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

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The Functionalist's Agenda: George Howe, the T-Square Club Journal, and the Dissemination of Architectural Modernism 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 professionaliza- tion of American architecture. The original constitution for the club de- clared 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 archi- tecture, 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 attempt- ed 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 compli- cated 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 profes- sional 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 func- tional 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 dur- ing 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 modern- ism, 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 re- veal important issues related to the promulgation of modern architec- ture, 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 pe- riodicals 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 ar- chitecture 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 cura- tors’ 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 modern- ism because the PSFS, along with eight other images of works by Howe and Lescaze, were in the first gallery that opened to the larger exhibi- tion 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 vo- cal 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 func- tionalists continued to utilize the pages of the journal to underscore their contention
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