Gwendolyn Wright

USA modern architectures in history Gwendolyn Wright REAKTION BOOKS Contents 7 Introduction one '7 Modern Consolidation, 1865-1893 two 47 Progressive Architectures, ,894-'9,8 t h r e e 79 Electric Modernities, '9'9-'932 fau r "3 Architecture, the Public and the State, '933-'945 fi ve '5' The Triumph of Modernism, '946-'964 six '95 Challenging Orthodoxies, '965-'984 seven 235 Disjunctures and Alternatives, 1985 to the Present 276 Epilogue 279 References 298 Select Bibliography 305 Acknowledgements 3°7 Photo Acknowledgements 3'0 Index chapter one Modern Consolidation. 1865-1893 The aftermath of the Civil War has rightly been called a Second American Revolution.' The United States was suddenly a modern nation, intercon- nected by layers of infrastructure, driven by corporate business systems, flooded by the enticements of consumer culture. The industrial advances in the North that had allowed the Union to survive a long and violent COll- flict now transformed the country, although resistance to Reconstruction and racial equality would curtail growth in the South for almost a cen- tury. A cotton merchant and amateur statistician expressed astonishment when he compared 1886 with 1856. 'The great railway constructor, the manufacturer, and the merchant of to-day engage in affairs as an ordinary matter of business' that, he observed, 'would have been deemed impos- sible ... before the war'? Architecture helped represent and propel this radical transformation, especially in cities, where populations surged fourfold during the 30 years after the war. Business districts boasted the first skyscrapers. Public buildings promoted a vast array of cultural pleasures) often frankly hedonistic, many of them oriented to the unprecedented numbers of foreign immi- grants. Real-estate speculators built comfortable apartments and oppressive tenements, while residential suburbs enjoyed a surge of growth within or just outside city limits, touting bucolic pleasures and the latest conveniences. Chicago's John Root articulated the challenge for architects: 'The frankest possible acceptance of every requirement of modern life in all its conditions,' he wrote, 'without regret for the past or idle longing for a future and more fortunate day') Americans lived in the present, a realm of ever-changing and contested realities. New technological connections intensified the pace of progress. Local events could take on national significance almost immediately. Crowds all over the country shared in the 1869 'golden spike' ceremony that marked the culmination of a transcontinental railroad. Ideas, images Brooklyn Bridge and materials as well as people could now move quickly across the coun- opening celebration, try, encouraging a more unified culture, although regional distinctions New York Cttv. 1883. lithograph. and metropolitan heterogeneity continued to grow apace. The drive for systemic coordination would affect time itself in 1883when the ,railroads imposed the four standard time zones we know today, sup~lantll1g m~re than fifty local variants. The telephone would further dissolve spatial barriers following the first caU in 1876 (the centennial year of national independence), eventually connecting a.ll would-be modern buildings. Linkages could be simultaneously symbolic and practical. teel sus- pension cables allowed the Eads Bridge (l874) to traverse the Mississippi River at St Louis. Young Louis Sullivan 'followed every detail', finding the ideal modern 'man in his power to create beneficently'< A decade later, New Yorkers celebrated the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge, a fusion of steel cables and neo-Gothic piers that unified two cities into boroughs of what had now become the nation's premier city. Celebrants routed the bridge as a beacon for immigration, a tourist attraction, an engineering marvel. They audaciously asked: 'Will New York Be the Final World Metropolis?' The critic Montgomery Schuyler called this <gossamer architecture' the leading monument of the age precisely because it was not a palace or a place of worship, but 'an exquisite refinement of utility in which the lines of forces constitute the strucrure.> Electricity transformed spaces, too, with urban crowds drawn by the dazzling lights of some streets and urban entertainment venues, fuelled by Edison's cen- tral power stations. Electrified public streetcars transported a new social category, the middle class, beyond the city limits. Inexpensive media saturated America with images of these and other spectacles. Pictures and texts about architecture attracted the general public and all manner of competing producers. American Builder and Journal of Art (founded in 1868) was joined by Carpentry and Building (1870), American Architect and Building News (1876), Chicago's icono- clastic Inland Architect (1883), Architectural Record (1890), National Builder (1885) and Scores of others. Family magazines like Scribner's and Scientific American also analysed the latest trends. Pattern books by architects and builders offered multiple house designs, urging readers to alter and combine the suggestions as they saw fit. This coverage was part of a larger phenomenon: the advent of postcards, comic strips, amateur photography and omnipresent advertising, If the national appetite for commercial illustrations elicited fears among the elite that populariza- tion would subvert the standards of fine art, the population as a whole delighted in the visual stirnulation that surrounded them everywhere. The architectural profession acquired its modern structure during these years of cultural maelstrom. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology offered the nation's first professional classes in 1865,and ten ot~e~ schools followed in the next two decades, dispersing professional traming beyond the East Coast. The scene remained cosmopolitan since German, British and Irish architects continued to wield considerable authority across the country, and ambitious Americans still studied in Europe, most often at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Anyone could call himself an architect, so a resuscitated American Institute of Architects (AlA) joined other professional organizations to ostracize competitors and command respect. Licensing exams in the 18905 con- ferred state-approved credentials and gave registered architects exclusive rights over major public buildings. Most professional offices remained quite small (as they do today), although multiple commissions in a few firms required large staffs since corporate clients demanded speed, driv- 'I en in part by steep financing costs. As Daniel Burnham told Louis ,il Sullivan in 1874, 'my idea is to work up a big business, to handle big things, deal with big businessmen, and to build up a big organization." Rationalized Business Structures Frank Furness, II Provident Life and Trust Company, Rapid expansion and economies of scale fostered concentration of all Philadelphia. 1876-9. sorts, beginning with the railroads, then mergers and the emergence of large corporations - modernity's most powerful clients and economic II arbiters. Businesses large and small, including architecture, calculated managerial practices and profit mar- gins with far greater precision, in part through 'process spaces' to facil- itate more resourceful operations." Large-scale prod ucers moved their clerical and administrative employees into downtown 'headquarters', away from the gritty world of factories. Up-and-coming companies invested in commercial architecture that trumpeted prosperity, recognizing that this could give them a distinctive edge in a fiercely competitive laissez- faire economy. Insurance companies and newspapers set the pace, followed by otherwise conservative banks, since their growth thrived on fears and excitement about change. In the words of the pre-eminent business historian AJfred Chandler, Modern Consolidation, 1865-1893 '9 'Modern business enterprise' became viable 'only when the visible hand of manag~m~~t proved to be more efficient than the InVISI- ble hand of market forces" New York increasingly stood out, 'part Paradise,part Pandemonium', in the words of an 1868 best-seller; 'Order and harmony seemled] to come out of the confusion.'9 Lnthe 1870S, the tumultuous world of speculative booms and busts brought thousands of tourists to Wall Street, the 'engine room of corporate capitalism', whose 'Robber Baron' magnates were both admired and despised." These circumstances generated the first skyscrapers - still a quintes- sential expression of modernity. A search for 'firsts' tends to obscure dynamic processes of appropriation and adaptation, essential to any innovation. Nonetheless, many contemporary historians give the prize to New York's Equitable Life Insurance Building (1867-70), the flagship of a company less than a decade old whose assets set a world record in 1868. The Equitable Building was certainly not a Gilman &1 Kendall and 'proto-skyscraper,' as some later historians contended, implying a teleolog- George B. Post, ical course towards an inevitable outcome." The evolution of its design Equitable Life Insurance instead fused modern concerns for cost-effectiveness with high-risk stakes Headquarters, New and publicity. Although one firm, Gilman & Kendall, won a competition YOI-k,1867-7° for the new building in 1867, Henry Hyde, founder and vice-president of the company, immediately asked runner-up George B. Post to revise their scheme, making it 'rational' - by which he meant that it should abide by the cost guidelines while providing both higher rents and

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