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ORAL HISTORY of GENE SUMMERS Interviewed by Pauline ORAL HISTORY OF GENE SUMMERS Interviewed by Pauline A. Saliga Compiled under the auspices of the Chicago Architects Oral History Project Ernest R. Graham Study Center for Architectural Drawings Department of Architecture The Art Institute of Chicago Copyright Ó 1993 The Art Institute of Chicago This manuscript is hereby made available 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 CONTENTS Preface iv Outline of Topics v Oral History 1 Selected References 109 Appendix: Resume 112 Index of Names and Buildings 114 iii PREFACE In the fall of 1987, I met with Gene Summers for two days in The Art Institute of Chicago to discuss his career to date. Because, early in his career, Summers was the supervising architect for some of Mies van der Rohe's most celebrated projects, including the Seagram Building (1956) and the National Gallery in Berlin (1960), his work is often closely associated with that of Mies. However, Summers's career is also distinguished by many critically-acclaimed buildings that he, himself, designed, the best known of which is the McCormick Place Convention Center (1970) on Chicago's lakefront. A charming and engaging man, Summers is notable among architects for both his considerable talent and his uncanny humility. Since the time we spoke, Summers returned from his work as a sculptor in the south of France to Chicago to head the School of Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology, where he received his own architectural training four decades ago. However, he recently resigned from that post in the spring of 1993. Mr. Summer's five-hour oral history was recorded on four 90-minute cassette tapes which have been transcribed by Kai Enenbach and minimally edited by Sarah Underhill to maintain the spirit and flow of his recollections. I owe a special note of thanks to Maurice Blanks, an architect and research assistant in the Department of Architecture at the Art Institute, who did an excellent job of researching the biography and bibliography of Mr. Summers and to Meredith Cole, a Brown University student, who did the final edit on the manuscript. The transcription is available for research in the Ryerson and Burnham Libraries at The Art Institute of Chicago as well as at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal. This oral history was sponsored by the Department of Architecture at The Art Institute of Chicago in cooperation with the Canadian Centre for Architecture. We are most grateful to the Canadian Centre, and its founder and director, Phyllis Lambert, for providing funding to record the impressions of one of Mies's most talented protégés, Gene Summers. We are also most grateful to Mr. Summers, himself, for sharing so freely his observations, opinions and memories of a most important chapter in the history of American and world architecture. Pauline Saliga Associate Curator of Architecture The Art Institute of Chicago iv OUTLINE OF TOPICS Early Architectural Education at Texas A&M 1 Graduate Study at the Illinois Institute of Technology 8 Caine House Project 21 Farnsworth House, Plano, Illinois 22 Use of Models in the Design Process in Mies's Office 25 Use of Collage in the Design Process 26 Service in the U.S. Corps of Engineers 29 Projects Built in Korea During World War II 31 Illinois Institute of Technology Chapel 33 Seagram Building and Plaza, New York City 38 Phyllis Bronfman Lambert's Involvement in the Seagram Building 43 Mies's Approach to Taking on New Clients 49 Bacardi Building Project, Cuba 50 Mies's Plan for the Illinois Institute of Technology Campus 57 Schaefer Museum Project, Schweinfurt, Germany 60 National Gallery, Berlin 61 Designing Museum Gallery Space 64 Role in Mies's Office 65 Mies's Favorite Artists 66 Mies's Relationship with Lora Marx 68 Federal Center, Chicago 69 Decision to Leave Mies's Office 75 Decision to Open an Office 76 Decision to Join C.F. Murphy as Design Partner 76 McCormick Place, Chicago 77 Malcolm X Junior College, Chicago 86 Interest in Landscape Architecture 88 Decision to Leave C.F. Murphy Associates and Start a Development Company with Phyllis Lambert 89 Move to France 92 v Furniture Design 92 Helmut Jahn 94 Career in Relationship to Mies 96 Relationship with Mies 98 Architectural Drawings 99 Relationship between Richard M. Daley and Charles Murphy, Sr. 103 Art Collection 105 vi Gene Summers Saliga: Today is October 7, 1987, and I'm speaking with Gene Summers in The Art Institute of Chicago. Gene, I wonder if you can tell me, why did you choose architecture as your profession? We'll start at the very beginning. Summers: That's pretty difficult. The town that I grew up in was Bryan, Texas, and I probably changed my mind three times between aeronautical engineering, veterinary medicine and architecture. I think that really what happened is at the last minute my father, who is a paint contractor, was doing a job and the architect had come over one Saturday afternoon, and he asked me what I was going to do. He, essentially, got me so excited about it that that really made me decide at the last minute. Saliga: How old were you then? Summers: I was actually sixteen. I sort of got out of school right before I turned seventeen. This was in 1945 and the war was just about over, the second World War. I was going immediately from high school to college. The college was Texas A&M, which is very close to the hometown that I lived in, Bryan. Saliga: Is that why you went to school there? Summers: Yes. It was a matter of survival. Saliga: Exactly, plus there were all of those GIs coming back from school. Summers: Actually they didn't start back until, I think 1946 or 1947 was the big influx of the GIs. It was a strange situation where I seemed to be particularly young and two years later you'd get the GIs coming back. They were considerably older; they seemed like they were considerably older. Saliga: So you went to Texas A&M thinking that you would go into architecture from the very beginning? Summers: No, you go immediately into it. There was no course that you would go through first. I took architecture from my freshman year right through. Saliga: So you had to jump right in. Summers: It was a five-year course. I loved it from the first minute. I had no problem there. Saliga: You probably loved it all along, when you were young, don't you think? Summers: I can't tell you any stories like I'm sure a lot of architects can by saying that they saw this building under construction and it was great and everything. The town I was in was so small and most of the buildings were wood frames. There was no good architecture around, anyway. So I can't say that. The school itself, the teachers were always enthusiastic. I think it's still true even today that if you go into the school of architecture at some university, as my son later did, you either like it from the first day or else you find out you better get out of it. That certainly was the way it was with me. I really enjoyed it. Saliga: When you were at Texas A&M what was their curriculum like? Summers: It was interesting in retrospect. They had been off the old Beaux Arts program for probably two or three years, only two or three years. They had been on that program, and drawings were still around the school so you could see what they were doing then. But, they went from that disciplined type of 2 program to a totally, almost irrational system, where every professor had his own way of teaching; he could do what he wanted. He had a certain program to teach, be it construction or pure design or graphics, but they let those teachers do what they really felt. You'd get a teacher from MIT or Harvard and they would have a totally different outlook on what you were doing. It was actually quite confusing as I look back. Saliga: I would think so for a freshman coming into this. Summers: Everything that was stressed was, you should be different, you should be different, be an individual. Anything you'd do in design, thinking of design, the really ultimate aim was simply to do something different. Presentation of your project was really as important as what the design was. That was just the way they looked at these things. You were judged probably more on that presentation—how unique it was, how well-done it was—than in fact what the basis of your design was. Saliga: In a way that's still kind of a holdover from the Beaux Arts approach. It was the drawings that were so important. Summers: Yes, but they were wild drawings. I remember getting this striated plywood and you'd make your drawings and you'd sort of paste these drawings on this painted plywood. They were really wild. Saliga: That's not like the Beaux Arts system. Summers: No. They taught you how to use the airbrush. That was the sophomore year as I recall. That was a fairly new instrument then. They'd teach you how to watercolor and use conté crayon.
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