ORAL HISTORY OF STUART EARL COHEN Interviewed by Betty J. Blum Compiled under the auspices of the Chicago Architects Oral History Project The Ernest R. Graham Study Center for Architectural Drawings Department of Architecture The Art Institute of Chicago Copyright © 2000 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 the manuscript may be quoted for publication without the written permission of The Art Institute of Chicago. CONTENTS Preface iv Outline of Topics vi Oral History 1 Selected References 226 Appendix: Curriculum Vitae 230 Index of Names and Buildings 232 iii PREFACE May 1976—the war of architectural ideas erupts in Chicago! The battle was launched in a pair of exhibitions, each presenting its own view of Chicago's architectural history. In one, 100 Years of Architecture in Chicago, Mies and his followers were presented as the legitimate and sole heir of the renown first Chicago School, a popularly held view that had the support and validation of respected historians such as Sigfried Giedion and Nicholas Pevsner. The other more catholic exhibition, Chicago Architects, sought to explode the exclusive view of the first exhibition to include many architects who had long been forgotten or deliberately excluded. This revisionist point of view was organized and presented by several disparate architects, soon to become known as the Chicago Seven, and documented in the exhibition's catalog written by Stuart Cohen. How and why this unprecedented, startling confrontation took shape, the strategy of the Chicago Seven that followed and its effect on the architectural community in Chicago is the story that Stuart Cohen tells. He was in the advance guard of the Chicago Seven and was known as the resident academic. The events spearheaded by the Chicago Seven are set in the framework of Cohen's tripartite career: that of writer, educator and practitioner. Cohen remembers his engagement in the activities of the Chicago Seven as one of the important challenges in his career. To record Stuart’s story of people and events, we met in his office in Evanston on three consecutive sessions, May 27, 28 and 29, 1998, where we tape-recorded ten and one-half hours of his recollections on 7 ninety-minute cassettes. The transcription has been minimally edited to maintain the spirit, tone and flow of Stuart’s original narrative and has been reviewed for accuracy and clarity by both Stuart and me. The selected references are in three categories: those of general interest about the Chicago Seven, articles written by Cohen on various topics, and articles written by others about Cohen’s work. Cohen’s oral history is available for study in the Ryerson and Burnham Libraries at The Art Institute of Chicago as well as on The Art Institute of Chicago’s web page. I am grateful to Stuart for his cooperation in scheduling our recording sessions and his candid and thorough narrative of the events and people of this pivotal time in his career iv and in the history of Chicago architecture. Special thanks go to the Graham Foundation for Advanced Study in the Fine Arts for funding this group project. My appreciation goes to my colleague, Annemarie van Roessel, for her thoughtful judgement in transcribing the tapes, her skillful shaping of the final form of this document, and for her general cooperation throughout this project. Betty J. Blum May 2000 v OUTLINE OF TOPICS Family Background and Early Experiences 1 Memorable Professors at Cornell 4 New York After Graduation 15 In Richard Meier's Office 18 Writings: Ronchamp and Contextualism 23 About Colin Rowe 29 The Role of Writing in Cohen's Career 34 Working in New York: Gruzen & Partners, Johnson & Burgee 37 Return to Chicago and Odd Jobs 47 The MCA and "One Hundred Years of Architecture in Chicago" 50 Meeting Stanley Tigerman 54 An Aside About the University of Illinois Chicago 57 Stanley and Stuart Organize the "Chicago Architects" Exhibition 59 The Chicago Seven Comes Into Being 69 Stuart and Sisco Lubotsky 71 Chicago Architects to Accompany an Exhibition By the Same Name 74 "Seven Chicago Architects" at the Richard Gray Gallery 80 "The Exquisite Corpse" at the Walter Kelly Gallery 88 The Chicago Seven Becomes Eleven 95 The Graham Foundation for Advances Studies in the Fine Arts 100 More About Cohen's Writings 102 Teaching 109 Renewed Interest in Drawing 125 Conferences at the Graham Foundation 129 "Late Entries to the Tribune Tower Competition" and Its Aftermath 132 At the University of Illinois Chicago 157 The Chicago Architectural Club 158 "The Presence of the Past" at the Venice Biennale 168 "New Chicago Architecture" in Verona, Italy and Chicago 172 "Tops" Exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago 177 "The Revision of Modernism" in Frankfurt, Germany 181 vi Cohen's Approach in His Work 184 "Seven + Eleven" Conference at the Art Institute of Chicago 189 Assessing the Chicago Seven 195 More About Cohen's Work 198 The American Institute of Architects 203 Religion and Architecture 206 Remembering and Evaluating the Impact of the Chicago Seven 209 At the University of Illinois Chicago with Beeby and Tigerman 211 vii Stuart Earl Cohen Blum: Today is May 27, 1998, and I'm with Stuart E. Cohen in his studio in Evanston. Stuart was born in Chicago and received his architectural education at Cornell and early on embarked on a triple-headed career: you write, you teach, and you build. You were the youngest member of the Chicago Seven, a group of Chicago architects who came together in the 1970s to challenge the mainstream of modernist architecture. Stuart is the author of the important and influential catalogue, Chicago Architects, that accompanied an exhibition of the same name in 1976. Since then he has been recognized as a vocal intellectual influence. Among those of the Chicago Seven, you were thought of as the resident academic. All of this occurred at a time of unprecedented disenchantment and ferment, a time when the status quo was under fire from almost all sectors of American life. May we begin with your earliest recollections of what led you to architecture and then work our way through your experiences to the time of the Chicago Seven? You were born in Chicago in 1942? Cohen: Yes, in Chicago. Blum: I've seen the E. in print so many times but never your full name. What does it stand for? Cohen: Earl. Blum: Was your father connected to architecture or construction in any way? Cohen: No, my dad was kind of a minor mathematical genius. He was trained as an accountant but he actually never really worked as a certified public accountant. He worked for my grandfather who owned some hotels and other kinds of property, so my dad was involved in hotel and property management. One early memory of him is that he—we grew up in Winnetka and we moved there when I was five from the North Side of Chicago—he rode the train, the North Western, every single day. He rode from downtown and back and at the end of the day, he would give my mother ten dollars and he would give me a dollar or two, these were his gin rummy winnings. I asked my father as a little kid, "How come you always win and how come the people you're always taking money from want to play cards with you every afternoon?" He said, "Well they're sort of a captive audience and we have a regular game because there's nothing else to do for forty-five minutes on the train." Then I asked him how he always won at gin. He said, "Well, I remember every card that's picked up and discarded and I calculate the odds of drawing what I need to complete my hand." So my dad was one of those guys who could do three, four, five-digit long division in his head. I don't know that I inherited any of that, in fact I can't add two and two to get four. It's probably because my memories of my dad when I wanted his attention were that he was always going through ledger books. He used to bring them home with him at the end of the day. My mother always wanted to be an artist. She went to Northwestern University. She wanted to go to art school but my grandfather, who was a sort of an old Viennese gentleman, told her that she could not and that no one in the family would be an artist. Blum: Why was that? Cohen: For the same reason that he told my uncle that he was going to go to law school and made him go. He was very patriarchal. There were proper things that girls did and teaching was one of those things, so my mother actually went through, but never completed a degree in education at Northwestern. She wanted to be an art teacher. Blum: Well, she sort of blended her wish with his. Was being an artist too bohemian in your family's opinion? 2 Cohen: Absolutely. Gypsies were artists, as far as my grandfather was concerned. I think that my mother was always sad that she had never done anything professionally or even at a personal level. My memories as a little kid were that I was always drawing things. My mother and I would sit down together at the table and make drawings of things.