The Functionalist's Agenda: George Howe, the T-Square Club Journal, and the Dissemination of Architectural Modernism

David Brody

American Periodicals: A Journal of History, Criticism, and Bibliography, Volume 20, Number 2, 2010, pp. 241-268 (Article)

Published by The Ohio State University Press

For additional information about this article http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/amp/summary/v020/20.2.brody.html

Access Provided by New School University at 02/08/11 5:21PM GMT The Functionalist’s Agenda: George Howe, the T-Square Club Journal, and the dissemination of Architectural Modernism

David Brody

Founded in 1883 in Philadelphia, the T-Square Club became an important voice in the professionalization of American architecture. The original constitution for the club declared that the group would “promote the study and practice of Archi- tecture and the Kindred Arts; to afford its members opportunities for friendly competition in design; and to further the appreciation of Archi- tecture by the public.”1 The club fostered a conversation about architecture, giving parameters to the changing and professionalizing field of architectural design. This attempt to define professionalism was not unique. Over the course of the nineteenth century, Americans attempted to navigate the shifting economic, industrial, and political landscape through the formation of professions, where groups of male profession- als banded together to create regulatory bodies and mandates about education, accreditation, and other assorted requirements. This rising professional class of Americans—born from the volatile and complicated nature of the business realm—sought ways to control who would be considered a professional and how he should conduct business. Robert Wiebe notes that it was “the ambition of the new middle class to fulfill its destiny through bureaucratic means.”2 This rising bureau- cracy, couched in the discourse of progressivism, demarcated professional life. As Mary Woods details, the nineteenth century witnessed a protracted conversation about what the practice of architecture would entail.3 This spirited exchange continued to define the profession into the twentieth century. Part of the dialog of professionalization included the formation of clubs where members could set an agenda about a given career. This was the T-Square Club’s goal. As rapid changes altered the practice of architecture, the T-Square Club did what many professional organizations eventually do: it started a journal. The first volume of the T-Square Club Journal, from Decem- ber of 1930, opens with architect and club president George Howe.4 His opening note, titled “A Fair Future to the T Square Club Journal!” is, in part, an allegorical tale about the importance of new directions

American Periodicals, Vol. 20 No. 2 (2010) Copyright 2010 by the Ohio State University 242 American Periodicals in architecture. Howe explains the need for future architects who will practice a mutinous type of design. He wants the profession to aban- don past notions that embraced aspects of building that were not functional and merely ornamental. Howe likens architects to a flock of birds and claims that when this new flock “attained sufficient strength they took possession of the fields and stripped the scarecrow bare, for they were persuaded that the wrinkles and secret deformities of a spinster aunt could not be more disgusting than horsehair buttocks and barbed scalp-locks.”5 In a discursive move that would happen repeatedly during this era, architecture becomes gendered. The forms of traditional architecture take on the metaphoric characteristics of an old, tired aunt who never married, while the new architects of the modern era strip the feminized past of excess. Architecture, according to Howe, becomes an artistic role model by seizing the moment and exposing the distortions that adulterated its history. After defining the parameters for this clash, Howe reveals the role of the journal in this fight: “Dis- cussion, recrimination and blows are a necessary preliminary to agree- ment among many. I wish the T-Square Club Journal good luck in the battle royal.” Howe understood that the pages of the T-Square Club Journal, his journal, would be the ideal grounds for the architectural crusade that was central to the promotion of his design ethos. Howe’s pugilistic language is not surprising since Americans pas- sionately negotiated the newly introduced aesthetic of architectural modernism during the second quarter of the twentieth century, when the T-Square Club Journal was first published. Many praised modernism, others saw modernism as the demise of moral culture, and several designers and critics used modernism to comment on controversial cultural issues. George Howe and the T- Square Club Journal played a significant role in this complex narrative. Furthermore, the Philadel- phia Saving Fund Society Building (PSFS) by Howe and William Les- caze became a lightning rod for debate about the changing nature of architectural design. Finished in 1932, the building was one of several key structures that set a design precedent for the remainder of the twentieth century (Figure 1).6 This was a precedent that the journal furthered and debated in articles, images, and letters to the editor. Through an analysis of the T-Square Club Journal, as well as other architectural publications, this article assesses how George Howe and other modernists utilized professional periodicals to comment on and establish a system of meaning about architectural modernism. Specifi- cally, this essay explores the manner in which writing in professional journals disseminated information about the design of the PSFS. Fur- thermore, I assess the manner in which Howe’s and others’ writings reveal important issues related to the promulgation of modern architecture, especially when understood in relation to authors who critiqued modernism. Topics such as concerns about aesthetics, engineering, economics, and race, filled the pages of these publishing venues. The George Howe and the T-Square Club Journal 243

Figure 1: Howe and Lescaze, Philadelphia Saving Fund Society (PSFS) Building, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1929-1932. Courtesy of Loews Hotels.

PSFS and the larger design discourse that enveloped conversations about functionalism expose the critical position that architectural periodicals played in the profession during the first half of the twentieth century.

Defining Modernism and the PSFS Building

Like all design discourse, architectural modernism required defini- tion before it could circulate as a cultural axiom, establishing its role 244 American Periodicals within the realm of acceptable design. The event that put modern architecture on the cultural map in America was the 1932 Modern Archi- tecture - International Exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, which featured George Howe and William Lescaze’s PSFS Building. The show, organized by Philip Johnson and Henry-Russell Hitchcock, included a range of photographs and models of buildings that fit into the curators’ categorization of what they termed, in an accompanying book, The International Style. Alfred Barr, MoMA’s director at the time of the show, noted in the introduction to this volume, “The International Style has already gained signal victories in America as is proven by a glance at the skyscraper by Howe and Lescaze. George Howe was formerly a well-established traditional architect in Philadelphia.” The Interna- tional Style included designs that moved away from the eclecticism of traditional forms. Barr, for instance, lauded Howe for his departure from “tradition” and his ability to imitate European precedent found in locations like the Bauhaus. In fact, museum visitors saw the PSFS as a crucial part of MoMA’s sweeping narrative about architectural modernism because the PSFS, along with eight other images of works by Howe and Lescaze, were in the first gallery that opened to the larger exhibition space.7 Johnson and Hitchcock believed that Howe and Lescaze were bringing the International Style to America, and before museum visitors would see the work of Europeans such as Le Corbusier, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Walter Gropius, they first encountered Ameri- can versions of architectural modernism. Members of the architectural profession, including the very vocal George Howe, explained modernism as appropriate for twentieth- century America before the MoMA show of 1932. Howe and his peers wrote several articles in the T-Square Club Journal that claimed to seek truth through what they termed a functionalist notion of design. In “A Further Vague Pursuit of Truth in Architecture,” Howe declared that the “functional modernist” is looking for a “universal formula.” Howe further noted, “It is with the idea of establishing the basis of such a formula that they have discarded all the complicated combinations of the past and present and reduced architectural expression to its elements.”8 This trope of ridding architecture of its adulterated itera- tions—where admixtures of ornament flourished—became the most consistent refrain disseminated by Howe in the journal. Later in the same article, Howe succinctly related the fundamental fantasy of the functionalists who wanted “to expose the size and relative importance of the structural members [of a building] rather than to encase them in shells bearing no direct relation to them.”9 Howe and his fellow functionalists continued to utilize the pages of the journal to underscore their contention that architecture needed to change and rid itself of the superfluous ornament that was denying the functional “truth” that could be found, exposed, and celebrated by the new architecture. Howe further addressed the readers of the T-Square Club Journal George Howe and the T-Square Club Journal 245 by reprinting his remarks given to the American Institute of Architects on May 21, 1930, where he continued to strip the scarecrow of its excess. Howe asserted that the modernist “does not consider decoration an essential part of architecture. He is convinced that any great monument of the past would remain a great monument by its function, pro- portion, and execution, even if stripped of every detail.” The modernist “believes that essential beauty which appeals to all men transcends personal taste.”10 To Howe, there was a universal truth to architectural form that embraced developments in the field of engineering. Specifi- cally, he asserted that because of new materials, buildings could be built higher and without the past’s limitations. Preconceived notions of building techniques, which often necessitate elements, such as the architectural orders, could be eliminated. Buildings, according to the modernist, could now stand without columns, arches, and other arti- facts from architecture’s history. To clarify his editorial point of view, Howe did permit voices of dis- sent into the pages of the T-Square Club Journal, especially when that opposition questioned his passion for what he celebrated as functionalist design. In April of 1931, M.E. Levinson, the editor of the journal, gave a summary of the T-Square Club’s April meeting. The meeting began when Norman Rice, a vocal proponent of the new architecture who had worked for Le Corbusier prior to coming to Philadelphia, raised the notion that a “building is not to be verbose; its expression is to be hon- est, not only in intention but also in the use of its technical medium. The more perfect the integration, the closer the building approaches a harmonious unity.”11 Levinson reported that a T-Square member, only identified as “Mr. Watts,” derided Rice’s pronouncements and the primacy given by the club to European architects. Mentioning Europe, often understood as the birthplace of the new architecture because of institutions such as the Bauhaus, was a not-so-subtle codeword refer- encing the supporters of functionalism. As a vector of modern architecture, functionalism claimed to negate the eclectic grammar of architecture’s past and to embrace new materials that would allow buildings to be more efficient and machine-like. Howe and the other purveyors of functionalism also stayed true to a sense of geometry accentuated with elements such as flat roofs. And, perhaps most importantly, they articulated the structure’s function so that it could define form and be read on the exterior façade. Moreover, the functionalists experimented with mechanical inventions, such as elevators, escalators, and cooling systems. Watts was adamant about the negative effects of the prepon- derance of glass in these modern designs, since too much glass would mean little protection from the sun’s harmful rays.12 In the midst of Watts’ opposition, “The Editor of the Journal was called upon to give an opinion as to the merits of the New and Traditional styles of architecture, but through lack of personal decision took no definite stand.” Whether the editor, Maxwell Levinson, had an opinion or not is un- 246 American Periodicals clear; the clamor of the debate must have been too loud for him to feel comfortable offering a verdict. Levinson concluded his notes on the meeting by reporting, “There was no doubt that the discussion of Mod- ernism versus Traditionalist was still unfinished.”13 Indeed, others, such as the architect Ely Jacques Kahn, continued to lambaste the functionalist credo in the journal. In September of 1931, Kahn decried that “modernistic is the red flag that, to the writer at least, is grounds for a scrap.” Kahn poked fun at the modernists, using their own discourse about the copying of ornament. As soon as a modernist “has finished railing at the reproduction complex of some of our architects … the startling fact appears that the old habit of crib- bing leads them glibly to a new field of inspiration. The modernistic atrocities are all ornament and deserve the oblivion they will see in short order.”14 Kahn wanted to beat the modernists at their own game, and he singled out their putatively revolutionary efforts as destined for the trash. At the same time that the T-Square Club was debating the parameters of what architecture should and should not be, Howe and Lescaze were overseeing construction of the PSFS Building, creating a structure that, perhaps goaded by these vitriolic naysayers, would fully embrace the tenets of functionalism. Howe pronounced this office tower the ideal modernist edifice. In an article in the journal titled “A Design for A Savings Bank and Office Building,” he wrote that the PSFS plan “is based on the human intention of the building which is straightforwardly economic and not falsely mystical or vainglorious.” He discussed several aspects of the PSFS and concluded that the “com- plete absence of ornament is in conformity with the observable trend in other fields. The clipper ship is much simpler in detail than the Span- ish Galleon, and the modern steamer again than the clipper ship, as this building is simpler than the Trianon or the Tower of Rouen Cathe- dral in turn.”15 Ornament for the sake of mere decoration, or ornament that does not serve a structural function, was a waste of architecture to Howe; it was mere visual clutter. He believed that the PSFS was exemplary of the new direction, an evolutionary direction of progress, that modern life demanded. Howe’s advocacy for modern design can be found in other architectural journals from the early 1930s. In April of 1932, one year after groundbreaking for the PSFS, Howe wrote “Functional Aesthetics and the Social Ideal” for the periodical Pencil Points. In this manifes- to-like essay, he discussed the importance of spreading “functionalism” throughout the architectural community. Recent architectural movements had extolled the virtues of eclecticism, and this has “led to the creation of meaningless surface patterns based on an imitation of unrelated traditional forms.” He wanted architects to begin building structures that dropped old habits and engaged with his “convic- tion that architecture is social, not individual, and that its ideal must George Howe and the T-Square Club Journal 247

Figure 2: “The Fear and the Reality” from Pencil Points (April 1932).

conform for better or worse to the social ideal of its time.”16 He asked that the profession accept the fact that people use buildings, and this social use of space demanded a functional aesthetic structured around a building’s appearance that was determined by utility and not décor. To illustrate his point, Howe included photographic comparisons demonstrating his belief in the virtues of modernism. One set of images juxtaposes a still image from Fritz Lang’s film Metropolis, where the urban environment becomes the “slave” of machinery, with a “modern power station.” The film is a fantasy and the station represents what was Howe’s reality (Figure 2). The still used from Metropolis is from the moment in the film when the young protagonist, Freder, becomes disappointed with the power of the machine. Freder suddenly understands that the machine is an irrational entity that can violently explode and hurt workers in ways that Lang represents as horrifyingly whimsical. The power station in Howe’s juxtaposition is not framed as the frightening, all-consuming structure with steam that dwarfs the individuals in the foreground of Lang’s image. The station is rational, ordered, and functional. Howe compared these two scenarios to clarify his captioned claim: “Functional Design proposes to use engineering for the purpose of establishing order and to achieve architecture by an intense expression of the racial ideal.” The architect’s use of the phrase “racial ideal” magnified his intentions of establishing modernism as a form of design that would clean culture’s mixed-plate of eclecticism. The historically embedded facades of the past needed to be replaced with a “fresh effort at clarity and consciousness.”17 Howe started his career fully committed to the historicism that he later turned away from, and his original vision for the PSFS, which he developed in the 1920s, established the revolutionary character of the building’s final design. A drawing from 1926 shows Howe’s plan for a tower capped with a typical Beaux-Arts top (Figure 3). Starting from a clearly articulated base, which expands over a city block, the façade 248 American Periodicals

Figure 3: PSFS, Branch Office and Office Tower, 1926. The Architectural Archives, University of Pennsylvania. moves upward with the help of vertically oriented fenestration that pairs twin rectangular windows across the building’s skin. Like other period structures, the design calls for a series of setbacks that nar- row at the Beaux-Arts influenced top, where small figures dwarfed by globes and atlases would be perched. The overall effect of the building’s George Howe and the T-Square Club Journal 249

crown, which declares the bank’s presence as a worldly institution, recalls the architectural conservatism that Howe would have found in both Philadelphia and New York City at the time. Indeed, Howe would later decry this proposal as too reliant on “purely decorative elements, such as the great globe at the summit of the tower, and on the use of set-backs.”18 Shortly after 1926, Howe began to embrace the new mantra of architectural modernism. This intellectual transformation significant- ly altered the original Beaux-Arts conception of the PSFS. The architect’s revitalized vision was a product of his partnership with William Lescaze, which began in 1929. The Swiss-born Lescaze was ten years younger than Howe and had been wrestling with design and ideological issues that would come to be known as the International Style, named after MoMA’s exhibition. Howe, in his aggressive search to embrace the new aesthetic of modernism, saw in Lescaze a man who understood modernist design. Modernism, with its insistence on divorcing built forms from ornamentation, was a way to move traditional elements— that Beaux-Arts syntax so prevalent in the 1926 drawing—toward functionalist architecture and away from 1910s and 1920s skyscraper design in the United States, which relied on traditional ornamentation.19 Finished in 1932, the PSFS became the first International Style tall building in America. Ahead of its time, the PSFS was sleek and devoted to functionalism; it was the first tall building in the United States that faithfully executed this doctrine. Instead of anchoring the office block within the foundation, the structure is cantilevered dramatically over its stream- lined base, demonstrating what new materials would allow for in relation to engineering. The actual bank branch was not placed at street level. Instead, commercial space was on the ground floor, which al- lowed for additional rental income, and the bank’s retail branch was on the second floor. Customers reached the banking level, with its granite floors and chrome furniture designed by Howe and Lescaze, via an escalator that proceeded up a vast corridor (Figure 4). The architects used reflective material, further illuminating the sun-lit interior bathed in light through the enormous room’s large windows. The abundance of light and reflective surfaces provided a sense of open- ness and transparency to the bank’s customers (Figure 5). Further keeping in mind the potential depositor, Howe and Lescaze’s flat roof had a giant PSFS sign marking the Philadelphia skyline with its illu- minated lettering that declared the bank’s name (Figure 6). The bold sign was antithetical to the capping element found in Howe’s 1926 rendering for the bank; the symbol denoting the building’s corporate brand rather than connoting its symbolic import. Everything about the building declared the bank’s intent of facilitating commerce and gaining customers through a design that projected luxury, wealth, and modern technology.20 250 American Periodicals

Figure 4: PSFS interior. Courtesy of Loews Hotel. George Howe and the T-Square Club Journal 251

Figure 5: PSFS interior, photo by Richard T. Dooner. Courtesy of Avery Archi- tectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University (photo from the George Howe Collection). 252 American Periodicals

Figure 6: PSFS exterior. Courtesy of Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University (photo from the George Howe Collection).

While writing about the building in architectural periodicals, Howe explained how the office tower would improve the lives of its tenants. He realized that many critics might argue “that a deadly monotony must result from the pursuit of a single method of design. To this it may be answered that the result would be, not monotony, but unity.” Specific forms, materials, and architectural members do repeat throughout the project. Howe claimed that this dedication to harmony would lead to a remarkable building where “the thought of security and economy” will be paramount. In the structure’s second-floor banking room, for instance, the use of steel enabled expansive glass windows to ring the room’s perimeter. Natural light could pour into the space, as mentioned above, which gave depositors a sense of safety. The bank was protecting their finances in this room that was separate from the dangers of the street, yet connected to the outside world. Howe described the building as an ideal “organism,” and he denoted the function of individual spaces within the PSFS to make certain that each individual part of the edifice’s body worked efficiently. He figuratively described the building using anatomical language where “a sort of spine is created to which the office floors are attached more or less like ribs.” Information, light, and capital flow with ease through the body of the PSFS, a structure that scorns “distorting the internal volumes and creating a totally false George Howe and the T-Square Club Journal 253

external impression of the reality.”21 Howe felt he had designed the ultimate commercial tower where tenants, bank employees, and customers could experience the city through the purity of functionalism.

The Debate about the PSFS in the T-Square Club Journal

The architect Albert Kelsey fired the first shot about the problem with the PSFS Building in the April 1931 edition of the T-Square Club Jour- nal. Kelsey was a well-known architect who graduated from the Uni- versity of Pennsylvania.22 He posited his critique of the PSFS in a letter to the journal dated April 2, 1931. He regretted that Howe, in his article on the building from the previous month, “says nothing what- ever about what his office building for the Philadelphia Saving Fund Society will mean to the public at large, to the symmetry and beauty of the city’s skyline, to the difficulties of municipal housekeeping in an already overcrowded center.” Kelsey dismissed the functionalist credo that celebrated the inner-workings of the corporeal-like structure, which in Kelsey’s estimation divorced architecture from its urban context. He asked a series of pointed questions, “Will it [the PSFS] sim- plify street traffic, insure greater safety? Will its glaring and flashing plate glass ease the eyestrain on those in adjoining buildings? Will it promote mental health? And, lastly, will it show consideration for its neighbors and a proper deference to one of the most hallowed edifices in the City of Brotherly Love?” The Beaux-Art architect had “admira- tion” for Howe’s “facile pen,” but he could not abide the building’s lack of engagement with the civic-scape of Philadelphia.23 Howe returned Kelsey’s volley in the next issue of the journal by claiming that this criticism could not be beneficial for the practice of architecture. Howe related that “it would no doubt be desirable that the entire conception of modern industry, business and city planning should be imbued with a greater respect for social welfare. The skyscraper had better, no doubt, be eliminated from our economy, and with it inflated land values and congestion.” We should steer clear, Howe exclaimed, of a “farcical image of a city of monuments” where design simply ignored the actual reality of urban life. He saw Kelsey’s position as too enamored with the ideal of becoming a “social reformer,” while he understood the task of architecture as engaged with “the reality” that faced cities. To Howe, cities had expensive real estate and were filled to capacity with people, and the tall building could facilitate this less-than-ideal situation. Architecture was about current conditions and not, according to Howe’s logic, about the search for a new urban reality. He concluded his letter to the editor explaining that we have “no positive proof that every cathedral designer of necessity believed in the infallibility of the Pope.” 24 In Howe’s view, even the designers of 254 American Periodicals the great cathedrals had questions about the context for which they were building, but they continued to construct remarkable churches in response to what society needed in the Middle Ages. Kelsey’s strong opinions, Howe suggested, shirk the actual circumstances found in the modern metropolis. By the start of 1932, it was clear that Howe had prevailed in the pages of the T-Square Club Journal. In the journal’s first issue from 1932, praise for Howe’s career trajectory came in the form of a hagio- graphic essay titled “George Howe: An Architectural Biography.” While the author provides information about Howe’s education and familial background, it is the arc of Howe’s learning about the wonders of modernist design that stands out. The concept of functionalism had become the culmination of Howe’s intellectual development. His “last long stride toward his goal [of finding a ‘valid architectural formula’] was taken when he was commissioned to design an airport and an office building.” The result of the commission of the PSFS led him to further question the “irrational current practice of using steel merely as the invisible support of a false and meaninglessly subdivided screenwork.” Thus, “As he studied the application of this naturally unrestricted structural medium to his problem he began to see that the formula of the new pioneers alone was at once sufficiently broad and sufficiently precise to solve not only these but all the problems of today. He decided he must follow in the footsteps of the prophets.” 25 The prophets of this message about allowing the structure to speak the truth—through the tenets of functionalism—were the new practitioners of modern architecture, such as Le Corbusier, whose progressive notion of design had been praised by Howe and others in the journal. Howe was not simply following the ideals of the new architecture; he was, according to his biography, adhering to a larger religious purpose. Howe’s consolidation of power over the journal can also be seen in the January 1932 cover, where a new name and a new look can be found. The journal was now simply called T-Square, and the editors had transformed the cover into a paradigm of modernist aesthetics reminis- cent of the graphic design work of El Lissitzky and László Moholy-Nagy, who were very closely tied with the Bauhaus.26 Two straight black lines go down the left side of the cover, which embrace the letter “T” towards the top and a heavy, black dot at the bottom of the page. The word “SQUARE” is on the top of the white space to the right of the second black line (Figure 7). All of the lettering is done with bolded capitals in a sans-serif font. Towards the bottom of the page is the month and date, followed by the volume and issue numbers. The representation of the architectural muse, which had graced the old cover of the journal, was gone, and the new cover’s simplified and gridded form spoke to Howe’s functionalist vision, as marked through the medium of graphic design.27 In February of 1932, as if finally satisfied with the direction of his club’s journal, Howe wrote an editorial that severed the T-Square George Howe and the T-Square Club Journal 255

Figure 7: T Square (January 1932).

Club’s affiliation with what was now called T-Square. Howe joked “that the only fault to be found with its [the journal’s] editorial policy is that it has given me as president of the club more space in its columns than I deserve as a private citizen.”28 The joke was, however, on the reader, because later in the same issue Howe engaged in a back-and-forth volley of words with none other than Frank Lloyd Wright. In 1932, Wright was not at the pinnacle of his career and was fed-up with this talk of the new architecture. An indication of what must have caused his frustration can be seen at MoMA’s International Style Show of 1932, where Hitchcock and Johnson included Wright’s work, but it was not given the primacy that Howe and Lescaze received in the exhibit’s first room.29 Although the MoMA exhibit had not opened by February of 256 American Periodicals

1932, Wright must have been dismayed by Howe’s rising fame and his own diminishing name. In a spiteful essay titled “For all May Raise the Flowers Now for All Have Got the Seed,” Wright censured the In- ternational Style. He claimed that the proliferation of this new design ethos was only the work of good salesmanship. This sales tactic was little more than a vehicle for propaganda about spreading the seed of empty modernism throughout the world. Wright included his own reports on Brazil and Japan, where these architectural conceits had fostered a type of “deplorable butchery.”30 He detailed that when he was in Brazil, a group of students asked if their work was “modern architecture.” Wright responded “that it was. … But it wasn’t architecture at all where they were concerned, because it ignored their natures, their climate, and the character of their environment.”31 Wright, like other critics from the same period (think back to Kelsey’s criticism of the PSFS tower), noted that ignorance of context was a dangerous form of design propaganda that would continue to sow its unfortunate fantasies about what constituted good design. Even in this February issue where he declared that he was relin- quishing control, Howe fought back and followed Wright’s essay with his own article titled, somewhat humorously, “Moses Turns Pharaoh.” Howe claimed that Wright’s overly nationalistic pride had poisoned his understanding of the growing importance of the International Style. Howe, never one for nuance, reported that Wright, “abandoning the part of Moses, is suddenly turned Pharaoh in the architectural the- atre. With tragi-comic gesture he has cast into the river all new-born male children of the tribe of ‘Internationalists.’” Howe continued his Old Testament reference and asked, “Why should he who has led us out of bondage turn and destroy his children?”32 Two months later, in a book review of both Wright’s autobiography and Philip Johnson and Henry Russell Hitchcock’s book The International Style, Howe again lashed out at Wright in the pages of Shelter (the newest name, as of April 1932, for the periodical originally known as the T-Square Club Journal). Wright, Howe decried, “is one of those strange vital giants our country brings forth at intervals who seem to embody in their single persons the whole frustrated creative impulse of the nation.” He continued, “Their very strength makes their pursuit by the furies, both in their work and in their private lives, more tragic than any doom. … Their Promethean bellowings echo around the world and change the course of history in spite of bonds and persecution.” Just as Wright “hates the old eclectic disciplines of false traditions, so he detests the new social, structural and aesthetic discipline in architecture, which he has called, elsewhere, the new eclecticism.” Wright, in Howe’s estimation, simply liked to complain about everything. Then, in an overtly solipsistic turn, Howe moved onto Hitchcock and John- son’s book, which prominently featured Howe’s recent architectural venture in Philadelphia. Howe related that these curators “have gath- George Howe and the T-Square Club Journal 257

ered into a small volume of ninety-five pages of text and one hundred and forty illustrations an amount of concentrated and well-digested knowledge of their subject seldom found in so small a compass.” The directional vector, as set by Hitchcock and Johnson, was clear and Howe, once again, used the journal that he supposedly no longer controlled to celebrate modernism. 33

Marketing Modernism

Other publishing venues promoted the PSFS in relation to architectural modernism. In May of 1932, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that a city engineer, named Manton Hibbs, had begun to observe changes in the city’s architectural landscape. Hibbs explained to a reporter, “There has been a decided change in building forms, the trend point- ing particularly toward economy. … Ornamentation seems to be on the wane. The modern trend is toward plain surfaces, rounded corners, more extensive use of glass by the use of larger windows and glass ornament.” The genesis for these new built forms, according to Hibbs, could be located in Europe and “an example of the newer trend in big building construction is to be found in the Philadelphia Saving Fund structure.”34 The engineer liked what he saw and concluded that there was a need for economic forms of construction. He contended that the new architecture would translate into lean building costs. It is not surprising that the popular press stressed a type of architecture based on parsimony. The market crash of 1929 started the spi- ral toward the Great Depression and this event caused, as Carol Willis notes, an “oversupply” of offices. Corporations did not have the funds to put people to work, and desks sat empty. Hence, the idea of being able to build structures that used the latest and cheapest materials in an economic way became very popular with corporations, architects, and builders.35 Getting rid of architectural conceits that earlier skyscrapers used, such as facades that had heavily ornamented carving, was becoming popular in the wake of economic instability. Howe’s writing in the T-Square Club Journal, especially in his article “A Design for A Savings Bank and Office Building,” speaks to the importance of economic prudence. Using the language of functionalism, Howe connected his design to the purpose and use of the PSFS Building. “A mutual savings bank is,” in Howe’s estimation, “the home- ly refuge of the workingman’s dollar. Its material dwelling must express above all others the thought of security and economy.”36 Howe explained how the structure evoked convenience for the customer but also, as a result of good design, offered ample space for additional rental income from offices and stores. Howe reiterated his advocacy for economy in other venues during this period. In November of 1931, during a speech he gave at New York University, Howe equated the “orgy 258 American Periodicals of inflation” Americans witnessed in the economy with the recent architecture. Now, Howe declared, we are “suffering the consequences.” Both the economic realities of the 1930s and the lack of building during this period, which was a direct product of the Depression, forced artists and designers to reconsider the future. Howe optimistically explained, “As artists we need not look forward to such a change with alarm. On the contrary we may hope to see an architecture of greater dignity, more fundamental in its approach to the industrial age and more sober in its expression of personal luxury.” 37 Again, Howe elevated the status of functionalism where the new architecture “represents a return to the active tradition of organic growth as opposed to the lazy tradition of superficial form.”38 He posited his excitement for this “new aesthetic ideal” where parsimony would lead to sensible buildings that are akin to “breathing organisms with throbbing hearts,” thus meta- phorically linking his architectural mandate to the overall restoration of good health in the midst of an economic crisis.39 The Philadelphia Saving Fund Society understood the importance of marketing the building’s value while their new headquarters was being built, so the bank began placing advertisements in the popular press to sell office space. In May of 1932, a small advertisement ran that included a simple, black-and-white depiction of the structure along with copy that read, “MORE THAN YOU’D EXPECT FOR LESS THAN YOU’D THINK YOU’D HAVE TO PAY.” The copy details the bene- fits of the “year-round” climate control being installed in the structure, and at the bottom of the brief paragraph is the address of the building’s rental agent, Richard Seltzer. Seltzer printed his own advertising brochures, which circulated while workers built the PSFS. Most of the writing in these marketing pieces focuses on climate control, avail- ability of light via vast expanses of glass, and other conveniences that get packaged, repeatedly, under the umbrella phrase “Nothing More Modern” (Figure 8). Here, the cover of the advertising brochure looks very similar to the modernist graphics found on the January cover of T- Square from 1932. Seltzer was not afraid to embrace the pared-down, grid-like aesthetic as a way to entice potential renters. The copy in this collateral material also highlights the modernist ethos. For instance, in a dramatic passage from one of these pamphlets we read: “In the skyline of Philadelphia -- on the southwest corner of Twelfth and Mar- ket Streets -- rises The Philadelphia Saving Fund Building. Up it goes -- ten … twenty … thirty-three stories above the city streets […] Nothing more modern … nothing more completely utilitarian exists anywhere in Philadelphia today.”40

The “Racial Ideal” in Architectural Periodicals

Cleanliness and purity became important watchwords to modern designers in the twentieth century as they began creating products that George Howe and the T-Square Club Journal 259

Figure 8: Nothing More Modern. The Architectural Archives, University of Pennsylvania. manifest, in the words of George Howe, a “racial ideal,” replete with clean lines and surfaces that negated ornamentation. This new genera- tion of designers believed that bad design cited the past for the purpose of décor without considering functional use. While industrializa- tion can be easily linked to this new aesthetic, there were ideas about racial typology that also influenced modernist discourse. Often the discussion about architectural modernism found in periodicals like the T-Square Club Journal depended on stereotypes about race to critique and explain the arrival of modernity. In 1931, the critic and architect Norman Rice defended architectural modernism in an article in the T-Square Club Journal through racial classification. Rice was particularly suited to teach the tenets of modernism to an American audience because he was, as noted earlier, one of the first Americans to work in Le Corbusier’s famous Paris of- 260 American Periodicals fice, where architectural modernism flourished through writing and design. He was also an important figure in Philadelphia because he worked with Howe and Lescaze on the PSFS Building. In his writing, Rice explained that the “new architecture” needed to get away from a traditional form of building that required the dishonest application of ornament. He demanded an aesthetic based on the concept of “functionalism.” Like many of his fellow critics in the pages of the journal, the architect asked that the turn-of-the-century obsession with historical ornamentation give way to building types structured on utility where each design element had an actual purpose that functioned beyond mere decoration. Rice juxtaposed an unusual array of images to advocate modern design. He used a total of eight comparisons that promoted, with captions, the new architecture. Many of these comparisons place modern spaces next to each other. Rice also compared modes of transportation and engineering structures to explain how the functionalist designer must remember to focus on a product’s purpose rather than become intrigued with the potential of producing “monu- mental effects” that would belie the principles of functionalism. In an unusual juxtaposition, the second-to-last comparison contrasts two women (Figure 9). On the left is a photograph Rice could have found in the pages of National Geographic. Here a black woman with skin scari- fication wears nothing but a choker. On the right is a Western woman wearing heavy make-up, jewelry, and a stylish hat. Underneath these two photographs is the caption: “Decoration, the essential overplus of the uncultured; being superficial, it is determined by fashion only.”41 Rice deployed a Western notion of primitivism in conjunction with a stereotype about modern women, whom he believed consistently ap- ply too much “decoration,” to help the reader visualize what occurs when ornament and lack of functionalism become extreme. Rice es- sentialized the primitive and explained this woman’s décor as part of her uncivilized nature, while he criticized modern women for their similarly superficial commitment to fashion. He argued that modern women should know better than to act impulsively fashionable, which he viewed as regressive. Rice would have been familiar with earlier declarations by architects, such as Adolf Loos, about the relationship between primitivism and ornament. Since its inception, in fact, architectural modernism had evoked the primitive as a way to equate lack of ornamentation with a refined sensibility. Loos’s 1908 paper “Ornament and Crime,” which was a turning point in relation to the twentieth-century embrace of modernist forms, deployed the primitive as a foil to the new architecture. Loos used the example of skin decoration to represent how far culture had evolved since its infancy. He located the quintessential primitive state in tribes found in Papua New Guinea and observed: “The Papuan covers his skin with tattoos, his boat, his oars, in short, everything he can lay his hands on. He is no criminal. The modern George Howe and the T-Square Club Journal 261

Figure 9: “Decoration…” from T-Square Club Journal (March 1931).

person who tattoos himself is either a criminal or a degenerate. There are prisons in which eighty percent of the inmates have tattoos. Peo- ple with tattoos not in prison are either latent criminals or degenerate aristocrats.”42 Loos contended that civilization had progressed and this coming of age could be traced through the erasure of surface décor. As Mark Taylor observes about this particular passage, “The reason Loos places so much emphasis on tattooing is that he sees in this practice the origin of all forms of ornamentation associated with the primitivism that humanity is destined to overcome.”43 To Loos, the tattoo signaled a form of corporeal decoration that civilization had precluded through cultural advancement. Howe engaged the fantasy of a culturally sanctioned racial purity, or what he perceived as the opposite of the primitive, to celebrate the PSFS in the architectural press. Underneath his visual comparison of the “modern power-station” and the Fritz Lang film Metropolis (Fig- ure 2), already discussed, Howe referred to the power-station as “an intense expression of the racial ideal.”44 While Howe did not denote the primitive in this passage, the idea of racial purity is never avail- able without purity’s alter ego, miscegenation. Once again, the primitive—that group disparaged for having an adulterated past—implicated 262 American Periodicals

modernism. This racial standard expressed the architect’s call for a modern culture where functionalism and a visual sense of cleanliness could become manifest. Like Loos, Howe insisted that design be decon- taminated, so that the ideal becomes an aesthetic disenfranchised from primitivism. In several essays from this period, Howe discussed his approach to design in evolutionary terms explaining how architecture could only be understood as exemplary of progress linked to the evolution of humanity. Writing for the American Architect in May of 1930, Howe asked, in his title, “What is this Modern Architecture Trying to Express?” Using many of the same discursive strategies identified in his other writings, he was adamant about the need for architecture to “return to sound tradition as opposed to stylistic tradition.” This turning away from a form of building that emphasized “style” would, Howe contended, lead to a functional aesthetic where there can be a “pursuit of effective utility.” He strongly believed that the progress of architectural history was akin to an evolutionary process. As he stated, architecture “has developed an experimental method which has evolved forms of surprising significance.” At another moment he used history to note that architecture “evolves with slow inexorability, with the evolution of man’s mode of life.” And finally, towards the end of his article, Howe explained, “Architectural form is, in fact, an inseparable concomitant of social progress.”45 Howe’s thoughts about design and evolution were similar to other architects, such as Loos, who claimed in “Ornament and Crime,” “The evolution of culture is synonymous with the removal of ornamentation from objects of everyday use.”46 The words “progress” and “evolution” were popular terms during the first half of the twentieth century when many designers purported the importance of purity and cultural betterment based on an evolutionary ideal that needed careful monitoring.47 Howe’s discussion about what modern architecture expresses fo- cused on the idea of constructing a bank, since he was in the middle of the PSFS project at this time. He found the idea of cloaking a modern bank or chain store “in the borrowed finery of ancient or mediaeval times” a “ridiculous” conceit that ignored the “peculiar dignity” of these places of commerce.48 Recall that most modernists wanted to break free of a design ideology that covered structures with ornament, so architectural forms that were decorative tributes to earlier styles of building became, in the eyes of the modernist, impure. Howe lauded the architecture of yesteryear because it engaged with forms that imple- mented functionalism. Yet modern instances of ornamentation, where design meant simple historical references devoid of functionality, were deemed regressive. In fact, while discussing the PSFS during a speech he gave in 1932 at MoMA, Howe professed the need to conceptualize architecture using a functionalist aesthetic, otherwise the building’s George Howe and the T-Square Club Journal 263

inclusion of “thin skin pattern appeared as inept as tattooing on a human being.”49 Like Loos before him, Howe did not want the body of the building infected by incompetent design decisions. Howe engaged with the notion of evolutionary progress in his Pen- cil Points essay that included the description of the racially ideal power station. He derided what he described as “sentimentalists” who “prate about mediaeval sculptors or Mexican Indian potters, with their unconscious sense of ornament.” Howe asserted that “the minute” these “unconscious virtuosos … are set to work on a modern building” the results would be disastrous. In short, “The pathetic results of falsely unconscious primitiveness are all about us.” The modern architect “sees more beauty in the meticulous correction of a straight line or a smooth surface than in rough textures produced in imitation of a gen- eration less skilled in mechanical processes.” As he did in other writing from this period, Howe compared buildings to bodies and noted, “On a building so conceived sculpture in the mass is mere adipose tissue and surface ornamentation—meaningless tattooing.” Taking a cue from Loos, he furthered the metaphor of architecture as corporeal and claimed that a “functional building is no longer a pile of rocks but an organism with a huge body, standing on slender legs in delicate balance, like a living creature.”50 There is a clear evolution of form in Howe’s description of the progression of architectural grammar, and he used imagery related to the body to clarify what he upheld as the ideal organism that would be engineered without design flaws, a form that was part of what Howe signaled as the “racial ideal.” He wanted to cut away the excess fat to create buildings that were worthy of mankind’s escape from the clutches of primitivism. To Howe, functionalism had evolved as an elevated “development of architecture, which consists … in assimilating the modern programme in terms of modern construction, and reducing it to ‘significant form.’”51 Architectural design could now rely on functionalist aesthetics, and critics and architects found the notion of utilizing earlier architectural styles unacceptable; thus, Howe and Rice, like Loos before them, wanted to rid culture of those elements that they understood as inferior. The pages of architectural periodicals became the ideal venue for making their fervent case.

A Cold War Coda

The controversy about the International Style and functionalism continued after the 1930s. As the style proliferated and became more wide- ly accepted by corporate culture and arbiters of taste within the design world, the alarm bells that first appeared in architectural periodicals began to sound in the popular press. The magazine House Beautiful, 264 American Periodicals which was founded in 1896 and continues, to this day, to focus on pro- moting its conception of ideal domestic spaces, ran two articles in 1953 about the corrupting forces and viral-like potency of the International Style. In April of that year, Elizabeth Gordon, the magazine’s editor, “decided to speak up” about what she titled “The Threat to the Next America.” “The story, in its bluntest terms,” was, according to Gordon, about a well-accepted mode of design that had done nothing but make our lives uncomfortable. Her frank language contended that “the much touted all-glass cube of International Style architecture is perhaps the most unlivable type of home for men since he descended from the tree and entered a cave.” Highlighting the work of Le Corbusier and others, Gordon detested what she exposed as the marketing scheme of the International Style’s promoters. Her overarching concern was that the architectural establishment was pushing her readers to accept these new forms, and Americans needed to “open their eyes to the truth, then the reign of error will be over.” She included images of modernist masterpieces, such as Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye (1928-1931), to reveal the cold austerity and discomfort that had established itself in Europe and had, through a global conspiracy, become rampant in the United States.52 Gordon’s editorial essay was not the end of House Beautiful’s at- tack. Three months later, in July of 1953, Frank Lloyd Wright repeated many of the sentiments he had originally published in T-Square in House Beautiful, but here he included an additional dose of political rage. Wright praised what he viewed as the positive aspects of organic architecture, which was “truly American” and “indigenous” to the values of the United States, while the International Style could only be labeled as an “evil crusade.” The new modernist “propaganda” was so frightening to Wright that he claimed it was akin to “totalitarianism” and “collectivism,” words that Americans, in 1953, would have instantly connected to the threat of communism. Wright was well aware of Cold War rhetoric, and to help promote his own cause he asked, “Why do I distrust and defy such ‘internationalism’ as I do communism?” The an- swer, in Wright’s estimation, was simple: “Because both must by their nature do this very leveling in the name of civilization. If communism (the factual religion of collectivism) is once established, the sun of creation, which is the sun of the individual, goes down and life has agreed to be embalmed alive.” A type of static death where no progress could be achieved was imminent, and Wright concluded, “The strength of our native spirit is more necessary than ever for the freedom not only of our- selves but the entire world.” Wright implored Americans to find a way to look beyond the “publicity” of the International Style so that a national spirit of design could rise to the fore.53 House Beautiful’s warning about the perils of modern design was not unique. As the twentieth century progressed, popular culture would continue to question the value of what many perceived as a George Howe and the T-Square Club Journal 265

sterile aesthetic.54 This distrust of modern design may have been rampant, which publications like the T-Square Club Journal attempted to dispel by providing a venue where debate could unfold, but the march of modernism remained unimpeded. Indeed, the modernists effectively promoted a version of architecture that spoke to a yearning for what Reinhold Martin has called “the Organizational Complex,” where corporate and government-sponsored design deployed an aesthetic that worked in tandem with the rise of cybernetics and the military-industrial complex.55 Howe and his fellow T-Square Club members dreamed that buildings like the PSFS would become the standard, and they created a fo- rum that enabled modernism to flourish. Through the implementation of a design discourse that praised modernism, its stylistic authority could be celebrated and marketed, and its adherence to functionality and the principles of capitalism could be lauded. It was through the commendation of functionalist design in periodicals like the T-Square Club Journal that Howe and his followers advanced their design ethos and even welcomed dissenting voices that derided functionalism. Even- tually these voices of opposition were squelched by the overriding sen- timent of the architectural establishment that had become more of a cohesive voice thanks to an intertwining matrix of professional offices, specialized schools, and other tightly controlled organizations. Thus, structures such as the PSFS Building became normative in American urban centers as tall buildings based on the principles of the Inter- national Style could be found lining American city streets by the late 1960s.

Notes

Several colleagues read parts of earlier drafts and gave me helpful suggestions. James Castillo, Katherine Grier, Bernard Herman, Sarah A. Lichtman, Richard Mey- er, Keith Morgan, Ethan Robey, Janice Simon, Joshua Srebnick, and Bess William- son were all enormously helpful. Additionally, I want to acknowledge Emily Kanders Goldfischer at Loews Hotels, Janet Parks at Columbia University, William Whitaker at the University of Pennsylvania, and Jennifer Tobias at the Museum of Modern Art’s library for their help with attaining images.

1 T-Square Constitution, 1903, 13, quoted in William Robert Mitchell, “The T Square Club, Philadelphia, 1883-1938,” MA. Thesis, American Studies, University of Delaware, 1967, iv. Mitchell also describes many of the other founding principles of the club in his thesis. 2 Robert Wiebe, The Search for Order, 1877-1920 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1966), 166. 3 Mary N. Woods, From Craft to Profession: The Practice of Architecture in Nine- teenth-Century America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999). 4 The journal was titled the T-Square Club Journal through 1931, but then in January of 1932 the title changed to T-Square. Finally, in April of 1932 the title 266 American Periodicals

changed to Shelter, which was co-edited by Richard Buckminster Fuller, but only three issues were published under this new name. By mid-1932 the journal was defunct, even though it came back for short period in the late 1930s (from March of 1938 till April of 1939). For this helpful history, see David Brownlee and David De Long, Louis Kahn: In the Realm of Architecture (New York: Rizzoli, 1991), 24 and “Shel- ter,” Canadian Centre for Architecture, http://www.cca.qc.ca/en/collection/408- shelter. 5 George Howe, “A Fair Future to The T-Square Club Journal,” T-Square Club Journal 1, no. 1 (December 1930): 3. 6 For more on “modernism” as a cultural phenomenon, see Marshall Berman, All That is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982). Additionally, there are several places where important work on the PSFS can be found. The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians devoted an entire issue to the PSFS. See William Jordy, “PSFS: Its Development and Its Sig- nificance in Modern Architecture” and Robert A. M. Stern, “PSFS: Beaux-Arts and Rational Expressionism,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 21 (May 1962): 47-95. Also, see Robert A. M. Stern, George Howe: Toward a Modern American Architecture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975) and Lorraine Welling Lanmon, William Lescaze, Architect (Philadelphia: Art Alliance Press, 1987). 7 See Alfred H. Barr in The International Style, ed. Philip Johnson and Henry Russell Hitchcock (1932; New York: W. W. Norton, 1995), 31; for a very helpful floor plan of the exhibit, see Terence Riley, The International Style: Exhibition 15 and the Museum of Modern Art (New York: Rizzoli, 1992), 68. 8 George Howe, “A Further Vague Pursuit of Truth in Architecture,” T-Square Club Journal 1, no. 3 (February 1931): 13. 9 Howe, “A Further Vague Pursuit of Truth in Architecture,” 28. 10 George Howe, “The Modernist,” T-Square Club Journal 1, no. 4 (March 1931). 11 Norman Rice, as quoted by M.E. Levinson, “The Modern Architecture: A Sum- mary of the April Meeting of the T-Square Club,” T-Square Club Journal 1, no. 5 (April 1931): 22. 12 M.E. Levinson, “The Modern Architecture: A Summary of the April Meeting of the T-Square Club,” 23 and 35. 13 M.E. Levinson, “The Modern Architecture: A Summary of the April Meeting of the T-Square Club,” 35. 14 Ely Jacques Kahn, “This Modernism,” T-Square Club Journal 1, no. 10 (Sep- tember 1931): 5. 15 George Howe, “A Design for A Savings Bank and Office Building,” T-Square Club Journal 1, no. 4 (March 1931): 11-13. The connection that architects make between modernism and other forms of design outside of the realm of building has an extensive history. See, for example, Adolf Loos, Ornament and Crime: Selected Essays, trans. Michael Mitchell (Riverside: Ariadne Press, 1998) and Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture, trans. Frederick Etchells (New York: Payson and Clarke, 1927). 16 George Howe, “Functional Aesthetics and the Social Ideal,” Pencil Points 13, no. 4 (April 1932): 215. 17 Howe, “Functional Aesthetics and the Social Ideal,” 217. For more on Lang and the film, see Michael Minden and Holger Bachmann, eds., Fritz Lang’s Metropolis: Cinematic Visions of Technology and Fear (Rochester: Camden House, 2000). 18 Howe from a letter of 1930, quoted in Jordy, 57. 19 See Stern, George Howe, 91-95. 20 For a helpful stylistic reading of the structure, see Stern, George Howe, 90- 132. 21 Howe, “A Design for A Savings Bank and Office Building,” 13. The previous George Howe and the T-Square Club Journal 267

quotes can be found in the order they appear on 13, 10, and 11-12. 22 For more on Kelsey, and his most famous project, see C. Matlack Price, “The Pan American Union and its Annex: Washington D.C.,” Architectural Record 34, no. 5 (November 1913): 385-457. 23 Albert Kelsey, “Letter to the Editor, April 2, 1931,” T-Square Club Journal 1, no. 5 (April 1931): 30. 24 George Howe, “Letter to the Editor,” T-Square Club Journal 1, no. 6 (May 1931): 34. In this very same issue, Elbert Conover, who was Director of the Bu- reau of Architecture at the Methodist-Episcopal Church, wrote a scathing missive against Howe’s work on the PSFS. Conover claimed, “The days will come when even in America, we will become skilful enough to meet economic pressure without forcing upon the community such ugliness and such illogical designing as which seems to superimpose upon plateglass, great pillars or wall areas.” Elbert Conover, “Letter to the Editor,” T-Square Club Journal 1, no. 6 (May 1931): 35. Howe responded to this letter in June of 1931 claiming that “the future” will “judge” the “merits” of his design. George Howe, “Letter to the Editor,” T-Square Club Journal 1, no. 7 (June 1931): 32. 25 “George Howe: An Architectural Biography,” T Square 2, no. 1 (January 1932): 23. 26 My colleague Ethan Robey pointed out this striking connection. El Lissitzky (1890-1941) was an important Russian artist and designer. His work helped usher in new experimentations with abstraction, which became inspirational at schools such as the Bauhaus. László Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946) taught at the Bauhaus and is well known for influencing the development of modern graphic design and typography. For more on their influential work, see Herbert Spencer, Pioneers of Modern Typog- raphy (1969; Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004) and Victor Margolin, The Struggle for Utopia: Rodchenko, Lissitzky, Moholy-Nagy, 1917-1946 (Chicago: University of Chi- cago Press, 1997). 27 Although I cannot locate who designed this image, there may have been a competition to choose a new cover for the journal. David Brownlee and David De Long include a potential cover that Louis Kahn did for the January 1932 edition of T-Square in their Louis I. Kahn, 24. It is important to note that in February of 1932, the following month, there was a new cover of the journal that was also reliant on modernist graphics. 28 George Howe, “A Letter from the President of the T-Square Club,” T-Square 2, no. 2 (February 1932). 29 Again, for a floor plan of the exhibit, see Riley, 68. 30 Frank Lloyd Wright, “For all May Raise the Flowers Now for All Have Got the Seed,” T-Square 2, no 2. (February 1932): 6. Neil Levine sees this essay as a direct response to Hitchcock and Johnson’s celebration of the International Style. See his The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 219. 31 Wright, 7. 32 George Howe, “Moses Turns Pharaoh,” T-Square 2, no. 2 (February 1932): 9. 33 George Howe, “Creation and Criticism: Two Book Reviews by George Howe,” Shelter 2, no. 3 (April 1932): 27. 34 “Economic Trend in Construction Field,” Philadelphia Inquirer, May 1, 1932. 35 Carol Willis, Form Follows Finance: Skyscrapers and Skylines in New York and Chicago (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1995), 129. Although expense might have been a factor in many cases, the bank saved little when it came to the construction of the PSFS. The rare woods used in the executive suites, the Cartier clocks in the elevator lobbies, and the built-in cabinetry in the executive dining room are a few examples that reveal the extravagance of the building’s detail work. 268 American Periodicals

36 Howe, “A Design for A Savings Bank and Office Building,” 10. 37 George Howe, “Architectural Deflation, or the Practical and Aesthetic in Mod- ern Architecture: An address delivered on the occasion of the award of the Medal for Excellence in Design for the year 1930-1931 by the Société des Architects Diplomés par le Governement Francais, Groupe Américain, to the Department of Architecture of the College of Fine Arts of New York University, November 13, 1931,” 8. Vertical File at the Museum of Modern Art. 38 Howe, “Architectural Deflation, or the Practical and Aesthetic in Modern Ar- chitecture,” 9. 39 Howe, “Architectural Deflation, or the Practical and Aesthetic in Modern Ar- chitecture,” 10. 40 See Philadelphia Inquirer, May 10, 1932 for the newspaper advertisement. For the brochures, see “Nothing More Modern” and ”The Philadelphia Saving Fund Building” at the Architectural Archives, University of Pennsylvania and “Twelve South Twelfth,” “Manufactured Weather,” “Day Lighted,” and “Garage Facilities” at the Prints and Manuscript Division, Free Library of Philadelphia. This passage comes from “Twelve South Twelfth.” 41 See Norman Rice, “This New Architecture,” T-Square Club Journal 1, no. 4 (March 1931): 14-19, 31-33. The quotes here can be found on 15 and 19. For a brief mention of Rice and his biography in relation to Le Corbusier, see Mardges Bacon, Le Corbusier in America: Travels in the Land of the Timid (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001), 99. For more on Rice and the PSFS project, see the Norman Rice Archives, Architec- tural Archives, University of Pennsylvania. Rice is also discussed in Stern, George Howe, 139. 42 Loos, 167. 43 Mark Taylor, Hiding (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 99. 44 George Howe, “Functional Aesthetics and the Social Ideal,” 217. 45 For these quotes, see George Howe, “What is Modern Architecture Trying to Express?” The American Architect 137 (May 1930): 22, 23, 25, 106, and 108. 46 Loos, 167. 47 For more on this issue, see Christina Cogdell, Eugenic Design: Streamlining America in the 1930s (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004). 48 See Howe, “What is Modern Architecture Trying to Express?,” 23. 49 George Howe, “Why I Became a Functionalist,” “Read before a symposium of the Museum of Modern Art, Friday, February 19th, 1932,” 4. Vertical File at MoMA. 50 Howe, “Functional Aesthetics and the Social Idea,” 216-217. Howe repeated a variation of this passage in speeches he gave from this period. See, for example, his “Modern Architecture, the Universal Language: A Synthesis of Economics and Aes- thetics,” speech given at the University Club, Philadelphia, PA on December 4, 1931, George Howe Papers, Avery Library, Columbia University, New York, NY. 51 Howe, “What is This Modern Architecture Trying to Express?” 25. 52 Elizabeth Gordon, “The Threat to the Next America,” House Beautiful (April 1953): 126-130 and 250-251. The quotes above are from 126, 250, and 251. 53 Frank Lloyd Wright, “Speaks Up,” House Beautiful (July 1953): 86-88 and 90. The quotes can be found on 88 and 90. Sarah A. Lichtman insightfully directed me toward this article and Gordon’s essay. 54 Perhaps most famous of these critics is Tom Wolfe. See his From Bauhaus to Our House (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1981). 55 Reinhold Martin, The Organizational Complex: Architecture, Media, and Corpo- rate Space (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005).