute. 96 In a paper presented in IgOI to the Architectural League of America, Lorch proposed his approach to the teaching of design.

The rough draft of his paper sketches his theory. He wrote, "In all arts of expression, creative ability distinguishes the art ist from the workman or laborer and the power of finding an artistic solution of an otherwise purely utilitarian problem dis tinguishes the greatest art craftsman-the architect-from the builder ... My premise is that this end can be most nearly at tained by exercises in pure design from the very beginning of the first year followed by what is called applied or industrial design throughout the remainder of the course parallel with the more direct architectural design study and in order to develop as much as possible the student's perceptive power, apprecia tion of the beauty of line, form and color and the necessity of harmonious inter-relation between these - or beauty, leaving the study of historic forms to a later period in his course, studying these styles of art and architecture as illustrations of expression during various epochs and under certain conditions rather than as absolute standards for the designer of today."97 Lorch imple mented this concept of design by requiring his students to be gin with courses in the principles and possibilities of design through simple shapes, color tones, and lines. 98 Along with teaching, Lorch became immediately engaged in deliberations about new buildings on campus. He wrote to Chandler at MIT that the opportunity to apply his professional skills to Ann Arbor's campus pleased him. As a member of the building committee of the university, he was asked even before his arrival in town to offer advice about plans for a new dental building and a dormitory for women (which would be designed and built a few years later by Albert Kahn, thanks no doubt in part to Kahn's personal acquaintanceship with the building's benefactors, the Joy family of Detroit).99 Lorch was also assigned the task of serving on a committee to design a master plan for the entire campus. In his opinion, the lack of any uniformity or "harmony" made the campus ap pear incoherent. It bothered him that "the present West Eng. Bldg. and the Psych. Ward [both by the Kahn brothers] were the only modern U. structures. There was no campus plan, the U. stables, paint shop and power house occupying some of the most important sites on the old campus with much 'variety' in material, color, and design, since further emphasized."lOo Drawn by instructor Alice Hunt, the scheme that Lorch and the other

DESIROUS OF GOING TO ANN ARBOR

DESIROUS OF GOING TO AN N ARBOR

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committee members presented to the regents in 1907 was never realized in its entirety. It presented a more formal symmetry to the campus, both along its outer avenues and within the interior spaces of the Diag. It was not implemented due to the adminis足 tration's reluctance to remove older buildings and its inability to devote funds to acquiring land beyond the boundaries of the main block, even despite the power of eminent domain achieved in 1908.'0' These explanations overshadowed the committee's at足 tempts to abide by Angell's parsimony by providing for "as few changes as possible at as slight expense as can be managed. "102 "Very elastic" modifications, which would ideally include some sort of uniformity in materials such as red brick , were the most forceful recommendations of the committee. In terms of actual use, the most successful features of this attempt at a more formal definition of the campus were the axes leading to an eventual mall and landscaping which framed the eclectic facilities. Lorch was eager to gain the approval of Frederick Law Olmsted for the committee's design. He was therefore more than a little frustrated when Olmsted visited Ann Arbor and discussed the plan as it was presented by committee member Mortimer Cooley, unbeknownst to Lorch., 03

Cosmopolitan by nature, Lorch matched his new affiliation with the university with a commitment to the enhancement of architectural education beyond his own setting. As he settled

into his new surroundings, he solicited the support of his col足 leagues in the East and the Midwest for his ideas. His method of information gathering through correspondence provided an effective means for him to consider Michigan's relationship to other schools of architecture . He and his colleagues were just beginning to rely on telephone conversations, the professional conference, and state licensing as standardizing influences in the formation of architectural pedagogy. Lorch made a point of reminding his eastern associates to include the University of Michigan in efforts at coordination. 104 In 19II, Michigan's role was further substantiated by its inclusion among the Ameri足 can Institute of Architects list of recognized schools. Seniority was a surer assumption in the new ACSA since the University of Michigan was a charter member. Lorch asserted the Michi足 gan model for teaching architecture in his authorship of the ACSA "standard minima." 10 5 He also became the first president of the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards. All of these efforts cast Lorch as a visionary of high American professional standards in an era when alternatives to European academic pedagogy, with its own set of conformities, were not so obvious. One written survey undertaken by Lorch concerned the fea足 sibility of university extension courses for builders in Detroit and elsewhere. The university's connections with Detroit were particularly strong in that era. Faculty and regents rode the train back and forth for meetings, classes, recruitments, and social events. In proposing these off-site courses, Lorch acknowledged the convenience of access as a prerequisite. He wrote, "Detroit is but 37 miles from Ann Arbor on the main line of the New York Central lines, which affords excellent service."106 Even more important, Lorch also conveyed a progressive sense of civic obligation to improve the architectural quality of "all classes of buildings." New opportunities for leadership by the architect abounded, given the architects' and clients' mutual interest in expanding the morphology of aesthetic architecture. Lorch endorsed this democratization by writing that, "Classes of buildings which formerly were hardly considered from an artistic point of view, such as factories, warehouses, and the like are now designed by architects. Our great corporations have come to a realization of the value of buildings which are at

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DESIROCS OF GOING TO ANN ARBOR

once adequate, attractive and interesting. Cities everywhere, by means of general improvement plans, are recognizing the need of good design in everything, and in this city planning develop ment the architect is playing a most important part. " IG 7 Detroit in particular would be an opportune location for ex tension from the University of Michigan. Between I910 and I920, the city's population nearly doubled, from 465,766 to 993,678.108 A few years later, Detroit would become the fastest growing city in the country. 109 Despite the disinterest or criticism of some of the architectural educators who answered his survey, Lorch proceeded to plan for extension courses which would material ize a few years later.II G Impressions, visions, and choices in the full autumn months of I906 formed an agenda for Lorch to follow for the next thirty five years of his active career at Michigan. Lorch prophesied his own future in a letter of encouragement to a prospective stu dent who had just heard of the new program at Michigan. He wrote, "Our aim is to combine the cultural and technical work, both of which are so needed by our practitioners today. Ann Arbor is a pretty little town where I think you would enjoy not only your work but your life."111 The pleasantries of Ann Arbor were indeed abundant and Lorch was by no means alone in his enthusiasm over its attrac tions. In 19I3 the new Ann Arbor Civic Association adopted the motto of ''A City of Knowledge and Homes" to emphasize the local values of home ownership and education. 112 But de spite the comfortable ambience, Lorch was at least once in his early years in Ann Arbor tempted to move on. Through Elmslie, he let it be known at the University of Illinois that he would welcome an invitation to head the architecture department in Champaign. In the summer of 1913 a series of correspondence was exchanged, with Lorch insisting upon the autonomy of the architecture department at the University of Illinois as a condi tion of his accepting any offer. His ultimatum was especially bold given that the creator of the architecture program at Illi nois, architect Nathan C. Ricker, was still the active dean of the College of Engineering in which the department of architecture was located. 113 In the end, Illinois could not promise any such administrative alteration. Its president apologized to Lorch that, "it takes time

to do things in the corn belt."I I4l\"evertheless, the appeal of Illi足 nois to Lorch reveals his ambitions and frustrations with the University of Michigan. Elmslie, ever Lorch's advocate, explained that, "Professor Lorch has always wanted to get a little bit nearer Chicago and in closer touch with a more active teaching field."II5 Lorch probably still considered himself engaged in the Chicago community of architects, who as a group had by 1913 a well-developed and distinct self-identity.1 16 Almost as soon as he arrived at Michigan he was escorting students to Chicago on field trips to see the work of Sullivan , Burnham, and other ac足 quaintances. During one of these visits he had his students show Sullivan their plates of work in abstract design. His satisfac足 tion with Sullivan's approval stayed with him his whole life. 117 University of Michigan's President Hutchins (Angell's suc足 cessor) urged Lorch to remain in Ann Arbor, pleading that, "we

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can't allow you to go. "118 At the time of the Illinois bid, Lorch had just succeeded in convincing the University of Michigan to grant his program its own identity as a free-standing department. This accomplishment was underscored by a new and strong, but ultimately troubling appointment to the architecture pro gram. It was a curious counterpoint to Lorch's interest in Illi nois. During the same days when he was contemplating head ing west, Lorch invited Sidney Fiske Kimball of the University of Illinois to join the ~1ichigan faculty to teach design and architectural history. The letter of invitation is a clear measure of Lorch 's ambivalence about Ann Arbor. In the typewritten and formal offer to Kimball, Lorch was very positive about the opportunities at Michigan. But in his handwritten postscript, he asked Kimball about the situation at Illinois, "since there is a possibility that I may go there and naturally am curious of learning as much as possible about the situation."119 Kimball arrived and Lorch remained. 120 The interests of Kimball and Lorch converged upon the con venient history of Greek Revival architecture in Ann Arbor, with Kimball making a study of the best examplars. Kimball's article about these buildings suggests his sense of novelty but also his limited commitment to the historical architecture of the Mid west. He wrote about himself, "to the writer, coming to them a stranger, they have had a special appeal, and with some of his students- John Jewell, 'IS, Louis Voorhees, 'r6, and Dorothy Probst, '18, he has sought to record their history. Only a begin ning has been made, and others must carryon the work, but enough is already accomplished to make possible an outline."121 Following his appreciation for the documentation of history, he and his students prepared drawings of some of these homes. How ever, this local project was modest in comparison to Kimball's preparation, while in Ann Arbor, of one of the country's first dis sertations in architectural history. \Vith visits to see documents at the Massachusetts Historical Society, he composed an inno vative thesis on "Thomas Jefferson and the First Monument of the Classical Revival in America." The dissertation was a strong case for the rigorous use of original documents in architectural history. Its methodology, based on antiquarian evidence not readily available to academics in the Midwest, could justify Kimball's preferences for an appointment elsewhere in the east.

Even more so, however, could Michigan's treatment of him during World War I. Kimball was among those whom the uni versity investigated in its panic to dismiss any disloyal faculty. (While Kimball was away from Ann Arbor, his colleague Wells Bennett advised him that, "there is great excitement here over the war and the militarists have come into their own. The engi neers and medics are especially rabid.") 122 The final report of investigator John C. Parker (professor of electrical engineering) admits failure in trying to reveal anything more damnable than Mrs. Kimball's ethnic heritage. Parker allowed that, "the utmost in the way of definite evidence seems to be that Mrs. Kimball is of German extraction. The habit of ostentation generally be lieved to be beyond Kimball's means, has been explained by Dame Rumor as the result of German subsidy. This seems to be about the extent of evidence against him." 12 3 Despite the investi gator's provocation, Lorch remained mute as he most likely winced at the shared vulnerability of German descendants. With out any overt acknowledgement of the investigation, Kimball left Michigan to lead the new McIntire School of Fine Arts at the University of Virginia. His final dissatisfaction with Ann Arbor was, however, revealed in a letter sent from his new office at the University of Virginia to Bennett. He confided that, "you may imagine I am looking forward with some amusement to meeting my dear friend Lorch there [in ''''ashington] at the As sociation of Collegiate Schools of Architecture. Of course our School is not even eligible to membership in that yet and no doubt he will make every effort to keep us out. I should be ea ger to watch him however, when he sees the big rendered per spective of a commission of mine here-a new open air amphi theatre for concerts, costing s60,ooo.oo-which will hang in the architectural exhibition in connection with the Convention. All told, you see, I am having a lot more fun than if I had stayed at Michigan!" 124 In contrast to Kimball's impatience with Michigan, other early faculty followed lengthy careers in Ann Arbor. Lorch, Bennett, design professor JJ. Albert Rousseau, construction professor George McDonald McConkey, and design professor Louis Holmes Boynton stayed with the program until retirement or death. Theirs were not necessarily carefree appointments either. Although he would eventually succeed Lorch as dean, Bennett's

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early years at Michigan were no more secure than those of other junior faculty. Disregarding any possible comparison with him self, Lorch faulted Bennett for not having had "several years of hard routine architectural experience in the field and in archi tects' offices." 12 5 Nine years after his own arrival, Lorch hired]]. Albert Rousseau as senior professor of design. Rousseau was Quebecois by birth , had studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, and created an image of himself as a "conservative modernist" in his teaching and in his work, including the Masonic temple and St. Mary's Student Chapel in Ann Arbor. 126 The Michigan students took an imme diate liking to Rousseau and encouraged him to stay by dedi cating their section of the yearbook to him. 12 7 Loyal to Ann Arbor until his premature death (in 1931), Rousseau entered the 1922 Chicago Tribune competition and won an honorable mention. An effusive newspaper tribute for his achievement in the com petition credited him with legitimizing Michigan's leadership. It stated that, "The college of architecture, the university, Ann Arbor, and even the state of Michigan profited by the entry of Prof. Rousseau. It showed the designers throughout the country that this section of the nation is rising in the architectural world and that the time is not long distant when the east would be forced to recognize the work done in the middle west. "128 Practicing architects in the state of Michigan were the first to endorse the university's program in architecture through mon etary contributions. In 1910, having surpassed by just a few years the length of Jenney's attempt at an architecture program, Lorch was pleased to acknowledge the establishment of two scholarships in architecture through the gifts of Albert Kahn and the Michigan Chapter of the American Institute of Architec ture. In what were surely either coordinated or competitive ges tures, Kahn and the chapter each donated $55.00 to the college. 129 Another, almost familial tribute to the program in architec ture was the attention given it by the Pond brothers. Natives of Ann Arbor, Irving Kane Pond and Allen Bartlit Pond achieved their own significant status as Chicagoan architects with their progressive approach to public architecture, evidenced by their work on Hull House and Irving's contribution to the industrial town of Pullman. They were dutiful in responding to Lorch's queries and forthright with their opinions about the program.

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The interest in Ann Arbor was not by any means strictly nos talgic or beneficent for these two Michigan alumni. The broth ers would gladly ride the rails homeward from Chicago to win commissions along the periphery of the expanding campus. Local connections and reputation made the homecoming sweet. In 1910, Dean Henry M. Bates of the Law School approached Irving Kane Pond with the proposal to build a student union. Pond reasoned later that Bates had asked him and his younger brother because they had "gained broad experience in the housing and accommodation of various classes of people." '3° The result of the deal was a multi-purpose, campus clubhouse, which would "minister broadly to the social and communal life" of the uni versity's male students and faculty. 13 1Funds for the building had been raised through aggressive solicitation of the alumni, with penurious former President Angell spearheading the drive for

others' money. The success of this building would be matched years later with the Ponds' complementary, feminized building for women, another "modern expression of college life" according to its architects. '3 2 The creed of the Pond brothers reflects a savvy but sympa thetic sense of the University of Michigan and their perceived "role of an intermediary, halfway between the revolutionary aes thetics and technology of the Chicago school and the taste for traditional architecture .. . clients often felt that precedent or literary aesthetics required."133 The Pond brothers ' statement of belief could just as well represent the emerging ethos of the Department of Architecture under Lorch's leadership, which was that "our work is not outre, it neither seeks the expression of a freakish individuality, nor does it disclose a straining for individuality; but it does attempt to use the forms to which we, in common with others, are heirs, in a fresh way which seems to us to express the purpose to which the building is to be put and the character of the time in which we live." '34

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The end of the First World War allowed the beginning of an era of maturation for the program in architecture. Studies could resume, eventually enhanced with cosmopolitan visiting lectur ers in a new building devoted solely to the fields of architecture and design. Some had interrupted their education for military duties including the new Air Service. Ruth Love Archibald had temporarily left Ann Arbor to work as a mechanical drafts"man" (as she noted) in automobile factories and Catherine B. Heller helped build seaplane wings.' 35 Harold Batin was welcomed back to the school from his service as a member of the military's entertainment staff and, more specifically, "member of the band which introduced jazz to Paris. "13 6 The devastation of war led to work overseas for three others who were chosen from among a national pool of applicants to go to France to aid in reconstruc tion.'37 In a letter to Cniversity of Michigan President Marion Burton, Emil Lorch proudly announced the departure of these three students, who were Robert V Gay, Armin A. Roemer, and Horace W. Wachter. 138 Shortly after the Armistice, Lorch was feted by the Michigan Chapter of the American Institute of Architects and the Michi gan Society of Architects. Following a dinner of roast chicken and "fancy peach ices" at the Detroit Athletic Club, the gather ing could enjoy the offerings of cigars and cigarettes and listen to six men praise Lorch's leadership. This assembly of about 100 architects and businessmen endorsed Lorch's dual efforts of creating a separate college of architecture and locating it in a building of its own.139 Their voice vote that evening did not translate into a building fund , however. Instead the war's end allowed Lorch and his faculty to begin what would amount to a lengthy campaign for a new building and better program and to abandon the protest over the exclu sion of architecture from the university's authorized curricu lum for the Student Army Training Corps.'40 The focus upon so many returning veterans also diverted Lorch's attention away from concerns over an envisioned intrusion into the state of

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Michigan did not secede entirely from a Beaux-Arts orientation 24

Michigan of ill-prepared, unregistered builders who might take jobs away from educated, licensed architects. '4 ' The heroic slogans of war service were replaced with somewhat vague forecasts for the architecture profession. Lorch told freshmen that the strength of future architects and engineers would be based upon "a sound spirit of nationalism," leaving behind a "passing of the old individualism" characterized by unregistered practitioners. '4 2

At the same time that Lorch heralded "nationalism" as the future commonality of professionals' architecture, he wondered more than ever if the location of his school in the Midwest might not afford it opportunities unavailable to the East. His delib erations fit architectural historian David Van Zan ten's observa tion that, "the idea that the West was different, more innova tive, and better organized, is a fundamental motif of American self-analysis. "143 Lorch shared his almost constant assessments with leading architects, a practice he had begun as soon as he arrived in Ann Arbor in Ig06. Chicago-based Irving Kane Pond did not know what to make of the following question asked by Lorch in his survey of Ig23: "should the schools of the Middle West reflect the conditions of the Middle West or try to build up a curriculum similar to that of the schools of the East?" Pond answered by resisting the distinction. He wrote, "The thing that strikes me at first is the assumption that there is a difference of conditions between the East and Midwest which would call for a difference in architectural training. That I might not be dis posed to grant without a more serious consideration of the subject. Another apparent assumption is that the curricula of the Eastern schools cannot be changed, but that those of the West ern schools might be changed to meet growing conditions. "144 Others with clear opinions responded unequivocally to Lorch's survey. Bertram Goodhue dictated, while gazing out of his New York office, that, "anything that fails to reflect the conditions of the middle west would be desirable. If Main Street and Gopher Prairie are to have an architecture of their own it will have to come about through very different methods from those in vogue anywhere in the world and its coming about won't happen I fancy for some thousands of years."14S Louis Sullivan, to the contrary, wrote to Lorch that the East ern schools "are wasting four years of the plastic period of young men, and that you can improve upon these methods by supply ing the missing element of sanity."14 6 No matter what the vary ing points of view, Lorch felt that the question was not only valid but important since "the architectural point of view is still a relatively new one in the middle west and hence needs whole hearted support."147 A few years after his survey, Lorch contin ued to highlight the differences in his efforts to distinguish midwestern pedagogy. In Ig28 he complained that there was

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too much standardization in design due to Beaux-Arts competi tions held among schools in the East. '4 8 Lorch's questions, al though directed at men of contrasting opinions, seem to have confirmed his preconceived distinctions. Over time he evinced a "continuing faith in western architectural progressivism."'49 What is just as informative as his Midwestern orientation is the continuing urge to compare and the confident, albeit some what confusing, accommodation of varying points of view. Lorch was credited by his immediate administrative superior, Dean Mortimer Cooley, with developing for the college a "catholic attitude towards the views held on architectural education by different groups of architects."'5 0 Numbers alone created an image for the University of Michi gan as an increasingly significant school of architecture. Given the lack of adequate physical facilities, it is a wonder that the school both retained faculty who were eight men to an office and attracted more freshmen, who found themselves sharing desks "as close to one another as office buildings in a big city."'5' By 1922, the architecture program was the third largest in the country. By 1925, its enrollment had risen to 337. Lorch claimed that growth was not at the expense of quality since he did not flinch from dismissing unsuccessful students.'5 2 A small minority of female students claimed even more of a place in the crowded classrooms and occasionally among the recipients of college honors. One of these women no doubt con fused matters with her masculine name of Lawrence Sims, which contrasts impressively with her very feminine visage in the student yearbook.'53 To underscore the importance of gen der, Lorch would continue to refer to coeds as "young women" alongside references to "architectural students."' 5 ~ The official exclusion of women from certain social activities on campus was insured by the opening in 1919 of the :Michigan "Cnion, a location into which men only were allowed to enter through the front doors, to congregate for congenial "smokers" with visiting architects.'s5 Faculty expected women to specialize in decorative design rather than architecture per se. In 1925, this assumption was strengthened by the creation of a formally separate degree pro gram in decorative design which was approved by the Board of Regents. Upon successful completion of four years of study, a

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Emil Lorch, far left, w ith architecture students in their cramp ed quarters i n th e Engin ee ring Building 25

candidate could earn a Bachelor of Science in Design . Lorch was pleased that such an education could apply equally at home as in business.'5 6 It filled a need, he felt, since it opened a career path for "men and women of artistic ability, who lack the con足 structive sense required of the architect, but have the ability and good taste to make our homes and public meeting places more attractive."' 57 The design program drew impressively upon the talents of regional artisans including Mary Chase Stratton of Pewabic Pottery. The establishment in the 1920S of the University of Michigan 's new academic programs in design , social work, library science, and nursing; the de cision to build even more women 's dormito足 ries; and the discussion of a women's side of campus, with gym足 nasium, league, and homes planned and built to th e east or north of campus, occurred in an era when female students constituted a significant campus population. What might later be interpreted as marginalization was then praised by both men and women as a recognition of women's distinctive place in academia. This differentiation continued beyond graduation. Three Michigan women who majored in architecture in the 1920S maintained their support of one another by establishing the Women 's Architectural Club, Chicago Chapter. They were Juliet Peddle, Bertha Yerex Whitman , and Ruth H. Perkins.'ss And at least a couple of their contemporaries who did not major in design or architecture went on to significant careers documenting the

evolution of modern American architecture: Margaret Bourke White as a premier photographer of industrial architecture and Esther McCoy as a critic of Californian modern architecture. 159 Other students of architecture also experienced isolation from their fellow classmates. Louis Redstone, class of 1929, recalled incidents of both blatant and insidious racism during his days as a student at Michigan: "The first greeting I received from the student who was to share a double-drafting table with me was 'Hello Abe. "'160 Housing in Ann Arbor was difficult to find for Redstone, fraternities were virtually inaccessible for him, and he knew of only one other Jewish student in his freshman architectural class. The Architects' May Party aimed to be an inclusive festivity for students and faculty alike. The talents of the students were exercised in the design of the ballroom, costumes, posters, and other details . Their craftsmanship drew attention from around campus. Progress in the preparation was reported in the Michi gan Daily and the results appeared both in this campus newspa per and in the Michigan ALumnus. Scrapbooks of the era provide much evidence of the entire student body's desire to celebrate college life by creating and sharing personal photographs, dance cards, cartoons, commencement programs, and other memora bilia. The Architects' ball was the most ambitious of these shared experiences since it required months of preparation with the pressure of high expectations, both social and academic. Class mates competed for the judgement of the faculty who treated the preparation as seriously as any other design assignment. One year the setting was the deep sea; another time it was the Ori ent, with Lorch presiding in a pink cape, shiny black boots, and turban. 161 The curriculum for all architecture students was debated and changed throughout the 1920S. In 1919, outside critics from Detroit had started to participate in the students' juries. Lorch wished that professional architects could come from beyond Dance cardfor Architects Detroit for very brief visits, but recognized that funds were not May Party, May 1 I, 192326 available for their travel to participate in juries. 162 Despite the growing numbers of students in the 1920S, archi tecture was still situated within the College of Engineering and Architecture. Working against any effort at autonomy was President Burton's concern about over-specialization among 54

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the students. ,63 Braving the resistance of Burton and the out right intimidation of Burton's successor, President Clarence C. Little, Lorch continued his campaign for the establishment of an autonomous program of architecture which would allow for an even stronger distinction in pedagogy between architec ture, engineering, and the liberal arts. President Little was the greatest threat to Lorch's interminable effort at autonomy, which he had started already in 1913. This combative president, who offended many with his advocacy of birth control and gen eral tolerance of students' indiscretions, had plans to the con trary by envisioning a fine arts division under which architec ture would sit. His concept was effectively weakened with his rather ignominious departure from the university, leaving Lorch relieved at the victory over an arrangement which he had feared would equate architecture with "dilettantism" in the eyes of the general university.'6 4 Even though the architecture program would not gain its administrative independence until 1931, it nevertheless was al ready achieving a high national, and even international, profile in the 1920S. While many references were made at the time to Michigan's connections with Europe, one of the program's first engagements was in Montevideo. "Michigan has scored in South America!" was the opening salutation of a letter from Lorch to Burton on March 7,1921. Students had won a gold medal there, along with silver medals and diplomas of merit for their sub missions to this first Pan American Congress of Architects . ,65 One of the great beneficiaries of these extroverted students and faculty was Louis Sullivan. In his last years, he expressed his appreciation for the attention paid to him by the V niversity of Michigan. The welcome extended by Michigan not only gave comfort to an elderly savant out of favor; it also signified the pro gram's almost unique respect then for "America's pioneering spokesman for modern architecture.",66 George Elmslie, who rare ly came to see his sister's family in Ann Arbor, nonetheless en couraged the ongoing contact between Lorch and Sullivan. The possibility of Sullivan teaching at Michigan was discussed by Lorch and Elmslie, but they agreed that Sullivan's personal prob lems were too inhibiting. ,67 The students nevertheless eagerly attended his occasional speaking engagements and showed their respects to him by escorting him from campus to his train for

Chicago. After one of his last outings in I924, Sullivan recalled his "bully" time in Ann Arbor, writing later that the visit had been "very eloquent on my part," and included "much mutual admi ration.",G8 At this final visit to Ann Arbor just a few months be fore his death in April 1924, he spent an evening with the Lorches and their new acquaintances, Mr. and Mrs. Eliel Saarinen. The arrival of Eliel Saarinen at Michigan in November 1923 was a triumph for Lorch. Saarinen's appointment matched President Burton's interest in a formal program for visiting fac ulty in the creative arts, which had brought Robert Frost to campus two years before Saarinen. The Finn's decision to teach at Michigan was the result of letters between Ann Arbor and Chicago, where Saarinen was residing temporarily. Because Lorch was so uncertain about Saarinen's interest in Michigan, he pursued at the same time another international visitor who was referred to in one letter as "Monsieur Grapin of Paris." Grapin receded from Lorch's list of desired visitors once Saarinen ac cepted the invitation. (The Frenchman took a position instead at Carnegie Institute of Technology) . ,69 Shortly after Saarinen's arrival, a special reception was held at which "a pageant of arts and crafts" was produced by student Henry S. Booth. Archi tects from Detroit, Toledo, Grand Rapids, and Kalamazoo were part of the gathering in a room lit only by fifty candles at an "altar of pagan design." '7 0 A special work area was reserved for Saarinen and his select group of students, who were seniors, graduate students, and alumni.'7' Their projects included civic and community centers, waterfronts, aviation fields, and a proposed Michigan School of Architecture and the Allied Arts. This last project was intended for the site where Lorch Hall was later built. 172 The students' models were published in the college's Michigan Technic upon their completion. 173 They appreciated Saarinen's day-long pres ence in their drafting room where he promoted the simultaneous development of drawing and clay models for three dimension al studies of architectural design. Modeling and casting work as part of the design process were novelties claimed by Mich igan thanks to Saarinen and his fellow :'-Jordic visitor, Knud Lonberg-Holm. 174 As he counseled his small group, Saarinen also worked on developing his own proposal for the Detroit Riverfront project. Interaction was most convenient in the

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Eliel Saarinen with son Eero at the University of Michigan 28

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drafting room anyway since Saarinen had no office of his own. He shared one with Lorch, who had to ask him to leave his desk in a dark corner of the room whenever there was need for a pri vate meeting. 175 While in Ann Arbor, Saarinen became acquainted with George G. Booth, whose son Henry had organized the welcoming re ception. The senior Booth was a major newspaper publisher, patron of the arts in Detroit, and occasional correspondent with Lorch. Already in 19[8, Lorch and Booth were sharing ideas about a new instructor in design. 176 The Booth family moved quickly to secure Saarinen's interest in Michigan by offering him design responsibilities for the new Cranbrook Academy in Bloomfield Hills. After an appointment of two academic years at the university, Saarinen moved a few miles eastward to this pri vate campus. Lorch recognized that the university could not com pete with the offer of Booth. 177 At his departure, the senior class commemorated Saarinen's valuable presence by giving a commis sioned portrait of him to the college in his honor. 178 A few years later, in 1932, the university paid a much more public tribute to him by awarding him an honorary degree. His munificent patron, Mr. Booth, continued to serve the university as a benevolent neigh bor in advocating better physical facilities for the architecture program and, most importantly, in establishing the George G. Booth Traveling Fellowship for Architecture students.179 The success of Saarinen at Michigan encouraged Lorch to seek out other prominent designers, especially from Europe. Lbnberg-Holm had arrived during the same semester as Saarinen. He, too, had been interested in the Chicago Tribune competi tion. He had prepared an entry but never submitted it. His, like Saarinen's, achieved its own significance. While he was at the University of Michigan, his design was published in Walter Gropius' Internationale Architektur (1925) and was cited as inspir ation in the Howe and Lescaze PSFS tower in Philadelphia. ISO Lbnberg-Holm did not arrive with the same publicity as Saarinen. Nor was his innovative, modernist pedagogy compen sated as well by either salary or title. Saarinen was professor, Lbnberg-Holm was instructor. Saarinen earned the princely sum of $4,000 per year and Lbnberg-Holm only $2,400.181 A student remembered him though as "a young Danish architect more enlightened than all the others ... Holm stimulated many of us

by his logic and analyses. He demonstrated that the essence of architectural design was based on these things without fashion or traditional styles."182 Lbnberg-Holm left Michigan to return to New York (having emigrated from Denmark) and shortly after his Ann Arbor days he became involved in C.I.A.M. Both Saarinen and Lbnberg-Holm retained an interest in architec ture at Michigan. (Lbnberg-Holm would return years later to help establish a formal architectural research program). Lorch hired others from abroad during this decade of pros perity. Francis Onderdonk came in 1925 from Vienna. His essays in the Michigan Technic about the marvels of concrete illus

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trate the program's appreciation for n ew technology and mate

rials. His articulation of these values at the crossroads of tech nology and aesthetics is rare, precise evidence of the Michigan faculty's version of modernism. He asserted that, "no other mode of construction can so well express the supremacy of man's mind. " 18 3 Concrete tracery will allow the architect to fulfill his poetic duty, he wrote in one essay, but at the same time concrete can also insure "clear, simple outlines, large spaces of even sur face, set off by outstanding features, [which] alone can stand the test of the automobilist who flashes by, or the business man who sends up a quick glance."18 4 Such references to the civic and capitalist benefits of modern architecture paralleled the claims of the university's engineers, who by the 1920S were proudly attracting attention to Michigan's exploratory collaboration between business and academia in advertisements about their new Department of Engineering Research. Lorch asked other prominent architects to stop by cam pus, if only briefly. A year after the arrival of Saarinen and Lbnberg-Holm , Erich Mendelsohn paid his first visit to Ann Arbor. And for years thereafter, Lorch corresponded with H.P. Berlage about his prospects of coming. This stretch for a contin ual international repertoire transcended Lorch's simultaneous fixation upon the role of the Midwest in shaping architecture. He wrote in his "Report of the College of Architecture, 1927 1928" that, "Europe has been so far in advance of the United States in the development of modern design that such distin guished representatives [as Eliel Saarinen and H.P. Berlage] are quite invaluable." Lorch even tried to extend this Continen tal association into his home life by speaking French at the

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dinner table. Daughter Betty remembered him saying often, "I think I'm really a Frenchman. " 18 5 Exhibits of architects' works expanded further the program's exposure to architecture elsewhere. Among the twenty-five exhibitions in 1927-28 were pencil sketches by Hugh Ferriss and photographs brought by Lars Marnus, architect from Copenhagen, showing old and modern Danish architecture. 186 Such shows were good local public relations for the college and complemented those of the Ann Arbor Art Association , which Lorch had helped establish upon his arrival in 1906 . The students themselves contributed more than once to the international identity of the school through their own travelling exhibitions. At the invitation of Dr. Edmund Schuler, who vis ited Ann Arbor in 1924, a select group of students sent their work to an exhibition at the Akademie der Kunste zu Berlin. ls7 The school's cultivation of impressive associations yielded big dividends in this one show since the Michigan students' draw ings were featured along with those of Sullivan, Saarinen, the Pond brothers, Albert Kahn, and other leading American ar~ chitects. The idea for the show, with the title Ausstellung Neuer Amerikanischer Baukunst, was attributed to Sullivan. Irving K. Pond wrote a general framework about modern development for the show's published catalog in collaboration with an unidentified German-language author, who concluded that the show's partic ular cohort of modernists were most capable of confronting "der phantasielosen Anbefung des Technik, der Mechanisierung des Geistes und der Entmannung der Kunst" (the unimagina tive worship of technique, the mechanization of the spirit, and the neutering of art).188 It is remarkable that eighteen- and nineteen-year-old Ann Arbor students would playa part in this show addressing the evolving distinctions within modernism just shortly after the Bauhaus had held its own International Architecture Exhibition in Weimar. They were even recognized in the catalog for their "surprisingly good models of buildings and monumental complexes" which could not be transported to Berlin because of their fragile materials. Saarinen had deliv ered an international visibility to novices whose later work would not be so conveniently favored. As of 1928, the architecture faculty could welcome with greater pride both distinguished guests and aspiring students. At long

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last a new building stood ready for the exclusive use of archi tects. Designed by Lorch, the four-story edifice served as the southern anchor of the campus. It drew praises most strongly from Lewis Mumford who congratulated Lorch in writing that, "it is a worthy brother of the Union: and I trust that the two will set the pattern for all the buildings that remain to be built on the canvas [sic] - a reproach to the bastard gothic and the dull classic." 18 9The new facilities were still not impressive enough to entice Henry-Russell Hitchcock to leave Vassar for Michigan. His youth had not prevented him from insisting upon a senior title, which ultimately led to an impasse in his hiring. 19° Curiously, in a decade of considerable land acquisitions and building, the Architecture Building was the only evidence on campus of the practicing abilities of the architectural faculty. Under President Burton, a "Committee of Five" had been estab lished to oversee the university's building program. Members of this committee included Regent Clements, President Burton, Secretary Smith, Professor of EngineeringJohn Shepard, archi tect Albert Kahn, but no member of the architecture faculty. 19 1 The concerns of this quintet were structures, sewers, sidewalks, streetlamps, and landscaping. The removal of older fixtures like the campus outhouses was discussed in the same meeting that Kahn presented sketches of his proposed literary building (later named Angell Hall).19 2 Lorch had at first thought that Burton and his committee would support a new building for architec ture, but realized during the president's five-year tenure that other units, and architects, were priorities. 193 President Burton's utilitarian pragmatism about architecture echoed remarkably the much earlier proclamations of President Angell. Burton stated that, "When the University of Michigan succumbs [sic] to megalomania her vitality will begin to dimin ish. All of our statements about brick and mortar, all of our descriptions of the expansion of the campus and the develop ment of shops and laboratories are of value just in proportion as they bear, not upon the means, but upon the ends of a true institution of higher learning."194 Furthermore, he stated else where, "It is not our function to pile up stones and brick, but to inspire young people with the ideals of good citizenship. We rejoice in our new buildings, of course, but only as we see in them a means to this end." 195 Kahn understood this restraint of

the administrators and successfully entered into contracts on their terms. Design alterations in his building projects caused furious remonstrances but never prevented future work. In the 1920S alone, he designed ten new buildings on campus, includ足 ing Betsy Barbour dormitory, the General Library, the William Clements Library, Angell Hall, East Physics, Couzens Hall, East Medical building, University Hospital, Simpson Memo足 rial Institute, and University Museums building. He was so successful at public relations around town that his office even designed the Ann Arbor News building. Students as well as faculty could be frustrated in their efforts to influence the design of new architecture on campus. When President Burton died in 1925, student committees wanted to fulfill his desire for a campus campanile. 19 6 Led by Alfred Connable, President of the Student Council, they on their own approached Saarinen with the request to prepare a design for a tower. He obliged, with a structure reminiscent of his Chicago Tribune entry. The students enthusiastically endorsed his pro足 posal and the successor to Burton, acting president Alfred Lloyd, must have as well since for a while the drawing hung in the office of the president. 197 The proposed Saarinen tower seemed

Architectural fragments on the lawn adjacent to the Art and Architecture Building30

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The Albert Kahn office in the Lorch era secured choice commissions both at the cen足 ter of campus and along its expanding peripheryV

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Eliel Saarinen's proposal for a campanile on the University of Michigan campus, 19 251"

almost afait accompli in its appearance in red leather on the cover of the 1927 }vfichiganensian. Town and gown alike realized the tourist value of a tower. One Ann Arbor newspaper predicted that the city would become a "motorists' mecca" because of the attraction. 19B More than six decades later, Connable could still recall the frustration felt by the students as their initiative was derailed by university administrators who advised them that the tower pro ject was too ambitious for them to handle alone. 199 The universi ty's Board of Regents appointed a committee to study various other plans. Irving K. Pond claimed his rights to the design of any future tower, complaining that his office had already pre pared one at the request of the university. In the end, Albert Kahn once again won the commission for his office. His first proposal for a campus tower, sharing space with Saarinen's in a 1925 Michigan Alumnus article, imagined three temples ascend ing to the top of the structure. Insufficient funds delayed build ing for a decade, until finally in 1935 the university could cele brate the erection of a much revised plan by Kahn, which might be interpreted as a stunted version of Saarinen's . Kahn issued a written statement that perhaps anticipated facile comparisons. He wrote that, "in its exterior treatment no particular prece dent has been followed ... [and] in construction a rather novel scheme has been followed. " 2 00 He did not acknowledge that the tower was his second tribute to the memory of Burton since in 1925, soon after the president's death, he offered his services to design the new home for Burton's widow with funds collected by generous alumni and other friends. A few years after Lorch's own structure on campus was opened, he felt finally able in 1930 to take a long-postponed trip to Europe with his close colleague, Detroit architect George D. Mason. ;101 In his absence, the modern architecture of Europe once again reached Ann Arbor, this time in the form of an ex hibit of the work of Peter Behrens. Lorch's daughter Betty pre viewed the event in a letter to her father, writing "from what I already know of the work of Peter Behrens it promises to be a very thrilling affair. "202 Lorch returned home from his journey to a university facing the Depression. The hardship was not immediate. In fact, in 1931 the architecture faculty could finally celebrate the university's

approval of a separate college of architecture. \tVhat is more, three new faculty members were hired that year, including Roger Bailey, Beaver Edwards, and Ralph Hammett. 203 However, by 1933 the campus infrastructure was seriously threatened by bank holidays and desperate legislators. 204 Salaries were reduced and vacant positions around campus were left unfilled. Enroll ment declined, commencement addresses were cautious, and the architects' ball was considered an unnecessary extravaganza. As of 1932, the course catalog no longer included the claim that "never before has there been so excellent an outlook for the trained architect. " 2°5 In 1933, the George G. Booth Traveling Fellowship was cancelled for the first time since 1924, due to "unusual cir cumstances."206 Alumnus Irving K. Pond came back to campus as a distinguished visiting lecturer, perhaps to generate a little revenue for himself while his office waited for work. 2°7 A more common means for architects to remain profession ally active during the Depression, albeit with minimal support, was the federal Works Progress Administration project to sur vey historic architecture. Lorch, although at no risk of unem ployment, joined the project as of 1934. 208 He oversaw the efforts of architects throughout the state to document its architectural heritage. His own appraisal appeared in the WPA guide to the state, for which he wrote a section entitled "The Development of Architecture." His piece was not entirely a survey of the past; he also addressed contemporary building, and the importance of a "fresh concept of architecture needed to produce new forms and revitalize tradition. " 20 9 He acknowledged the good work of his contemporaries, including Michigan faculty and alumni, with praise in particular for those buildings which showed a "quality of independence." (These in his opinion were Detroit's Federal Building, Naval Armory, Wardell Garage, and Deacon ess Hospital).210 Lorch had been successful in many of his invitations to visit ing faculty, but he realized more than ever during the Depression that salaries did not compensate his more permanent staff ad equately. He complained in 1935 to President Alexander Ruthven that, "for many years the salaries of our faculty have been low, perhaps on the theory of substantial outside earnings. This has never been a true picture since really remunerative architectural work is not available in Ann Arbor and cannot be done away

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from here by anyone paying adequate attention to teaching and other university duties."211 Lorch seemed to appreciate those facul ty who were loyal, referring to Ernest Wilby as "true blue."2J2 While they in turn valued his commitment, the faculty of the I930S began to assert its own authority with the establishment for the first time of a faculty committee. This act was in keeping with the general movement around campus towards a more com plex administration less dependent upon single, senior faculty. Meetings were held, minutes were kept, and the program gradu ally assumed a more participatory operation. Thirty years after his arrival in Ann Arbor, Lorch stepped down as director of the college. The students adorned him with a crown and recognized him openly by his nickname "the king." Their successors were more aggressive towards the college administration. The stu dents of I940 proposed that they be allowed to grade the fac ulty, "as is done in other units of the Cniversity." The faculty minutes recorded "no great interest" on the part of the profes sors present, bu t allowed the experimen t to go forward. 213 As of I938, such policy issues had become the concern of the new dean of the college, Wells Bennett. After retirement, Lorch drove throughout the state to measure and photograph structures as monumental as Fort Mackinac and as modest as dilapidated farmhouses exhibiting their ver nacular twist on Greek Revival. Others would come along on these rides and thereby contribute with Lorch to the Historic American Buildings Survey. Lorch also maintained his habit of correspondence. Elmslie still confided in him, and so too did former students. One of the most eloquent letters came to him from the college's prize stu dent of just a few years earlier, Raoul Wallenberg. The letter of this successful graduate from Sweden was an optimistic query about the prognosis for employment in the United States: Dear Professor Lorch, My thoughts very often go back to you and your school. Now that my work in South Africa and Palestine is at an end I have had more time to remember the wonderful three years and a half which I spent in Ann Arbor. Many times I have thought that since I am likely always to have one foot abroad I should at least see to it that "abroad" would mean America.

I am happy to tell you that I have received some very fin e offers for work, mostly, however, in queer far away places, such as South Af足 rica, South America and Persia. It therifore struck me that I ought to consult you before making any decision. I feel it a piry to turn nry back on architecture after all the good times it has given me. I believe the building industry has an enormous development ahead for the nextfew years in America and I would like to do my share in the great things that are to come. Please tell me if you think that conditions now are such that 1 would have a chance of finding a paid job as draftsman in New York or Detroit. Or if not there, then in some other place in the US. Besides my training at your school 1 have had little training in matters architectural - only the bath project of which I sent you some illustrations. But I have had some business training that might do somebody some good if he employed me in his firm. In South Africa I was a rather good salesman and organizer. We introduced many new Swedish articles there and it was extremely important that negotiations were carried on diplomatically, persua足 sively, and speedily. They were put in nry hands - it was a good train足 ing. Maybe you know of somebody who needs a man with a training on the borderline between architecture and business? I have so much of a longing to come to America again that I would be coming over on much less than a definite offer for a job. I would therifore ask you at any rate to give me a general idea of conditions in the field. Thanking you in advance for your kindness and asking you to give nry best regards to Mrs. Lorch, Mr. and Mrs. Hebrard and Mr. and Mrs. Bailey, 1 am, Yours sincerely, Raoul Wallenberg. 01 4

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Raoul Wallenberg33

The response from Lorch is unknown, since no copy survived in his archives. No matter what the reply, Wallenberg would never realize the typical career benefits of an education in archi足 tecture at Michigan. Instead, he went on just a few years later to become the heroic savior of thousands of lives in wartime Hungary. He was thereafter a prisoner of the Cold vVar and Soviet secrecy. His ultimate fate remains a mystery.

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Mid-century University of Michigan was the crowded rendez vous for dedicated faculty, glamorous guest speakers, and a stu dent population diversified by numerous veterans and a growing coterie of coeds. Student numbers swelled so much with return ing military that the College of Architecture and Design was obliged for the first time in its history to turn away qualified out-of-state applicants. 215 Shortly after the last year of the war when 291 students were enrolled, the enrollment figures more than doubled to 776 by 1950.216 Some predicted that enrollment would double again in another twenty years so that by 1970 there might be over 1,100, whose needs could only be met by devel opment of a new facility north of the Huron River.217 vVhile the return of veterans created a temporary profile of older students, a more permanent transition in gender ratios of enrollment al so occurred. Women numbered forty-two of the 105 freshmen in 1950. (That same year, the university's College of Engineering admitted just one woman in its freshman class of 280). 218 As leader of the College of Architecture and Design, Dean Wells C. Bennett advised the students that the post-war years were transitional, following the finished "Battle of Styles." He allowed that, "as after all wars, there remain some misgivings as to whether there was a victory." He assured the students in their own publication that, "architectural education is now navi gating more quiet waters, although the breezes of discussion are still brisk. We are still uncertain but less confused." 21 9 Bennett's thoughts reflected the traditional resistance of Michi gan's faculty to unite behind any single " style" to the exclusion of others. He had worked to shape this diversity already in 1937, when he became the successor to Emil Lorch as the third leader of the architectural program at the University of Michigan and the first to carry the title of dean. It was hardly exceptional under Bennett's leadership that a design studio was taught by the team of Professor Frederick O 'Dell, who favored the Beaux Arts tradition , and Professor Edward Olencki, a graduate of the Miesian Illinois Institute of Technology. The dean endorsed

Design Class, 1949 34

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such a combination, recogmzmg in 1951 that, "the important schools of Architecture have gone through the process of ad justment from the highly academic Beaux Arts system to the more intellectual German approach of the Bauhaus, or to an independent point of view based on American environment and American building techniques."22o Michigan preferred an independent and pluralistic view over any lockstep compliance with the Bauhaus or any other orientation. 221 Graduate Charles Moore (1948) recalled that, "there was very, very little of the Kraut-ish persuasion at Michigan." He instead characterized some of his teachers as "woodsy Finns. "222 A versatile exploration of architectural issues including de sign became synonymous with the University of Michigan at mid-century through a series of well-attended meetings known simply as the Ann Arbor Conferences. The first, held in early 1940, turned the Michigan lJ nion briefly into a salon for pre mier architects, designers , and academics, including Walter Gropius, Laszlo Moholy-N agy, Eliel and Eero Saarinen, Mies van der Rohe, Antonin Raymond,James Marston Fitch,Joseph Hudnut, Albert Kahn, Alden Dow, and other representatives from the Museum of Modern Art, Architectural Forum, and sig nificant schools of architecture of both modernist and Beaux Arts proclivities. Without any set agenda for the meeting, these participants elected to devote two days to exchanging ideas across the table about the title of the conference, "Coordination in Design with Regard to Education in Architecture and Allied Design ." At the first of these conferences, \"/alter Gropius delivered a formal paper titled "Contemporary Architecture and the Training of the Architect," which was subsequently printed by Harvard rather than Michigan. 22 3 In this late-afternoon address he delib erated at length over the challenge in finding "better education by releasing the creative powers of each individual. ""24 Not sur prisingly, this former leader of the encyclopedic Bauhaus hoped that, "we shall advance towards a wider and more profound con ception of design as one great organic whole." He was troubled that "our great heritage seems to have left people stunned and bereft of original impulse and, from being participators and cre ators, we have changed into connoisseurs and scholars," caus ing a separation between the public and the expert. He regretted

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that the study of architecture had become less of a creative en deavor than an aesthetic one shared exclusively by academics_ In keeping with the tone of his contemplative piece, Gropius did not mandate any particular blueprint for improved peda gogy_ Instead, he advocated generally for a manual training through actual building lessons_ This practical application was perhaps a reflection of his own earlier preferences as a student towards construction rather than theory_ He even endorsed, perhaps unknowingly, a development in the Cniversity of Mich igan's architecture program by urging his fellow pedagogues to recognize that more advanced students could learn along with their faculty in a laboratory workshop for architecture_ Despite the fact that at least two other Bauhaus colleagues in exile were in the audience (Maholy-Nagy and Mies van der Rohe) and that the war in his homeland was leading to aggressions to the north, south, and east, Gropius made no mention in his speech of the war or its effect on contemporary architecture or archi tects_ (Not until later that year would he speak publicly about the war)_226 Nor, unfortunately, does there remain any written evidence of what was probably a fascinating exchange of ideas

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225

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Projected development of the university's Central Mall, including an unre alized School of Music building next to the new Burton Tower and across from the new Horace H. Rackham School of Grad uate Studies3 6

and fresh experiences of Bauhaus emigres and their American colleagues. Had he chosen to, Bennett could undoubtedly have engaged his guests knowledgeably in a discussion about the effects of war upon European architecture, given his own conti nental travel of I932 and I933 when he studied the extensive rebuilding programs after World War I. Addressing his guests in general terms instead, Dean Bennett claimed that this conference heightened an awareness of the com mon interests shared by the architect, "the applied designer," the artist, and the public. Later he stated enigmatically, and perhaps with a certain amount of self-deception, that these conferences in Ann Arbor led the way towards a more "friendly esthetic" than the international style. 227 The college, in his view, was a clear inghouse rather than a final repository for the collaborative thinking achieved among conference participants who agreed to avoid the permanence of formalities: "no committees ... no reports ... no resolutions ... no manifestos."228 Subsequent Ann Arbor Conferences were limited to specialties within subfields of architecture and planning including hospital or theater design. And contrary to the initial preference for impermanence, these later annual meetings were documented through final reports. In their own discussions, the Michigan art and architecture faculty debated over ways for the college to accommodate most effectively their talents and interests as a diverse staff in charge

of an increasingly complex curriculum. They asserted their self confidence in the establishment in 1951 of several standing committees to help oversee the college's administration. A sub sequent reorganization in I954 resulted in three separate de partments within the college-art, architecture, and landscape architecture. Leonard Eaton, then a relatively new recruit on the architecture faculty, recalled much later that, "Bennett accept ed departmentalization very graciously although he couldn't understand why nobody liked his benevolent dictatorship."22 9 Bennett did protest at the time to the new president of the uni versity, Harlan Hatcher, that, "except for a very few men the fac ulty is without knowledge of or interest in parliamentary procedures. Again excepting for a very few men, the teaching spirit of the staff is fine in spite of the attempts of the malcon tents to sabotage morale."230 The faculty shared an unbridled "can-do" attitude about their role in the university, the state of Michigan, and "among our neighbors on this planet."2 3 Philip Youtz marvelled at the tech nical wonders of materials and constructions including the steel frame, which he claimed "offered a cure for claustropho bia."232 The twin Huron Towers, built in 1960 along Huron River according to his Lift Slab method of construction, became a landmark in engineering technology and efficiency. Had it not been for the steel strike and the strike of structural steel erectors that winter, Huron Towers would have been lifted floor by floor at an even quicker pace. 233 Along with the college's own faculty, visitors brought innova tive thinking and practice to Lorch Hall. Peripatetic inventor Buckminster Fuller was welcomed time and again to Ann Arbor to inspire students to construct their own cardboard geodesic domes and to discuss "The Comprehensive Designer," ''Archi tecture as Science," "Energetic Geometry," and "Lightweight Structure." Intellectual discourse was also enriched through a regular series of other guest lecturers. Steen Eiler Rasmussen , Edmund Bacon, Sibyl Moholy-Nagy, Siegfried Giedion, Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard ~eutra, Paul Rudolph , and Isamu Noguchi all came to Michigan in an impressive procession throughout the I950S. Even Erich Mendelsohn wrote in gracious appreciation about his visits to Ann Arbor, despite the fact that back in 1940 the 1

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Myron Chapin with a stu dent in the Art and Archi lecture Building37

Huron Towers under con struction 38

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Outside the home of the Alpha Rho Chi fraternity, students displayed their own geodesic dome. Its bear ers include Martin Geimer (far lejt) and Roderick Warren (secondjrom leJt)39

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Frank Lloyd Wright dur ing his visit to the college in 1958, with '58 class president, Robert L. Ziegelman 40

college had declined to offer him a faculty position. Perhaps he was unaware that Albert Kahn had attempted unsuccessfully at the start of the war to secure him refuge through a teaching position in Ann Arbor. Kahn had written directly to University of Michigan President Alexander Ruthven, "You undoubtedly know of the large number of students attracted by Gropius to Harvard. Mendelsohn, in my opinion, is a far better man and would have just as large a following because he is well known in the profession ... the University of Michigan could not possi bly have a better man in charge of design."2 34 However, in keeping with the university 's general reluctance to shelter emigres dur ing the war, Ruthven rejected Kahn's proposal on account of a lack of funds. The president was following a certain conservative consistency, leading one historian to observe later that, "given its great size and prestige, and its relatively cosmopolitan pre war tradition, Michigan appears to have recruited dispropor tionately few of these scholars ... The legendary enlivening and deprovincializing effect these intellectual immigrants had on American academia was less pronounced at Michigan. "235 At the same time that the college invited leading architects, artists, and critics for brief visits at least, it was also attempting to project its own image and influence beyond Ann Arbor. Tele vision beamed a few faculty into living rooms as early as I950 through the university's pioneering Michigan Media program. During the first semester of this new form of outreach, Associ ate Professor of Design Catherine Heller appeared on U niver sity of Michigan television to present a course on the design of home interiors. Others, including George Brigham, Wells Bennett, and Jean Hebrard, travelled by car to towns as near as Willow Run and as far as the Upper Peninsula where home builders and commu nity planners could see first-hand the newer features of domes tic architecture and community planning. Already during the Depression, the college had offered an architectural clinic for the benefit of prospective home builders with minimal re sources. 236 The home builders' demand for the services of the col lege increased multifold during and after World War II, when the college undertook a series of "Home Builders Institutes" around the state. At that time, the college felt an obligation to "give proper guidance to the lay public in buying or building a

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George Brigham's class, 4 June 1940 41

home."'37 A series of lectures were offered to Chambers of Com足 merce, which coordinated meetings between faculty and residents. These courses included Choosing the Site; Planning the Home; The Contractor and Construction; Post War Materials of Con足 struction; Financing the Home; Heating and Plumbing; Heat足 ing and Air Conditioning; Electrical Equipment and Post War Gadgets; Furnishings and Color in the Home'; and Landscaping

Drawing Class, 1949 42

the Home. In the winter of I945-46, over eleven hundred resi dents enrolled in the program in Grand Rapids. As a group, the faculty lecturers in these institutes advocated a certain lifestyle to match modern design and economy: "The house design of to day should surpass that of our colonial forefathers and be com posed of large plates of glass, wall surfaces of brick or sprayed cinder block, creosote-stained or oiled wood, anything and ev erything to get away from expensive maintenance. The inside, too, should be as free as possible from labor-provoking elements such as white enamelled woodwork, elegantly polished floors and crystal chandeliers. Homes should be places of comfortable relaxation, not mills of drudgery."2 38 These Home Planners Institutes, probably the most ambitious of the college's civic offerings, lasted only a few seasons. With the postwar surge in enrollment, faculty returned to duties on cam pus. Outlasting the institute was the college's commitment to urban studies and to research in housing. In I946 , Dean Bennett formalized the college's interests in urban development by es tablishing a program in city planning, to be headed by John Hyde. For improved housing, Professor George Brigham devel oped his "Brigham Building System." His investigation of fac tory fabrication of standardized building began during the war with contracts with the War Production Board and federal expectations for war housing derived from these funds. 239

Brigham's system was based upon ajoining device for standard ized wall and roof panels whose uniformity would allow for mass production and relatively easy assembly. 240 His approach to the design of this system has been characterized as "Califor nia modern modified for the Midwest. "24' At least one full-scale model was constructed on campus. It stood as an early proto type of collaborative research between the college, the federal government, and industry. At a time when there were not enough architects as educa tors, the college hired several of its own graduates as faculty in design, structure, and building construction. From the classes of I948 through I960 came fifteen new teachers, including Willard Oberdick (1948), Robert B. Lytle (1950), Robert C. Metcalf (1950), Lester Fader (1950), Edward Hammarskjold (1951), Tivadar Balogh (1952), William Carter (1952), Kingsbury Marzolf (1952), William A. Werner (1952),joseph Wehrer (1954),]. Sterling Crandall (1955), A. Peters Opperman (1955), Harold]. Borkin (1957), Robert W. Marans (1957), and Henry S. Kowalewski (1960) . Most of these men retained a loyalty to their alma mater by com mitting entire teaching careers to the University of Michigan. These graduates of Michigan shared offices in Lorch Hall with design and research experts from the East, including Theodore C. Larson, Walter Sanders, and William Muschenheim . This trio of new faculty came at the personal invitation of Dean Bennett, who was encouraged to contact them through Knud Lbnberg-Holm, the Danish modernist who had taught in Ann Arbor. They came with the understanding that the architec ture program at Michigan needed "revitalization. "2 4 2 Their positions were created for them as the result of a criti cal and confidential review of the college conducted, at the invi tation of Dean Bennett, by Harold D. Hauf, chairman of the De partment of Architecture at Yale University; joseph Hudnut; joseph D. Murphy of the School of Architecture of Washington "University in St. Louis; architect john Root of Chicago; and William W. Wurster, dean of the School of Architecture at MIT. In its report of April 2, 1948, the review team of fiv e urged the dean of Michigan's architectural program to leave landscape architecture to Michigan State College in East Lansing and instead strive to overcome "the most serious defects in the col lege," including "a) the lack of sufficient teachers with broad

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Art and Architecture Build ing, April 1949 4}

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ViSIOn and aptitudes for leadership in the courses in architec tural design, and b) the somewhat weak organization of the work in this field, and c) some confusion in the understanding of the objectives of architectural design. "243 While this team of review ers advocated team teaching rather than the singular leadership of recently retired design professor Hebrard (whom they never theless praised) , they did not extend this division of authority to the administration of the college. Instead they advised Bennett to act on his own, stating that, "we believe that you should have complete freedom to effect such reorganization." 244 So as one of his last major initiatives prior to the departmentalization of the college, Bennett himself travelled eastward to seek out his new staff. Soon after Muschenheim, Larson, and Sanders arrived they were honored with senior titles. They, too, demonstrated a last ing commitment to the University of Michigan by remaining a part of the faculty throughout their careers. Michigan's debate over design and design theory was enlivened by the voices of these easterners, who together comprised the so-called "design team" of faculty.2 45 By distancing himself from his earlier pur suit of architectural rationalization and his own publications in Architectural Record, Muschenheim found himself disagreeing with Larson and Sanders. Muschenheim recalled later in life that, "when I went to Michigan, Larson and Sanders were very much involved with that approach. I saw its value, but I also had ar guments that it was only a limited part of architectural think ing. They really came to the conclusion that you could make a design by analyzing it first. In teaching, and in my own work, I found that that doesn't really work. I mean , it doesn't. So we had lots of arguments about that. And I also found that when I started teaching- because I had never done it before-that the students didn't know why they came up with certain solutions." Disagreements were not censored from the classroom either. Muschenheim delighted in remembering that, "I instituted a course in architectural theory and philosophy in architecture. I gave this course with Professor Handler, who was an economist really. It was very interesting since I learned a lot because of all of the homework I had to do for this course. Professor Handler was not an architect, but he knew a lot about philosophy, which I had read but never, never taken a course in. So it was very

interesting. We had these terrible arguments in front of the stu dents. I remember one day he was so mad he walked out of the place and said , 'At least he was an intellectual!' And so we had to give it up because it was getting too wild. "24 6 Muschenheim's colleague Larson had headed west to Michi gan with the charge of developing new research for the college. His appointment was divided in half between teaching and research; it thus represented a more formal commitment on the part of the college to research, especially to the many newer avenues beyond historical studies. The most celebrated evidence of research undertaken by the team of Larson, his colleagues, and students was the structural prototypes constructed right in the courtyard of the college alongside the classical fragments already on the lawn. C niversity presiden t Hatcher presided over the dedication of the Unistrut steel framing structure which af forded a home for the many research possibilities in structural design, lighting, acoustics, and heating and ventilation. The significance of this kind of architectural research at Michigan captured the attention of both Life magazine and Architectural

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Willard Oberdick's research on hyperbolic paraboloid roof, September 1955 14

Forum.

The Unistrut system in particular was a well-publicized ex ample of collaborative study. It was made possible through the largesse of college alumnus Charles Attwood, who after his de gree in 1917 went on to establish the Unistrut Corporation . This corporation valued the research application of its system of met al framing, which was easily constructed and demounted at a relatively low cost. The college attempted through many other means as well to substantiate research and design as legitimate modes of inquiry. In March 1959, th e College of Architecture and Design hosted a "forty-man research committee" of the Ameri can Institute of Architects whose charge was to formulate a program of architectural research. 247 The college structured this type of collaborative research through its Architectural Research Laboratory, which was pro posed to the university in 1949 by a staff of architecture facul ty working with Knud Lbnberg-Holm as their consultant. 248 Theodore Larson was its first leader and was for the rest of his career recognized as a "respected trailblazer in architectural research." 249 Larson's research went well beyond the physical elements of architecture to consider such areas as "Fields of

Unistrut structure adja cent to the Art and Archi tecture Building45

Human Activity and Community Relationships." His confi dence in universal applications of research sources led him and Lonberg-Holm to create the Development Index, which was to in dex publications in the rapidly changing building industry so that architects, manufacturers, and builders could have ready access to current information on building technology.2 50 The ultimate purpose was an altruistic service to architects and the building industry; it was at the same time a means to defining questions of research for the faculty's laboratory: "Analysis of the information would certainly reveal many new needs in the design of all types of buildings and building products. Investi gation of these needs would follow, constituting fundamental research. We suggest that the laboratory should have as one of its principal functions exploration and definition of such rela tionships. "25 1 Other early research projects considered the effects of the environment on the learning process and the use of cellu lar plastics for low-cost housing. 252 The college's emergence as a bona fide research division of the university occurred during the country's formative period of substantial investment by private and public interests in the collaborative benefits of applied research for education, busi ness, and government. Even though the university as a whole had not undertaken any major fund-raising campaigns since the drive to build the Michigan Union (completed in I9I9), its mid twentieth century program yielded even more than its slogan 555 million target, especially from private corporations. This achievement cast the university as a model in fundraising for public higher education. The contribution of Charles Attwood was a strong endorsement of the College of Architecture and Design, and it could be proudly showcased as a recent anteced ent of the university's capital campaign initiative. With much of its attention devoted to teaching an increasing pool of students and to legitimizing research as an essential com ponent of architecture, the college did not contribute its talents to the considerable physical expansion of the university well beyond its original Diag. A roster of mid-century construction all but excludes the architectural faculty, except for the tempo rary structures on the lawn of Lorch Hall and Muschenheim's alterations within the Museum of Art (which were also disas sembled later).

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Instead, the office of Albert Kahn continued a tradition of several decades by routinely winning commissions from the uni versity with the result that the campus is a visual genealogy of Kahn design and technology. West Engineering (1904), Hill Auditorium (1913), the Clements Library (1923), Angell Hall (1924), the University Hospital (1925), Burton Memorial Tower (1936), the Undergraduate Library (1957), the Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library (1970), and the Thomas Francis School of Public Health (1971 ) are only a sample of the multi-generational Kahn portfolio on the Michigan campus. They constitute a wide exploration of historical styles, with functional achievements including the acoustic refinement of Hill Auditorium and the concrete construction of the engineering building. The C niver sity of Michigan provided a far-reaching extension into an aca demic environment of the work of this premier industrialist architect, whose designs of Detroit automobile plants were known and adapted as far away as the Soviet Union. The post-war construction boom brought other firms to the campus for multiple projects. The names Colvin, Robinson, & Wright; Giffels & Vallet; Kenneth Black Associates; Smith, Hinchman & Grylls; and Holabird & Root appeared on build ing permits more than once. Such prodigious contributions left the faculty with seemingly little role in the development of the campus other than the di rect influence they would have had earlier on those former stu dents who returned to the campus as practicing architects. The disengagement did not go unnoticed by the 1948 review team, which suggested that, "the authority and usefulness of the Fac ulty of Architecture ought to be extended in such a way as to be a determining influence in the physical environment of the University." Furthermore, they wrote, "we are impressed by the lack of direction and consistency which characterizes the plan of the University and its many buildings, each of which seems to have come into existence almost without relevance either to its neighbor or to a general unity. This has resulted not only in inefficiency in operation but in a chaos and conflict in appear ances which destroy in large measure the dignity and beauty of the campus. The architecture of the University denies the importance of the arts of design and contradicts their teach ing."2 53 In the same year that this critical review was submitted

to Bennett, the university designated a new position of Supervis ing Architect for Plant Extension. The review committee would no doubt have seen a certain irony in the placement of this ap pointment within the new Office of Plant Superintendent, with no formal linkage to the College of Architecture and Design. Despite the lack of an on-campus engagement, the college did endorse practice as "a distinct asset to the quality of the teaching program."2 54 At the periphery of the campus and Ann Arbor, and beyond, faculty exercised their abilities. "Vhile Youtz's lift slab system was used in the construction of Huron Towers, which presented the most significant transition in the city's landscape, a number of other faculty designed and built their own homes, showcasing their preferences for modernist living environs. Larson, Muschenheim, and Sanders located theirs in choice outlying areas of the city. Robert C. Metcalf began his prolific career of scores of houses in Ann Arbor with his own in 1952. He recalled that, "in 1950, Ann Arbor seemed the best place to begin a practice based on contemporary house design ... During the first decade, our firm-never more than three people strong --averaged eight completed projects per year. "255 The university had high expectations of any practice at all of the faculty, requiring practice to be specifically approved as the equivalent of an equal amount of research. "Implicit in this staff arrangement," it was stated, "is the understanding that com missions be of a research character. "256 One major research op portunity in design development was the university's new cam pus to the north of the Huron River. As with most American institutions of higher education, the University of Michigan an ticipated the need after the war to match changing expectations in research facilities for scientists, campus residences for fami lies, and efficient access for commuters including faculty, stu dents, and clients of the university's continuing education pro grams. 257 However, the challenges and rewards of transforming hundreds of acres of open fields into a residential and research campus went once again to an outside firm with cachet, rather than the university's own scholars in architecture. In 1951 Eero Saarinen and Associates were tapped for the project to devel op the former farmland. Preliminary plans featured an elegant , comprehensive, and formal pattern of buildings and spaces

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centering around an imitative "Diag" and framed symmetrically by access roads extending from central campus to an envisioned freeway going off to the western reaches of Detroit. This com mission was the single largest project of the Saarinen office to follow the General Motors Technical Center in Warren. For its part, with its ongoing commissions to the Albert Kahn office, the University of Michigan was accustomed and sympathetic to the versatility of Detroit-area architects, Kahn and Saarinen above all, who could transcend the conventional distinctions between sites of industry and sites of academia. Even with a very busy office, this particular assignment no doubt appealed to Eero Saarinen, at least in the abstract. He and his firm were at the time addressing all levels of campus planning, from single buildings to master plans. He observed at one point that, "universities are the oases of our desert-like civ ilization . .. they are the only beautiful, respectable pedestrian places left."25 8 For the Michigan campus, Saarinen noted in his memorandum to the university's architect and the vice president in charge of business and finance that the preliminary building program "was made with a desire to err on the maximum or optimistic side in order not to provide too little space for the component units. "259

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Under the Saarinen plan, the College of Engineering was to lead the way out to the new campus with new research facilities including the Cooley Engineering Building and the Phoenix Research Laboratory, which was devoted to the study of the peaceful use of nuclear energy. While their locations were part of the master plan , these buildings were designed by architects other than Saarinen. Due in part to its own advocacy for much more space, the College of Architecture and Design figured into Saarinen's plan. Disregarding the 1948 review committee's warning against de parting from Central Campus, Dean Bennett allowed in 1954 that, "for us as well as for others the present campus will have become too small.",6o In its earliest articulation, the North Cam pus was to feature at its western end a Fine Arts Center, com posed of music, architecture, art, and even television studios and an open air theater. 26, Despite its lack of direct involvement in the master plan of North Campus, the college took an active interest in its evolu tion . Dean Bennett endorsed the general concept of the campus, stating in his report to the university's president that, "this new campus can be one of the most beautiful in the United States. "262 His own research on campus design was focused upon traffic

W illiam Muschenhe im 's color studies for his house at 1251 Heather w ay, Ann Arbor1 6

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Site Plan for North Cam pus) Eero Saarinen and Associates 47

circulation. At a time when the University of Michigan was first allowing students to drive freely about campus, Dean Bennett was analyzing the problems and producing publications in cluding "The Personal Car and the Campus."26 3 His successor as dean, Philip N. Youtz , expressed his many concerns about the movement between Central and North Campus. He antici pated and then denounced possible solutions to the commute: "A multi-million dollar bridge spanning the Huron Valley would not bring the two areas close enough to link them as one campus ... A subway line would be too expensive. A fleet of school busses could cope with hundreds of students but not with thousands. A cavalcade of bicycles would help solve the transportation requirements, but their speed would be reduced by the steep rise on either side of the Huron Valley. For safety, this two wheel traffic would need a lane of its own from which cars and pedestrians were excluded. The proposal to shuttle fac ulty back and forth by car would be the most efficient scheme but would not encourage professional pondering on profound problems between classes." 26 4

Talk of a move from the south end of Central Campus to at least three possible sites on North Campus would occupy fac ulty discussions and administrators' proposals for over twenty years. As early as November 1954, Dean Bennett announced that final plans for a new Architecture and Design Building on ::"Jorth Campus would be completed in 1956 1957. 265 At the same time that the college was envisioning a physical removal from the center of the university, it was claiming a central role in the intellectual and cultural life of the entire university community. Youtz wrote in 1959 that, "In a larger sense the role of the Col lege of Architecture and Design is to serve the whole university community as a kind of yeast which will leaven the sometimes heavy academic loaf. Through its annual open house festivals, its faculty and student exhibitions at the Museum of Art and Rackham Galleries, its public lectures, its daily opportunities for contacts with students of other schools, the College plays a part in encouraging creativity. This quality or activity of the mind, or release of the electric currents in the brain, is admit tedly rare in its highest form. But it appears to be contagious or communicable and it is shared by students of poetry, physics, drama, engineering, medicine, and art alike. " , 66 A most conspicuous gathering of architects on campus oc curred when hundreds of alumni returned to Ann Arbor in the autumn of 1956 to help the college celebrate its fiftieth anniver sary. While together, they viewed displays, attended meetings led by MIT's deanJohn Ely Burchard and Harvard's dean emeritus Hudnut, and honored their earlier leader by naming the occa sion "Lorch Day." The incoming dean Youtz hoped for much from their generation, noting later that, "on their extraordi nary services depends the progress of our nation. " 26 7

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Dean Youtz's prophecies of grandeur in 1959 were followed by a less than idyllic era for the college. By his own admission two years later, the college was suffering from "certain growing pains" on account of expanding and expensive programs, changing ex pectations, and enrollments exceeding the capacity of the Ar chitecture Building. These were early symptoms of a growing impatience with the academic status qUO. 268 They paralleled a broader nonconformist activism in Ann Arbor. In 1960, the local Kresge department store was picketed by civil rights dem onstrators including Tom Hayden, who had also participated in the organization of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).26 g Presidential candidateJohn F. Kennedy stopped in Ann Arbor that same year to introduce his idea of the Peace Corps, on the front steps of the Michigan Union, to a crowd already attuned to a youthful and restless initiative. By retiring in 1963, Youtz was personally spared the challenge of administering through the worst of the discontent on cam pus. He would not have to concern himself with the White Pan ther Party, which moved into a house close by on Hill Street. Nor would he have to adjust to the flamboyant counter-culture at home within the Architecture Building or anticipate its prov ocations. A campus film club, Cinema Guild , showed the film "Flaming Creatures" in the college's own auditorium. Described as a "skin flick" by critics and a "purely visual, aesthetic experi ence" by defenders, the film was seized and four club members were arrested by Ann Arbor police officer Staudenmaier.270 Soon thereafter, Professor Willard Oberdick was challenged in the Architecture Building by unfamiliar students who threatened that, "if you are a cop, we are going to throw you out. "27 1 Four years prior to this confrontation, the search for Youtz's replacement had begun an era of dramatic change within the college. Michigan's own Walter Sanders was at first a top choice among some of his colleagues, but his uncertainties over the fu ture relationship of the art and architecture departments con vinced him to forfeit his chance. Instead he served on the search committee which considered over 100 candidates. Recruitment

Invitation to Reginald Malcolmson's exhibition entitled "Visionary Pro足 jects "49

competed with concurrent postings for new deans at other ma足 jor schools of architecture including MIT and Columbia. 272 The disinterest in academic administration among so many leading architects caused The New York Times to report on the difficulty of securing deans in the early 1960s.273 MIT decided in the end to promote Lawrence B. Anderson from within; after a two-year search Columbia finally asked its acting dean Kenneth Smith to continue permanently as dean; and Michigan gained Reginald Malcolmson of the Illinois Institute of Technology. Originally from Ireland, he had administrative experience as former assis足 tant to l\tIies van der Rohe . He achieved his own international rec足 ognition, too, through exhibitions showing his purist, Miesian theory of linear principles applied to the metropolis. 2H

When ~1ies reached the age of mandatory retirement in 1958, Malcolmson had been tapped as his temporary replacement as head of the architecture program at lIT. However, that assignment lasted only until the next year, when George E. Danforth became the new director. Mies was later supportive of Malcolmson's bid for the deanship at 1\1ichigan. He wrote to the search committee that , "Mr. Malcolmson is not only a good and experienced architect and thoroughly trained plan ner, but is above all a highly educated man with an inquisitive mind. He is at home in the fields of philosophical and sociologi cal thought and his main interest, in my opinion , is the clarifi cation of the relationship and interdependence between these disciplines and that of architecture." 275 After eighteen months of search committee meetings, three visits by the leading candidate, and endorsements from Mies, John D. Entenza of the Graham Foundation, and SaM's Walter ~etsch , the University of Mich igan Board of Regents officially recognized Malcolmson as the new dean. 276 Once in residence, Malcolmson introdu ced himself to the larger university community with a show of his work at the Muse um of Art on central campus. The exhibition was entitled "Pro jects in Architecture and City Planning." The museum's curator, Charles Sawyer, was a most appropriate facilitator for this since he had himself been the dean of the School of Fine Arts at Yale just a few years previous. 277 Malcolmson also arranged for a film to be made of himself discussing his work, for local and national distribution. In the script for the program, he recited the ideas for the "Metro-Linear" city that he had been refining for the past decade. As the camera filmed him walking past his panels, he stated that, "the :VIetro-Linear system is based on the recog nition of the linear character of transportation routes- they are the vertebra of the new city- the metropolitan center consists of a continuous parking structure 1/ 4 mile wide and 4 stories high above ground level-this continuous structure has entrances and exits for automobiles by ramps and bridges and will contain all the parking necessary for the urban center- parallel to this build ing are one-way auto routes and at 112 mile intervals on the roof of the parking structure are 7-story commercial blocks that con tain all the shopping and retail trade of the center- alongside this linear parking structure and beyond the auto routes are

HA~DSOME

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HANDSOME BOX

office towers 45 stories high, Ih mile apart. "27 8 One measure of Malcolmson's success in promoting this austere concept of the future city was the range of locations for his exhibitions: New York, Chicago, Buenos Aires, Paris, and other foreign sites left unspecified in his resume. The new dean was met with an Ann Arbor faculty at work at en larging both its curriculum and research agenda. At least two of his new colleagues, Edward V Olencki and Joseph P. Albano, could welcome him as fellow followers of Mies. (Albano had served on the search committee which nominated Malcolmson). While nobody echoed Malcolmson's call for a comprehensive revision of the metropolis in motion, there were however both individual and collaborative efforts at studying the evolving town and city.>79 Recently-hired instructor Robert Beckley received a Rackham research grant in 1964/'65 to consider multiple-level planning for vehicles and pedestrians in an urban context. In that same aca demic year, a number of faculty and graduate students worked on revitalizing the small town of Reed City, located almost 200 miles northwest of Ann Arbor. Their mission, as reported then in the Michigan Daily, was "to keep Reed City from becoming a ghost town. ">80 They showed more of an inclination to this scale of consultative analysis and collaboration than to any involve ment in urban transformation at the magnitude of, for exam ple, Mies' Lafayette Park in Detroit. LikeJenney and Lorch before him, Malcolmson had come to Ann Arbor with the understanding that he could shape curricu lar change and that he would design new architecture on cam pus. In the former he oversaw significant developments initi ated either by himself or by his faculty; in the latter he would become sorely disappointed. A single new building at the edge of Ann Arbor could not have seemed unachievable to the urbane Malcolmson when he arrived as dean. He assumed to the contrary, and stated quite firmly, that he would be the architect for the college's future home on North Campus.>sl His faculty did not share this as sumption, which Malcolmson had drawn from preliminary agreements with university administrator John McKevitt. The misunderstanding over their future home distanced the dean from the faculty's building committee. "Super-sensitive" was the description attributed to the college as a whole by the university

architect, who had no officially direct ties to the college but the obvious interests of an observer whose role was to act as the uni versity's liaison with architects commissioned to build on the campus. 282 Professors Olencki, Sanders, Francesco Della Sala, and Muschenheim had tried their turns at earlier site develop ment ideas for a North Campus location. 283 Theirs were disre garded when Malcolmson proceeded with his own six studies for the junction of Huron Parkway and Hubbard Road. 284 He presented his to the Board of Regents at an evening meeting on June 15, 1967. He began the slide show for them with thejustifi cation that, "at the time of my appointment here it was sug gested that the Dean might have the last word in the design and planning of the new building. It was, as I saw it, an inducement to me to accept the role of Dean and I have, therefore, over the past three years prepared a number of studies relative to a site on the North Campus."28 5 The long-lasting uncertainty over the college's future facility seems as a rehearsal for even more contentious issues of the 1960s. At the same time that Dean Malcolmson was discretely asking the regents for "virtually a free hand" in bringing about curricular and staffing changes according to his paternalistic design, his faculty was mounting its counterclaim to "democratic freedom in action. "286 Malcolmson advised the regents that, "change must inevitably take place if this College is to realize its potential" and that, "we can only make significant changes by bringing in new faculty members from the outside." Further more, he wanted to hire without any interference from his fac ulty. 287 He realized, and acknowledged still four years later, that the selection of any single individual was all the more critical since there was no room for a greater number of faculty until the move to North Campus. 288 The faculty challenged this type of leadership publicly, on the front page of the Michigan Daily, and more privately in their own internal communications with university administrators. 289 These teachers were both tenured and new, with Sanders label ling himself the "father confessor" for his worried colleagues. 29° Activist professors were joined by students, who in 1967 were given a more direct role in deliberating over college policy with representation on all department committees. The alleged in sistance upon an uncompromising aesthetic by Malcolmson and

HA~DSOME

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his closely-allied chairman Jacqu es Brownson seemed so exclu sive to studio students that some of them voiced their concerns about punitive grading. Faculty too criticized the notion of oblig atory conformity with Miesian modernism, and by inference the perceived style of Malcolmson's administration as well. Even more severe was the professors' vote of no confidence in Brownson, who returned to Chicago just two and a half years after his arrival. 29' The faculty's lack of familiarity with him had foreshadowed misgivings all along. In the chairman search committee's file was early evidence of a concern about candidate Brownson : "though obviously intelligent he seems to be some what non-committal intellectually as evidenced by a reluctance to submit a statement relative to his philosophy of cducation."29 2 \rVell into his appointment, he admitted his own sense of alien ation by stating at a late-night meeting of the faculty that, "I am not one for a lot of discussion and talking."2 93 No doubt the very positive international press coverage of the just-completed Chicago Civic Center, designed by Brownson , eased his depar ture from Ann Arbor.29i The act of resisting the chairman and dean was a force of habit rather than a momentary, fashionable manifesto. Michi gan 's faculty neither sought nor approved of any single ideology as their collective identity. They instead continued to take great pride in their principle of self governance and in their reputa tion- not quite strident enough to be considered a muscular counter-direction- of teaching coursework based on "a real sit uation, with a real site, a real client and a real problem."2 95 There was therefore no indecision for the majority over rejecting an authoritarian doctrine of either modernist or classical, Euro centric orientations since these were never a characteristic of the Michigan tradition. The rejection was a reaffirmation of the contrast of Michigan. Professor Eaton sensed this distinc tion as key to the college 's identity of self-reliance which was "not lIT, not Berkeley, not Harvard, not Yale. " 296 Although more than half of the faculty sabbaticals during Malcolmson's era were spent in Europe, these too were typically focused directly upon contemporary developments in materi als, housing, planning, and environmental studies rather than any academic heritage, ideology, or philosophical introspec tion. 297 The aim, at least as it was stated in requests for leaves,

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was comparative or derivative rather than imitative. Eaton's sab batical even reversed the conventional assumptions about in fluence by examining the imitation and adaptation of American architecture in Europe. 2g8 On the other hand , not a single sab batical proposal of that decade addressed the then avant-garde philosophy of postmodernism. This new direction was other wise bringing fame to alumnus Charles Moore. (The much ear lier Michigan graduate Joseph Hudnut is credited with intro ducing the term "post-modern" to the architectural lexicon by entitling his essay of 1945 "The Post-Modern House."Y99 For all its rejection of what it considered dogma forcing imitative formalism, Michigan was by no means looking for a curriculum without discipline. In fact, just as the faculty was closing ranks against Miesian pedantry, it was fighting, too, to extend degree requirements into a six-year program which would demand more rather than less. The idea was not new. Faculty had been discussing it since 1957 and watching its implementa tion elsewh ere at over a third of the eighty schools comprising the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture. 30o The appeal of the new curriculum was its increased emphases upon solid, pre-architecture introductory courses including physics, mathematics, economics, and English; changes in the environ ment , technology, and building materials; and the integration of these factors into design courses at alllevels. 301 This proposal, too, was divisive. Those opposed claimed that design in par ticular, and the humanities more generally, would be dimin ished. 30 2 But twenty-four professors in favor of change signed their names to a petition asking Vice President Allan Smith to overrule the dean and other opponents, in order to allow the idea to go forward. "The very principle of faculty self-govern ment is at stake here, " they urged heroically. 30 3 Jean-Paul Sartre, Marshall McLuhan, the U.S. Constitution, and the Ten Com mandments were all invoked for the sake of an impassioned argument whose issues were not always well-stated Y 4 Smith responded charitably that the changing nature of the profession was reason for the faculty's inability to articulate the college's needs with one clear voice. 30s He endorsed the six-year program anyway. Along with Michigan's notion of discipline was an internal conformity of its own fashion. Standards were set high for

structural integrity and honesty of materials, as much in the studios of the Architecture Building as on the job sites of faculty and alumni. There was the recognition among newly arrived faculty that, "structural discipline was regarded as of primary importance. "3° 6 The architectural research laboratory, as the flagship of scholarship for the college, was also continuing its orientation towards applied problem solving. Sponsorship by industry, foundations, and the government brought with it obligations other than learned disputation. The Unistrut corporation had expected a commitment to showcase for the building industry the commercial appeal of easily assembled and demountable steel framing; and the U.S. Department of State wanted effective solutions from research in using cellular plastics for low-cost housing in Third World countries. 307 These types of collabora tions suited the larger University of Michigan research commu nity, which was undergoing a "mainstream academic profes sionalism." By historian David Hollinger's definition, this campus-wide trend involved "a suspicion of grand theory and of epistemological quibbling, a preference for concrete and clear ly manageable projects, a penchant for technical methodologi cal refinements, and, above all, attention to aspects of the social sciences and humanities least likely to be mistaken for political advocacy, cultural criticism, or journalism. The Michigan that had come into being by the late 1950S and early 1960s was a mighty engine of scholarship and science of just this type. "3° 8 The research in Michigan's architecture laboratory was no less ambitious for its pragmatism. Nor did its objective of di rect applicability in technological development, environmental design, and international development safeguard it from arti ficiality. 3og In following that era's confidence in positivistic methodology, far-reaching bibliographic surveys were the lab oratory's bedrock for empirical analysis. (The laboratory was appropriately characterized later as "an information-gathering and information-generating unit"). 3I o Laboratory director Theodore Larson went even further to identify and organize categories of cultural factors to conform to his own perception of a new information system with univer sal relevance . The very appearance of his system mattered a great deal to him. He had designed it to resemble a Buckminster

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human intelligence

personal well-being

reueation

education

exploration

housing

power

population

tranlportation

organization

adminidration

Industrial production

bUline..

finance

societal control

FIELDS OF HUMAN ACTIVITY

and

COMMUNITY RELATIONSHIPS

8BSBd on dlagmms In DEVELOPMENT INDEX

by K. LOnberg-Ho/m and C. Theodore Latson 51

Fuller dome with equidistant spokes of phenomena such as manufacturing, sanitation, exploration, and comprehension. These were all connected and dynamic factors, whose interre lationships stretched the categories of conventional architec tural research and aligned it with both behavioral sciences and

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ecology. Larson understood this to constitute environmental re search. The objective was much more than drawing a static, two dimensional model of the mid-century human cosmos. Larson aimed at "clocking the future," in a proposed book which would "present a unified statistical technique for measuring and com paring the rates of change in various fields of activity as man develops into an integrated global society."3 Because of the goal of universal application of such experi mentation, it is conceivable that the laboratory's missteps were made all the more vulnerable to satire later on. Michigan's hy perbole and imagery from this Sputnik-era research could be easily maligned in the subsequent alienation from modern ism, including modernist research. Targets could include the overview of the laboratory's work entitled "The Architecture of Ultimate Concern." In it, the wonders of machine-produced housing components had been exaggerated with the teasing claim that, "husbands' day-end complaints about misplaced slippers may expand to include misplaced dens. "3 12 Skepticism from within the college could be just as severe as any later re view. But when Chairman Brownson characterized Larson's experimental structures in the college courtyard as a "plastic slum," Larson responded blithely that the "litter" was from "structural failures" and that, "we learn more from failures than successes in research."3 3 I1

Despite the limited shelf life of some of the laboratory's par lance and theory, the overall reputation of research at Michigan was excellent. Laboratory director Larson had been willing to risk a cheap laugh for the prize of futuristic, multi-disciplinary research well beyond the traditional equation of architectural research as history. The gamble literally yielded big dividends in Michigan's research investigations of computer applications for architecture. Over a period of almost twenty years, continual funding amounting to $1.7 million was behind Harold Borkin's savvy development of computer integrated design programs as well as applications pushed by J. Sterling Crandall and Willard

101

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Oberdick. 314 Foresight had paid off for these early devotees of computer research on a campus which was among the first to acquire commercial computers. 315 Already at an AlA conference in Washington in the spring of 1964, the college was paid trib ute. 316 Twenty years later the laboratory was still congratulating itself on its research in computer-aided building design, con struction, and management: "We do it well, perhaps better than anyone. It is the central theme of all our research. vVe now use the computer as the principal medium for all our work. It is the intellectual glue used to bind together the disparity of informa tion from different disciplines."3 7 Loyalty to the Larson ethos fit into this computer-based information system, whereby his successors were still attempting to "seek to build integrated com puter models, integrated across disciplines and over time. All of our research projects, present and proposed, to a greater or lesser degree, harmonize with this theme and build on it. It lends im m ense credibility to anything we propose, for each individual project advances a much larger project, and can be presented in context." 318 This credibility did not translate into computer use by design faculty, however. Even though the college had de cided in 1968 to require an introductory computer course for all fourth-year students, their studio teachers still chose the draw ing board over the computer screen. 3 lg "Vhat constituted research for the laboratory was for its staff self-evident. This clear of a common vision was not shared by the rest of the faculty. Nevertheless, by the late 1960s there was no choice for any individual professor but to address the question of a future research agenda for himself. The Total Commitment Committee of the Department of Archite cture (Edward Olencki, Joseph Wehrer, Stephen Paraskevopoulos, and Rob ert C. Metcalf) initiated a salary reform to compensate faculty for only 80% of their academic appointments, in an ef fort to "provide an equitable situation."3 2 o The assumption was that good research would generate sponsorship, just as success ful practice could. The tensile structures of Kent Hubbell and the underground law library of Gunnar Birkerts could later be referred to as justifying examples of the ideal synthesis of research and remunerative practice. The college believed that it required researchers as teachers since it was "training the first generation of architects whose 1

102

primary orientation will be towards architectural research." 321 The leaders of that first cohort of students were the candidates within the college's new doctoral program. That unique status could be pursued as of the fall of 1969, when Michigan became the first architectural program to offer the doctorate of archi tecture. A direct outgrowth of Larson's laboratory, the doctoral program quickly accrued a roster of graduates. The first was James A. Chaffers. His dissertation, completed already in 197I, was entitled "Design and the Urban Core: Creating a Relevant Milieu." He described it himself as "an attempt to sketch out a concept of total environmental quality nurturous and protec tive of the struggle and delicate dynamics akin to a black quest for liberation and self-determined development. "3 22 He had become academically as well as socially versed in the critical analysis of urban planning through his leadership in Detroit's "Grass Roots Organization of Workers" (GRO'V). His sustained effort to nurture empowerment through community design work shops for an area comprising roo city blocks earned him praise at the university and afforded the university in return a sorely ne eded example of credibility in the riot-torn neighborhoods of Detroit's inner city. With Chaffers as an inspirational cata lyst, the college turned from its earlier community service pro grams in the small towns of rural Michigan to a new course in "Conflict and Consensus in Urban Problems. " 32 3 Other doctoral graduates carried their degrees home to foreign countries including Greece, Germany, Iceland , and Korea Y4 Their topics and methodologies were just as varied as their destinations. Not surprisingly, many relied on the same computer technologies, survey techniques, and behavioral sciences investigated by their advisors within the laboratory. Even though it was of little interest to many of these candi dates of the 1970s, historical analysis was receiving a new kind of attention outside of the laboratory. The movement was in direct response to the earlier disregard for an architectural heri tage, either local or general. Whereas other schools of architec ture had been promoting a cerebral, self-referential adaptation of historical styles in the design of new buildings, Michigan placed its emphasis upon a more community-oriented historic preservation. By 1975 students could specialize in Building Pre servation/ Conservation . They shared their classes, which were

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The newly built Art and Architecture Building5 2

104

developed by Kingsbury Marzolf, with townspeople and students from other discipiinesY5 Marzolf stepped outside of the class room to help campaign successfully for the preservation of Ann Arbor's fire station and the campus observatory, and to convince restaurateur Chuck Muer to rehabilitate Ann Arbor's Michigan Central Railroad Depot into the Gandy Dancer. Just as Marzolf and others were becoming involved in promot ing the preservation of good architecture on and around central campus, they and their many colleagues in the college were pack ing to move to the northern edge of town. In the end neither fac ulty nor dean were in charge of the development of th e new Art and Architecture Building on North Campus. From a tentative list considering, among others, Mies van der Rohe; Smith, Hinchman, & Grylls; Glen Paulsen; Giffels & Rossetti; and Gunnar Birkerts, the state ultimately chose Robert S. Swanson and Associates of Bloomfield Hills, Michigan as architects for the new building. At least Swanson was an alumnus. His design was described as "not precious, rather ... easily modified, es sentially loft space. " 326 The construction of the winning proposal

would not occur before the end of Malcolmson's deanship. It fi nally opened for classes in September Ig74, over three decades af ter the first plans for North Campus were proposed by Swanson's uncle, Eero SaarinenY7 There was eventually at least some ap preciation for the long delay in opening this new building, since curricular and research changes of the Ig60s redefined the pro gram for ity8 The college had by then also vetoed its own ear lier ideas of housing some of the students within a residential section of the buildingY 9 The public, especially alumni, was invited to tour the build ing in April Ig75. The written invitation encouraged them to see in particular the Visual Simulation Laboratory, the Build ing Technology Laboratory, and the Computing Facilities Lab oratory.33 0 Also on display at the public opening was confirma tion of the new administrative separation of art from architec ture and urban planning, symbolized in two flags designed for the occasion. While Malcolmson had earlier resisted the divi sion, others recognized that "we have been dancing to different tunes since World War II."33 Art moved into the front of the new building, and architecture along with urban planning took the southern half of it. vVith more than twice the overall space of the building on central campus, and an architecture/ plan ning studio measuring go' x 360', this new facility easily accom modated the new School of Art and the renamed College of Architecture and Urban Planning. Contrary to the overall expansion, however, was an eventual loss beyond the conveniences of central campus. The university had decided, with no apparent sense of irony, to abandon any idea of preserving the Unistrut building which had housed the Architectural Research Laboratory on central campus. Even though college members had argued that this prototypical struc ture was in fact designed to be conveniently disassembled and moved, or stored, or adapted to another use, Swanson's final site plans did not include the laboratory. An investigation led by Unistrut preservationists among the faculty included the surmise that, "someone with authority ordered Mr. Swanson to man the eraser." 33 2 In the fall of Ig80, the L'nistrut Building was simply demolished.33~ Hosting the otherwise celebratory open house on North Campus were Dean Robert C. Metcalf as well as Dean George

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105

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The Art and Architecture Building's Slusser Gallery

on the building's dedica tion day53

106

Bayliss for the School of Art. Three immediate predecessors had earlier anticipated the event as theirs to oversee. Metcalf had succeeded Malcolmson as dean only after a rigorous re view of the entire college. He had the advantage of being a well respected and trusted member of the faculty since 1955 and chairman of the Department of Architecture for the second half of Malcolmson's tenure as dean. He knew the abilities and the tolerances of his colleagues and could mirror their interests for them. In his notes for his meeting with the dean search commit tee, he reminded himself to mention, as a candidate, the prefer ence to move "governance from autocratic to grassroots," in the new "age of communication" where important issues included the " finite nature of resources and urban decay. "334 One of Metcalf's first acts as dean was to try to assemble a faculty more diverse than the group whom he had known in his first twenty years at I\1ichigan. He even used Ms magazine to announce positions for women architectural educators. 335 The gender profile of his faculty did not change dramatically, and his own conclusion by 1981 was that , "given their central role in childbearing and family life, women are not moving in to professional positions in practice or teaching in anything like the numbers leaving school. "33 6 Female students, on the other hand, did occupy more of the classrooms and studios. They

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James Chaffers in the col lege s tudi0 54

constituted 30% of the student population by the 1980s.337 In 1979, Nancy R. Lickerman had even achieved a grade point av erage which was a record high for the school.3 38 Female students outpaced all other underrepresented groups in their advances in the college. Despite the demands of the 1970 Black Action Movement, the college never succeeded in approaching the 10% enrollment goal promised by President Fleming to Black students. 339 Metcalf recognized, and regretted , that the University of Michigan was "not perceived by minori ties, especially the black community, as a welcoming, nurturing place. "34 0 He relied upon Chaffers in particular for sage advice on minority recruitment. 34I Detroit architect Howard Sims was also both a key role model and advisor for Metcalf, as well as a general benefactor who with his wife established a scholarship fund for Black students. 342 By his own admission , Metcalf was not a theorist. 343 His me tier was instead a very skillful and productive practice resulting in modernist residences throughout the upscale neighborhoods of Ann Arbor. He began his apprenticeship as chief drafts man of approximately thirty houses for George B. Brigham be tween 1948 and 1952.344 The legacy of his mentor is evident in Metcalf's work , and proudly so. Others who influenced him were Greene and Greene, Bernard Maybeck, Frank Lloyd Wright,

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Gunnar Birkerts' Univer sity of Michigan Law Li brary Addition, copyright Timothy Hursley55

108

and Harwell Hamilton Harris. 345 For Metcalf, design was re search. Its principal ingredient was "thinking, not drawing."34 6 His only frustration with it was its low esteem among other aca demicians: "It bothers me that the design of a building is con sidered a mere commercial venture, and a conflict of interest, whereas the University would be happy to report that I wrote a piece of music, or a book, or painted a picture, or danced on the stage. They would probably be pleased to report I wrote some articles about the design of a house. In my view, designing is a lot more important achievement than writing about it. "347 What is more, his faculty wanted the teaching of design to be further strengthened. 34B

Just as Metcalf's forte in design analysis is evidenced in the details of his own drawings and the critique of his students', so too was his administration defined by his attention to precision in the college's operation. At the same time that he minimized ideological rhetoric and disdained "egocentric architecture," he assumed a personal responsibility for an efficient and cost effective central office. 349 He began already as chairman a pol icy of sending letters of appreciation for every gift to the archi tecture department, regardless of its amount. 350 He had wisely realized that such private assistance would become all the more important once the state of Michigan trimmed its support to the university.35 1 In part by organizing a CAUP Alumni Society, producing a newsletter entitled Portico, and conducting a tele phone fund drive, the college managed to reach an annual giv ing of over half a million dollars by the end of Metcalf's tenure as dean. 352 Monies received were directed into a variety of en dowments to earn annual income. Fund raising was labor in tensive for the college's central office. Metcalf 's administrative duties kept him from his practice and obliged him to at least consider displaying with his wife their "celebrated Apache num ber" for potential School of Art donors on the dance tloor. 353 The inevitable frustrations led him once to lament that, "I am the damn dean. "354 Brooding was otherwise minimal for this dean and his faculty. In fact, the appearance of a quite tranquil ambience actually concerned the team from the National Architectural Accredit ing Board who visited in I982. While the reviewers were im pressed overall with the college, they asked if "this confidence in the program limit[s] the flow of new ideas and program changes?"355 They suggested that, "the students of the school and the faculty are less interested in information than in valid ity; facts rather than hypotheses." Their negative impressions were arrived at quickly and were perhaps exaggerated during their abbreviated schedule of three days, which was disrupted by continuing snowstorms. The college did in any case decide just a few years later, in I984, to initiate a new fellowship program whereby younger, practicing architects could infuse energy into the design curric ulum and at the same time pursue their own research objectives. The fellowships carried with them honorary titles in tribute to

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log

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Visiting faculty Ian Taberner, Catherine Wetzel, Eduardo Gascon, Robert Cole, and Bob Henry at their 1987 exhibit entitled "On Our Own: Five Young Architects"57

110

two earlier faculty who themselves had excelled at design: William Muschenheim and Walter Sanders. The appointments also came with certain anticipations on the part of a college seeking a broader definition of design . In response to a letter of a few years previous, which questioned Michigan'S current curriculum, Metcalf shared with Carl Arthur Muschenheim of SONI his hope that, "all of us will be thinking of design as a good deal more than a handsome box. "35 6 Once accustomed to its new home on ~orth Campus, the College of Architecture and Urban Planning had perhaps real足 ized a distance from its own antecedents. The old Architecture Building on J'v1onroe was renamed Lorch Hall as a tribute to its architect and a recognition that he, rather than the ongoing program , was the building's permanent affiliation. Yet other symbolic references were brought to the new facility. One of the program's heirlooms, a Louis Sullivan grille, was mounted in the library. A bust of Jean Paul Slusser, the revered teacher of art, was placed outside of the new gallery which would carry his name. Lorch 's name would also be remembered through the college 's first professorship, established in 1977. Willard Oberdick was chosen then to hold the title "Emil Lorch Profes足 sor of Architecture and Urban Planning." Dean Metcalf decided to perpetuate the memory of alumnus Raoul Wallenberg through an ongoing series of lectures, after

the success of the first three by l\'"ikolaus Pevsner (1971), Eric Larrabee (1973), and Reyner Banham (1975).157 The fourth one

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was delivered in 1976 by art theorist and emigre Rudolf Arnheim . His address, entitled "The Persistence of Goodness in Time," spoke to the value of dedication and the courage of con viction. He asked his listeners to consider that for an archi tect, "one of the motives must surely be a willingness to com mit oneself in stone. One must feel sure enough to translate one's thought and vision into so hard a material and be eager to do so. "35 8 The means by which to accomplish this honorable integrity were left to the imagination of his audience. They were the source of speculation for a college faculty whose habit was still to de liberate in democratic fashion and whose newest dean , Robert M. Beckley, later testified to the value of the lesson itself: An architectural education is still a good education. It is one of the few curricula in the University which demands a mastery of scientific and artistic skills and an understand ing of the humanities. It is one of the few curricula where students can immerse themselves in creative activity. It is one of the few curricula which places equal emphasis on abstract and practical thinking. It is one of the few curric ula which: is immersed in historic traditions; has been involved in the revolutionary changes of the last century; and continues to explore new aesthetic and philosophical realms. A student graduating with a professional degree in architecture, be it undergraduate or graduate, has a broad range of knowledge, a set of tested analytical skills, and, I would maintain, a strong set of moral and ethical values. 359

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REFERENCES

University of Michigan Board of Regents, Regents ' Proceedings, 1837- 1864 (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan, 1915),5. 2 Burke A. Hinsdale, History of the University of Michigan, edited by Isaac N. Demmon (Ann Arbor, MI: Cniversity of Michigan , 1906), 48. 3 University of Michigan Board of Regents, Regents' Proceedings, 1837- 1864 (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan, 1915),82- 83. 4 Amelia Peck, ed., Alexander Jackson Davis, American Architect, 1803- 1892 (New York, NY: Rizzoli, 1992). S William Le Baron jenney and Sanford Loring, Principles and Practices of Architecture (Cleveland, OH, and Chicago, IL: Cobb, Pritchard, and Co., 186 9) . 6 William Le Baron jenney to james B. Angell, 19 August 1875, james B. Angell collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. (Hereafter Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan is abbre足 viated as BHL, UM). 7 David S. Andrew, Louis Sullivan and the Polemics of Modern Architecture (Urbana and Chicago, IL: Cniversity of Illinois Press, 1985),4. 8 Theodore Turak, William Le Baron Jenney, A Pioneer of Modern Architecture (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1986), 331. 9 William Le Baron jenney to james B. Angell, 19 August 1875, james B. Angell collection, BHL, UM. C.w. Durham to james B. Angell, 12 August 1875, james B. Angell col足

lection, BHL, UM.

Andrew Dickson White tojames B. Angell, 8 May 1875,james B. Angell collection, BHL, UM. Alexander Wadsworth Longfellow to james B. Angell, 27 August 1875, james B. Angell collection, BHL, UM. 13 The School of Architecture of the C niversity of Illinois was begun in 1867 and announced as the first architecture program in the ~idwest. See the preface to The Midwest in American Architecture, edited by john S. Garner (Urbana and Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1991 ). 14 William Tecumseh Sherman to james B. Angell, 9 january 1876, james B. Angell collection, BHL, UM. 15 Gordon W. Lloyd tojames B. Angell, 4 February 1876,james B. Angell collection , BHL, UM. 16 Frederick Law Olmsted to james B. Angell, 12 january 1876, james B. Angell collection, BHL, UM. 17 Theodore Turak, William Le Baron Jenney, A Pioneer of Modern Architecture (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1986), 106. 18 Frederick Law Olmsted to james B. Angell, 12 january 1876, james B. Angell collection, BHL, UM. Ig C.W. Durham tojames B. Angell, II january 1876,james B. Angell col足 lection, BHL, UM . I

115

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James B. Angell , The Reminiscences of James Burrill Angell (New York, NY: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1912),77. See also Victor Roy Wilbee, The Religious Dimensions of Three Presidents in a State l.:niversity (Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms, 1967). 71 William Le Baron Jenney to James B. Angell, 10 March 1876, James B. Angell collection, BHL, UM . " Walter A. Donnelly, ed., The University of Michigan, An Encyclopedic Survey III (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1953), 1289. 73 Burke A. Hinsdale, History of the University of Michigan, edited by Isaac N. Demmon (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan , 1906), 82. 74 Howard H. Peckham, The Making of the University of Michigan, 1817-1967 (Ann Arbor, MI: The Cniversity of Michigan Press, 1967),73. ' 5 Walter A. Donnelly, ed., The University of Michigan, An Encyclopedic Survey III (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1953), 1289. 76 Ibid. 77 William Le Baron Jenney collection, microfilm roll II, Chicago Micro film Project, Ryerson-Burnham Library, Art Institute of Chicago. , 8 The Chronicle, 20 May 1876. 79 William Le Baron Jenney to James B. Angell, 16 August 1876,James B. Angell collection , BHL, UM. 0 3 William Le Baron Jenney to James B. Angell, 8 June 1876, James B. Angell collection, BHL, UM . 3 William Le Baron Jenney to James B. Angell, 8 August 1876, James B. Angell collection , BHL, UM. 7 3 Ibid. 33 William Le Baron Jenney to James B. Angell , 17 August 1876, James B. Angell collection, BHL, UM. 34 Ibid. 35 William Le Baron Jenney to James B. Angell, 29 July 1876, James B. Angell collection, BHL, UM. 6 3 William Le Baron Jenney to James B. Angell, 16 August 1876, James B. Angell collection, BHL, CM. 37 University of Michigan Board of Regents, Proceedings of the Board of Re gents of the University of Michigan from January 1876 to January 1881 (Ann Arbor, MI: Ann Arbor Printing and Publishing Company, 1881 ), 402. 8 3 University of Michigan, Exercises at the Inauguration of President Angell and the Laying of the Cornerstone of University Hall (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan, 1871), 14. 39 Johns Hopkins University, Johns Hopkins University Celebration of the Twenty fifth Anniversary of the Founding of the University and Inauguration of Ira Remsen as President of the University (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins Press, 19 02 ), 13 6- 137. 0 4 Louis Sullivan, The Autobiography of an Idea (New York, NY: Dover Publi cations, 1956), 203 . 4 William Le Baron Jenney to the University of Michigan Board of Re gents, 19 December 1878, University of Michigan Board of Regents rec ords, BHL, CM. 70

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University of Michigan, Calendar of the University if Michigan, 1876~77 (Ann REFERENCES Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan, 1877),70. 43 Ibid., 71. 44 Ibid., 70.

45 The Chronicle, 7 April 1877.

6 4 William Le Baron Jenney to James B. Angell, 21 March 1876, James B. Angell collection, BHL, UM. 47 William Le Baron Jenney to James B. Angell, 28 June 1879, James B. Angell collection, BHL, UM. 8 4 The Chronicle, 2 December 1876, and The Chronicle, 18 November 1876. 49 Theodore Turak, William Le Baron Jenney, A Pioneer of Modern Architecture (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1986), 151. 50 The Chronicle, 17 March 1877. 5' The Chronicle, 14 February 1880. 52 Chronological Building Development of the University of Michigan, Buildings and Grounds, University of Michigan vertical file, BHL, UM. 53 William Le Baron Jenney to James B. Angell, 5 July 1879, James B. Angell collection, BHL, UM. 54 William Le Baron Jenney to James B. Angell, undated, James B. Angell collection, BHL, UM. 55 Howard H. Peckham, The Making of the University if Michigan, 1817~1967 (Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 1967),79. 56 University of Michigan Board of Regents, Proceedings of the Board if Re gents of the University of Michigan from January 1876 to January 1881 (Ann Arbor, MI: Ann Arbor Printing and Publishing Company, 1881),312. 57 Ibid., 154. 58 William Le Baron Jenney to the University of Michigan Board of Re gents, 19 December 1878, University of Michigan Board of Regents rec ords, BHL, UM. 59 William Le Baron Jenney toJames B. Angell, 19 November 1879,James B. Angell collection, BHL, UM. 60 William Le Baron Jenney collection, microfilm roll II, Chicago Micro film Project, Ryerson-Burnham Library, Art Institute of Chicago. 6, The Chronicle, 3 March 1877. 62 Michigan Daily, September 1906. 63 Emil Lorch, draft, folder 37, box I, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM. He wrote in this same draft about his comprehensive study of the meth ods and results of architectural schools. He also elaborated that, "In design my first enthusiasm was for Richardson, but at Technology, M. Litang [Eugene Letang of MIT], that rare and self-sacrificing French man, showed me the true path. And yet the most thorough piece of work I have done is the drawings for the Harvard inch-scale Rheims model." 64 EW. Chandler to Emil Lorch, 7 ~ovember 1905, folder 41, box I, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM. 65 George Elmslie to Emil Lorch, 15 December 1905, folder 42, box I, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM. 117 42

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Louis Sullivan to James B. Angell, 15 December 1905, James B. Angell collection, BHL, UM . 67 Robert Twombly, Louis Sullivan, His Life and Work (New York, NY: Viking Penguin, 1986),387. 68 See Louis Sullivan, Kindergarten Chats, reprint edition (New York, NY: George ,,,Tittenborn, 1947), 68. (Sullivan himself had apprenticed with William Le Baron Jenney for a brief time in the early 1870S before Jenney taught in Ann Arbor). Lg Hermine to Emil Lorch , 2 March 1906, folder 46, box I , Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM. 0 7 Levi L. Barbour to Emil Lorch, 28 November 1905, folder 41 , box I , Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM. 7' Announcement, Department of Architecture, folder 49, box I, Emil Lorch collection , BHL, UM. The announcement states in part that, "Profes足 sor Lorch was chosen for this position by the Michigan Chapter of the American Institute of Architects through its committee consisting of l\1essrs. John M. Donaldson, George D. Mason , and Frank C . Baldwin, of Detroit." 7 Wdls Ira Bennett, "College of Architecture and Design," miscellaneous writings (3), box I, 'Veils Ira Bennett collection, BHL, CM, and Burke A. Hinsdale, History of the University of Michigan, edited by Isaac N. Demmon (Ann Arbor, MI: Cniversity of Michigan, 1906),203. 73 Emil Lorch to John M . Donaldson , 25 October 1906, folder 52, box I, Emil Lorch collection , BHL, CM. 74 Emil Lorch prepared and mailed 2,500 copies about the program at Michigan all around the country. See folder 33, box 2, Emil Lorch col足 lection, BHL, UM . 75 Emil Lorch to Mrs. Georgia R. Ferguson, 30 August 1906, folder 51, box I, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM. This assessment of female abilities seems to have remained consis足 tent throughout Lorch's career. Nearly thirty years after the letter to the Iowan applicant, Lorch used similar language in reporting to College of Literature, Science, and the Arts Dean Kraus that, " In our judgment there is little opportunity for women in architecture and so we advise parents and prospective girl students. Only exceptionally well quali足 fied and vigorous young women should go into architecture." See Emil Lorch , Conference with Dean Kraus, 7 Nove mber 1935, folder 27, box 4, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM. On an undated, one-page r esume composed sometime after 1927, Lorch included a list of "successful alumni and former students." All twenty-nine names are male. See folder 58, box 3, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM. 6 7 Alice Louise Hunt taught drawing as an instructor within the College of Engineering from 1899 to 1919. See University of .'vfichigan Catalogue of Graduates, Non-graduates, Officers, and Members of the Faculties, 1837- 1921 (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan, 1923), 27. 66

lIB

L'niversity of Michigan Alumni Asso ciation Alumnae Survey,lg24, Delight Sweney entry, box 110, "Cniversity of Michigan Alumni Associa tion records, BHL, CM. 8 7 Ibid. 79 Michiganensian, 1921, 637 . All women who were enrolled in either engi neering or architecture were ipso facto members. See Michigan Technic XXVIII (March 1915),75. Another early alumna, Bertha Yerex Whitman, complained to the Alumni Association that one of the outstanding mem ories of her college days was the "entire lack of any way in which to give social life to women in professional colleges." See University of Michi gan Alumni Association Alumnae Survey,1924, Bertha Yerex Whitman entry, box 109, University of Michigan Alumni Association records , BHL, UM. 80 Jonathan Marwil, A History of Ann Arbor (Ann Arbor, Ml: The Ann Arbor Observer Company, 1987), 83. At least Lorch did not endorse Elmslie 's proposal to establish a chap ter of the Scarab Fraternity at the University of Michigan. Elmslie had supplied Lorch with an information sheet about the fraternity which be gan with the statement "Membership shall be limited to male members of the Caucasian race, who profess no other religion than Christianity, and who are following the profession of, or are students of, architecture, architectural engineering, or landscape architecture. " Elmslie was en thusiastic about the Scarab Fraternity, in part because it had supported the publication of Louis Sullivan's Kindergarten Chats and made Sullivan an honorary member. Lorch responded to Elmslie that, "University life is so over-organized that we hope that thne will be no more fraternities added here. " See folder 24, box 4, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, eM. 8. Jack Travis, ed., Ajrican American Architects in Current Practice (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Architectural Press, 1991 ),92 . 8. Clair William Ditchy, "Alpha Rho Chi ," The Archi of Alpha Rho Chi II (I) Gune 1920), Archi - National Magazine 1918- 1931 folder, box I, Alpha Rho Chi records, BHL, UM . 83 9 Aprillgog minutes, minutes volume 1909 '1915, box I, Alpha Rho Chi records, BHL, UM. A social committee was established to organize upcoming events. Albert Kahn's younger brother Louis, a student from 1906 to 1909, was nominated to the committee at the inaugural meeting of the organiza tion. (Louis Kahn did not graduate. Instead he joined his big brother's firm in 1910 and remained there permanently. ) See Grant Hildebrand, Designingfor Industry the Architecture of Albert Kahn (C a mbridge, MA: MIT Press, 1974),59. 84 ''Architectural Lecture Postponed ," Michigan Daily , 27 May 1909 . 85 Brendan Gill, Many Masks, A Life oj Frank Lloyd Wright (New York, NY: Ballantine Books, 1987), 199. 86 15 November 1909 minutes and 5 December 1912 minutes, minutes vol ume 1909- 1915, box I, Alpha Rho Chi record s, BHL, eM. 77

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119

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November 1912 minutes, minutes volume 1909-1915, box I , Alpha Rho Chi records, BHL, UM. A few years later the women students suggested a "smock dance." "Can you imagine it?" asked the male reporter to the Michigan Technic readership. "Something unique in costume colors should be present, and just think fellows, we would scarcely have to leave our own domain for pretty partners." See Michigan Technic XXXII (2) (May 1919), 157. 88 Clair William Ditchy, "Alpha Rho Chi," The Archi oj Alpha Rho Chi II (I) (June 1920),3, Archi - National Magazine 1918-1931 folder, box I, Alpha Rho Chi records, BHL, UM. 89 The Archi oj Alpha Rho Chi I (III), 9-10, Archi - National Magazine 1918 1931 folder, box I, Alpha Rho Chi records, BHL, eM. 0 9 Wilfred B. Shaw, "The University of Michigan as a Pioneer," The Michi gan Alumnus Quarterly Review LXIII, 14 (2 March 1957), 93-106. 9 ' Mortimer Cooley to Mr. M.R. Burrows, Secretary of the Michigan Chap ter of the AlA, 24 April 1913, folder 39, box 2, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM. 9 University of Michigan Board of Regents, Regents' Proceedings, 1906-1910, 88. 93 History of the College of Architecture, folder 30, box 4, Emil Lorch col lection, BHL, CM. Denison must have offered unique company for Lorch. He had been a member of the Michigan faculty since 1872, first as an instructor in engineering and drawing (1872-1876). Denison's title after Jenney's departure was Instructor in Engineering and Drawing and Assistant in Architecture (1876-1881). By Lorch's arrival his title had changed to Professor of Stereotomy, Mechanism, and Drawing. He died in Ann Arbor on 30July 1913. 94 The notice of the death of William Le BaronJenney which appeared in the Michigan Alumnus in October 1907 listed him under the category of Officer rather than Faculty. The lengthier obituary in Chicago'S Sunday Record, appearing on 16June 1907, made no mention of his tenure at the University of Michigan . Lorch did note much later that he regretted the disappearance of a biography written by one of Jenney's partners. He wrote that, "some of us are still hoping that it will turn up and tell us more about this won derful man who was responsible for the creation of what became the steel skeleton for construction of high buildings." See Emil Lorch to Dean Philip N. Youtz, 11 March 1960, Centennial Weekend, 1976, box 17, Cniversity of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records, BHL, VM. 95 Emil Lorch to Mr. Adelbert Mills, 19 June 1907, folder 2, box 2, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM. 6 9 David Van Zan ten, "Chicago in Architectural History," in Elisabeth Blair MacDougall, ed., The Architectural Historian in America (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1990),93. 97 Emil Lorch, "Some Considerations of the Study of Architectural De sign," paper read 24 May 1901 at the Third Annual Convention of the 87

120

100

101

102 103

105

106

Architectural League of America, Philadelphia, folder 9, box I, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM. Lorch was quite proud of his contribution to the notion of pure de sign and was eager to see his thoughts published in the Brickbuilder. He wrote in a letter to Arthur D. Rogers, "While here in Chicago and else where many persons have for a long time been favoring a change of archi tectural design study methods none of these persons have made a practi cal suggestion ... The proposition of using methods of study employed in the decorative and fine art field came, as is here known, from me, and would logically come from someone acquainted with the wider art edu cational field unfettered by a 'specific application. '" See Emil Lorch to Arthur D. Rogers, 21 June 1901, folder 9, box I, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM. University of Michigan Department of Architecture, Announcement (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan, 1910). Grant Hildebrand, Designing for Industry: the Architecture of Albert Kahn (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1974),27. Henry B.Joy, president of Packard Motor Company and son of University of Michigan regent James Frederick Joy, entitled Kahn to diverse opportunities at an early stage in his architectural career. In the first decade of the century Kahn de signed his first factory buildings for Packard and also established his ties to the University of Michigan with the Engineering Building (1902 1903). He also designed in 1908 the home of George Gough Booth, whose estate would later include the Cranbrook complex. History of the College of Architecture, folder 30, box 4, Emil Lorch col lection, BHL, UM. "The Campus Plan," The Michigan Alumnus XVIII (3) (December 19I1),

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94· Ibid., 95. Emil Lorch to Frederick Law Olmsted, 6July 1907, folder 2, box 2, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM. Emil Lorch wrote to E W. Chandler at MIT, "I was glad to learn that the heads of the Eastern schools of architecture had met in conference recently as I feel much good can be accomplished by such meetings ... such meetings [should] be held annually and that all architectural schools be invited to participate." See Emil Lorch to EW. Chandler, 30 May 1909, folder 12, box 2, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM. Just a few years after telephones were installed on campus, Lorch had the novel instrument installed in his home. See the 8 September 1908 telephone lease, folder 14, box 2, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM. History of the College of Architecture, folder 30, box 4, Emil Lorch col lection, BHL, UM. "The department became a charter member of the ASCA [sic] whose yard-stick for arch. schools, the 'Standard Minima,' was largely written here." Emil Lorch to D.R. Wells, draft of letter, 19 November 1909, folder 17, box 2, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM.

121

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10, University of Michigan Colleges of Engineering and Architecture, Gen

122

eral Announcement, 1917 -1918 (Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michi gan, 1917), 124, 127-128. 108 United States Bureau of the Census, Population, 1920,3: 488. 109 Detroit Cit:Y Directory, 1924 - 1925, BHL, eM. 110 History of the College of Architecture, folder 30, box 4, Emil Lorch col lection, BHL, eM. Lorch remembered in this rough draft that , "Many extension lectures and some courses were given particularly in Detroit and Grand Rapids and from 1912--15 volunteer criticism in design was given by request ... to a group of Detroit arch. draftsmen some of whom were form er Michigan students unable to continue their studies here.» Emil Lorch to C.N. Butler, 19 June 1907, folder 2, box 2, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM. 112 Jonathan Marwil , A History if Ann Arbor (A nn Arbor, MI : The Ann Arbor Observer Company, 1987), 85. 113 Mark L. Peisch , The Chicago School if Architecture, Early Follo wers of Sullivan and Wright (New York, NY: Random House, 1964), I J. Ricker had been the first stude nt of the architecture program at Illinois (e nrolling in 1870). He was thereby the first individual to study architecture at an institution of high er education in the Midwest. See "Preface," in John S. Garner, ed., The Midwest in American Architecture (Urbana and Chicago, IL: Uni vers ity of Illinois Press, 1991), x. Lorch may have assumed that Ricker was about to retire. Sidney Fiske Kimball mentioned in a letter to Lorch on 30 August 1913 that, "On account of Professor Mann's leaving, it was decided that Professor Ricker should not retire as yet." See Sidney Fiske Kimball to Emil Lorch, 30 August 1913 , Sidney Fiske Kimball col lection, series 7 ssb, Philadelphia Museum of Art Archives. ,,~ Cniversity of Illinois President Edmund J. James to Emil Lorch, 22 August 1913, folder 40, box 2, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM. " j George Grant Elmslie to William L. Steele, 8July 1913, folder 40, box 2, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, eM . True enough, Champaign is "a little bit nearer" to Chicago, since the distance is ninety-one miles less than the distance between Chicago and Ann Arbor. In his ongoing correspondence to his brother-in-law, Elmslie rou tinely tried to persuade Lorch to leave :v1ichigan. "Michigan is out of line!!!!" was his warning in one typical letter. See George Elmslie to Emil Lorch, 20 March 1920, folder 12, box 3, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, eM. Elmslie himself had never received a formal education in architec ture . See Craig Zabel, "George Grant Elmslie and the Glory and Bur den of the Sullivan Legacy," inJohn S. Garner, ed., The Midwest in Ameri can Architecture (Crbana and Chicago , IL : University of Illinois Press, (99 1 ),3. ,,6 David Van Zanten, " Chicago in Architectural History," in Elisabeth Blair MacDougall, ed., The Architectural Historian in America (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 199°),95. The name "C hicago School" was coined just a few years earlier by Thomas E. Tallmadge in Architectural Review XV (April 1908),69 -71.

"7 Emil

Lorch to Dean Philip N. Youtz, II March 1960, Centennial Week end, 1976, box 17, University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records, BHL, UM. Lorch wrote that, "Louis Sullivan's influence played a part here since he was the leading progressive archi tect of his time, whose work was discussed in many lectures in the his tory of architecture. When in 1909 our first class and I visited Chicago, we looked up all the local buildings designed by Sullivan, and spent some time with him in his office where my late brother-in-law, George G. Elmslie, was associated with Sullivan. Sullivan was much interested in some plates showing work in abstract design made by the students, and felt that the approach was sound, as Frank Lloyd Wright stated later at a meeting of the Chicago Architectural Club, at which I read a paper on the subject." ,,8 H.B . Hutchins to Emil Lorch, 29 August 1913, folder 40, box 2, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, eM. "9 Emil Lorch to Sidney Fiske Kimball, 26 August 1913, Sidney Fiske Kimball collection, series 7 ssb, Philadelphia Museum of Art Archives. Sidney Fiske Kimball accepted Lorch's invitation, and at the same time explained his reasons for leaving Illinois. He wrote that, "I went to Illi nois at a salary of $I 200, with the promise of advancement and the un derstanding that I was to succeed to Professor Ricker's work on his ex pected retirement at the end of the year. On account of Professor Mann's leaving, it was decided that Professor Ricker should not retire yet. At the same time, through my marriage with the daughter of Professor Goebel, I became ineligible for reappointment under the University rule concerning relatives on the faculty." See Sidney Fiske Kimball to Emil Lorch, 30 August 1913, Sidney Fiske Kimball collection, series 7 ssb, Philadelphia Museum of Art Archives. That same year, William Caldwell Titcomb left the architecture faculty of Michigan to join that of the University of Illinois. Titcomb had been one of Lorch's earliest colleagues, joining the school in 1908. Titcomb returned to Michigan in 1925. See Wells Ira Bennett, "College of Architecture and Design, History," miscellaneous writings (3), box I, Wells Ira Bennett collection, BHL, UM. Fiske Kimball, "The Old Houses of Ann Arbor," The Inlander 22 (8) (May 19 19): 3- 6 . 1>2 Wells Bennett to Fiske Kimball, 6 April 1917, correspondence 1917- 1919, box I, Wells Ira Bennett collection, BHL, UM . 3 John C. Parker to H.B. Hutchins, 12 June 1918, folder 6, box 3, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM. Fiske Kimball to Wells Bennett, 3 May 1920, correspondence 1920- 1923, box I, Wells Bennett collection, BHL, UM. Bennett and Kimball shared historical research for a few years af ter Kimball's departure from Michigan. Despite his disassociation from the university, Kimball did retain a curiosity about its development. He ended one letter to Bennett with "Do write me all the news and gossip."

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120

121

124

I23

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See Fiske Kimball to Wells Bennett, 7 November 1922, correspondence 1920-1923, box I , Wells Bennett collection, BHL, UM. 5 Emil Lorch to William S. Lowndes, 18 July 1917 , folder 3, box 3, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM. '26 College of Architecture and Design History, miscellaneous writings (3) , box I, Wells Bennett collection , BHL, UM. '27 "Michiganensian," Michigan Technic (March 1917), 48. '28 J.J. Albert Rousseau, Biography Vertical File, BHL, UNI . The article also relates Rousseau 's opinions that , " the building plans of the east ern portion of the country are too conservative while the west carries things too far in the Mexican and mission styles." ' 29 University of Michigan treasurer George S. Baker to Emil Lorch, I No vember 1910, folder 23, box 2, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM . 13° Guy Szuberla, "Irving Kane Pond: A Michigan Architect in Chicago, " The Old Northwest 5 (2 ) (Summer 1979), 135. '3' Irving Kane Pond, "The College Union, " The Architectural Forum Gune 193 1),77 1. '3 Irving Kane Pond, "University of Michigan League," University of Mich igan vertical file, BHL, UM. Pond wrote that, "there will be an expres sion of character and individuality and a recognition of modernity linked with the past such as shown in the Union but besides this the building will exhale an indefinite and subtle something which does not of neces sity appertain to a building designed primarily for the uses of men. No little of this charm will be imparted by the presence of the women them selves; but there will be a spiritual something in the building which shall minister to this other and furnish a proper background." ' 33 Ibid., Ill. '34 Pond and Pond Architectural Firm: Historical Background, box 6, Pond Family collection, BHL, UNI. ' 35 University of Michigan Alumni Association Alumnae Survey, 1924, Ruth Love Archibald-Burnham entry and Catherine B. Heller entry, box 109, University of Michigan Alumni Association records, BHL, UM. 6 '3 " Back Again ," Th e Michigan Technic XXXII, 4 (December 1919),305. The architecture fraternity newsletter noted earlier that Battin's assignment was "due to his dexterity with the drums." See page 10 of The Archi of Alpha Rho Chi, I, III. His address was listed a few pages later as Harold Battin, care Aoecy Jassy Band, 10 rue de Paris, A.P. 708 , A.E.F. '37 Lorch c.v. for Mr. Trout, folder 58, box 3, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM. 8 '3 Emil Lorch to President Burton, 7 May 1921, folder 6, box 3, Marion L. Burton collection, BHL, UM. '39 Program for "Dinner Honoring Professor Emil Lorch ," 1 Kovember 1919, folder I I, box 3, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM, and "Honors to Professor Lorch," The Michigan Technic XXXII, 4 (December 1919), 302. '4° '\farren Laird , professor of architecture at University of Pennsylvania, wired Lorch a telegram on September 10, 1918, that, "Today learn offi cially that courses required in Students Army Training Corps probably 12

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exclude architecture virtually vacating all schools would you advise that

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as association official I petition authority in person on behalf schools generally to accept architecture on par with engineering can go to Wash ington Monday could you go too wire briefly collect." See Warren P. Laird to Emil Lorch ,

September 1918, folder 6, box 3, Emil Lorch

collection , BHL, UM. Their efforts were for naught, and many of the '4'

non-exempt students of architecture were enlisted. See folders I and 2, box 3, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM, for discus

sion of this concern. '4' Emil Lorch, "Twenty Minute Talk to Engineering Freshmen," 18Janu ary 1922, folder 19, box 3, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM. '43 David Van Zanten, "Chicago in Architectural History," in Elisabeth Blair MacDougall, ed., The Architectural Historian in America (Washington , '44

'45

DC: National Gallery of Art, 1990), 92. Irving Pond to Emil Lorch, II May 1923, folder 23, box 3, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM. Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue to Emil Lorch, II May 1923, folder 20, box 3, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM. Goodhue was no more positive about current architectural practice in New York City. He continued in his letter to complain to Lorch that, '~t no great distance from me is a series of columns, stone on the outside but iron frame within, holding a stone cornice constructed in exactly the same fashion . ""hile such things are possible isn't all architectural education worse than idle and is there any place for logic in the profession in which we both practice?"

147

Louis H . Sullivan to Emil Lorch, Lorch collection, BHL, UM .

May 1923, folder 23, box 3, Emil

Memo, 2 October 1922, folder 20, box 3, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM.

'4B He claimed that, "a deplorable outgrowth of the desire to win competi

tions has been the minimization of non-technical and certain technical studies in favor of architectural design. Eastern schools allow le ss time for non-technical subjects than those schools west of the Alleghenies; Yale allows but half of what is required at Michigan. " See Emil Lorch to Clarence Cook Little, 12 June 1928, folder 53, box 3, Emil Lorch collec tion, BHL, UM. '49 David Van Zan ten, "Chicago in Architectural History," in Elisabeth Blair MacDougall, ed., The Architectural Historian in America (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1990), 93. Lorch's continuing faith in the unique offerings of the Midwest was not always clearly proclaimed. In a letter to Mortimer Cooley, he wrote that , "Situated as Michigan is , be tween the East and the West, she has a unique opportunity to respond to this rising demand for a more vital architecture. The American Institute of Architects devoted one of its sessions last May to the discussion of 'Plagiarism as a Fine Art'; yet the things that were said were largely tho se which have been taught here ever since the foundation of the architec tural school." See Emil Lorch to Mortimer Cooley, 22 October 1924, folder 30, box 3, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM.

125

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The University of Michigan, President's Report, 1924' 25, 106. Cooley continued that, "the faculty has been chosen to bring together these views, so far as possible, in order that out of mixed opinions may come a broader policy, one that shall carry the student beyond a particular cult and give him knowledge of many. What wiser policy for a people like ours, made up as it is from the regions of the earth?" Historian David Hollinger noted that in Lorch's era the Cniversity of Michigan sensed that it was "in the Midwest but not altogether of it," and that, by comparison to another large midwestern university, "Mich igan looked eastward, and with the extensive support of the legislature in Lansing, fashioned for itself an image more national, more cosmo politan , and more conservative than that of Wisconsin." See David A. Hollinger, "Academic Culture at Michigan, 1930-1988: The Apotheosis of Pluralism," in Margaret A. Lourie, ed., Intellectual History and Academic Culture at the University of Michigan: Fresh Explorations (Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan , 1989),91'92 . See Earl Lundin to Marion Burton, 9 December 1922, folder 20, box 3, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, eM. Lorch himself was encouraged to consider once again relocating within the Midwest. His brother-in-law, George Elmslie, wanted him to pursue any possible establishment of an architectural program at the University of Wisconsin . In a letter of March 20,1920, Elmslie wrote that, "If they do establish one, for goodness, apply for the job and get hitched up with a liberal and great university. The Wisconsin idea, as you know, is known all over the world. It isn't long since I read an article in the Contemporary Review (British) on 'the Wisconsin idea.' This great new day is going to slide along the Mississippi Valley. Michigan is out of line!!!!" See George Elmslie to Emil Lorch, 20 March 1920, folder 12, box 3, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM. With regards to crowded conditions, see also "Teaching Architecture in a Boiler Shop," The Michigan Alumnus XXXI, 25 (II April 1925), 547- 549· '5' "Report of the College of Architecture, 1927' 1928," folder 50, box 3, Emil Lorch collection , BHL, eM. '53 Michiganensian, 19 20, 665' ' 54 "Notes on a Talk to Architectural Freshmen," 6 October 1920, folder 14, box 13, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM. Lorch stated in part that, "in case of illness, young women should go to Mrs. Jordan for excuses, while architectural students will come to me." '55 Women were not privy to meetings with visitors like Mr. Eames of Smith, Hinchman, & Grylls who spoke about "The Business Relations of the Architect." See ''Architects' Smoker," The Michigan Technic XXXVII, 3 (March 19 24),3 1- 32. Elizabeth Lorch Bailey, a student in the College of Architecture and Design in the 1930S, recalled that her father would invite female students to join his family for dinner on occasion. She also felt that, "he tried harder than the results showed." Elizabeth Lorch Bailey, interview with author, Ann Arbor, MI, May 1991.

IJI

126

157

159

160

See "Report of the College of Architecture, 1927-28," folder 50, box 3, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM. Emil Lorch to Dean Mortimer E. Cooley, 22 October 1924, folder 30, box 3, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, GM. Lorch wrote in his 1927-28 report that, "Decorative design has attracted and will continue to at tract more young women than men; there are now thirty-one and six, respectively." "Report of the College of Architecture 1927- 28," folder 50, box 3, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, L'M. According to historian Howard H. Peckham, Michigan's design program was at the time one of only three in the country. See Howard H. Peckham, The Making of the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 19 6 7), 147· Mary Otis Stevens, "Struggle for Place: Women in Architecture: 1920 1960," in Susana Torre, ed., Women in American Architecture: A Historic and Contemporary Perspective (New York, XY: Whitney Library of Design,

REFERENCES

1977),89· Margaret Bourke White's famous photographic career began with night scenes from rooftops of the campus. She received an honorary doctorate from the university in 1951. Esther McCoy was recognized for her life-long contributions to Cali fornian architecture through an exhibit in 1990 at the Museum of Con temporary Art in Los Angeles. See The New York Times, 14January 1990. Louis G. Redstone, Louis G. Redstone, From Israeli Pioneer to American Archi tect (Ames, IA: Iowa State University Press, 1989), 72. In general, how ever, Michigan was at least more open than Ivy League schools of that same era. See David Hollinger, ''Academic Culture at Michigan, 1938 1988: The Apotheosis of Pluralism," in Margaret A. Lourie, ed., Intellec tual History and Academic Culture at the University of Michigan: Fresh Explora

161

tions (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan, 1989), 91. ''Architects' Ball an Evening of Oriental Splendor," Michigan Alumnus

XXXI, 30 (23 May 1925), 662-663. See memo of a conference with President Ruthven, 18June 1931, folder 6, box 4, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, eM. Lorch noted that, "among the desiderata would be: funds for jury members coming from other cit ies. Such men are a stimulus to staff and students." 16 3 Howard Peckham, The Making of the University of J1ichigan (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1967), 149. 16 4 Emil Lorch to Mr. Lawrence Kocher, Managing Editor of the Architec tural Record, 8 November 1935, folder 27, box 4, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM. Little's successor, Alexander Ruthven, retained the formal concept of a Fine Arts Division, but it had a minimal impact on the administration of the architecture and design program. 16 5 Emil Lorch to President Burton, 7 March 1921, folder 6, box 3, Marion L. B urton collection, BHL, eM. 166 Leonard K. Eaton, "The Louis Sullivan Spirit in Michigan," Michigan Alumnus OJtarterly Review LXIV, 18 (Spring 1958), 220. 16,

REFERENCES

168

Elizabeth Lorch Bailey, interview with author, Ann Arbor, MI, May 1991 and Emil Lorch to George Elmslie, 13 October 1920, folder 14, box 3, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, eM. Louis Sullivan to Mr. and Mrs. Pickell, 31January 1924, folder 27, box 3, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, CM. John Burchard and Albert Bush-Brown, The Architecture of America (Bos ton, MA: Little, Brown and Company, 1961), 376.

"The Pageant of Arts and Crafts," The Michigan Technic XXXVII, 2 (Jan uary 1924), 22. Hospitality took many forms. Lorch had arranged for living accom

modations for the Saarinen family, in a house across the street from his own on Church Street. And newcomer Eero Saarinen was accompanied to school by Lorch's son Richard. Elizabeth Lorch Bailey, interview with author, Ann Arbor, MI, May 1991. 1 17 The alumni in Saarinen's advanced design course included Kenneth Rindge, Horace Wachter, Harold Beam, Catherine Heller, Edward Kline, Ralph Calder, and Russel Lark. See "Alumni of '23," The Michigan Technic XXXVII, 2 (January 1924), 23. 2 17 Collections of the College of Architecture, University of Michigan, 1906 173

174

1936, folder II, box II, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, CM. J. Robert Swanson, "Eliel Saarinen," The Michigan Technic XXXVII, 4, (May 1924), 5-6. Lorch was proud of this type of three-dimensional design, claiming, "Our school is probably leading most other American architectural schools in the development of three-dimensional teaching in connection with

175

177

design." See Emil Lorch to Mortimer E. Cooley, 22 October 1924, folder 30, box 3, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM. "Teaching Architecture in a Boiler Shop," The Michigan Alumnus XXXI, 25 (II April 1925),547-549. George G. Booth to Emil Lorch, 1 August 1918, folder 6, box 3, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, U:v1. "The College of Architecture," The Gniversity of Michigan, President's Report, 1925-26, 68. He admitted that, "The school cannot ... compete

with large professional opportunities such as now are awaiting him." Emil Lorch to Mortimer E. Cooley, 22 October 1924, folder 30, box 3, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, GM. That same year, the college also re ceived as gifts a painting from Henry Ford, SI ,000 from George Booth, and carving models for the university's new lawyer's club from archi tects York and Sawyer. Eliel Saarinen's son Eero, prepared his own portraiture of the uni versity's president Burton. This linoleum cut and others appeared in the university'S high school publication, for which he was art editor. See "The Youngest Adventurers in Campus Journalism," Michigan Alumnus

179

128

XXXI, 30 (23 May 1925), 665. The rewards of this international travel fellowship were bestowed on male and female students alike. Miss Marion F. Blood was one of the first holders of the award.

180

Lorraine Welling Lanmon, William Lescaze, Architect (Cranbury, NJ: Asso

REFERENCES

ciated University Presses, 1987), 52. "Proposed Budget for College of Architecture for the Year 1925"" 1926," folder 10, box II, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM. ,82 Maynard Lyndon to "Carl," 10 March 1988, Dick Croake files, within current University of Michigan College of Architecture and Crban Planning records retained by the college. 18 3 Francis S. Onderdonk, "Possibilities of a Concrete Architecture," The Michigan Technic XXXIX, 2 Ganuary 19 26), 15. ,84 Ibid, 16. 181

Elizabeth Lorch Bailey, interview with author, Ann Arbor, MI, May 1991. Exhibitions in Architectural Building, 1927-28, folder 50, box 3, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM. In his annual "Report of the College of Architecture 1927-1928," Lorch mentioned that , "Mr. Lars Marnus, an architect of Copenhagen, gave two illustrated lectures on old and mod ern Danish architecture. He came to this country largely through ar rangements made by us, and he spoke at several other architectural schools. " ,87 Emil Lorch to Dean M.E. Cooley, 22 October 1924, folder 30, box 3, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM. ,88 Akademie der Kiinste zu Berlin , Ausstellung Neuer Amerikanischer Baukunst (Berlin, Germany : Akademie der Kiinste zu Berlin, 1926),5, The trans lation is that of Kent Kleinman. ,8g Lewis Mumford to Emil Lorch, 7 March 1928, folder 52, box 3, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, CM. 0 '9 "Conference with President Little," 3 August 1928, folder 54, box 3, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM. '9' Howard Peckham, The Making of the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan, 1967), 141. This resident architect was giv en the formal title of "consulting architect." See The University of Mich igan, President's Report, '922 - 23,29. '9' Minutes of Committee of Five, 19 December 1923, folder 5, box 14, Marion Burton collection, BHL, UM. ' 93 Emil Lorch to George G. Elmslie, 13 October 1920, folder 14, box 3, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, eM. '94 Howard Peckham, The Making of the l..; niversity of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan, 1967), 143. ' 95 The University of Michigan , President's Report, 1922 -23, 47. 6 '9 The idea for a campus campanile had, according to one article, been inspired by a sketch of a tower sent by Lorch to Burton as a New Year's greeting. See '~ Campanile Proposed for Michigan's Campus," The Mich igan Alumnus XXXII, II (19 December 1925), 229 -232. '97 Ibid. ,85

,80

'99

Ann Arbor Daily News, "Ann Arbor Seen as Motorists' Mecca Following Erection of Fine Charles Baird Carillon," 6 March 1936 . Alfred Connable, interview with author, Ann Arbor, MI, 30 June 1992 .

12 9

REFERENCES

200

The Burton Memorial Tower, University of Michigan vertical file, BHL,

lIM.

Lorch had already asked for a leave of absence in 1923 to go to Europe during which he would meet with M. Grapin and travel further to Italy. See Mortimer E. Cooley to President M.L. Burton, 14July 1923, folder 9, box 14, Marion L. Burton collection, BHL, eM. George Mason was referred to by his colleagues in the state as the "Dean of Michigan Architects." See Michigan Society of Architects, Weekfy BuLLetin 16, 34 (25 August 1942), folder 13, box 12, Emil Lorch col lection, BHL, CM. Albert Kahn began his career in Mason's office. 2o, Betty Lorch to Daddy, 8 October 1930, folder 68, box 3, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM. 20 3 Miscellaneous writings, folder 3, box I, \,yells Ira Bennett collection, BHL, UM. 20 4 Howard Peckham, The Making if the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan, 1967), 173. 20 5 University of Michigan Colleges of Engineering and Architecture, An nual Announcement 1928--1929 (Ann Arbor, MI: Cniversity of Michigan, 1928), 225· 206 Cniversity of Michigan College of Architecture, Annual Announcement 1933 1934 (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan, 1933), 39. 207 Ibid, 5. 208 Emil Lorch to Richard Raseman, 13 December 1937, folder 52, box 4, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM. Lorch related in another letter, to Mr. Howell Taylor at the American Cniversity of Beirut that, "it has been possible to measure and photograph practically all the important build ings in Michigan which are worthy of record in the Library of Congress." Emil Lorch to Mr. Howell Taylor, 16 December 1937, folder 52, box 4, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, CM. 20 9 Michigan, A Guide to the Wolverine State (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1941), 164. Ibid., 171. 20!

210

Emil Lorch to Alexander Ruthven, 25 May 1935, folder 26, box 4, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM. Emil Lorch to George D. Mason, 5 October 1931, folder 8, box 4, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM. 3 Faculty minutes, 28 May 1940, faculty minutes 1929- 1952, box I, Uni versity of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records, BHL, CM. Raoul Wallenberg to Emil Lorch, 25 :'-Jovember 1936, folder 36, box 4, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM. 5 The University of Michigan, President's Report, 1951 52, 125. The war time intimacy of the college was valued by the few who were able to pursue their studies. Charles Moore (1948) recalls that the college then "was as intimate as any Ivy League school." See David Littlejohn, Archi tect) The Life and Work if Charles Moore (New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1984), 106.

211

212

214

I30

,, 6 Wells

21 )

218 21

220

221

222

223

224

225

226

Ira Bennett to Harlan Hatcher and Marvin Niehuss,

October

REFERENCES

1951, architecture folder, box I, Marvin Niehuss collection, BHL, UM. John Ely Burchard, "The City on the Hill," Michigan Alumnus Q,uarterly

Review LXIII, 14 (Winter 1957), 128. The University of Michigan, President's Report, 1950-51, 200. Wells Ira Bennett, "By Way of Introduction," Student Publication I, I (Spring 1955),3· Wells Ira Bennett to Harlan Hatcher and Marvin Niehuss , 2 October 1951, architecture folder, box 1, Marvin Niehuss collection , BHL, CM . Even the nomenclature of architectural style was deliberated over. Philip Youtz told the Michigan students that, "The high priests of the Mu seum of Modern Art have labeled this new product the International Style, because they perceived that it did not grow from regional roots as did all historical styles. But, if we had delayed the christening until we could make the acquaintance of the child, we would have chosen some such name as the scientific, technical, positivistic, industrial, or dyn amic ar chitecture." See Philip N. Youtz, "The Impact of Science on Architec ture, " Student Publication I, 1 (Spring 1955), 4. David Littlejohn , Architect, The Life and Work if Charles W Moore (New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1984), 107-108. Through the support of Michigan architecture graduate Joseph Hudnut, Gropius was able to secure a teaching position in the United States at the outset of World War II. Hudnut, as dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Design , was one of Gropius' strong supporters and a m ember of the audience in Ann Arbor when Gropius delivered his paper a t the conference on design . Walter Gropius, "Contemporary Architecture and Training the Archi tect," paper delive red at th e Conference on Co-ordination in Design [sic] , held at the University of Michigan , February 2- 3, 1940. Reginald R. Isaacs, Gropius: An Illustrated Biography if the Creator if the Bau haus (Boston , MA: Little, Brown , 1991 ), 17 . Ibid.

Wells Ira Bennett , " Design Today," commencement address delivered at Cranbrook Acad emy of Art , 28 May 1948. Excerpt located among mis cellaneous writings, folder 5, box I, Wells Ira Bennett collection, BHL, UM. 228 Wells Ira Bennett, "The Ann Arbor Conference," miscellaneous writ ings, folder 6, box 1 , Wells Ira Bennett collection, BHL, UM. 229 Leonard K. Eaton , interview with author, Ann Arbor, MI, 19 May 1988. 0 23 Wells Ira Bennett to Harlan Hatcher and Marvin Niehuss, 2 October 1951, architecture fold er, box I, Marvin :'-Jiehuss collection, BHL, UM. Bennett's antagonistic relationship with certain of his colleagu es was long-standing. In a letter he sent to Emil Lorch from Europe on 28 May 1933, Bennett concluded , " ... though most of the staff will not be lieve it, I should like to see th em. Some of them deserve a swift ki ck but will you translate it to them as my kindest regards. " Wells Bennett to Emil Lorch , folder 20 , box 4, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, CM. 22 )

13 1

REFERENCES

23' 2,2

The C niversity of Michigan , President's Report, 1959-60, 20. Philip N. Youtz, "The Impact of Science on Architecture," Student Publi

cation I, I (Spring 1955), 4· Philip K Youtz, "Lifting Huron Towers," Journal of the American Concrete Institute Gune 1961), 1537-'1548. 21~ Albert Kahn to Alexander Ruthven , 28 March 1940, correspondence 1940- 1946, box I, Wells Ira Bennett collection, BHL, UM. 2,,> David Hollinger, "Academic Culture at Michigan , 1938-'1988: The Apotheosis of Pluralism," in Margaret Lourie, ed., Intellectual History and Academic Culture at the University of Michigan: Fresh Explorations (Ann Arbor, MI: university of Michigan, 1989), IOJ. Leonard Eaton, in reminiscing about the selection and retention of Michigan's mid-century architecture faculty, observed that , "Michiga n hasn 't been kind to genius." Leonard K. Eaton , interview with author, Ann Arbor, MI, 19 May 1988. 23" Cniversity of Michigan College of Architecture and Design and De partment of Engineering Research, "Housing Research and Education at the University of Michigan," I December 1947. 23 7 Ibid . 8 23 Ibid ., 3. 239 Folder 24, box 3, Universi ty of Michigan Phoenix Project records, BHL, 233

eM. 0

Cniversity of Michigan College of Architecture and Design and De partment of Engineering Research, "Housing Research and Education at the University of Michigan," I December 1947. 24' Leonard K. Eaton, interview with author, Ann Arbor, MI, 19 May 1988 . '4' William Muschenheim , interview with William Jordy, New York, 1985 . Transcript and so und recording on deposit at Columbia Univer sity. '43 "Co nfidential Report of the Survey Committee of the College of Archi tecture and Design, University of Michigan , April 2, 1948," Wells Ira Bennett folder, box 2, University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records, BHL, GM. 214 Ibid. 24

The University of Michigan, President's Report, 1950 -51, 120. William Muschenheim , interview with William Jordy, New York, 1985. Transcript and sound recording on depo sit at Columbia Cniversity. '47 The University of Michigan, President's Report, {958-59, 85. 248 Folder 24, box 3, University of Michigan Phoenix Project records, BHL, UM. 249 Robert C. Metcalf toJames C. Snyder, 10 August 1981, Annual reports 1981- 82, box II , University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records, BHL, UM. '50 The Cniversity of Michigan, President's Report, 1952-53, liB. 25 ' "Architectural Rese a rch and Education ," folder 24, box 3, University of Michigan Phoenix Project collection, BHL, U~. '+5

246

I3 2

Robert C. Metcalf, "College of Architecture and Design," in Ferol Brinkman, ed., University of Michigan, An Encyclopedic Survey V (Ann Arbor,

REFERENCES

MI: University of Michigan, 1977),58. Confidential report of the Survey Committee of the College of Archi tecture and Design, 2 April 1948, architecture folder, box I, Marvin Niehuss collection, BHL, UM. 254 Progress Report (Spring 1951), 10, folder Ed. Olencki 1949 -62, box I, Uni versity of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records, BHL, UM. 255 "Metcalf Remembers," Portico (Summer 1991), 15. 6 25 Progress Report (Spring 1951), 10, folder Ed. Olencki 1949 -62, box I, Uni versi ty of Michigan College of Archi tecture and 1: rban Planning records, BHL, CM. 257 Paul Venable Turner, Campus, An American Planning Tradition (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990). 8 25 Allan Temko, Eero Saarinen (:"Jew York, :"JY: George Braziller, 1962), 27. 259 Tentative Building Program for :"Jorth Campus Area, 23 :"Jovember 1951 exhibits, box 66, 1:niversity of Michigan Board of Regents records, BHL, 1:M. 260 The University of Michigan, President's Report, 1953-54, I 16. Progress Report (Spring 1951), folder Ed. Olencki 1949-62, box I, Univer sity of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records, BHL, UM. 262 The University of Michigan, President's Report, 1956-57, 275. Such a state ment is considerable contrast to the lack of any mention of the 1:niver sity of Michigan North Campus in the recently-published general his tory of American campus planning by Paul Turner. Sec footnote 257 for full citation. 26 3 \Vells Bennett, "The Personal Car and Campus," Journal if the American Institute if Architects 26 (1956),105110. 26 4 Philip N. Youtz, "Planning an Integrated Campus for an Expanding Uni versity," 25 March 1960, North Campus Planning 1959- 60, box 20, Uni versity of Michigan Vice President and Chief Financial Officer records, BHL, UM. 26 5 College of Architecture and Design Faculty minutes, 22 November 1954, box 1, University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Plan ning records, BHL, 1:M. 266 The University of Michigan, President's Report, 1958-59,84. 26 7 The University of Michigan, President's Report, 1958-59, 83. 268 The Cniversity of Michigan, President's Report, 1960- 61,22. 26 9 Tom Hayden, Reunion, A Memoir (New York, NY: Random House, 1988), 253

201

32 . Paul Sawyer, "Cinema Guild, Underground Film, and Flaming Crea tures," R.L. Cutler- Student Organizations- Cinema Guild- I967 1968, box 7, University of Michigan Vice President for Student Affairs records, BHL, UM.

133

REFEREKC ES

134

College Faculty Minutes, 9 February 1967, box 2, University of Michi gan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records, BHL, UM. 2)2 Architectural Forum,January 1964, 63. 2)3 The New York Times, 28 May 1965. 2)4 The college was at least familiar with him already in 1956, when its pub lication entitled Dimension included his article "Metro-Linear, A Study of the Metropolitan Center." See "Biographical Statement," box 2, Uni versity of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records, BHL, eM. 2)5 Faculty Appointment Recommendation, 15June 1964, box 101, Univer sity of Michigan Board of Regents records, BHL, UM. 2) 6 Entenza reenforced his new interest in Malcolmson at Michigan by of fering Graham Scholar grants to qualified University of Michigan stu dents to attend the International Design Conference in Aspen. See The University of Michigan , President's Report, [964-65, 3 [. 277 What is more, during his first year as :Michigan's curator, Sawyer had overseen the installation of William Muschenheim's modernist stair case and display system within the museum. 2)8 Reginald Malcolmson, "Outline Text of TV Program ," television pro gram folder, box 4, Cniversity of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records, BHL, UM. This film seems to have been made in 1966, according to the U-M TV scripts B558-B582, Summer 1966, "Understanding Our World," Michigan Media records, BHL, liM. 2)9 There was as well the assertion that landscape architecture would be more appropriately placed in the university's School of ~atural Resources; by 1965 that move had been made. 28 0 Michigan Daily, "Architecture Students Try to Help a City," 15 November 2)'

1964, l. 28, The Department of Architecture Building Program, Special Meeting, 8 November 1966, College Building Committee, 1960- 1970, box 6, Uni versity of Michigan College of Architecture and Crban Planning records, BHL, UM . 28 2 Virginia Van Dreal, on the part of Howard Hakken, to J.F. Brinkerhoff andJ.G. McKevitt, 26July 1965, College Committee on Space and Plan ning, 1965- 1972, box 6, University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records , BHL, UM. 28 3 Minutes, Department of Architecture Building Program Special M eet ing, 8 Novemb er 1966, College Building Committee 1960-1970, box 6, University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning rec ords, BHL, UM. 28 4 Reginald F. Malcolmson to Professor Gerhard Olving, 28 February 1967, Ad hoc Building Program Committee 1967- 68, box 6, University of Mich igan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records, BHL, UM. 28 5 Reginald F. Malcolmson, "A Report to the Regents of the University of Michigan, College of Architecture and Design ," IsJune '967, Architec ture and Design, College of, (Dean Malcolmson) 1966 7, box 3, Universi ty of Michigan Vice President for Academic Affairs records, BHL, UM.

Ibid., and C . Theodore Larson to Allan F. Smith, 30 January 1967, Ar chitecture and Design, College of, Department of Architecture 1966- 67, box 3, University of Michigan Vice President for Academic Affairs rec ords, BHL, UM. 28 7 Reginald F. Malcolmson, ''A Report to the ReRents of the university of Michigan, College of Architecture and Design," 15June 1967 , Architec ture and Design, College of (Dean Malcolmson) 1966-7, box 3, Univer sity of Michigan Vice President for Academic Affairs records, BHL, UM . 288 Department of Architecture Long-Range Master Plan, 1970-1980, Long Range Master Plan, 1970-1980, box 4, University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records , BHL, UM. 28g Walter Sanders to Allan F. Smith , 13 February 1967, Architecture and Design, College of, Department of Architecture 1966 ·67, box 3, Univer sity of Michigan Vice President for Academic Affairs records, BHL, 286

UM. 2g0 Department of Architec ture , Minutes of the Special Faculty Meeting, 24 March 1966, Jacques Brownson , box 4, University of Michigan College of Architecture and C rban Planning records, BHL, UM. 'g ' Twenty endorsed the vote of no confidence, twelve opposed it, and two abstained. See Jacques Brownso n, box 4, University of Michigan Col lege of Architecture and Urban Planning records, BHL, UM. 2g, "Qualifications for Position of Chairman of Department of Architec ture ," Chairman , Department of Architecture Search Committee, 1964 . 1965, box 8, University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning re cords, BHL, UM. '93 See Jacques Brownson , box 4, Cniversity of Michigan College of Archi tecture and Urb a n Planning records , BHL, UM. 294 Pauline Saliga, ed., A Century of Chicago Skyscrapers, The Sky's the Limit (New York, NY: Rizzoli, 1990), 193. '95 Memorandum "To Whom It May Concern" from Robert C. Metcalf, 17 February 1981, box 15, University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Pla nning records, BHL, UM. ,g6 Leonard K. Eaton, interview with author, Ann Arbor, MI , 19 May 1988. 2g7 Sabbatical Leave Reports, box 19, University of Michigan College of Ar chitecture and Urban Planning records, BHL, UM. 2g8 See Leonard K. Eaton, American Architecture Comes if Age) European Reaction to H .H. Richardson and Louis Sullivan (Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts In stitute of Technology, 1972). 299 Gwendolyn Wright and Janet Parks, eds., The History of History in Ameri can Schools if Architecture) 1865 ·1975 (New York, NY: The Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture and Princeton Ar chitectural Press, 1990), 88. Hudnut was dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Design when he authored the essay. 00 3 Memorandum to Allan Smith from Chairman and Educational Programs Committee, Department of Architecture, 6 June 1967 , Department of Architecture 6- Year Program , box 3, G nive rsity of Michigan Vice Presi dent for Acad emic Affairs records , BHL, "cM.

REFERENCES

135

REFEREKCES

Ibid.

Memorandum to Allan F. Smith from 24 faculty, 8 February '967, De partment of Architecture 6- Year Program , box 3, University of Michi gan Vice President for Academic Affairs records, BHL, 'CM. 30 3 Ibid. 02

Memorandum, Robert Darvas to Faculty, D epartment of Architecture, 27 February 1967, Department of Architecture 6-Year Program, box 3, University of Michigan Vice President for Academic Affairs records, BHL, CYI. 0 3 5 Minutes of the Faculty M eeting, Department of Architecture, 4January '967, Departme nt of Architecture 6-Year Program , box 3, 'Cniversity of Michigan Vice President for Academic Affairs records, BHL, UM. 06 3 Leonard K. Eaton , Gateway Cities & Other Essays (Ames, IA: Iowa State University Press, 1989), xii. 0 3 7 "The Architecture of Ultimate Concern ," Research News XIX, , (July '968), Office of Re search Admini stration, Annual Reports , 1971 - 72, box II , l !niversity of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning rec ords, BHL, CM. 0B 3 David Hollinger, ''A cademic Culture at Michigan , 1938- 1988: The Apo theosis of Pluralism," in Margaret A. Lourie, ed. , Intellectual History and Academic Culture at the Cniversity if Michigan: Fresh Explorations (Ann Arbor, MI: 'Cniversity of Michigan , 1989),99. 3 9 "The Architecture of Ultimate Concern ," Research News XIX , 1 (July 1968), Office of Research Administration, Annual Reports, 1971 - 72 , box II , University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning rec ords, BHL, CM . 3'0 Department of Architecture Long-Range Master Plan, 1970-1980, Long Rang~ Master Plan, 1970- 1980, box 4, University of Mi chigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records, BHL, CYI. 3" Memorandum to Professor Joseph]. V\iehrer from C. Theodore Larson, ,8 Octob er '973, College of Architec ture and erban Planning, Annual Reports 1971 '72, box I', University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records , BHL, UM. 3 ' 2 "The Architecture of Ultimate Concern," ReseaTChNews XIX, 1 (July '968), Office of Research Administration , Annual Reports, 1971-72, box II, University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning rec ords, BHL, CM. Such esprit found its way into th e title of one labo ratory report , which was " Somt' Sensible and Outrageous Ideas for the Future." See Robert C. Metcalf to Allan F. Smith, 13July 1973, Research R eview '979, box II , University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records, BHL, FM. The intention of irony is not a giv en in another review of the research, in which it was written that , " this process might be described as the conscious application of conscious ness to the qu es tion of how increased consciousness is achieved ." See Research News XIX , 1 (July 1968), 6. 3'3 See Jacques Brownson , box 4, University of Michigan College of Archi tecture and 'Crban Planning records, BHL, UM. 0

3 4

I3 6

Memorandum to Alfred S. Sussman from Robert C. Metcalf, 26 June REFERENCES

1984, box 15, University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records, BHL, UM. 3 ' 5 The University of Michigan Computing Center, University of Michigan Computing Center vertical file , BHL, UM. 16 3 The University of Michigan, President's Report, '963 -64, 28. 3' j Memorandum to Research Policy Committee from John McIntosh, 28 January 1983, Annual Reports 1983.84, box I I, University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records , BHL, UM. 18 3 Ibid. 3 ' 9 The University of Michigan College of Architecture and Design, An nouncement, 1968-69 (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan , 1968), 24, and Robert C. Metcalf to Ronald Lee Johnson, 16 April 1979, box 14, University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning rec ords, BHL, eM. 3'0 Department of Architecture Long-Range Master Plan, 1970-' 1980, Long Range Master Plan, 1970-1980, box 4, University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records , BHL, UM. 3" Ibid. , 22. 3 Graduates, Doctoral Program in Architecture Dissertation List, Doc toral Program Files Dissertation List 1971- 1986, box 19, University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning re cords, BHL, UM. 3'3 Robert C. Metc alf, The College of Architecture and Design, History of Architecture and Design, 1952- 1974, box 18, University of Michigan Col lege of Architecture and Urban Planning records , BHL, UM. 3 4 Ibid. 3' 4

Robert C . Metcalf to Leslie Kenyon, 30Jun e 1976, box 14, University of Michigan College of Architec ture and Urban Planning records, BHL, UM. 26 3 Robert C. Metcalf toJackJ. Rood , 3 August 1977, box 14, University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records, BHL, UM. 1 J 7 Virginia Van Dreal (secretary to Howard Hakken) to Dean Malcolmson , College Committee on Space & Planning, 1965- 1972, box 14, University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records, BHL, UM. 28 3 Robert C . Metcalf to Professor Barron Hirs ch , II January 1978 , box 14, University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning rec ords, BHL, eM. 2 3 9 Faculty Meeting Minutes, 8 October 1965, College of Architecture and Design, box 2, University of Michigan College of Architecture and Ur ban Planning records, BHL, UM. 33° Robert C . Metcalf to Dear Alumna/Alumnus, 31 March 1975, box 14, University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning rec ords, BHL, UM. 2

3 5

137

REFERENCES

Robert C. Metcalf toJohn B. D'Arms, 4 August 1982, box IS, University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records, BBL, CM. 2 33 Memorandum to vVilliam A. Lewis from Robert C. Metcalf, 4 October 1973, Architectural Fragments, box 4, Cniversity of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records, BBL, UM. 333 Robert C. Metcalf to Barvey K.Jacobsen, S May 1981, box 15, Univer sity of Michigan College of Architecture and C rban Planning records, BBL, CM. 334 Robert C. Metcalf, Points to Discuss in Thursday Talk, Search Commit tee ]97S- 76, box 8, University of Michigan College of Architecture and C rban Planning records, BBL, CM. m Robert C. Metcalf to Sakura Namioka, 6 August 1974, box 14, Univer sity of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records, BBL, CM. 6 33 Memorandum from Robert C. Metcalf to Director of Affirmative Ac tion, Virginia B. Nordby, 3 March 1981, box 15, University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records, BBL, UM. 337 Ibid. 33

Robert C. Metcalf to Ralzemond D. Parker, 28June 1979, box 14, Uni versity of Michigan College of Architecture and Crban Planning records, BBL, CM. 3::;9 At the time of the BAM strike, enrollment of Blacks in the Department of Architecture was only S per cent. See Robert C. Metcalf, "Position Paper on Black and Other Minority Student Enrollment," Minority En rollment, Annual Reports and Statistics, box 10, C niversity of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records, BBL, UM. 0 34 Robert C. Metcalf to Niara Sudarkasa, 4 February 1985, box 16, Univer sity of Michigan College of Architecture and C rban Planning records, BBL, liM. 34 Robert C. Metcalf to R. ThomasJaeger, 2sJanuary 1974, Minority En rollment, Annual Reports and Statistics, box 10, University of Michigan College of Architecture and C rban Planning records, BBL, CM. Metcalf knew how unique Chaffers' insight would be among the local population of architects since in 1969 there were only twelve Black architects among 450 members of the Detroit Chapter of the AlA. See Robert C. Metcalf to "Villiam L. Cash, 31 March 1969, Minority Enrollment, Annual Re ports and Statistics, box 10, University of Michigan College of Architec ture and Crban Planning records, BBL, CM. 342 Robert C. Metcalf to Mr. and Mrs. Boward Sims, 20 January 1984, Mi nority Enrollment, Annual Reports and Statistics, 1983 -84, box 10, Uni versity of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records, BBL, UM. 343 Robert C. Metcalf to Sidney Robinson, 19 November 1974, box 14, Cni versity of Michigan College of Architecture and U rban Planning records, BBL, UM. 33

138

Robert C . Metcalf Curriculum Vita, Search Committee 1975 -76, box 8, University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning rec ords, BHL, UM. 345 Robert C. Metcalf to Members of the Committee, North Carolina State University, 4 February 1985, box 16, University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records, BHL, UM. 6 34 Robert C. Metcalf to Steven Johns, 7 July 1980, box 15, University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records , BHL, UM. 347 Robert C. Metcalf to Alfred S. Sussman, 29 May 1980, box 15, Univer sity of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records, BHL, UM. 342 Memorandum to Faculty of the College from Dean and Executive Com mittee, 27 August 1984, box 16, University of Michigan College of Archi tecture and Urban Planning records, BHL, CM. 349 Robert C. Metcalf to Members of the Search Committee, 27 August 1984, box 16, University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Plan ning records , BHL, UM. In a letter to the Associate Vice-President for Academic Affairs, he remarked that, "we undoubtedly do have the leanest administrative crew on campus, and perhaps the only unit where all aca demic administrators teach, including the dean." See Robert C. Metcalf to Niara Sudarkasa, 26 November 1984, box 16, University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records, BHL, UM. 0 35 Robert C . Metcalf to Wendell R. Lyons, 25 January 1979, box 14, Uni versity of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records, BHL, UM . 35' Memorandum from Robert C. Metcalf to Billy E. Frye, 25January 1985, box 16, University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Plan ning records, BHL, CM . 35' "History of Giving to the College of Architecture and Urban Planning," Portico (Fall 199 2), 19 . 353 George V Bayliss to Robert C. Metcalf, 8January 1980, box 15, Cniver sity of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records , BHL, UM. 354 Robert C . Metcalf to David Clarke, 11 July 1974, box 14, University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records, BHL, UM. 355 Visiting Team Report, January 31 - February 3, 1982, National Archi tectural Ac crediting Board 1981 [sic], box 4, University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records, BHL, eM. 6 35 Robert C . Metcalf to Carl Arthur Muschenheim, 26 March 1979, box 14, University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning rec ords, BHL, UM . This statement was prefaced in the letter with the fol lowing: "I hope you will encourage our B.S. graduates who succeed in landing a job with SOM to go back to school and finish their profes sional studies. If they do , I have little doubt in a few years they will be 344

REFERENCES

139

REFERENCES

357

:Jo9

your best people, in sales, in office management, in programming, in pro足 duction, in energy management, in computer applications- and I hope they will be your best people in design, ... " Robert C. Metcalf to Frank H.T. Rhodes, 6 November 1975, box 14, Uni足 versity of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records, BHL, UM. Rudolf Arnheim, "The Persistence of Goodness in Time," Rudolf Arnheim, box 4, University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Plan足 ning records, BHL, UM. Robert M. Beckley, ''Architectural Education, The Profession, and the University: A Question of Credibility?", Journal of Architectural Education 43/3 (Spring 199 0 ), 63揃

140

IMAGE CITATIONS

Vignola, Le dve regale della prospettiva pratica di M. lacarne Barozzi da Vignola

(Rome : Nella Stamparia des Mascardi, 1644). Image provided courtesy

of University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning.

University of Michigan Architectural Drawings, Bentley Historical Li

brary, Cniversity of Michigan (hereafter cited as BHL, UM).

3 Jasper Cropsey collection, BHL, VM. 4 Oil painting by Cropsey, hangs in the Roscoe o. and Lillian C. Bonisteel

Room of the Bentley Historical Library, University of Michi?;an .

University of Michigan map collection, BHL, UM.

6 Portrait of William Le BaronJenney, from The Western Architect,June Igo7 ,

courtesy of The Art Institute of Chicago.

University of Michigan University Hall folder, University of Michigan

Photographs Vertical File, BHL, UM.

S University of Michigan Architectural Drawings, BHL, UM.

9 Delta Kappa Epsilon folder, Vniversity of Michip;an Photop;raphs Verti

cal File, BHL, UM.

10 William Le Baron Jenney to James B. Angell, folder 49, box 2, James B. Angell collection, BBL, CM. Family Photographs Irving Pond folder, box 8, Pond Family collection, BBL, UM. 12 Allen B. Pond folder, box 8, Pond Family collection, BHL, UM. 13 Pond - Sketches - Travel - Cnidentified Landscapes and Buildin?;s fold er, box 8, Pond Family collection, BHL, CYI . 14 Irving Kane Pond to Aunt Esther, Irving Kane Pond correspondence, 1876 - 1878 folder, box 4, Pond Family collection, BHL, UM. 15 Portraits folder, box 18, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, CM. 16 Michiganensian, 1920, 665.

I) University of Michigan West Engineering Building folder, University of

Michigan Photop;raphs Vertical File, BBL, UM. 18 University of Michigan maps collection, BHL, UM. 19 University of Michigan College of Architecture folder, University of Mich igan Photographs Vertical File, BHL, CM. 20 Rou-Rowen folder, box 145, University of Michigan Alumni Association records, BHL, UM . 21 Ann Arbor Buildings, Masonic Temple folder, Ann Arbor Photographs Vertical File, BBL, CM. 12 Pond Family collection, BBL, CM. 23 Architectural Subjects, Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan League Construc tion folder, box 8, Pond Family collection, BBL, UM. '4 University of Michigan Collep;e of Architecture and Crban Planning fold er, University of Michigan Photographs Vertical File, BBL, UM. 25 University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning fold er, Cniversity of Michi?;an Photograph s Vertical File, BBL, UM. I

I4 I

IMAGE CITATIONS

142

Cniversity of MichiRan College of Architecture and Urban Planning fold er, University of Michigan Vertical File, BHL, UM. 27 University of Michigan Clubs and Organizations broadsides, BHL, UM. 28 Photograph courtesy of Cranbrook Archives. 29 This plan is included in Ausstellung Neuer Amerikanischer Baukunst, published by the Akademie der Kiinste zu Berlin in January, 1926. 0 3 Images 17-289 and 17-293, Ivory collection , BHL, UM. 3' University of Michigan Alexander Grant Ruthven Building folder, Uni versity of Michigan Photographs Vertical File, BHL, UM; University of Michigan Hill Auditorium folder, University of Michigan Photographs Vertical File, BHL, UM; University of Michigan Angell Hall folder, Uni versity of Michigan Photographs Vertical File, BHL, UM; University of Michigan William Clements Library folder, Cniversity of Michigan Photographs Vertical File, BHL, UM;University of Michigan General Library folder, Cniversity of Michigan Photographs Vertical File, BHL, UM; Cniversity of Michigan Simpson Memorial Institute folder, Cniver sity of Michigan Photographs Vertical File, BHL, UM. 2 3 University of MichiRan Proposed Buildings Burton Tower and Music School folder, University of Michigan Photographs Vertical File, BHL, UM. 33 Raoul Wallenberg Photograph Vertical File, BHL, UM. 34 Negative sleeves Arch.-32 and Arch.-4I, box I, series A, Cniversity of Mich igan News and Information Services records, BHL, UM. 3j University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning rec ords, BHL, UM. 6 3 University of Michigan Proposed Buildings folder, University of Michi gan Photographs Vertical File, BHL, UM . 37 University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning fold er, University of Michigan Photographs Vertical File, BHL, UM. 38 Photograph courtesy of Huron Towers. 39 Buckminster Fuller Experimental Model Shelter, series A, box I, Univer sity of Michigan News and Information Services records, BHL, UM. 0 4 Photograph courtesy of Robert L. Ziegelman and the University of Mich igan College of Architecture and Urban Planning. 4' Negative sleeves I and 2, Brigham's Architecture Class, 6/ 4ir940, Box 19, Ivory collection , BHL, UM. 2 4 Negative sleeves Arch.-62 and Arch .-74, box I, Series A, University of Michigan News and Information Services records, BHL, UM. 43 Negative sleeve Arch .-Io , box I, Series A, Cniversity of Michigan News and Information Services records, BHL, CM. H Negative sleeve Arch. & Des. 146, box I, Series A, University of Michigan News and Information Services records, BHL, UM . i5 Negative sleeve Arch . & Des. 134, box I, Series A, Cniversity of Michigan News and Information Services records, BHL, CM and rendering cour tesy of Myra Larson . 46 William Muschenhcim collection , BHL, UM . Copyright, William Muschenheim family. 26

Eero Saarinen and Associates collection, BHL, GM. Negative sle('ve ZZ-20, box I, Series A, University of Michigan News and

IMAGE CITATIONS

Information Services records, BHL, UM. 49 University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning fold er, University of Michigan Vertical File, BHL, GM . 50 Michigan Daily , BHL, GM. 5 ' Based on diagrams in K. Lonberg-Holm and C. Theodore Larson , Devel opment Index (Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan , 1953). Cour tesy of M yra Larson . 5' Photograph courtesy of the University of Michigan C oll ege of Architec ture and Urban Planning. ;;3 Photograph courtesy of the University of Michigan College of Architec ture and Urban Planning. 54 Photograph courtesy of the University of Michigan Coll ege of Architec ture and Urban Planning. 55 Timothy Hursley photograph, courtesy of Gunnar Birkerts and Associ ates. 56 Photograph courtesy of the University of Michigan College of Architec ture and Urban Planning. 57 Photograph courtesy of the University of Michigan College of Architec ture and Urban Planning. 58 Rendering courtesy of the University of Michigan College of Architec ture and Urban Planning. 59 Drawing courtesy of the Unive rsity of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning. 60 Photograph courtesy of the University of Michigan College of Architec ture and Urban Planning. 6, Photograph courtesy of the University of Michigan College of Architec ture and Urban Planning, photographer D.C. Goings. 6, Photograph courtesy of the University of Michigan College of Architec ture and Urban Planning. 63 Photograph courtesy of the University of Michigan College of Architec ture and Urban Planning, photographer Victoria Veenstra . 64 The Louis Sullivan screen is located within the Art and Architecture Li bra ry of the University of Michigan. 65 Drawing by Professor Kent Kleinman, 1994.

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