INTERVIEW with WALTER T. STOCKTON Interviewed by Betty J
INTERVIEW WITH WALTER T. STOCKTON
Interviewed by Betty J. Blum
Compiled under the auspices of the Chicago Architects Oral History Project The Ernest R. Graham Study Center for Architectural Drawings Department of Architecture The Art Institute of Chicago Copyright © 1995 Revised Edition Copyright © 2005 The Art Institute of Chicago This manuscript is hereby made available to the public for research purposes only. All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publication, are reserved to the Ryerson and Burnham Libraries of The Art Institute of Chicago. No part of this manuscript may be quoted for publication without the written permission of The Art Institute of Chicago.
ii TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface iv Preface to Revised Edition vi Outline of Topics vii Oral History 1 Selected References 36 Curriculum Vitae 37 Index of Names and Buildings 38
iii PREFACE
Since its inception in 1981, the Department of Architecture at The Art Institute of Chicago has engaged in presenting to the public and the profession diverse aspects of the history and process of architecture, with a special concentration on Chicago. The department has produced bold, innovative exhibitions, generated important scholarly publications, and sponsored public programming of major importance, while concurrently increasing its collection of holdings of architectural drawings and documentation. From the beginning, its purpose has been to raise the level of awareness, understanding, and appreciation of the built environment to an ever-widening audience.
In the same spirit of breaking new ground, an idea emerged from the department's advisory committee in 1983 to conduct an oral history project on Chicago architects. Until that time, oral testimony had not been used frequently as a method of documentation in the field of architecture. Innumerable questions were raised: was the method of gathering information about the architect from the architect himself a reliable one? Although a vast amount of unrecorded information was known to older architects, would they be willing to share it? Would their stories have lasting research value to future scholars, or would they be trivial? Was video-recording a viable option? How much would such a project cost? With a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, we began a feasibility study to answer these questions.
Our study focused on older personalities who had first-hand knowledge of the people and events of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s—decades that have had little attention in the literature of Chicago's architectural history. For nine months in 1983, I contacted more than one hundred architects in Chicago and suburbs and visited most of them. I learned not only that they were ready, willing, and more than able to tell their stories, they were also impatient to do so. Many thought such a program was long overdue.
For each visit, I was armed with a brief biographical sketch of the architect and a tape- recorder with which I recorded our brief exchange. At that time, we considered these visits to be only a prelude to a more comprehensive, in-depth interview. Regretfully, this vision did not materialize because some narrators later became incapacitated or died before full
iv funding was secured. Slowly, however, we did begin an oral history project and now, more than twelve years later, our oral history collection has grown into a rich source of research data that is unique among oral history programs worldwide. With the completion of these interviews our collection of memoirists now numbers more than fifty and the collection continues to grow each year. This oral history text is available for study in the Ryerson and Burnham Libraries at The Art Institute of Chicago, as well as in a complete electronic version on the Chicago Architects Oral History Project's section of The Art Institute of Chicago website, www.artic.edu/aic
This interview is one of several dozen short interviews that were recorded in 1983 during the feasibility study. Surely each one of these narrators could have spoken in greater depth and at greater length; each one deserves a full-scale oral history. Unfortunately, thirteen of these twenty architects have already died, which makes these short interviews especially valuable. These interviews were selected for transcription, despite their brevity, because each narrator brings to light significant and diverse aspects of the practice of architecture in Chicago. We were fortunate to receive an additional grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts to process this group of interviews.
Thanks go to each interviewee and those families that provided releases for the recordings to be made public documents. Thanks also go to Joan Cameron of TapeWriter for her usual diligence and care in transcribing; to Robert V. Sharp of the Publications Department and Maureen A. Lasko of the Ryerson and Burnham Libraries at The Art Institute of Chicago for the helpful suggestions that shaped the final form of this document; and, once again, to the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts for its continuing support, with special thanks to Carter Manny, its former director. Personally, I would like to thank John Zukowsky, Curator of Architecture at The Art Institute of Chicago, for his courage in taking a chance on me as an interviewer in 1983, when I was a complete novice in the craft of interviewing. Since then, I have learned the art and the craft and, more importantly, I have learned that each architect's story has its own very interesting and unique configuration, often filled with wonderful surprises. Each one reveals another essential strand in the dense and interlocking web of Chicago's architectural history.
Betty J. Blum 1995
v PREFACE TO REVISED EDITION
Since 1995, when the previous preface was written, advances in electronic transmission of data have moved at breakneck speed. With the ubiquity of the Internet, awareness and demand for copies of oral histories in the Chicago Architects Oral History Project collection have vastly increased. These factors, as well as the Ryerson and Burnham Libraries' commitment to scholarly research, have compelled us to make these documents readily accessible on the World Wide Web. A complete electronic version of each oral history is now available on the Chicago Architects Oral History Project's section of The Art Institute of Chicago website, http://www.artic.edu/aic, and, as before, a bound version is available for study at the Ryerson and Burnham Libraries at The Art Institute of Chicago.
In preparing an electronic version of this document, we have reformatted it for publication, reviewed and updated with minor copy-editing, and, where applicable, we have expanded the biographical profile and added pertinent bibliographic references. Lastly, the text has been reindexed and the CAOHP Master Index updated accordingly. All of the electronic conversion and reformatting is the handiwork of my valued colleague, Annemarie van Roessel, whose technical skills, intelligence, and discerning judgment have shaped the breadth and depth of the CAOHP's presence on the Internet. This endeavor would be greatly diminished without her seamless leadership in these matters. Publication of this oral history in web-accessible form was made possible by the generous support of The Vernon and Marcia Wagner Access Fund at The Art Institute of Chicago; The James & Catherine Haveman Foundation; The Reva and David Logan Family Fund of the Community Foundation for the National Capital Region; and Daniel Logan and The Reva and David Logan Foundation. Finally, to the Ryerson and Burnham Libraries at The Art Institute of Chicago and its generous and supportive director, Jack P. Brown, we extend our deepest gratitude for facilitating this endeavor.
Betty J. Blum February 2005
vi OUTLINE OF TOPICS
School and On-the-Job Training 1 Clark and Walcott 4 Working with Robert S. DeGolyer 7 Building the Ambassador East Hotel, Chicago 14 Century of Progress International Exposition 22 Surviving the Depression 23 Opinion of Mies and His Work 24 Art Deco Powhatan Apartments 26 Office Records of DeGolyer and Company 27 In the Office of Philip Maher and Others 33
vii Walter Thaw Stockton
Blum: Today is August 30, 1983, and I am with Walter Thaw Stockton at his home in Evanston. Mr. Stockton, why did you become an architect?
Stockton: I really don't know. I just always thought I wanted to be one. Somehow I also wanted to go to Princeton, and they didn't have an architectural school at that time. I went there and took all the courses I could and after I graduated, in 1917, I took most of my engineering in Chicago.
Blum: What did you study at Princeton?
Stockton: I took all their art courses and a few engineering courses, but I really wasn't prepared to be a professional architect.
Blum: Did you have it in your mind then that you were going to be an architect?
Stockton: Yes. Then I got most of my training working at the various offices.
Blum: You said when you graduated Princeton you were not prepared for a career in architecture. What did you do when you graduated?
Stockton: I went right into the war. I weighed 120 and I was six feet tall, and they wouldn't take me so I became a captain in the Illinois Reserve Militia on the brigade staff, and I organized all the training corps companies in northern Illinois. And then after that, in 1919, I went with Chester Walcott. He had a little cubbyhole, and if we had a client I had to go out and walk in the hall.
Blum: Was that 1919?
Stockton: Yes.
1 Blum: How did you happen to work for him?
Stockton: I'd known him all my life.
Blum: What kind of work did he have?
Stockton: Residential, mostly on the North Shore of Chicago. I got seven dollars a week and was glad to get it.
Blum: Was it single-family homes or apartments?
Stockton: Homes, mostly.
Blum: What did you do in his firm?
Stockton: Drafting. I was the only one there.
Blum: In a two-man office?
Stockton: I was learning as much as I was giving.
Blum: Was your training at Princeton useful to you at that point?
Stockton: Not too much. We did have a young professor who had just graduated from the architecture school at Columbia, Shirley Morgan, who started classes in perspective and drawing, and in my senior year I took those classes, so it did help.
Blum: Did you say you took engineering courses there?
Stockton: Nothing that really did me any good. I took mostly mathematical work.
Blum: So it wasn't a technical education.
2 Stockton: No. Their architectural school didn't start at Princeton until after the war, under Howard Crosby Butler.
Blum: So in 1919 when you went to work for Mr. Walcott, you were getting on-the- job training.
Stockton: I was getting on-the-job training and going to night school.
Blum: Where?
Stockton: This fellow named Hooper gave structural classes at night.
Blum: In a school, or was this as a private tutor?
Stockton: No, just on his own, I think. You see, at that time we didn't have to pass an exam on mechanical work. It was structural and architectural and specifications and that kind of thing.
Blum: And what was he tutoring you in?
Stockton: In structural—steel and concrete and that sort of thing.
Blum: How long did you stay with Mr. Walcott?
Stockton: Chester Walcott's brother, Russell, came back from the war in 1920. Then they made the firm of Clark and Walcott, and I went along with them.
Blum: Who was Mr. Clark?
Stockton: Eddie Clark—Edwin H. Clark.
Blum: Was this the Edwin Clark who built the Winnetka Village Hall?
3 Stockton: Yes, that's right. That was Clark and Walcott.
Blum: Now that was in 1920?
Stockton: Yes.
Blum: How long were you with them?
Stockton: Yes, for two or three years.
Blum: What did you do in that office?
Stockton: I did both drafting and supervision on mostly residence work.
Blum: How did their partnership—you say there was Russell Walcott, Chester Walcott and Edwin Clark.
Stockton: Well, Russell Walcott was never really a part of the firm. He was there then, but he moved on to Tryon, North Carolina, very shortly.
Blum: Was he an architect?
Stockton: Yes.
Blum: So he really didn't remain in the office?
Stockton: No. And both of them went to Princeton, too.
Blum: It looks like Clark and Walcott was the Princeton enclave like Perkins and Will was the Cornell enclave.
Stockton: Right.
Blum: How did the arrangement between Mr. Clark and Mr. Walcott work?
4 Stockton: It worked very well. I've forgotten why it split up. That was several years after I left.
Blum: Who did what? Was one a designer and one a client man, or one a construction man and one a business end?
Stockton: I think Eddie Clark was the business-getter and Chet Walcott was the designer.
Blum: What kind of work did that firm do?
Stockton: Mostly residential on the North Shore?
Blum: This was the early twenties.
Stockton: 1920—around in there.
Blum: In 1922 we had the Tribune competition in Chicago.
Stockton: Oh, yes. I remember that—gosh, yes.
Blum: Do you have any recollections of that competition or what was happening in the office related to the competition?
Stockton: We didn't enter it.
Blum: Do you have any personal recollections of the entrees?
Stockton: I just remember the competition drawings being on exhibit and going over to see them. I do remember that lot and the lot south of it there. What's the name of that insurance company building on the river? You know where I mean. Equitable, isn't it? That was a parking lot at the time, and we were the first tenants in 307 North Michigan—Bob DeGolyer and I—and I parked
5 across in that lot at twenty-five cents a day. And then when it went up to thirty-five cents, that was terrible.
Blum: Well, we're still complaining about the parking rates going up, only it's gone up ten times, plus. Do you remember thinking about Hood's design, the winner of the competition, being in the Gothic style?
Stockton: No. Let's see, that was—what was the name of the winner?
Blum: It was Raymond Hood.
Stockton: Hood, yes. Howells and Hood.
Blum: What did you think about Saarinen's entry to the competition?
Stockton: Well, it was late, you know. But I think it would have been the best.
Blum: Is that just the way you recall it today, or did you think so at the time?
Stockton: No, I think most architects of that day thought it was the best. They all complained about the false buttresses on the top of the present Tribune Building, you know. They weren't doing anything.
Blum: Was that in the fashion of the day?
Stockton: Yes, the Gothic was. I don't think anybody could do a Gothic building now. I don't think any one of them could do a really Gothic cathedral or anything like that.
Blum: Who else was in the Clark and Walcott office with you?
Stockton: Maurice Webster, and he just died last year. They're all gone except me. He was with them for a number of years.
6 Blum: Was he a designer?
Stockton: Yes, then when the firm broke up—I don't remember what year that was—Maurice formed the firm of Allen and Webster, and then they broke up.
Blum: So there were five of you—Mr. Clark, the two Walcotts, Mr. Webster and you.
Stockton: As I remember, Russell Walcott was never with the firm of Clark and Walcott, and of course, Maurice Webster was a draftsman the same as I was, and there were four or five other draftsmen. I don't remember who they were.
Blum: Now, in the meanwhile, you're getting all this experience in these firms, but you still don't have…
Stockton: A license?
Blum: And you don't have all the training you need to be licensed, do you?
Stockton: I took my exams in 1923, and got my license in 1923.
Blum: How did you fill in your education after Princeton, from which you did not have a degree in architecture?
Stockton: Actual practice at the office and night school. My degree is bachelor of letters and not bachelor of architecture.
Blum: So you really got on-the-job training as well as evening courses.
Stockton: That's right.
Blum: Who else did you take courses with? You said Mr. Hooper.
7 Stockton: I don't remember anybody else. Maurice Webster and I studied with Hooper.
Blum: Was he doing the same thing?
Stockton: Yes. He went to Cornell.
Blum: Did he have a degree in architecture?
Stockton: Evidently not at that time. Well, he may have; yes, he may have. He was taking the exam, same as I was, for a license. Then you could still take exams for a license without having a degree in architecture.
Blum: Is that what you did?
Stockton: Yes, I took my exam in 1923.
Blum: Is that about the time you left Clark and Walcott?
Stockton: Then I went in with Bob DeGolyer.
Blum: You were in business with him from 1924 through 1944.
Stockton: That's right with Bob DeGolyer.
Blum: How did you happen to go into business with him?
Stockton: He asked me. I'd known him personally. He was, I think, nineteen years older than I, but I knew him. I knew the family, and we grew up here in Evanston.
Blum: So he asked you to come with him. When you went with him, were you an employee of his or were you an associate? What was the actual arrangement?
8 Stockton: I worked for him for a year or so, and then I became a partner.
Blum: Was the firm ever known as DeGolyer and Stockton?
Stockton: Yes, at the end. It was Robert S. DeGolyer and Company before.
Blum: And you were part of the company—you were the "Company."
Stockton: I was the "Company," and the last few years it was DeGolyer and Stockton—Robert S. DeGolyer and Walter T. Stockton. Jackson was the other member of the company, and then I bought him out—Archer L. Jackson. He went into the construction business and really made some money. He formed his own firm of A. L. Jackson and Company Building Construction.
Blum: When you went into DeGolyer's office, what kind of work did he have?
Stockton: Apartment buildings. That's when we did a number of them in the twenties.
Blum: In Randall's book [History of the Development of Building Construction in Chicago], he lists many of the buildings that were built by DeGolyer and Company. In 1925, 1120 Lake Shore Drive, and he says that building was built with a new concept.
Stockton: That's about right. We did it for Baird and Warner. It's still there—eighteen stories. It was red-brick Gothic.
Blum: What was the new concept?
Stockton: The new concept is that all the rooms had outer exposures. And there is an east portion and a west portion. It was L-shaped along Lake Shore Drive and then most of it was along Elm Street. I remember that there was a three-story house that Baird and Warner wanted to buy to make the building larger, you see.
9 Blum: Do you mean to knock it down?
Stockton: Yes, to take down, but the owner wouldn't sell. He held them up for the money.
Blum: Is that why the building is L-shaped?
Stockton: No, that's because the arm wasn't as long on Elm Street. The owner wouldn't sell, but we went ahead and built. He had to protect his own property, and it cost him $15,000 to protect his property from falling into the hole. Of course, the $15,000 would be $30,000 or more nowadays.
Blum: Do you mean he had to shore it up so it didn't fall into the excavation?
Stockton: Yes.
Blum: In 1926 Randall lists 1320 North State Street. And for many of the projects from 1926 through, say, 1930, Smith and Brown were the engineers.
Stockton: That's right, and H.L. Chute was the mechanical engineer. He retired to Berrien Springs, Michigan. He turned all his working drawings into handkerchiefs.
Blum: What!?
Stockton: You know, the working drawings, in those days were on linen—perfectly marvelous linen with this glaze on them—and he used ink. He just washed them all up and used them for handkerchiefs.
Blum: Oh, I've seen the glazed linen, but I did not know that it could be used like that.
Stockton: The pencil linen was a different linen entirely. It was a rough linen.
10 Blum: I've seen ink on linen. It was so glazed it just looked very fragile to me.
Stockton: That's just the filler for the linen.
Blum: Well, he washed out the record of his whole career in one tub of water. When DeGolyer and Company got one of these good-sized commissions, say, for instance, the 1120 Lake Shore Drive, you were fairly new. How did DeGolyer and Company work out such a commission?
Stockton: Well, Bob DeGolyer had been the chief designer for Marshall and Fox. He did the Edgewater Beach Hotel for them; he did the Blackstone Theater and the Blackstone Hotel for them, and he was well known. Marshall and Fox got all the credit, but Bob DeGolyer was the one that did all the designing and the layout. He designed and he made that cross design for the Edgewater Beach Hotel, and they threw it in the wastebasket. Then they finally got to saying, "That really is worth something, " and they pulled it out and built it.
Blum: Was Charlie Dornbusch with Marshall and Fox at that time?
Stockton: Dornbusch—I remember that name, but I never met him.
Blum: He was one of their designers, too.
Stockton: Yes, well, Bob DeGolyer went in business for himself—oh, gosh, it must have been in 1916.
Blum: So he would have left Marshall and Fox by then. And his reputation apparently was well known.
Stockton: Yes, he'd made a reputation. Benny Marshall lived in that house on Sheridan Road in Wilmette, and when I was commodore of the Sheridan Shore Yacht Club, we had our quarters in the basement of that building. Then I was the architect for the new Sheridan Shore Yacht Club that was built in 1937 across the harbor.
11 Blum: Did you ever want to work for him?
Stockton: No. We used to see a lot of him, but I never wanted—he was sort of a playboy architect. He got the business.
Blum: He had a big studio with very talented people.
Stockton: Yes.
Blum: Did you meet Mr. DeGolyer in that context?
Stockton: No, I'd known him.
Blum: Did you have any contact with the actual workings of the Marshall office, even quite by accident just because you were in the building?
Stockton: No, not at all.
Blum: You were saying that the way these commissions worked in DeGolyer and Company's office is that Mr. DeGolyer would get the commission…
Stockton: He was the business-getter, and I was the business-get-outer.
Blum: What do you mean?
Stockton: I had charge of the drawings and writing the specifications, and then we had two or three field superintendents.
Blum: Who had the inspiration for some of the concepts and designs?
Stockton: Bob DeGolyer did most of it. I did a couple of residences for friends of mine while I was there, but Bob DeGolyer did practically all of the layouts. He was whiz at layouts.
12 Blum: So was it his idea that units in 1120 Lake Shore Drive should all have outer exposures?
Stockton: I think what you may have been talking about, it was one of the few buildings that had a peaked roof that enclosed all the mechanical work. It had a regular Gothic roof instead of a flat roof.
Blum: Was that unusual?
Stockton: Yes. It enclosed all these tanks and penthouses and all that stuff instead of just a flat roof with these things on top of it.
Blum: You mentioned a Mr. Jackson. Was he part of that company?
Stockton: He was with Bob DeGolyer when I joined the firm. I bought him out after about three years.
Blum: In the DeGolyer firm, was he the construction man, then?
Stockton: Yes. He was the superintendent.
Blum: Was he an architect?
Stockton: No. He had charge of all construction.
Blum: So when he left, was that the time when the DeGolyer firm tied up with Smith and Brown?
Stockton: Smith and Brown had been with us right along.
Blum: Who was Mr. Smith, and who was Mr. Brown?
13 Stockton: Smith had been a professor of engineering at Purdue, and Brown was—I don't remember where Brown came from. They joined this firm of Smith and Brown, and we had practically the whole nineteenth floor of 307 North Michigan Avenue, which had just been built at that time.
Blum: And they were also on that floor?
Stockton: They weren't part of the firm. We had three separate, individual offices, you see, but we always used each other.
Blum: That was Smith and Brown, H.L. Chute, and DeGolyer and Company.
Stockton: That's right.
Blum: You say Archer Jackson left in 1926 and formed his own construction firm. You said before we turned on the tape that Jackson was responsible for taking care of the drawings.
Stockton: Yes, he stored them in his warehouse.
Blum: Did he do that at that time, in 1926?
Stockton: No, he did it when our firm broke up in 1944.
Blum: Why, if he was no longer part of the firm, why did he come into the possession of the drawings?
Stockton: Just because we asked him to. We just didn't know what else to do with them.
Blum: Now, in 1927 the Ambassador East was built. Was it considered a big commission?
14 Stockton: Yes, it was. I remember that. We had it all designed as a cube—not a cube, but an oblong. It was the same height all the way up. We built it on a guarantee for Ernest Byfield. We formed an outfit with BW Construction Company and a real estate outfit and ourselves as architects, and we guaranteed to build a three-hundred-room hotel for Byfield. Just at the time we were about ready to build—we were finishing the drawings—we discovered that the building code, zoning code, had been changed. They never notified the architects at all. They just came around and slapped notices on you that you couldn't have the height limit on the street that high. But I saved the day.
Blum: How did you do it?
Stockton: Well, I studied that thing back and forward and found that it said that if you set back one foot from each lot line, you could go two feet higher. So, if you set back ten feet, you could go up twenty feet as a tower, and that just made the three hundred rooms. And Byfield promised me a case of his College Inn canned goods for saving the day. I never got it. I've been waiting for it ever since.
Blum: That was the Ambassador East, which was really elegant.
Stockton: And Sam Marx designed a stairway there in the lobby—Samuel Marx. He was a designer. He never had an architect's license.
Blum: Samuel Marx also did the interior design of the Pump Room.
Stockton: Yes, but originally I had designed the room as an old-fashioned Virginia ballroom, and then after a year or two he redesigned that.
Blum: Are there photographs of the first design? Was it called the Pump Room then?
15 Stockton: It had a little musicians' balcony and all that stuff. You see, it stayed that way for a few years, and then he designed the Pump Room a number of years after the building was up.
Blum: What was the room called originally?
Stockton: I don't know. It wasn't anything—just a dining room.
Blum: Was the Sarah Siddons Room called the Sarah Siddons Room?
Stockton: Well, I don't remember what that was called either.
Blum: Could it have been a later addition?
Stockton: As a matter of fact, that porch business on State Street there was a later addition.
Blum: The porch that is like an annex to the Pump Room?
Stockton: Yes. That was built later.
Blum: Have you been in it recently?
Stockton: I haven't been there for years.
Blum: Well, it's been redesigned again. It's sort of sleek now. As a matter of fact, booth number one, the Pump Room booth where all the famous people sat, is now in the Chicago Historical Society.
Stockton: Oh, is it? They've taken that all out? I haven't been in the Ambassador East Hotel for years. Do they still have the raised portions on the east end?
Blum: If I recall, as you walk in there is a raised portion to the left, which was always the bar, and is still the bar.
16 Stockton: But was there a raised portion down at the other end?
Blum: On the right, it seems to me, that was where the orchestra and the dance floor was located. Now, I'm not sure if it is still there. It may be. When that was being built, how did you and Mr. DeGolyer allocate responsibilities for that commission?
Stockton: We had our own construction man outside. You see, in those days when you finished your working drawings you were really just getting underway because we had sheets and sheets and piles and piles of drawings for details. All this ornamental work was all done at full size; all the stone cutting all done at full size; all the wood carving done at full size—everything—oh, just piles of drawings after we'd finished the job and were ready to build. And we still had that work to do right while it was being built, and when we dug the hole we ran into old beer cellars.
Blum: What had been on the site before?
Stockton: A beer manufacturing outfit, and those were the cellars for the cooling. As a matter of fact, as it started out, this group that I was telling you about, we had completed the drawings for a co-op, and Ernie Byfield looked out the window and said, "What's going on here? Build me a hotel, " and we had half the pilings driven. We just stopped everything short and started over again with a new piling layout, and then we discovered that we'd gone into these brick tunnels.
Blum: Do I understand you correctly to say that you were to build an apartment building on that site and then that was scrapped and you built the hotel?
Stockton: That's right.
Blum: Why did Byfield change his mind?
17 Stockton: He had the Ambassador West, and he wanted a…
Blum: A companion?
Stockton: Yes, and we built the tunnel under the street.
Blum: Who had the inspiration for the style of the building?
Stockton: Oh, Bob and I both did it. We both worked on it.
Blum: Was there any thought at that time to make it compatible with the Ambassador West?
Stockton: No.
Blum: Is the Ambassador East the larger of the two structures?
Stockton: Really, I don't know.
Blum: Somehow I've always thought that the West was an afterthought.
Stockton: No, the West was there first. Of course, it wasn't called the West at that time.
Blum: What was it called?
Stockton: Just the Ambassador, because they had to distinguish between the East and the West when the East was built.
Blum: What was the neighborhood like at that time?
Stockton: It was mostly residences.
Blum: Was the Churchill apartment building up at that time?
18 Stockton: I don't know, but I assume so. That's an old building.
Blum: In 1927, you built 1430 Lake Shore Drive.
Stockton: Yes. That was a very skinny little building. Before they built the building on the south side of it, in a heavy storm it would sway a little bit. The pictures on the top floor used to sway, but they built the building next to it in a year or so, and it was all right.
Blum: Do they have a party wall?
Stockton: Well, they didn't have a party wall, but they built right up against it.
Blum: By 1929 some of the early soundings of the Depression were being felt. Was it being felt by the DeGolyer firm?
Stockton: Well, let's see—we were building 1242 Lake Shore Drive. That was a co-op, and that's when the collapse came, when people at Baird and Warner, as I recall, were selling the building. The Depression just wrecked it. They couldn't sell it all.
Blum: So what happened?
Stockton: Well, the outfit, whoever it was—the owners; I can't remember who it was—had to carry the empty apartments. We had Insull, Jr., in there. He had two floors.
Blum: Did you get paid?
Stockton: Yes. It's still there.
Blum: From 1925 to 1928, the commissions for the firm were buildings that were very elegant, costly, high-rise apartment residence hotels.
19 Stockton: That's right.
Blum: Were there other types of buildings that the firm did?
Stockton: It was mostly hotels and apartments.
Blum: Was that the demand, or was that what speculators wanted?
Stockton: Well, both.
Blum: You mean there was a lot of money in Chicago, and people wanted fancy apartments.
Stockton: Yes.
Blum: And then what happened in 1930?
Stockton: Everything just quit. Just overnight there was just no business.
Blum: So was the 1242 Lake Shore Drive building the last lucrative commission that the DeGolyer office had?
Stockton: Yes.
Blum: How large was the office, say, in 1928?
Stockton: Oh, we probably had about twenty draftsmen. I think Walter Swanson was the chief draftsman, but I don't know what became of him.
Blum: And then how did the DeGolyer office survive the Depression?
Stockton: Well, we just reduced our space and sort of dribbled along, doing remodeling work and so on. Then Bob DeGolyer went to Washington and worked on the Pentagon building, and I was left alone there. I had a small office about the
20 size of this room, and I did a job for the navy at Great Lakes, and that was about the extent of the work.
Blum: This was from 1930 through 19—…?
Stockton: Just about up until 1939.
Blum: What happened to the firm?
Stockton: See, we were a partnership at that time, and he just left and we broke up the partnership.
Blum: So in terms of the name of the company, it was Robert DeGolyer and Company from whenever he started until you became partners in about 1927. And then it disbanded.
Stockton: It was Robert S. DeGolyer and Walter T. Stockton. And that disbanded when the Depression came in 1930.
Blum: So you were Robert S. DeGolyer and Walter T. Stockton for about three years.
Stockton: Yes, something like that.
Blum: Okay, then he went to Washington, and you stayed here to run the office. Now, your partnership had officially broken up then, but was there any thought of him returning?
Stockton: No.
Blum: Was that the end of your collaboration with him?
Stockton: After the end of the war he came back. I think he did a little bit of architecture, but he retired and then he died. I don't remember what year he died, but not long after the war.
21 Blum: In the forties?
Stockton: Yes.
Blum: Yes, except we're still speaking about the thirties.
Stockton: Yes.
Blum: Evidently, he was in Washington, but did you have any thought in 1933-1934 about participating in the Century of Progress International Exposition?
Stockton: Well, yes. We had a tremendous job in the Century of Progress for a friend of Bob DeGolyer's with the Parker Pen Company. We did an exhibit for the Parker Pen Company at one of the buildings. That was the extent of our work.
Blum: Did you do the building? The interior?
Stockton: You know, these firms rented space so much. It might be as big as this house, or it might be as small as nothing. This place was about the size of this living room, and we designed the displays for that space.
Blum: Were the displays designed in any futuristic style?
Stockton: It was in keeping with the style of the building, yes, what we called modernistic in those days.
Blum: What was actually happening in design in the late 1920s, early 1930s? I realize that the buildings that your company built—the 1120 and the 1320 and the Ambassador and then the 1242—were all conservative and elegant.
22 Stockton: Incidentally, on the 1242 we were in on the purchase of that land. I've forgotten how the rest of the financing was done, but we were one of the purchasers with somebody else.
Blum: Is that how a lot of architects survived the Depression or made money, by becoming an investor? Did many do that in the twenties?
Stockton: Yes, quite a few.
Blum: Was that frowned on by the American Institute of Architects?
Stockton: No, because that did not interfere with your designing.
Blum: It seems that the AIA frowned on architects who also did their own construction. Engineering was okay, but constructing was not acceptable. Why?
Stockton: That's right. If you took over the whole project and sold it, for instance, that was frowned upon.
Blum: Did that seem to constitute a conflict of interest?
Stockton: What was also frowned upon was being what they called a "kept architect, " working for a big firm; not an architectural firm but just any corporate firm.
Blum: Like the Standard Oil Company?
Stockton: The Standard Oil needed architectural work done. That was frowned on, but it isn't anymore.
Blum: Change has taken place, and now much is accepted that wasn't before.
23 [Tape 1: Side 2]
Blum: How would you describe the work you did in the 1920s?
Stockton: Well, a good word is conservative.
Blum: But it was more imitative of historical styles in the details.
Stockton: That's right.
Blum: And at the same time some information about what was happening at the German Bauhaus was coming through to architects in Chicago.
Stockton: That's right.
Blum: What were your feelings about the differences in the style or the design shift that developed?
Stockton: We didn't care particularly for it originally. We never did care for Bauhaus. What was his name who did the glass and steel work?
Blum: Mies van der Rohe?
Stockton: Yes.
Blum: At that time it was all so new. Mies wasn't even here until the late thirties. But there were some firms that were trying out the International Style in a small way.
Stockton: Of course, let's face it, it was the cheapest way to build in the Bauhaus way. In the modern—just glass and steel. You didn't have any stonework, you didn't have any carving; you didn't have any fancy business at all, you didn't have any fancy indoor trim and paneling and all that stuff.
24 Blum: Did that appeal to you?
Stockton: No. And in that case, when you finish the working drawings for the building, you were through. You didn't have all this detailing to do.
Blum: How did you feel about some of the houses, like the Kecks' House of Tomorrow or the Crystal House at the Century of Progress?
Stockton: Well, they were interesting to look at but not to live in. And don't ask me about Frank Lloyd Wright.
Blum: Did you know him? Do you dislike the person or his ideas?
Stockton: Well, I didn't like the person. If you went to hear him, he always started out insulting you. He never became an AIA fellow.
Blum: Well, do you have to become a fellow to win an AIA award?
Stockton: No, I don't think so.
Blum: Did any of Mr. DeGolyer's and your buildings ever get an award or mentioned as outstanding work?
Stockton: Well, the one that won was the 7321 South Shore Drive building. They made it a historical landmark.
Blum: So the recognition is a little late in coming, but coming. When was that built?
Stockton: That was built in 1927. I remember because I was in Europe; I wasn't asked to leave the country. I was in Europe, and most of that building was built during the three months that I was in Europe, so I am kind of blank about the questions you'd want me to answer.
Blum: Was that a traveling fellowship?
25 Stockton: No, we just went abroad and traveled.
Blum: It seems that many people who were trained and either won a prize or something of this sort had a few months in Europe going around and sketching as part of their architectural education. Is that what you did?
Stockton: No. We were just traveling. We went, of course, on ship both ways in those days. From Evanston to Evanston we were gone three months, all through Europe and England, stayed in the best hotels, and the whole bill was $3,500.
Blum: Did you take a sketchbook along?
Stockton: No. We were moving too fast.
Blum: All right, that was when the 7321 South Shore Drive building went up. There was also another large apartment building.
Stockton: It was in the era when we did the building with the Indian name, the Powhatan.
Blum: How did that come about? I'm not sure what the actual date of construction is, but it was up by 1928. You know, the buildings that we talked about already seem to have been done in a very traditional style. The Powhatan was styled differently.
Stockton: Yes, that was entirely different.
Blum: Where did the idea for that style, the Art Deco style, come from?
Stockton: I really don't know. The owner must have been—I can't think who the owner was, but I do know that Charlie Morgan designed all those. He designed all the terra cotta Indian designs on the exterior of the building and worked with our office.
26 Blum: Oh, but was he not employed by your office then.
Stockton: No.
Blum: Was it his idea to give it an Indian name?
Stockton: I don't know which one got the idea.
Blum: You mean either the owner or Charlie Morgan?
Stockton: Yes.
Blum: Was the Powhatan a unique example of that style in the work of your office or were other buildings done in that style?
Stockton: Oh, no. That was the only one that I know of.
Blum: And were you involved with the Powhatan?
Stockton: Me personally? Well, I probably wrote the specifications for that, yes.
Blum: Did the Narragansett go up at about the time as the Powhatan?
Stockton: I don't know.
Blum: Were you involved with those buildings at all?
Stockton: No, not the Narragansett.
Blum: I'm looking through a book with the office records of DeGolyer and Company. [A copy is at the Ryerson Burnham Libraries at the Art Institute.]
27 Stockton: Yes. Here are the different buildings we built. There is a breakdown of the cost of the building.
Blum: Some of these sheets are a little earlier. Now, this is for the 1242, and this was in 1931. There's the Ambassador East name there—well, here—"The ratio of expenses by year."
Stockton: Those are just our personal expenses. You can see the project there, 1929, 1930, 1931.
Blum: Now, here the Campbell Apartments are listed in 1916 and 1917. And in 1923, the Marlborough.
Stockton: 1916 and 1917? The Marlborough, too. That was Bob DeGolyer. He did that.
Blum: And the Barry in 1924; were you in on that?
Stockton: In 1924, yes.
Blum: And Elm Street, but no address.
Stockton: Elm Street—that's the 1020 Lake Shore Drive.
Blum: Then 3750 Sheridan, and then it says Crandon for 1927.
Stockton: Yes, we did 3750. Crandon, that's on the South Side for Johnson.
Blum: And, oh, some more. In 1926, Lincoln Park West. What building was that?
Stockton: Oh, 2136 Lincoln Park West. That was just what I would call a cheap apartment building. The apartments were small. It was a small building; I mean, it's probably only about twelve stories or something like that.
28 Blum: It looks like the buildings are listed by streets—Campbell, Marlborough, Pearson, Monterrey, Barry—all apartment buildings. Here is a sheet that says, "The Architect Committee on Building Valuations, the Subcommittee on Hotels and Apartments." There was John Fugard...
Stockton: Well, he appointed me to take his place in 1932.
Blum: And Mr. DeGolyer, Philip Maher.
Stockton: Yes. I worked for Phil Maher later.
Blum: And Frank A. McNally, R.D. Huszagh and L.E. Olsen. Was that Olsen and Urbain after a while?
Stockton: Yes.
Blum: And Leo B. Steiff, and F.C. Starr.
Stockton: I don't remember him.
Blum: He was on the bottom of the list. It looks like he did all the paperwork. He was the secretary of the group. What was the function of this committee?
Stockton: I was going to say that nothing ever came of it.
Blum: What was it intended to do? It says "building valuations."
Stockton: And I don't know what it was for.
Blum: Well, there is a lot of paperwork here. It looks like the committee had a lot of meetings.
Stockton: Like most committees, it was a lot of paperwork and nothing accomplished.
29 Blum: Now, here is an amazing statistic: 1120 Lake Shore Drive was completed in 1925, and the cost per cubic foot was 67.8 cents.
Stockton: Now it's mostly by square foot, not cubic foot. We built that 3750 Sheridan Road building for 50 cents a cubic foot.
Blum: Amazing. Lincoln Park West was 51.7 cents a foot, 3750 was 52.5 cents per foot—amazing. And these were all intended to be elegant buildings, weren't they?
Stockton: Oh, yes. This is more of a complete list, but it doesn't start until 1928.
Blum: What does this mean—the H, the K—that little pencil mark?
Stockton: I haven't the slightest idea. I joined Bob DeGolyer just as they were making drawings for the Pearson Hotel.
Blum: So you were in on all of these—this entire list.
Stockton: Oh, yes. We built that Pearson Hotel for $1,100,000, and I think there was less than ten thousand dollars in extras. You know, you always have extras for mistakes and this and that. That thing would cost five million now.
Blum: Here all the contractors are listed for each job.
Stockton: A breakdown of the—and the cost per cubic foot of each. I'm pretty sure that the Art Institute library has copies of all that.
Blum: I'm certainly going to ask.
Stockton: You might check with Tom Neuman, too. Do you know who he is?
Blum: Yes, I do. Here is a newspaper clipping. It looks like building values. Maybe this is part of what your committee did.
30 Stockton: I don't remember what they were going to use it for, was my point.
Blum: Here, this looks like it is the valuation of the Powhatan, at the time. Was that conceived as a luxury apartment building?
Stockton: First class, yes. It has a swimming pool in it.
Blum: Was that unusual?
Stockton: Well, 3750 has one. It was rather unusual, yes.
Blum: Was that an amenity that was only built in luxury buildings?
Stockton: Yes. That's what this was for, then, for the use of appraisers fixing the market values on buildings in Cook County.
Blum: After the Powhatan was built, after the Narragansett was built, what happened in the thirties?
Stockton: Well, nothing, as far as we were concerned. Here is 1930. We were finishing up jobs, you see, but in 1931 there was practically nothing. We did a YWCA over on Ashland Avenue, and I was sick at the time and didn't get in on that. In 1930 we were finishing up the buildings, you see. All of these are 1930 because they had been started the year before.
Blum: Now, Mr. DeGolyer went to Washington, but new work was not coming in?
Stockton: No.
Blum: Here is a list of your library books, too. What has happened to the library?
Stockton: I had some, and Bob DeGolyer took some. It wasn't extra-extensive.
31 Blum: When you wanted a design, when you wanted, say, a detail, would you use one of these books as your model?
Stockton: Yes.
Blum: I see you had Italian and French and English books.
Stockton: That's the only way you could do it.
Blum: Oh, here is something else. It says, "People holding keys to the office."
Stockton: Oh, who are they?
Blum: Mr. DeGolyer, you, Willis J. McCauley.
Stockton: He was the chief draftsman.
Blum: Leonard C. Smith. What did he do?
Stockton: Yes, I had forgotten about him. He was just one of the draftsmen.
Blum: And Ann Petersen.
Stockton: She was the secretary, and she just died last year.
Blum: And Robert L. Nusbaum.
Stockton: Bob Nusbaum was a draftsman.
Blum: Do any of these people survive?
Stockton: I don't know. No, they all were gone before—see, we didn't have anybody at the time we broke up, except Ann Petersen was still around.
32 Blum: Did she stay with you?
Stockton: I didn't have anybody. When the partnership broke up, she left.
Blum: What happened during the thirties—you say very little. Did you have any war work during the Second World War?
Stockton: After I was alone—absolutely alone—I did a large garage and dormitory for Great Lakes Naval Training Station.
Blum: This was during the Second World War, in the early forties. Your affiliation with Mr. DeGolyer broke up in 1944.
Stockton: That's right.
Blum: What did DeGolyer do after the war?
Stockton: He came back and puttered around a bit. I don't know what he did, really.
Blum: Were you associated with him after that?
Stockton: No. He was nineteen years older than I, see. He had a little apartment down near South Boulevard, down there. He died in 1952, and Mrs. DeGolyer went to the Mather Home up here, and she died about ten years later.
Blum: Now, in 1950 you associated with Philip Maher. Was it in 1952 that you did the Chicago State Tuberculosis Sanitarium?
Stockton: Yes. I did that, and then the one in Mount Vernon when I was with Phil.
Blum: What kind of an office did Maher have? How large was it?
Stockton: We had about five draftsmen, I think.
33 Blum: Do you remember any of them?
Stockton: There was a kid named Nemoy, but I can't remember the others. We did an apartment building for the University of Chicago on Ellis Avenue and the tuberculosis sanitarium.
Blum: When you and Maher built the Chicago State Sanitarium, how did the design responsibility work?
Stockton: Phil did all the designing, and I had charge of the drafting room—getting all the work out and writing the specifications. He did all the designing.
Blum: And you were with him from 1950 to 1952, or was it 1951 to 1953?
Stockton: Yes—I've forgotten. But, in the meantime, I worked twice for L.J. Sheridan and Company, the real estate outfit. I made all the layouts for the Prudential Building for him. Sheridan was the manager. I had been with L.J. Sheridan for four years during the Depression as the operating manager of all his buildings. I made layouts for all his buildings and also had charge of the operation of all his buildings. That's when there was no architecture being built.
Blum: Is that how you filled the Depression years?
Stockton: That's how I survived.
Blum: You were associated with Mr. Maher for a few years in the early fifties. And then you worked for Fugard, Burt, Wilkinson and Orth.
Stockton: In 1956, 1 went to Fugard, Burt, Wilkinson and Orth. When I was at Fugard, we did a dental clinic up there. Yes, so I think I was with Phil Maher for more than two years.
34 Blum: Before you went there and when you and Mr. DeGolyer broke up completely, you said that you called Archer Jackson—he took your drawings and stored them. Is that accurate?
Stockton: Yes.
Blum: The last question I want to ask you is, what do you think the most successful building you've ever built has been?
Stockton: The Ambassador East.
Blum: That was a fast answer. You didn't have to think about that, did you?
Stockton: No.
Blum: Well, I can see why. Mr. Stockton, thank you very much. I really appreciate your being so cooperative and speaking about your firms and your career. Thank you.
Stockton: Well, I'm glad to cooperate with you. You're entirely welcome.
35 SELECTED REFERENCES
"1120 Lake Shore Drive, Chicago." Western Architect 35 (April 1926): pl.55-56. "Barry Apartments, Chicago." Western Architect 35 (April 1926):49-51. Harris, Neil. Chicago Apartments: A Century of Lakefront Luxury. New York: Acanthus Press, 2004. "Marlborough Apartments." Western Architect 35 (April 1926):pl. 52-54. "Pearson Hotel, Chicago, Illinois." Architectural Forum 41 (November 1924):225-226. Sexton, Rudolph W. American Apartment Houses, Hotels and Apartment Hotels of Today. With a forward by Raymond Hood. New York: Architectural Book Publishing Co., Inc., 1929. Westfall, C.W. "From Homes to Towers." in Chicago Architecture 1872-1922, ed. John Zukowsky. Munich: Prestel-Verlag, 1987. Zurier, Rebecca. "The Development of American Apartment Houses From the Civil War to the Depression." in Architectura: Zeitschrift fur Geschichte der Baukunst 21 (1991):177-215.
36 WALTER THAW STOCKTON
Born: 15 February 1895, Chicago, Illinois Died: 3 December 1989, Evanston, Illinois
Education: Princeton University, Litt. B., 1917
Professional Experience: Clark and Walcott, 1919-1923 Pond and Pond Robert S. DeGolyer and Walter T. Stockton, 1924-1944 Leo J. Sheridan, 1930s (Manager of Sheridan properties) Philip B. Maher, 1950-1952 Fugard, Burt, Wilkinson and Orth, 1956-
Selected Projects: 1120 Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, Illinois, 1924 1242 Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, Illinois, 1929 7321 South Shore Drive, Chicago, Illinois, 1927 Ambassador East Hotel, Chicago, Illinois, 1926 Chicago State Tuberculosis Sanitarium, Chicago, Illinois, 1950 Sheridan Shore Yacht Club, Wilmette, Illinois, 1937
Civic Service: Art Commission, Evanston, Illinois Evanston Historical Society, Evanston, Illinois
37 INDEX OF NAMES AND BUILDINGS
1120 North Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, Marx, Samuel (Sam) 15 Illinois 9, 11, 13, 22, 29 Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig 24 1242 North Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, Morgan, Charles (Charlie) 26, 27 Illinois 19, 20, 22, 28 Morgan, Shirley 2 7321 South Shore Drive, Chicago, Illinois 25-26 Pearson Hotel, Chicago, Illinois 28, 30 Powhatan Apartments, Chicago, Illinois Allen and Webster 7 26-27, 31 Ambassador East Hotel, Chicago, Illinois 14-18, 22, 28, 35 Sheridan, Leo J. 34 Ambassador East Hotel, Pump Room, Sheridan Shore Yacht Club, Wilmette, Chicago, Illinois 15-17 Illinois 11 American Institute of Architects 23, 25 Smith and Brown 10, 13-14 Swanson, Walter 20 Baird and Warner 9, 19 Blackstone Theatre, Chicago, Illinois 11 Tribune Tower, Chicago, Illinois 5, 6
Century of Progress International Walcott, Chester (Chet) 1, 3, 4-5, 6, 7 Exposition, 19333-1934, Crystal House, Walcott, Russell 3, 4, 7 Chicago, Illinois 25 Webster, Maurice 6-7, 8 Century of Progress International Exposition, 19333-1934, House of Tomorrow, Chicago, Illinois 25 Century of Progress International Exposition, 19333-1934, Parker Pen Company Exhibit, Chicago, Illinois 22 Chute, H.L. 10, 14 Clark and Walcott 3-7, 8 Clark, Edwin H. 3, 4-5, 7
DeGolyer, Robert S. (Bob) 5, 8, 9, 11, 12- 13, 17, 2, 21, 22, 25, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34
Edgewater Beach Hotel, Chicago, Illinois 11
Fugard, Burt, Wilkinson and Orth 29, 34
Hood, Raymond 6 Howellls and Hood 6
Jackson, Archer Louis 9, 13, 14, 34
Maher, Philip B. 29, 33-34 Marshall and Fox 11, 12
38