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The Story of Liang and Lin

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The Story of Liang and Lin The Story of Liang and Lin Liang Sicheng and Lin Huiyin came to Penn at the height of Philadelphia’s Beaux-Arts building boom. They returned to revolutionary China with ideas that made a lasting mark on the development of architecture in the People’s Republic. By Naomi Elegant 1947, when he was a visiting fellow Liang’s busy schedule. “You can see what at Yale University and China’s rep- a hot shot you have gotten to be,” Ben- In resentative on the international diner teased his old classmate in a letter. team designing the United Na- Liang politely declined the speaking invi- tions Headquarters in New York, Liang tation, explaining in a handwritten reply Sicheng Ar’27 GAr’27 took a short trip to that “it would be best for me to join my old Philadelphia to visit his alma mater. friends, have lots of fun, and no talk.” He stayed at the Camac Street resi- Liang stayed overnight and left Phila- dence of Alfred Bendiner Ar’22 GAr’27, delphia the next evening, after spending an architecture classmate from Penn the day “in the Museum,” likely the Penn whose wife Elizabeth was close friends Museum. Bendiner had been trying to get with Liang’s wife and longtime collabo- the University to award Liang an honor- rator, Lin Huiyin FA’27. ary degree, but missed the deadline and Bendiner asked Liang if he wanted to had been advised to re-apply the follow- give a talk at the Architects Alumni As- ing year, provided Liang was still in the sociation dinner they were attending, United States. By that time, though, he which had been arranged to accommodate had returned to China for good. 48 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE Nov | Dec 2019 Photos: (this page) Library of Congress; (facing page) Fisher Fine Arts Library Image Collection Nov | Dec 2019Lin and THE Liang PENNSYLVANIA at the Temple GAZETTE of Heaven. 49 Below: Rodin Museum (Philadelphia) and Hall of Supreme Harmony (Beijing) share design characteristics. Liang Sicheng and Lin Huiyin were eration was serendipitous. There is a Liang’s Beaux-Arts education lent itself part of a group of Chinese students who certain visual compatibility between the to his preservation eff orts back in China, came to the US on Boxer Indemnity Beaux-Arts style and traditional Chinese off ering “a gentler way to modernize.” scholarships in the 1920s and then re- architecture, Steinhardt explains. In both It was not just the sublime that he turned to China, becoming known as the disciplines, “There’s a grand formalism, picked up through his architectural edu- First Generation in Chinese architecture. there’s symmetry, there’s the use of gates, cation at Penn, but the mundane, too. He “Every architect in China traces his or and there’s also a link with antiquity.” took classes in heating and plumbing, her lineage from this group,” says Nancy Just place a photograph of the Forbid- which traditional Chinese buildings—like Steinhardt, professor of East Asian art den City’s Hall of Supreme Harmony in those in the Forbidden City, constructed and curator of Chinese art at the Penn Beijing next to a photograph of a Beaux- from impermanent materials like wood— Museum. “They took the Penn educa- Arts building, Steinhardt suggests, and had never incorporated. tion, they went back to China, and they in both “there is this grandeur, symme- “Liang’s personal mission was for China wanted to make a diff erence in the fu- try, clear central axis, and emphasis on to be able to modernize without losing Old ture of their nation.” the sides and the top.” China,” Steinhardt says. “So what he was When Liang and Lin arrived at Penn in trying to do is use modern materials, but September 1924, Philadelphia was the always make China look like China. He third-largest city in the country. It was a really worked hard not to lose the past.” vital sea port and industrial powerhouse. Penn showed Philadelphia is dotted with Paul Cret’s Architecturally, it was emerging from the infl uence [“Arts,” Sep|Oct 2018]. In ad- City Beautiful Movement and into the Liang and Lin dition to the Rodin Museum, he drafted golden age of the pre-Crash 1920s. the fi rst plans for the Benjamin Franklin Everywhere, buildings were cropping Parkway, based on the Champs-Ély- up that refl ected the city’s vibrancy and “a gentler way sées in Paris, and he designed the origi- growth: in 1927, the Parkway Central nal Barnes Foundation building in Mer- Library opened its doors; in 1928, the to modernize.” ion, all in the Beaux-Arts style. Stein- Philadelphia Museum of Art; and in 1929, the Rodin Museum, designed by the French Beaux-Arts master Paul Philippe Cret, who taught and infl u- enced Liang Sicheng, Lin Huiyin, and other members of the First Generation, as well as Louis Kahn Ar’24 Hon’71, who graduated from Penn the year Liang and Lin matriculated. Cret came to Penn in 1903, recruited by Fine Arts dean Warren Powers Laird to lead the architectural program, and stayed on the faculty until he retired in 1937. By the 1920s, when Liang, Lin, and many other Boxer scholars were on cam- pus, the program had fl owered into one of the best in the country, specializing in the Beaux-Arts style Cret had imported from Paris. In 1926 the School of Fine Arts announced that Penn students had won more architecture competitions in the previous four years than students from all other schools combined; half of the winners were Chinese students. The overlap between Cret and the stu- dents who became part of the First Gen- 50 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE Nov | Dec 2019 Fisher Fine Arts Library Image Collection hardt says that there is no evidence that later wrote, “Miss Lin has pursued her leges thanks to a wealthy family and sup- Liang and the other First Generation course of study with great earnestness portive father, explains Siyen Fei, associ- architects came to Penn specifi cally to and a high degree of success. The amount ate professor of Chinese history at Penn. study under Cret. “It’s kind of just really of study which she has taken each year “Not everybody enjoyed that level of good fortune that this was the person has been greater than that of the average freedom. Social class was a big factor.” Liang worked with.” student … In point of character, breeding, Still, Lin’s lifetime of accomplishments Though Liang and Lin both came to mentality and natural talent Miss Lin has was exceptional. “She really became, I Penn to study architecture, only Liang shown the highest qualities.” think, a role model in China for women,” graduated with degrees in it (earning Classmates recall Lin Huiyin, who went Fei says. “She was very active, she’s beau- both a master’s and a bachelor’s in archi- by Phyllis in English-speaking circles, as tiful, talented, and she still asserted that tecture in three years). The architecture vivacious and social. Her friend and fel- kind of independence—she had a career program did not admit women—it only low student Elizabeth Sutro FA’27, who [and] a husband who really respected changed that policy in the mid-1930s—so later married Bendiner, told Penn archi- what she did.” Lin graduated with a bachelor of fi ne arts vist Francis Dallett in 1979 that Lin was As widespread as Lin’s infl uence may degree. At the time, only 10 percent of “an exquisite, lovely girl” with a “wonder- have been, her legacy is most tangible on students in the School of Fine Arts— ful sense of humor.” The author of a 1925 a much smaller scale—within her family. which encompassed the architecture, article in the The Philadelphia Public Her niece is the American architect Maya music, and fi ne arts programs—were Ledger seemed as spellbound by Lin as Lin, whose illustrious career was kick- women, and the majority studied music. everyone else who met her, writing of her started in 1981 when, at 21 and still an According to Wilma Fairbank, Lin’s “soft laughter” and “sharp, black eyes undergraduate at Yale, she won a nation- close friend and author of a seminal bi- twinkling with amusement.” wide competition to design the Vietnam ography of the couple, women couldn’t In Chinese popular culture today, the Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC. enter the program because “architec- couple has been elevated to near-myth- “My whole life was framed by my fa- tural students had to work on their ical romantic status. They have been the ther’s respect for Lin Huiyin,” Maya Lin drafting at all hours of the night, and the subject of multi–part documentaries, said to Smithsonian magazine in 2017. unchaperoned presence of women television soap operas, and even an ac- “You could say that Lin’s passion for art would be improper.” tual opera—the China National Opera and architecture fl ows through me[.] Lin had not acquiesced without a fi ght: and Drama Theatre’s Lin Huiyin, which Now I’m doing what she wanted to do.” when she was still in Beijing, she and her premiered in May 2017 in Beijing. father wrote letters to Laird, asking if she Lin’s personal life especially has been could circumvent the policy, even enlist- the subject of public sensation. Before iang and Lin, not yet married, lived ing the Chinese Legation Minister— heading to Penn and marrying Liang, separately while at Penn. When he equivalent to the national ambassador— she became acquainted with the Chinese Lfi rst arrived, Liang lived on 40th to speak to the dean on her behalf.
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