Syracuse University SURFACE The Courier Libraries Spring 1984 William Lescaze Reconsidered William H. Jordy Follow this and additional works at: https://surface.syr.edu/libassoc Part of the American Art and Architecture Commons, and the Architectural History and Criticism Commons Recommended Citation Jordy, William H. "William Lescaze Reconsidered." William Lescaze and the Rise of Modern Design in America. Spec. issue of The Courier 19.1 (1984): 81-104. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Libraries at SURFACE. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Courier by an authorized administrator of SURFACE. For more information, please contact [email protected]. SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY ASSOCIATES CO URI ER THE RISE OF MODERN DESIGN IN AMERICA A BRIEF SURVEY OF THE SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY A R. CHI TEe T U R A L H 0 L 0 I N GS VOLUME XIX 1 SPRING 1 984 Contents Foreword by Chester Soling, Chairman of the Syracuse University 5 Library Associates WILLIAM LESCAZE AND THE RISE OF MODERN DESIGN IN AMERICA Preface by Dennis P. Doordan, Assistant Professor of Architecture, 7 Tulane University, and Guest Editor William Lescaze and the Machine Age by Arthur ]. Pulos, Pulos Design Associates, Inc., and 9 Professor Emeritus, Syracuse University William Lescaze and Hart Crane: A Bridge Between Architecture and Poetry by Lindsay Stamm Shapiro, Parsons School of Design 25 The "Modern" Skyscraper, 1931 by Carol Willis, Parsons School of Design 29 William Lescaze and CBS: A Case Study in Corporate Modernism by Dennis P. Doordan, Assistant Professor of Architecture, 43 Tulane University European Modernism in an American Commercial Context by Robert Bruce Dean, Assistant Professor of Architecture, 57 Syracuse University William Lescaze Symposium Panel Discussion Respondents: Stuart Cohen, University of Illinois 67 Werner Seligmann, Syracuse University Robert A. M. Stern, Columbia University William Lescaze Reconsidered by William H. ]ordy, Professor of Art, Brown University 81 A Brief Survey of Architectural Holdings at the Syracuse University Libraries by Werner Seligmann, Dean of the School of Architecture, 105 Syracuse University NEWS OF THE SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES AND THE LIBRARY ASSOCIATES 113 William Lescaze Reconsidered BY WILLIAM H. JORDY Looking back on it from our present perspective, what can one say ofLescaze's career? History has been cruel to it. Although the skyscraper for the Philadelphia Saving Fund Society, designed with George Howe (in a design relationship which is still debated) shared in the grand sweep of history, there is not much else now to point to. Of course, to be widely known for a single achievement of such importance in a career may be fame enough. A creativity which is sustained throughout a long professional life and which continuously demands the historian's attention is rare. To have had a Woolworth Building, a Lincoln Memorial, a Schroeder house, a PSFS-just one moment of supreme glory, which even history in the large must acknowledge-is more fame than all but very few will get. History, however, offers not only the panoramic vista, but also the closer look. It is the closer look which we take ofLescaze here: specifical~ ly, his role in "the rise ofmodern design in America", to cite the theme of this exhibition. But even a careful scrutiny has its disappointing (one might even say for Lescaze personally, its cruel) aspect. The decade that remains important in his professional career comes relatively early, from roughly 1929 to 1939, or from his thirty~third to his forty~third year. The decade of professional life which preceded was desultory and uncertain preparation. The three decades which remained to him from the outbreak of World War II, when he at last began to get commis~ sions of something like the scale of PSFS, are, if thoroughly respect~ able, dull at best. The magic moment had somehow passed, and, among early modern architects in the United States, not just for Lescaze. For him, even the restricted look at the single most creative decade of his career can seem disappointing (and harsh) at first sight. It began with the building that rocketed him to fame. The depression saw that no such sizeable opportunities would come his way soon again. Lescaze's other buildings during the thirties were small to medium in scale. PSFS was, so to speak, his Price Tower looming (at the time Wright designed it, at least) over a Bartlesville of smaller buildings. To take a close historical look at Lescaze's career as a modernist demands that we tem~ porarily set PSFS aside, except as a point ofcomparison-and anyway Syracuse University Library Associates Courier Volume XIX, Number I (Spring 1984) 81 I have had my say on thisI-in order to concentrate on the smaller buildings. What is the configuration of Lescaze's career. as a modern architect? It is not, I think, one that requires chronological treatment, because it does not show consistent development: not one, in other words, that indicates the progressive working out of an individual point of view. It is, indeed, a pragmatic career. On the whole, Lescaze accepted a received "look" from European modernism; but he countered this (and here is the real interest in his career) by rising to special occa, sions which demanded both insight and enthusiasm.2 The received look appears, above all, in the series of houses for subur, ban or country sites which he designed during the thirties. The special occasions occur in such diverse commissions-some examined by other contributors-as his schemes for the Museum of Modern Art, his hous, ing (especially the Chrystie,Forsyth Street Housing Development), his work as architect and designer for the Columbia Broadcasting System, and in my opinion, above all in his three townhouses in Manhattan. These, together with some of his industrial design and PSFS, comprise his principal legacy to the modern movement. Let us look at them. How eagerly he received, absorbed, and perpetuated the look ofEuro, pean modernism is demonstrated by his designs for a house for the year 2039, designs which he produced at the time of the New York World's Fair, hoping perhaps, but if so, in vain, that they might win him a job for something similar at the Fair itself (fig. 1). Surely, this House of the Future so,called was all too much his House of the Pres, ent. In the airbrushed ethereality of one of its presentation drawings, it seems to be fabricated of aluminum (or some other thin and gleam, ing material as yet undiscovered) and appears the more fragile for all the extravagance of its plate glass infill. So much is this the case that it is difficult to tell who, among this mob ofguests invited to a presumed house,warming (or perhaps visitors to the Fair), is within the house and who without. The pipe,railed decks and stairs appear as his hallmark of the future. The topmost deck has been reinforced to take helicopters, one of which occurs in the drawing as a blob behind the 1. William H. ]ordy, "PSFS: Its Development and Its Significance in Modern Ar­ chitecture", Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 21 (May 1962): 47-102. 2. For general background on Lescaze's career, I am indebted to the catalogue spon­ sored by the Institute of Architecture and Urban Studies, Lindsay Stamm Shapiro, ed., William Lescaze (New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 1982). 82 tree. Guests arrive from the sky as well as from the street. Another, less diaphanous drawing reveals this future in more pedestrian clarity (fig. 2). In its design the helicopter has advanced little more than the architecture. (As imaginative projections of what then existed, Frank Lloyd Wright's spinning tops over Broadacres are far more visionary than Lescaze's stodgy vehicle.) Nor have cars apparently advanced much, although the airbrushed version does indicate something dimly Dymaxion. Somehow, the suburban developer's plot, with its hedge and scattered tufts of yews on the front lawn, epitomizes (perhaps all too exactly) the degree ofchange that is expected to occur. The clearer Fig. 1. Project for a House for the Year 2039, 1939, Rendering. (This and all other illustrations for this article are from the George Arents Research Library for Special Collections at Syracuse University.) Fig. 2. Project for a House for the Year 2039, 1939, Rendering. 83 of the two views does at least foretell one aspect of the future. Over the garage door, to one side, there appears to be an electric eye or an alarm of some sort. Nothing, however, redeems the lack of imagina, tion displayed in this project. Given the problem ofdesigning a house projected a hundred years into the future, Lescaze came up with a cen­ tury of provincial International Style, tarted up with vehicles and gadgetry which could have been extrapolated from the advertising pages of Collier's or the Saturday Evening Post. To be more modern than "modern", at a time when modern had just been established as (in Mies' phrase) the style of the epoch, was, at least, consistent. But in examining en bloc the suburban and coun­ try houses of Lescaze's creative decade, can more be said for them? Consider his Frederick Vanderbilt Field house in New Hartford, Con­ necticut, which was built in 1930,31 (fig. 3). It has been called the "first country house built in the United States in the International Style of architecture",3 following three slightly earlier residential designs, none of which were realized. As grandson of Marshall Field and great, grandson of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, his client could well afford the isolated mountain site of nearly eight acres with a spectacular view.