More Than A Handsome Box
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Education in Architecture at the University of Michigan 1876-1986 "The education of architects at the University of Michigan has a long and distinguished history. This publication in intended to celebrate that tradition and place architectural education at this institution in a broader cultural, political, and academic perspective. The University of Michigan is blessed with a fine archive, the Bentley Historical Library, a repository of memories and documents which chronicles education at the university. This essay draws from evidence within that archive to capture at least some of the salient features of the teaching of architecture at Michigan over the past twelve decades."
Transcript of More Than A Handsome Box
MORE THAN A HANDSOME BOX
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MORE THAN A HANDSOME BOX
EDUCATION IN ARCHITECTURE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
1876- 1g86
NANCY RUTH BARTLETT
THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN COLLEGE OF ARCHITECTURE AND URBA PLA lNG
ANN ARBOR · MICHIGAN
1 995
The University of Michigan
College of Architecture and Urban Planning
2000 Bonisteel Boulevard
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-2069
Copyright © 1995 The University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 95-61091
ISBN o-9614792-2-1
Technology: Assembled on an Apple Power Macintosh ""' JIOo/ 66 using Aldus. PageMaker. and Adobe Photoshop""'
Typeface: Monotype Baskerville
Design! Production: Kathryn M. Ridner
Printing: The John Henry Company, Lansing, Michigan
Every iffort has been made to trace ownership of copyrighted material in this book and obtain permission for its use.
CONTENTS
PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
A MOST PROPER ASSOCIATE AND GUIDE FOR YOUNG MEN
Nineteenth Century Prelude
I AM MOST DESIROUS OF GOING TO ANN ARBOR
1906-1919
SUPPLYING THE MISSING ELEMENT OF SANITY
1920-1936
STILL UNCERTAIN BUT LESS CONFUSED
1937-1964
MORE THAN A HANDSOME BOX
1964-1986
7
9
II
29
49
7I
PREFACE
The education of architects at the University of Michigan has a
long and distinguished history. This publication is intended
to celebrate that tradition and place architectural education at
this institution in a broader cultural, political, and academic
perspective. The University of Michigan is blessed with a fine
archive, the Bentley Historical Library, a repository of memories
and documents which chronicles education at the university.
This essay draws from evidence within that archive to capture
at least some of the salient features of the teaching of architec
ture at Michigan over the past twelve decades.
No history can be truly complete. This one highlights those
significant events which have affected the nature of education
at Michigan as well as other events which have given the pro
gram its distinct character. It provides extensive citations to
archival sources in the hopes that there will be those who wish
to do further research on education at Michigan .
This history is a tribute to the research skills of Nancy Bartlett,
associate archivist at the Bentley Historical Library, who has
woven a tapestry of facts to create a very legible image in both
words and pictures. I personally thank Nancy for the tenacity
she has brought to this project which exceeded, in great mea
sure, our expectations of the work involved. She has been fully
committed to this endeavor, and the quality of this publication
is a tribute to her talent and dedication. I also wish to thank
Kathryn Ridner from the College of Architecture and Urban
Planning who contributed her expertise to the production of this
publication.
The inspiration for this comes from many sources. The first is
Dr. Dorothy Gondos Beers, who has provided both encourage
ment and support in memory of her late husband, Dr. Victor T.
Gondos,Jr., B.S.Arch. '25. The Victor Gondos,Jr. Archives Fund,
established in his name in rg83, helped to make this work pos
sible. Dr. Gondos Beers' own commitment to preserving history
was instrumental in moving this project forward. I also want to
give special acknowledgement to Gilbert P. Schafer, B.S.Arch.
'22, a devoted supporter of the college whose recollections of 7
PREFACE
8
his own college days inspired us to want to learn more about
the origins of architectural education at this institution. We have
tried to capture the kinds of vivid memories which were so im
portant to Gil so that others might enjoy them as much as he.
There are many faculty emeriti who helped to inspire this work
as well as Deans Emeriti Reginald Malcolmson and Robert
Metcalf, who deserve special credit for helping Ms. Bartlett.
Nancy Bartlett has been supported by colleagues at the Bentley
Historical Library. They include Marjorie Barritt, Francis Blouin,
KarenJania, Kenneth Scheffel, William Wallach, and Christine
Weideman. She has also received special encouragement from
Professors Thomas Hille, Kent Kleinman, Kingsbury Marzolf,
and Leslie VanDuzer. Professor Emeritus William Muschenheim
also provided inspiration for this endeavor. Nancy has written
that "his cosmopolitan love of fine design, cigars, opera, and ca
maraderie defines for me the grandest in the word 'architect."'
I hope you will enjoy this tribute to architectural education at
the University of Michigan.
Robert M. Beckley, FAIA
Dean
Summer 1995
~ I , .
lfi fif 
INTRODUCTION
r87r University of Michigan campus plan illustrating the formal symmetries of its north, south, and west sides5
IO
University of Michigan's Detroit Observatory, built in Ann Arbor in r854 and painted by Jasper Cropsey in r8554
The exigencies of constructing a forty-acre campus with class
rooms, housing, and a suitable library preempted the notion
of architectural pedagogy in Ann Arbor. Even with such practi
cal matters, however, the regents initially aimed high. Both Ammi
B. Young and Alexander Jackson Davis prepared drawings for
the first building on campus.3 Davis had even offered two alter
native designs , in Collegiate Gothic and Classic, but the regents
in the end declined these choices from the East. 4
What remains of the early university is instead the work of more
anonymous builders. They achieved a respectable appearance
for the campus, with a formal plan of paired residences at its
northern and southern ends. One of these survives as the Presi
dent's House. Off to the northeast is the university's observatory,
whose Italianate form appealed to painter Jasper Cropsey. For
its first decades, these buildings would have to suffice as Michi
gan's best testimony to its appreciation for good architecture.
A MOST PROPER ASSOCIATE AND GUIDE FOR YOUNG MEN
Architecture as a discipline of study was first brought to Ann
Arbor by William Le Baron Jenney of Chicago. With his name
preceded by the proud rank of "Major," he had already achieved
recognition as a leader, both from his earlier glory days as Gen
eral William Tecumseh Sherman's aide-de-camp and for his new
"elevator building," a precursor to his later prototypical sky
scraper. This novice professor had never prepared a syllabus but
he had nonetheless advocated a formal knowledge base for the
architectural profession in the book he co-authored, entitled Prin
ciples and Practices of Architecture.5 Refined New Englander by birth,
continental sophisticate by education, romantic patriot by war
duty, and ambitious westerner by vocation, Jenney embodied
the image of architect as worldly professional.
The major's appearances on Ann Arbor's campus were brief,
but his few town and gown edifices were to remain signifi
cant vestiges of the University of Michigan at its nineteenth
century zenith, when it surpassed all other American universities
in enrollment and gained its moniker as the "Harvard of the
West."
Unlike his Ann Arbor colleagues, Jenney never had a real
home in town. His building projects in Chicago and elsewhere
required his steady presence further west. Instead of walking
from the nearby neighborhoods of Victorian and Greek Revival
houses, he arrived by rail for classes, only to stay for two days per
week before riding back to his wife, two children, and office in
Chicago. The commute could not have been altogether unpalat
able for one who at seventeen had sailed on his father's ship
around Cape Horn to follow adventures in Chile, San Francisco,
and Manila.
The preparation for his Ann Arbor course work offeredJenney
a diversion from his construction contracts in northern Michi
gan's Manistee and in other states, where high-reaching office
structures including Chicago's Portland Building (r872) and
Lakeside Building (r873) and Indianapolis' Fletcher and Sharp
Building (r875) were bringing him much attention. II
ASSOCIATE & GUIDE
I2
At a certain inconvenience, the Ann Arbor teaching fit into
Jenney's great appreciation for education in architecture. Him
self a graduate of Harvard University and the Parisian Ecole
Centrale des Arts et Manufactures, he maintained the inquisi
tive drive of an academic, which characterized his balanced
commitment to edification in the classroom as well as the office.
With reluctance he had turned down an earlier offer to teach ci
vil and mechanical engineering and drafting at Rutgers College
just after the Civil War while he was still an aide to Sherman. 6
Although he had never had an academic appointment prior
to Ann Arbor, Jenney did nevertheless have the credentials of
teaching his younger apprentices to help build the "bustling and
undisciplined settlement on lower Lake Michigan known as
Chicago."7 Jenney loved to tutor these employees, even refer
ring to his draftsmen as his "students. " 8 Not long before his own
assignment in Ann Arbor, he had attracted apprentices Daniel
Burnham and Louis Sullivan to his office in mid-town Chicago.
It was from the Portland Building that Jenney responded to
an invitation to apply for employment from University of Michi
gan President James B. Angell. Jenney replied with wonder on
August 19, 1875 that, "the question is so new to me that I would
not be willing to express myself other than in general terms"
although he anticipated that, "there is an opportunity for re
search and theoretical labor that does not occur in practice."
He admitted that even his letter of introduction to Angell was
written in haste since "I leave in a few moments for Indianapo
lis where I have some six buildings in more or less progress. "9
Angell had apparently learned aboutJenney from an acquain
tance in Chicago, city and county surveyor C.W. Durham, who
had just days earlier recommendedJenney. Durham had praised
Jenney's abilities in "higher mathematics and the theory of his
profession," but warned Angell that, "I do not believe that you
could get him." 10 Angell had been searching already since the
spring of 1875, when Cornell's president Andrew Dickson White
(formerly of the University of Michigan) had offered to share
with him his "candidates book."II Even while corresponding with
Jenney, Angell pursued at least one other possible candidate for
the position, who was a considerably younger easterner with the
literary name of Alexander Wadsworth Longfellow. 12 An east
ern candidate, at least by birth if not by present location, would
bear the right associations for Angell, who never consulted the ASSOCIATE & GUIDE
new School of Architecture of the University of Illinois for ei-
ther more local prospects for employment or insight into how
to establish a program in the Midwest. l3
After several months of apparent inactivity, Angell resumed
his search in the middle of winter. He then received a laudatory
letter from General Sherman aboutJenney, "a most proper as
sociate and guide for young men," whose "habits were excellent
and manners refined and cultivated." 14 Even more relevant for
the Michigan appointment than General Sherman's accolades
were letters from fellow architects. Architect Gordon Lloyd of
Detroit added in his note to Angell that Jenney was appealing
because of his "strong feeling for gothic," which Lloyd had no
doubt hoped would yield Ann Arbor structures complemen
tary to his own design of St. Andrew's Episcopal Church on North Division. l5
Not all his professional colleagues promotedJenney. Frederick
Law Olmsted was only lukewarm about his abilities, warning
Angell thatJenney "has not been a sufficient student" and that
he was "still feeling his way." 16 Perhaps Olmsted's reservations
were the result of differing influences of Olmsted and Jenney
upon Chicago's West Parks and neighboring Riverside. 17 The
tighter compositions thatJenney had learned by studying parks
west of Paris would not have impressed Olmsted, who nonethe
less admitted to Angell that, "I know no one likely to be avail
able whom I would better recommend." 18
To ferret out any further criticisms, Durham had gone so far
as to question Jenney's neighbors in Chicago about his "moral
character." The worst possible limitation he could report back to
President Angell was thatJenney was no active church member, so "it may be that he holds some 'crooked' views concerning spir
itual matters. " 19 Such a suspicion could not be disregarded since
the University of Michigan was just beginning to undergo a cultural secularization under this president who as a young man had
had plans to study for the ministry. 20 Perhaps Jenney's intended
absence from town on Sundays conveniently minimized the
issue of his credence. (For a questionnaire much later in his life,
he admitted that he was in fact not a member of any church.)
Jenney was not at all evasive about his home life, inviting Angell
to stay with him during his visit to Chicago in March of 1876. 2 1
University Hall, the university's main building along State Street, built in 1872 and altered more than once before its demolition. In its last years it sat ignominiously behind Angell Hal£.7
By the first of April r876, any possible hesitations on the part
of Angell and the university's regents were overcome. Under his
letterhead of "W.L.B. Jenney, Architect" the leading candidate
formally accepted the offer of President Angell. Jenney assumed
the appointment approved by the regents with the general un
derstanding that he would perform "such duties for the present
as may be assigned him, and for such compensation for the ser
vices rendered as may be arranged by the Executive Commit
tee."» Over time he would learn that "duties as may be assigned"
would require just as much of his talents on the campus build
ing sites as in the classroom. Eventually he would realize that
these additional duties as campus architect would outlast his
teaching responsibilities.
Jenney's initiation into architectural pedagogy coincided with
a considerable transition in the curriculum of the University of
Michigan. While searching to expand his faculty, Angell him
self was still becoming accustomed to the novelty of leading a
university whose administration had been his responsibility
only since r871. His skillful success in gaining the state legisla
ture's permission for revenue from property mill taxes afforded
a new growth for the university and allowed him to recruit new
professors of homeopathy, dentistry, mining engineering, and
architecture, and also to insure the expansion of instruction in
pharmacy and the literary department. The professor of archi- ASSOCIATE & GUIDE
tecture was to serve on the faculty of the university's new School
of Mines, which had received provisional funding for two years
from the state legislature. Through curricular developments un-
der Angell's early presidency, students throughout the univer-
sity were able to benefit from a much greater choice of classes,
and faculty, in the emerging elective system. 2 3 These gains were
matched by losses of the university's first generation of senior
faculty, several of whom left in the r87os either for positions at
peer institutions or for retirement. 2 4
One of those who had recently left Michigan, to return to the
East, was professor of engineering De Volson Wood, who in his
r87r report to the Board of Regents had revived the call for courses
in architecture. 25 Four years later, in October 1875, the regents
recognized the "great need" for a chair in architecture and de
sign. They admitted that, "we do not expect a large number of
students at first in this School, but we think it will have a steady
and healthy development. " 26
Despite the limitations of the regents' expectations, Jenney
set immediate goals in his teaching and President Angell laid
out a great variety of duties for his new professor of architec
ture and campus architect. The first requirement for Jenney was
to prepare a series of two lectures for late afternoon meetings in
the law lecture room of the university. As the printed announce
ment indicated, these public lectures were to occur in the spring
of 1876, months prior to Jenney's actual teaching responsi
bilities. 27 Both appealed to the most general interests in archi
tecture with the first one entitled ''An Introductory Lecture on
Architecture" and the second one "The House and Its Furni
ture." They attracted a good audience and, according to the student newspaper shortly thereafter, they "won for him the
respect of students and citizens. " 28
In the months leading up to his teaching duties, Jenney laid
careful and elaborate plans for the accoutrements of his class
room. He wanted to create a photographic collection and
architectural library for the university. As the fall semester ap
proached, he submitted to Angell his suggestions for books.
None of these were actually textbooks as such since he wrote
that, "I think much more information can be imparted in a giv
en time by lectures- with proper notes and examinations- and IS
ASSOCIATE & GUIDE access to a library than by text books." 2 9 His first list focused
upon illustrative books and included the titles Art Foliages; Plants)
their Natural Growth and Ornamental Treatment; Principles of Orna
mental Art; Free Hand Ornaments; Flore Ornementale; and Recueil of
Sculpture Gothiques [sic J. Their easy accessibility was important
since "they are in fact dictionaries of ornamentation" to use in
the drawing room rather than in the university's library.
16
Books on stone cutting, a subscription to London Architect, and
second-hand books on Palladia would also be useful for stu
dents at their drawing boards. 3° Jenney was convinced that the
writings of Viollet-le-Duc, at least those available in English,
would be highly valued sources for the classroom.3' He also
made reference to Viollet-le-Duc's Entretiens sur rArchitecture, not
ing for Angell that, "I contemplate using it extensively."32 He
was quite firm in insisting upon good copies of The Stones of Venice
and Seven Lamps of Architecture, rather than the American edition
with badly reproduced plates. Even so, Jenney recognized that
by comparison with the library at Cornell the Michigan collec
tion of architectural publications would be inferior for years
to come.33
Jenney also wanted to assemble the makings of an architectur
al museum. He wrote to Angell in an almost telegraphic short
hand that, "my desire is to make a collection of all woods- and
marbles- and of such stone as are used in building in any part
of the world. Later we should have collections of apparatus
plumbing- gas- water- heating etc.- in actual articles-or in
models or designs. I also desire a collection of fine wall paperssome specimens of artistic wood- stone- + terra cotta drawings- In fact an architectural museum to include fine drawings
models photographs etc. etc." These would all contribute to the
students' understanding of materials and "appliances." His own
drawings, sent already inJune, were to form a part of these col
lections. The university's carpenter was to build a special frame
for these using Jenney's specifications. Jenney hoped that other
architects would follow his example by contributing their own
photographs and drawings to the university. 34
These ambitions were shaped in part by Jenney's consulta
tion with his respected colleague in Boston, William Robert Ware,
who had just seven years earlier begun the country's first school
of architecture at MIT. At their meeting inJuly r876, Ware had
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offered to have copied the drawings he had collected in Europe,
primarily from the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris .35 As fe llow
Harvard alumni and continental connoisseurs, Ware andjenney
also agreed that casts from England and France were essential
for instruction in drawing from models. The availability of any
instructive architecture could not be assumed in Ann Arbor, much
less than in Boston or even Chicago.
ASSOCIATE & GUIDE
Ware and Van Brunt 's Library, built at the center of the University of Michigan campus in 18838
17
ASSOCIATE & GUIDE The minutiae of learning tools were not left to chance either.
Soon before the start of the academic year,Jenney specified with
great precision the type of notebooks for all students to use
in the architecture program. They were to be of paper good in
quality, "very securely bound in half cow-hide- deep red with
dark colored cloth sides." He even sent President Angell a sam
ple of the leather and muslin to use along with a sample of the
label to affix to the cover of each notebook. He anticipated that
each student would require a dozen notebooks per year, to use
in taking notes during lectures, "as is done in the continental
schools."36
Jenney's wish list for classroom mat~rials was almost obses
sive in its details. By comparison the Board of Regents' goals
for new architecture on campus were vast but unformed. Months
before the start of classes, Jenney's employers had resolved that
he should design a new library and museum building for the
campus and supply them with a cost estimate. Not until fully
three years later did their meeting minutes acknowledge the
acceptance of working drawingsY
At the same time that the regents and the university's presi
dent anticipated great developments in the size and prestige of
the late nineteenth-century university, they were ambivalent about
erecting architectural showcases on campus. James B. Angell
had begun his presidency just a few years prior to Jenney's ten
ure with an inaugural speech warning against the excesses of
extravagant architecture. He had asked in r87r, "How many of
our well-meaning countrymen have given their tens of thousands of dollars for the material homes of colleges and Universities,
and have made no adequate provision for securing the most gifted
and devoted teachers? When will even good men learn that to
endow a University with brains and heart, and not alone with
bricks and mortar, is the part of true wisdom?"38 While undoubt
edly sincere in his conviction, Angell the very next year oversaw
the completion of the massive and matronly University Hall,
whose building cost of sroo,ooo would not be surpassed until
the construction of the university's Palmer Ward in 1903.
Thirty-one years later, still president, Angell continued to pro
claim publicly the virtues of economy in campus architecture.
In rgo2 during a visit to Johns Hopkins University he related
to an audience of fellow university presidents that, "I could
not conceal my joy, in the early days of the institution [of the ASSOCIATE & GUIDE
University of Michigan], at the self-restraint which led the Presi-
dent and the Trustees to content themselves with these modest
homes in which this University was housed, scarcely to be distin-
guished from the business houses upon the streets around them,
while they went scouring the world for the best men that could
be found on the two continents to bring here ... Better have an
Agassiz on Penikese island, with nothing but a jelly-fish before
him, than to have a house full of pretended scientists, even in
Kensington Museum. Abelard under his tents of osier, Socrates,
bare-footed in the streets of Athens; these men were universi-
ties worth more than marble palaces crammed full of pedant
teachers. "39
The lesson for Jenney then was to learn to design lean cam
pus structures, economical to build yet decorative in Ruskinian
ornamentation and imaginative in an eclectic blending of Gothic
and Italianate composition . A further complication to this chal
lenge was his already busy agenda at building sites elsewhere.
No doubt his obligations outside of Ann Arbor compensated for
his loss of the commission to build the university's library, de
signed instead by Ware and partner Henry Van Brunt.
His Ann Arbor days were so fleeting thatJenney's name never
rested in any local directory of residents. His face was absent
from the collection of photographs of other beloved faculty in
the few surviving leather-bound photographic albums, otherwise
so carefully assembled by students enamored with photographic
portraits of college life. Faculty meetings were held without him.
Nor did he have any time for casual reading from the library's
holdings either, checking out only one book during his tenure,
Rawlinson's Herodotus.
Probably because his students never gained a casual familiar
ity with him, Jenney did not personally suffer the brunt of soph
omoric humor inflicted upon his more settled colleagues. His
name was not twisted in pun and his face did not appear in
caricature in the student publications of the late r87os. He
would otherwise seem a likely target since Louis Sullivan re
called vividly around that time that, "he spoke French with an
accent so atrocious that it jarred Louis' teeth while his English
speech jerked about as though it had St. Vitus's dance. He was
monstrously pop-eyed, with hanging mobile features, sensuous rg
ASSOCIATE & GUIDE lips, and he disposed of matters easily in the manner of a war
veteran who believed he knew what was what. "4°
20
In his classroom, Jenney counted among his own students a
total of nine young men who were working for a degree special
izing in architecture.4' He wanted eventually for his graduates
to be able to enter into architectural offices with problem-solving
acumen. Their coursework would therefore focus upon projects
and problems, "such as will often actually occur."42 For Fresh
man to Senior year, the course requirements in architecture
appeared in the 1876- 77 calendar. They represented the special
mixture of Jenney's values whose inspirations were derived
from both the continent and the Midwest. To aspire to the image
of worldly architects, Jenney's students would have to learn
French as well as appreciate the contemporary association of
botany with architecture. To succeed at home, these same nov
ices would need to design and draw plans "so as to be readily
and unmistakably understood by the mechanics who might be
called to execute them."43
Jenney recognized the likelihood that his students would
remain as architects in the Midwest. He campaigned for their
formal training by writing in the course catalog that, "the ad
vantages of obtaining an architectural education in the region
where the conditions of materials, construction and ways of
working closely resemble those which are found where the graduate
proposes to practice are very evident to all architects and build
ers. The prospect for a successful career to architects of advanced
taste and skill was never more brilliant, especially in this part of the United States, where the difficulties of obtaining a pro
fessional education have been heretofore so great as to put it
beyond the reach of many young men. "44
While the requirements for admission were made quite clear
in the course catalog, the end result of such a specialization were
not obvious to the general student body. Their newspaper com
plained that, "what degree is given to graduates in this course is
not stated, and seems to be a mystery." 45 Jenney himself knew
that he wanted "to graduate students having at least the basis
of a good architectural education."46
Despite the limitations of his interaction with the campus
community, Jenney did have very positive relations with both
faculty and students outside of the classroom. In his ongoing
correspondence with Angell, he would mention his assooa- ASSOCIATE & GUIDE
tions with other faculty.47 The campus athletes who formed the
boating crew asked him to design a new gymnasium where they
and all the other members of the campus Boating Association
might train during the winter. He obliged with plans for a "plain
yet handsome" wooden building measuring 40 x 6o feet ,
whose expense nevertheless surpassed the means of the student
population and the indulgences of the regents. 48
Just to the west of State Street, the economies of architecture
were much more feasible for a select group of students with their
own resources. They hiredJenney to design their private meet
ing hall. He provided drawings for a compact Gothic-Italianate
box with elements of mystery and exclusivity in its appearance.
Against a backdrop of open lawns and little foliage, this dark
brick vault must have seemed forbidding to neighbors along
Williams Street. Without windows for peering in or out, the build
ing was a place of secret ceremony for the Delta Kappa Epsilon
fraternity. Only well above street level didJenney allow for more
fanciful ornamentation in the decorative corbels and opaque
windows appearing in a progression of "ascending forms." 49 Com
pleted in 1879, this most inaccessible structure was eventually
to become the sole surviving representation of Jenney's pres-
ence in Ann Arbor. The same fraternity commissioned Jenney
to design a residence, later dismantled in an era less apprecia-
tive of the "New Gothic."
Even though Jenney instructed relatively few students, many
more who knew of him expressed their interest in undertaking
an expedition around the world with him and Professor Joseph
Beal Steere, the new professor of paleontology and curator of
the university's natural history collections. So many students had applied to partake in the expedition that the two professors
decided to postpone the departure in order to revise plans. so By
the time the team left in 187g,Jenney was no longer available to
join in the adventure which led Steere and his five student assis
tants to the Amazon.
Jenney did, however, contribute to the success of Steere's ex
plorations by designing a new museum of natural history to dis
play the thousands of specimens of birds, reptiles, mammals,
and plants brought home to Ann Arbor from exotic locations.
Constructed in 188o with the regents' insistence upon fire-proof
William LeBaron Jenney 's Delta Kappa Epsilon shant9
21
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ARCHITECT.
Jenn ey's letter to President Angell concerning th e air circulation for his new homeopathic ward at the University of Michigan 10
safety and low expenses, the museum featured fanciful beasts ASSOCIATE & GUIDE
on its facade of brick and terra cotta and distinct interior spaces
devoted to mineralogy, zoology, paleontology, botany, and even
a new department of photography. At first the student critics
praised the building for providing "an exception to the other-
wise uninterrupted ugliness which prevails in our college build-
ings."s' Later its attraction was greatly diminished by structural
problems in the roof.
During the same hectic summer when he was planning the
museum from his office in Chicago, Jenney was also sending
notes to Angell about his addition to the university's depart
ment of homeopathy. This second job was considered so minor
that Jenney's role as architect was eventually forgotten by his
successors in the university's buildings and grounds depart
mentY Despite its later insignificance, the building was not
without special interest for Jenney. Although he knew that his
job was to "copy substantially the two wards now existing," he
deliberated over how to insure good hygiene and comfort. He
decided to omit any wooden tracery across the ward, since he
felt that it may be "distressing to nervous patients." He feared
that wainscotting might increase the liability of infection, and
that windows without screens would be useless. s3 He even sent a
detailed section to Angell showing his proposal for introducing
warmed fresh air into the ward, although he decided that "the
question of heat at patients heads we will leave to the doctors." s4
Despite his enthusiasm for design and teaching in Ann Arbor,
William Le Baron Jenney was unable to continue beyond his
first year in the classroom. After just two semesters, the univer
sity felt forced to terminate its course offerings in architecture.
A series of misfortunes seemed to conspire against the new architecture program. The most offensive was a tangled web of
malfeasance created by two professors in chemistry. Their
misuse of laboratory funds divided the university community
and incurred the wrath of the state legislature. The reluctance
of the university to respond quickly to its internal discord may
have further alienated the legislators from the north who were
campaigning for the transfer of the School of Mines to the
Upper Peninsula. Even without unfavorable publicity and con
flicting regional interests, operating funds for the university
were hard to secure at the end of the r87os. The whole country
ASSOCIATE & GUIDE
Ir ving Kane Pond11 Allen Bart/it Pond' 2
was suffering from a depression which led the state to reduce
expenditures in many areas. ss Even President Angell's salary
was lowered. Jenney could not have overlooked the irony of his
own record at spending far less than what was allotted for the
architecture program.s6
The School of Mines, and the architecture program within
it, were not abandoned without protest. Printed in the Board of
Regents proceedings for October r877 is President Angell's
complaint that, "surely in the downfall of badly planned and ill
constructed buildings, causing not only destruction of property
but also of life, we are receiving eloquent appeals for the thor
ough training of architects. We do not need to leave our own
grounds to be reminded of the advantages which might accrue
to us from the employment of architects of chaste and cultivated
taste. " 57
Just before Christmas in r878, Jenney added his own eight
pages of a "memoir," at the request of the Board of Regents. For
only ss ,ooo per year, he estimated, the Department of Architec
ture and Design could resume its previous activities. He too ap
pealed to the civic responsibility of legislators to help further
good architecture for its sanitary, safety, and aesthetic benefits.58
To his credit, Jenney never left any evidence of bitterness ASSOCIATE & GUIDE
about the limitations of the university's commitment to him. In
fact, he made quite clear his eagerness to revive the teaching of
architecture. Even during the busy year of r87g, as he was over-
seeing the construction of the First Leiter building in Chicago,
he wrote to Angell that, "I am ready to do as you decide for the
best, requiring but a few days previous notice."59 Despite the
parsimonious constraints, the challenge of working in the envi-
ronment of a growing and groping Midwestern university must
have appealed to the major. The university had offered him yet
another type of building site upon which to expand his confi-
dent self expression, with the unintimidated spirit so character-
istic of the Chicago architects after the fire. He recalled late in
life that, "what success I have had I attribute to my engineer
training in the Ecole Centrale and in the war under Generals
Grant and Sherman. It is a standing rule in the army- When
one has orders to do anything he must find a way to do it- This
was so deeply instilled in my mind that when I was ordered by
the Home Insurance Company of New York to design for them
a building under conditions not before presented, I invented the
Steel Skeleton Construction, in order to carry out my orders." 60
A bold but sentimental leader, Jenney did not abandon Ann
Arbor easily. After his short tenure as professor, he returned to
oversee his few building sites and to visit friends, whose homes
remained open to him. The Pond family in particular welcomed
him back to Ann Arbor. Elihu and Mary Pond no doubt dis
cussed the welfare of their son Irving, who began his appren
ticeship as an architect in Jenney's office in Chicago. Within a
few decades, Jenney's museum and the Pond brothers' Michi
gan Union would face one another from opposite sides of State
Street. The rails from Ann Arbor to Chicago were travelled by sev
eral other Michigan alumni as well. Already during Jenney's
tenure, a club known as "Michigan University of Chicago" was
formed by over fifty graduates. 6 ' One of Jenney's students,
William Augustus Otis, had impressed him so much that the
former teacher and student became partners. Otis, who like
Jenney arrived in Chicago after further studies in Paris, there
by achieved a higher status in his office than draftsmen includ
ing William Holabird, Martin Roche, and George Elmslie.
~· 4 . , .. _ ' - __ ,
Tra ve l Sketch of Irving Kane Pond, among the first to study architecture at Michigan 1
3
ASSOCIATE & GUIDE By rg58, with the specimens long since removed to the newer
and much larger museum along Geddes, Jenney's museum was
ignobly levelled with little fuss. His campus buildings gone, his
legacy became even less obvious. Yet at the centennial of his
arrival in Ann Arbor, students of architecture celebrated his
memory by decorating a wall of the college's drafting studios
with a large portrait entitled 'Jenney lives."
bcltooJ o-£ Wt'cbitectut'e,
11. of~·
Student Irving Kane Pond's stationary, featuring his own unofficial letterheadfor what he chose optimistically to label the School of Architecture 1
4
I AM MOST DESIROUS OF GOING TO ANN ARBOR
In September 1906, Ann Arbor's State Street was the scene of
the familiar but terrifying spree of a runaway team of horses.
Inside the University of Michigan's offices along that shaded
and as yet unpaved street, the chief administrator was at work
trying to harness the modern prospects of the new century.
Elderly President James B. Angell, though just recovering from
a serious operation, marvelled at the arrival of a student body
numbering over s,ooo; oversaw the installation of the university's
first telephone system; fretted to the Board of Regents about
the lack of state aid for campus improvements; and welcomed
the new faculty member from the East who was to revive the
university's architectural program. 62 Emil Lorch, age thirty-five
and newly-wed to George Elmslie's sister Jemima, came to Ann
Arbor on September 4 as the new professor of architecture. His
arrival marked the beginning of the present architectural pro
gram at Michigan.
As he and his bride moved into their house, just one block
south of campus on Monroe, Lorch's thoughts must have been
occupied by his upcoming professional duties. He was aware
that his new academic home had almost thirty years earlier ter
minated its appointment of architect William Le BaronJenney
and his courses in architecture after only two years of funding
from the state. He surely knew too that President Angell had
welcomedJenney to campus and had shortly thereafter bid him
farewell, albeit regrettably. Despite the ominous precedent, the support of his contemporaries at the university and colleagues
elsewhere would have reassured Lorch. He had, after all, cam
paigned strongly for the position, stating in the draft of one let
ter that, "I am most desirous of going to Ann Arbor and will not
haggle over the salary." 63 His eagerness and his credentials as
a graduate of MIT, general assistant to the director of the Art
Institute of Chicago, teaching assistant at Harvard, and assis
tant professor at Drexel Institute in Philadelphia led his alma
mater's F.W. Chandler to promise to "do anything I can to help
you to be considered a candidate." 64
Emil Lorch 15
DESIROUS OF GOI G
TO A ARBOR
Among the positive endorsements for Lorch was one emg
matic letter which failed to mention his name. Louis Sullivan,
in response to Lorch's request for his support for the position,
considered the job but not its candidate. This omission was de
spite the assurance from Elmslie to Lorch that Sullivan "says he
will write to Angell a fundamental note and mention you as the
party for the job. "65 Instead, in his letter to President Angell,
Sullivan offered his advice, and quite possibly his own services,
to the university. He wrote, "I am thus taking the liberty to bring
myself to your notice, because I assume that it is perhaps the on
ly means by which you are likely to learn of my existence (not
withstanding my international reputation as an Architect) or be
put on the track of the life-thought that I have given to the de
velopment of a democratic architecture in a democratic land." 66
Sullivan's solicitation might have been inspired more out of a
need for income (since his business was at its lowest) than a gen
uine interest in the University of Michigan. 67 With no college de
gree but plenty of seniority in apprenticing Chicago architects,
he had a feisty skepticism for any architectural school system
and was otherwise not adverse to voicing his contempt. 68
In the face of competition for the position, Lorch had the advan
tage of support from his hometown of Detroit, where his German
immigrant father shed tears at the news of his son's appoint
ment. 69 The family's local connections served him well during
the university's search. Among others, Regent Levi Barbour of
Detroit had encouraged Lorch to apply for the position since
it would give him "great pride in bringing a Detroit boy back to Michigan with the honor of a promotion."7o Key to his success
ful bid for the appointment was the Michigan Chapter of the
American Institute of Architects, to whom the university had
given the responsibility of choosing the appropriate candidate.7'
The chapter had lobbied the Board of Regents earlier for the
new position, most likely through Regent Frank Ward Fletcher
since it was he who brought the issue to the board's attention.
Fletcher's responsibilities as chairman of the university's Com
mittee on Buildings and Grounds and his ties to the lumbering
business in Alpena would have given him some idea of the is
sues associated with an architectural program on campus.72
Lorch acknowledged his indebtedness to the chapter by re
sponding to its request for a written report from him only a few
weeks after he had assumed his new responsibilities. In this DESIROUS OF GOING
letter of 25 October rgo6, which he described as his first written TO A
statement following his appointment, he mentioned his satisfac-
tion with an enrollment of twenty-three students. 73 His greatest
challenge, he reported, was the lack of space and equipment to
house even such a small group of people. He also wrote that he
intended to improve the students' weak skills in drawing by
organizing a "Sketch Club." At least one of these first students,
Jean Paul Slusser, must have overcome any shortcomings since
years after his graduation in rgog he joined the faculty to teach
drawing and painting.
The composition of the student body was of great concern to
Lorch. While he sought to increase the volume by sending out
thousands of copies of an advertisement about the program, he
was also determined to cultivate those who were, in his view,
most able.74 To a woman in Iowa, who had written to President
Angell to express her interest in the new architecture program
at Michigan, Lorch crafted a careful response. The draft of his
letter shows his struggle to articulate a proper amount of lim
ited encouragement. Between deletions and modifications, he
cautioned that, "Because of the 'all-round' kind of demands made
of the profession of architecture very few young women are now
practicing that profession. But for those with the proper equip
ment in the artistic and constructional fields, and with some
business ability, there should be ample opportunity in the direc
tion of house building. " 75
Although they were not welcomed heartily, women did in fact
appear in the architecture classrooms as soon as Lorch arrived
on campus. There were varying degrees of acceptance allowing
female faculty to teach freehand drawing and watercolor painting and coeds to hold class offices, participate in organizing
festivities, and join the ranks of members elected to the Architec
tural Honorary Fraternity, Tau Sigma Delta.76 One of the ear
liest architecture coeds, with the disarmingly coquettish name
of Delight Sweney, recalled "my first morning in the engineer
ing school [in rgr5] when I had to walk from one end of the
building to the other. It happened that, being the first morning
of the year all the doors were locked & there were billions of
men standing at the doors to be let in & all staring. I can still
remember how my knees banged together - how pigeon toed I
ARBOR
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walked - & how I got red & white by turns & wanted to run & DESIROUS OF GOING
yell. I can remember coming into the drafting room on occa- TO AN ARBOR
sions (for almost 3 years I was the only girl) & hearing the tail
end of a story or a curse & then having some shamefaced young-
ster come up & say 'Pat [sic], I'm awfully sorry!' & then assur-
ing him earnestly that it was perfectly all right! that I hadn't
heard a word!"77
Miss Sweney did not graduate. She did however return to a
warm and triumphal reunion, which she remembered in her
response to an alumnae survey of 1924. Amid the handwritten
recollections of many schoolteachers, librarians, and homemak
ers, Sweney's memories of Michigan are unique: "And one of
the biggest things is when I came back to A.A. last spring - first
after I had gotten my architect's license + Prof. Rousseau &
McConkey, Mr. Makielski, Mrs. Green & a few others congrat
ulated me & seemed glad that I had it & that I was the first girl
who had studied at Mich. to get it- that they still remembered me
& were glad of my little success - well is it any wonder that one
stands up - sticks his chest out & says - 'My college? Why my
college is Michigan' & then he's off, telling about the size, the
spirit, new buildings, conference championships, & old mem
ories that gather in the smoke. "78
The identity of Delight Sweney and her fellow female class
mates was conspicuous even in impersonal records since their
full names would appear in any listing of students who were
otherwise mentioned by last name only. To compensate for
their exclusion from the vocabulary and activities of the male
academics, these women joined with engineering coeds once a
month in their own T-Square Society, established in 1915 to "help
make up for the lack of social relationships with the other women of the campus, prevented by the nature of their work. "79
Minorities were not solicited by the college either. Even though
Ann Arbor's population of African Americans had increased by
nearly 50 per cent between 1900 and 1910, their closest associ
ation with architecture was almost entirely as construction la
borers on the many job sites around town. 80 One early exception
was the classmate of architecture students, Cornelius Langston
Henderson of Detroit. He received his University of Michigan
degree in civil engineering in 1911 and went on to design in 1929
the first all-welded-steel factory building in the country. 8' 33
DESIROUS OF GOING
TO A ARBOR
34
An exclusive selection of "only those men ... who are of good
character" determined the membership of the architecture fra
ternity on campus. 82 Sigma Upsilon was founded at the Univer
sity of Michigan on April9, 1909. The first minutes indicate the
young men's eagerness to consult with Frank Lloyd Wright,
George Booth, and George Mason about possible activities of
the club.83 In fact, Wright was invited to speak to the club just
one month after its formation. He agreed and offered the lec
ture title of "Out of an Architect's Workshop." However, he can
celled his commitment via telegram at the last minute. 84 (Wright
would a few months thereafter depart from Oak Park and the
Midwest to join his mistress Mamah Cheney in Europe. Cheney
had graduated from the University of Michigan in 1892.)85 The
fraternity's subsequent efforts at camaraderie and edification
were more successful. Competitions were held to design a seal
for the club and a page in the 1912 yearbook. 86 Members were
also asked to choose colors for the students ' requisite smock. The
winning combination reflected more than one type of patriotism
with "Yellow for Fresh., Red for Soph., White for Jr., and Blue
for Sr. " 87
Five years after its establishment, the club merged with the
architectural fraternity at the University of Illinois. At a meet
ing in Chicago, representatives of these two schools created a
new national organization with the name Alpha Rho Chi. 88 Ohio
State University and the University of Minnesota reenforced the
Midwestern identity by establishing chapters in 1915 and 1916
respectively. The fraternity brothers in Ann Arbor behaved as bons vivants
in their antics of celebration and mockery. They reported proudly
to the national newsletter about their appraisal of campus ar
chitecture: ''A very unique celebration was held this spring by
the department to commemorate a great event. The Campus
has for many years been marred by a group of old wooden struc
tures adjacent to the Engineering building. The campus has
been improved from time to time, but the old one story Surveying
buildings with their cupolas and moss-covered roofs remained
untouched, much to the disgust of the school in general and the
Architectural department in particular. The Michigan Alumni
will be glad to hear that they were at last removed. Hence, the
celebration . It consisted of a procession which marched around
the campus at midnight, bearing a wooden effigy of one of the
buildings. A chant was sung and a gong sounded at definite
intervals which made it very impressive. Arriving at the newly
cleared ground a ring was formed and the effigy burned amid
not sobs- but shouts of joy that the scare-crow buildings were gone." 89
The parent of the architecture program at Michigan was the
university's Department of Engineering. Having existed contin
ually as a unit of the university since 1858, this department was
a firm base for architecture (and much more established than
the university's School of Mines to whichjenney had reported).
Furthermore, the engineering faculty showed signs of enthusi
asm in expanding in several directions including architecture.
Just prior to Lorch's arrival, the department had built the coun
try's first naval tank for the study of ship design and a few years
later the department inaugurated the country's first academic
Albert Kahn's Engineering Building, located at the southeast edge of campus, served as the home for the architecture program from 1906 until the Art and Architecture Building (later renamed Lorch Hall) was built in 1928'7
35
DESIROUS OF GOI G program m automotive engineering.go The dean of the engi
TO ANN ARBOR neering program, Mortimer Cooley, welcomed the addition of
architecture to the curriculum but he did not stand in the way
of the almost immediate efforts towards autonomy. He agreed
to "speed the parting guest."9' Less than two years after Lorch's
arrival, the regents were approached by architects about the
issue. It was reported in their May 1907 minutes that, "Regent
Dean read a communication from the American Institute of
Architects asking that Architecture in this University be made a
separate Department. "92
The "guest" had found lodgings within the new engineering
building but space was hardly ample: "The headquarters of the
department were on the top floor of the west wing of the West En
gineering building and consisted of a small classroom, a small
drafting room and an office adjoining that of Professor Charles
Denison with whom the head of Arch . shared the use and cost of
a telephone which for a time the University could not afford." 93
The collection of books accumulated by Jenney were trans
ferred from the General Library to the library of the engineering
department, enabling the architecture students to have readier
access to sources including Viollet-le-Duc's dictionary of French
architecture. It was the only work in the set inherited fromJenney
that Lorch considered particularly valuable. Lorch's modest tri
bute to his predecessor was his acknowledgement of the publi
cations gathered by Jenney, who died just months after Lorch's
renewal of the architecture program.94
In his personal correspondence Lorch revealed that at the outset of his career at Michigan he was uncertain of just what a
formal education in architecture should, or could, provide. He
wanted somehow to combine the cultural and technical work of
the architecture student, and he admitted that architectural de
sign was the most difficult subject to teach. 95 By offering several
courses in design in that first semester, Lorch faced the chal
lenge head-on. He was attempting to apply his earlier work on
the abstract compositional rules of "pure design," which he had
studied under Arthur Wesley Dow at the Museum of Fine Arts
in Boston and furthered during his employment in Chicago as
the assistant director of the Art Institute.96
In a paper presented in 1901 to the Architectural League of
America, Lorch proposed his approach to the teaching of design.
The rough draft of his paper sketches his theory. He wrote, DESIROUS OF GOING
"In all arts of expression, creative ability distinguishes the art- TO A N ARBOR
ist from the workman or laborer and the power of finding an
artistic solution of an otherwise purely utilitarian problem dis-
tinguishes the greatest art craftsman-the architect-from the
builder ... My premise is that this end can be most nearly at-
tained by exercises in pure design from the very beginning of
the first year followed by what is called applied or industrial
design throughout the remainder of the course parallel with the
more direct architectural design study and in order to develop
as much as possible the student's perceptive power, apprecia-
tion of the beauty of line, form and color and the necessity of
harmonious inter-relation between these- or beauty, leaving the
study of historic forms to a later period in his course, studying
these styles of art and architecture as illustrations of expression
during various epochs and under certain conditions rather than
as absolute standards for the designer of today. "97 Lorch imple-
mented this concept of design by requiring his students to be-
gin with courses in the principles and possibilities of design
through simple shapes, color tones, and lines.98
Along with teaching, Lorch became immediately engaged in
deliberations about new buildings on campus. He wrote to
Chandler at MIT that the opportunity to apply his professional
skills to Ann Arbor's campus pleased him. As a member of the
building committee of the university, he was asked even before
his arrival in town to offer advice about plans for a new dental
building and a dormitory for women (which would be designed
and built a few years later by Albert Kahn, thanks no doubt in
part to Kahn's personal acquaintanceship with the building's
benefactors, the Joy family of Detroit).99 Lorch was also assigned the task of serving on a committee
to design a master plan for the entire campus. In his opinion,
the lack of any uniformity or "harmony" made the campus ap
pear incoherent. It bothered him that "the present West Eng.
Bldg. and the Psych. Ward [both by the Kahn brothers] were the
only modern U. structures. There was no campus plan, the U. stables, paint shop and power house occupying some of the
most important sites on the old campus with much 'variety' in
material, color, and design, since further emphasized." 100 Drawn
by instructor Alice Hunt, the scheme that Lorch and the other 37
DESIROUS OF GOING
TO A N ARBOR
1906 Campus Plan 18
THii PROPOSED PLAN fOR THE FUTUU DEVELOPMENT OF THE CAMPUS $TATI. STIUf OM 'Dia aiGWTl LUT VIUYUirrY OM TBI Lin. SBOYIMC TNa an.ATTOM OP Till PllOI'OI.IO 111.ALL TO Till UIU&T. AMO
TRI DIAGC»>AL 9.U.Q .U TllllY AU UTAtlUID I)( THI n• SCkiNI
committee members presented to the regents in 1907 was never
realized in its entirety. It presented a more formal symmetry to
the campus, both along its outer avenues and within the interior
spaces of the Diag. It was not implemented due to the adminis
tration's reluctance to remove older buildings and its inability to
devote funds to acquiring land beyond the boundaries of the main
block, even despite the power of eminent domain achieved in
rgo8. 101 These explanations overshadowed the committee's at
tempts to abide by Angell's parsimony by providing for "as few
changes as possible at as slight expense as can be managed." 102
"Very elastic" modifications, which would ideally include some
sort of uniformity in materials such as red brick, were the most
forceful recommendations of the committee. In terms of actual
use, the most successful features of this attempt at a more formal
definition of the campus were the axes leading to an eventual
mall and landscaping which framed the eclectic facilities.
Lorch was eager to gain the approval of Frederick Law Olmsted
for the committee's design. He was therefore more than a little
frustrated when Olmsted visited Ann Arbor and discussed the
plan as it was presented by committee member Mortimer Cooley,
unbeknownst to Lorch. 103
Cosmopolitan by nature, Lorch matched his new affiliation
with the university with a commitment to the enhancement of
architectural education beyond his own setting. As he settled
into his new surroundings, he solicited the support of his col- DESIROUS OF GOING
leagues in the East and the Midwest for his ideas. His method TO ANN ARBOR
of information gathering through correspondence provided an
effective means for him to consider Michigan's relationship to
other schools of architecture. He and his colleagues were just
beginning to rely on telephone conversations, the professional
conference, and state licensing as standardizing influences in
the formation of architectural pedagogy. Lorch made a point
of reminding his eastern associates to include the University of
Michigan in efforts at coordination. 104 In I9II, Michigan's role
was further substantiated by its inclusion among the Ameri-
can Institute of Architects list of recognized schools. Seniority
was a surer assumption in the new ACSA since the University
of Michigan was a charter member. Lorch asserted the Michi-
gan model for teaching architecture in his authorship of the
ACSA "standard minima." 105 He also became the first president
of the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards.
All of these efforts cast Lorch as a visionary of high American
professional standards in an era when alternatives to European
academic pedagogy, with its own set of conformities, were not
so obvious.
One written survey undertaken by Lorch concerned the fea
sibility of university extension courses for builders in Detroit
and elsewhere. The university's connections with Detroit were
particularly strong in that era. Faculty and regents rode the train
back and forth for meetings, classes, recruitments, and social
events. In proposing these off-site courses, Lorch acknowledged
the convenience of access as a prerequisite. He wrote, "Detroit
is but 37 miles from Ann Arbor on the main line of the New
York Central lines, which affords excellent service."ro6 Even more important, Lorch also conveyed a progressive sense of civic
obligation to improve the architectural quality of "all classes of
buildings." New opportunities for leadership by the architect
abounded, given the architects' and clients' mutual interest in
expanding the morphology of aesthetic architecture. Lorch
endorsed this democratization by writing that, "Classes of
buildings which formerly were hardly considered from an
artistic point of view, such as factories, warehouses, and the like
are now designed by architects. Our great corporations have
come to a realization of the value of buildings which are at 39
DESIROUS OF GOING once adequate, attractive and interesting. Cities everywhere, by
TO A ARBOR means of general improvement plans, are recognizing the need
of good design in everything, and in this city planning develop
ment the architect is playing a most important part."' 07
Detroit in particular would be an opportune location for ex
tension from the University of Michigan. Between 1910 and 1920,
the city's population nearly doubled, from 465,766 to 993,678. '08
A few years later, Detroit would become the fastest growing
city in the country. !09 Despite the disinterest or criticism of some
of the architectural educators who answered his survey, Lorch
proceeded to plan for extension courses which would material
ize a few years later. "0
Impressions, visions, and choices in the full autumn months
of 1906 formed an agenda for Lorch to follow for the next thirty
five years of his active career at Michigan. Lorch prophesied his
own future in a letter of encouragement to a prospective stu
dent who had just heard of the new program at Michigan. He
wrote, "Our aim is to combine the cultural and technical work,
both of which are so needed by our practitioners today. Ann
Arbor is a pretty little town where I think you would enjoy not
only your work but your life."'"
The pleasantries of Ann Arbor were indeed abundant and
Lorch was by no means alone in his enthusiasm over its attrac
tions. In 1913 the new Ann Arbor Civic Association adopted
the motto of ''A City of Knowledge and Homes" to emphasize
the local values of home ownership and education. "2 But de
spite the comfortable ambience, Lorch was at least once in his
early years in Ann Arbor tempted to move on. Through Elmslie, he let it be known at the University of Illinois that he would
welcome an invitation to head the architecture department in
Champaign. In the summer of 1913 a series of correspondence
was exchanged, with Lorch insisting upon the autonomy of the
architecture department at the University of Illinois as a condi
tion of his accepting any offer. His ultimatum was especially
bold given that the creator of the architecture program at Illi
nois, architect Nathan C. Ricker, was still the active dean of the
College of Engineering in which the department of architecture
was located. " 3
In the end, Illinois could not promise any such administrative
alteration. Its president apologized to Lorch that, "it takes time
to do things in the corn belt." "4 Nevertheless, the appeal of Illi
nois to Lorch reveals his ambitions and frustrations with the
University of Michigan. Elmslie, ever Lorch's advocate, explained
that, "Professor Lorch has always wanted to get a little bit
nearer Chicago and in closer touch with a more active teaching field.""s Lorch probably still considered himself engaged in the
Chicago community of architects, who as a group had by rgr3 a
well-developed and distinct self-identity. "6 Almost as soon as he
arrived at Michigan he was escorting students to Chicago on
field trips to see the work of Sullivan, Burnham, and other ac
quaintances. During one of these visits he had his students show
Sullivan their plates of work in abstract design. His satisfac
tion with Sullivan's approval stayed with him his whole life. " 7
University of Michigan's President Hutchins (Angell 's suc
cessor) urged Lorch to remain in Ann Arbor, pleading that, "we
DESIROUS OF GOING can't allow you to go." 11 8 At the time of the Illinois bid, Lorch
TO A ARBOR had just succeeded in convincing the University of Michigan to
grant his program its own identity as a free-standing department.
This accomplishment was underscored by a new and strong,
but ultimately troubling appointment to the architecture pro
gram. It was a curious counterpoint to Lorch's interest in Illi
nois. During the same days when he was contemplating head
ing west, Lorch invited Sidney Fiske Kimball of the University
of Illinois to join the Michigan faculty to teach design and
architectural history. The letter of invitation is a clear measure
of Lorch's ambivalence about Ann Arbor. In the typewritten
and formal offer to Kimball, Lorch was very positive about the
opportunities at Michigan. But in his handwritten postscript,
he asked Kimball about the situation at Illinois, "since there is
a possibility that I may go there and naturally am curious of
learning as much as possible about the situation." 11 9 Kimball
arrived and Lorch remained. '20
The interests of Kimball and Lorch converged upon the con
venient history of Greek Revival architecture in Ann Arbor, with
Kimball making a study of the best examplars. Kimball's article
about these buildings suggests his sense of novelty but also his
limited commitment to the historical architecture of the Mid
west. He wrote about himself, "to the writer, coming to them a
stranger, they have had a special appeal, and with some of his
students- John Jewell, 'r5, Louis Voorhees, 'r6, and Dorothy
Probst, 'r8, he has sought to record their history. Only a begin
ning has been made, and others must carry on the work, but
enough is already accomplished to make possible an outline." 12'
Following his appreciation for the documentation of history, he
and his students prepared drawings of some of these homes. How
ever, this local project was modest in comparison to Kimball's
preparation, while in Ann Arbor, of one of the country's first dis
sertations in architectural history. With visits to see documents
at the Massachusetts Historical Society, he composed an inno
vative thesis on "Thomas Jefferson and the First Monument of
the Classical Revival in America." The dissertation was a strong
case for the rigorous use of original documents in architectural
history. Its methodology, based on antiquarian evidence not
readily available to academics in the Midwest, could justify
Kimball's preferences for an appointment elsewhere in the east.
Even more so, however, could Michigan's treatment of him DESIROUS OF GOING
during World War I. Kimball was among those whom the uni- TO ANN ARBOR
versity investigated in its panic to dismiss any disloyal faculty.
(While Kimball was away from Ann Arbor, his colleague Wells
Bennett advised him that, "there is great excitement here over
the war and the militarists have come into their own. The engi-
neers and medics are especially rabid.") 122 The final report of
investigator John C. Parker (professor of electrical engineering)
admits failure in trying to reveal anything more damnable than
Mrs. Kimball's ethnic heritage. Parker allowed that, "the utmost
in the way of definite evidence seems to be that Mrs. Kimball
is of German extraction. The habit of ostentation generally be-
lieved to be beyond Kimball's means, has been explained by
Dame Rumor as the result of German subsidy. This seems to be
about the extent of evidence against him." 123 Despite the investi-
gator's provocation, Lorch remained mute as he most likely
winced at the shared vulnerability of German descendants. With-
out any overt acknowledgement of the investigation, Kimball
left Michigan to lead the new Mcintire School of Fine Arts
at the University of Virginia. His final dissatisfaction with Ann
Arbor was, however, revealed in a letter sent from his new office
at the University of Virginia to Bennett. He confided that, "you
may imagine I am looking forward with some amusement to
meeting my dear friend Lorch there [in Washington] at the As-
sociation of Collegiate Schools of Architecture. Of course our
School is not even eligible to membership in that yet and no
doubt he will make every effort to keep us out. I should be ea-
ger to watch him however, when he sees the big rendered per-
spective of a commission of mine here- a new open air amphi-
theatre for concerts, costing s6o,ooo.oo- which will hang in the architectural exhibition in connection with the Convention. All
told, you see, I am having a lot more fun than if I had stayed at
Michigan!" 124
In contrast to Kimball's impatience with Michigan, other early
faculty followed lengthy careers in Ann Arbor. Lorch, Bennett,
design professor JJ. Albert Rousseau, construction professor
George McDonald McConkey, and design professor Louis
Holmes Boynton stayed with the program until retirement or
death. Theirs were not necessarily carefree appointments either.
Although he would eventually succeed Lorch as dean, Bennett's 43
DESIROUS OF GOI G early years at Michigan were no more secure than those of other
TO AN ARBOR
].]. Albert Rousseau20
].]. Albert Rousseau's Masonic Temple in Ann Arbor21
44
junior faculty. Disregarding any possible comparison with him
self, Lorch faulted Bennett for not having had "several years of
hard routine architectural experience in the field and in archi
tects' offices."' 25
Nine years after his own arrival, Lorch hiredJJ. Albert Rousseau
as senior professor of design. Rousseau was Quebecois by birth,
had studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, and created an image
of himself as a "conservative modernist" in his teaching and in
his work, including the Masonic temple and St. Mary's Student
Chapel in Ann Arbor.' 26 The Michigan students took an imme
diate liking to Rousseau and encouraged him to stay by dedi
cating their section of the yearbook to him. '27 Loyal to Ann Arbor
until his premature death (in 1931), Rousseau entered the 1922
Chicago Tribune competition and won an honorable mention.
An effusive newspaper tribute for his achievement in the com
petition credited him with legitimizing Michigan's leadership.
It stated that, "The college of architecture, the university, Ann
Arbor, and even the state of Michigan profited by the entry of
Prof. Rousseau. It showed the designers throughout the country
that this section of the nation is rising in the architectural world
and that the time is not long distant when the east would be
forced to recognize the work done in the middle west. "'28
Practicing architects in the state of Michigan were the first to
endorse the university's program in architecture through mon
etary contributions. In 1910, having surpassed by just a few
years the length of Jenney's attempt at an architecture program, Lorch was pleased to acknowledge the establishment of two
scholarships in architecture through the gifts of Albert Kahn and
the Michigan Chapter of the American Institute of Architec
ture. In what were surely either coordinated or competitive ges
tures, Kahn and the chapter each donated S55.00 to the college.' 29
Another, almost familial tribute to the program in architec
ture was the attention given it by the Pond brothers. Natives of
Ann Arbor, Irving Kane Pond and Allen Bartlit Pond achieved
their own significant status as Chicagoan architects with their
progressive approach to public architecture, evidenced by their
work on Hull House and Irving's contribution to the industrial
town of Pullman. They were dutiful in responding to Lorch's
queries and forthright with their opinions about the program.
I Ill f' I' l
Michigan Union ornament for fireplace designed by Pond and Pond, 191722
DESIROUS OF GOI G The interest in Ann Arbor was not by any means strictly nos-
TO ANN ARBOR talgic or beneficent for these two Michigan alumni. The broth
ers would gladly ride the rails homeward from Chicago to win
commissions along the periphery of the expanding campus.
Local connections and reputation made the homecoming sweet.
In 1910, Dean Henry M. Bates of the Law School approached
Irving Kane Pond with the proposal to build a student union.
Pond reasoned later that Bates had asked him and his younger
brother because they had "gained broad experience in the housing
and accommodation of various classes of people."' 3° The result
of the deal was a multi-purpose, campus clubhouse, which would
"minister broadly to the social and communal life" of the uni
versity's male students and faculty. '3' Funds for the building had
been raised through aggressive solicitation of the alumni, with
penurious former President Angell spearheading the drive for
others' money. The success of this building would be matched
years later with the Ponds' complementary, feminized building
for women, another "modern expression of college life" according
to its architects. '32
The creed of the Pond brothers reflects a savvy but sympa
thetic sense of the University of Michigan and their perceived
"role of an intermediary, halfway between the revolutionary aes
thetics and technology of the Chicago school and the taste for
traditional architecture ... clients often felt that precedent or
literary aesthetics required."'33 The Pond brothers' statement of
belief could just as well represent the emerging ethos of the
Department of Architecture under Lorch's leadership, which
was that "our work is not outre, it neither seeks the expression
of a freakish individuality, nor does it disclose a straining for
individuality; but it does attempt to use the forms to which we, in common with others, are heirs, in a fresh way which seems
to us to express the purpose to which the building is to be put
and the character of the time in which we live." '34
Building of the Women's L eague, 1928•3
47
SUPPLYING THE MISSING ELEMENT OF SANITY
The end of the First World War allowed the beginning of an era
of maturation for the program in architecture. Studies could
resume, eventually enhanced with cosmopolitan visiting lectur
ers in a new building devoted solely to the fields of architecture
and design. Some had interrupted their education for military
duties including the new Air Service. Ruth Love Archibald had
temporarily left Ann Arbor to work as a mechanical drafts"man"
(as she noted) in automobile factories and Catherine B. H eller
helped build seaplane wings. '35 Harold Batin was welcomed
back to the school from his service as a member of the military's
entertainment staff and, more specifically, "member of the band
which introduced jazz to Paris."'36 The devastation of war led
to work overseas for three others who were chosen from among
a national pool of applicants to go to France to aid in reconstruc
tion. '37 In a letter to University of Michigan President Marion
Burton, Emil Lorch proudly announced the departure of these
three students, who were Robert V Gay, Armin A. Roemer, and
Horace W. Wachter. '38
Shortly after the Armistice, Lorch was feted by the Michigan
Chapter of the American Institute of Architects and the Michi
gan Society of Architects. Following a dinner of roast chicken
and "fancy peach ices" at the Detroit Athletic Club, the gather
ing could enjoy the offerings of cigars and cigarettes and listen
to six men praise Lorch's leadership. This assembly of about
roo architects and businessmen endorsed Lorch's dual efforts of creating a separate college of architecture and locating it in
a building of its own. '39 Their voice vote that evening did not
translate into a building fund, however.
Instead the war's end allowed Lorch and his faculty to begin
what would amount to a lengthy campaign for a new building
and better program and to abandon the protest over the exclu
sion of architecture from the university's authorized curricu
lum for the Student Army Training Corps. '4° The focus upon so
many returning veterans also diverted Lorch's attention away
from concerns over an envisioned intrusion into the state of 49
MISSING ELEME T
Michigan did not secede entirely from a Beaux-Arts orientation24
so
Michigan of ill-prepared, unregistered builders who might
take jobs away from educated, licensed architects. 14
1 The heroic
slogans of war service were replaced with somewhat vague
forecasts for the architecture profession. Lorch told freshmen
that the strength of future architects and engineers would be
based upon "a sound spirit of nationalism," leaving behind a
"passing of the old individualism" characterized by unregistered
practitioners . 142
At the same time that Lorch heralded "nationalism" as the
future commonality of professionals' architecture, he wondered
more than ever if the location of his school in the Midwest might
not afford it opportunities unavailable to the East. His delib
erations fit architectural historian David Van Zanten's observa
tion that, "the idea that the West was different, more innova
tive, and better organized, is a fundamental motif of American
self-analysis." 143 Lorch shared his almost constant assessments
with leading architects, a practice he had begun as soon as he
arrived in Ann Arbor in 1906. Chicago-based Irving Kane Pond
did not know what to make of the following question asked by
Lorch in his survey of 1923: "should the schools of the Middle
West reflect the conditions of the Middle West or try to build up
a curriculum similar to that of the schools of the East?" Pond
answered by resisting the distinction. He wrote, "The thing that
strikes me at first is the assumption that there is a difference of
conditions between the East and Midwest which would call for
a difference in architectural training. That I might not be dis
posed to grant without a more serious consideration of the
subject. Another apparent assumption is that the curricula of the
Eastern schools cannot be changed, but that those of the West
ern schools might be changed to meet growing conditions." 144
Others with clear opinions responded unequivocally to Lorch 's
survey. Bertram Goodhue dictated, while gazing out of his New
York office, that, "anything that fails to reflect the conditions of
the middle west would be desirable. If Main Street and Gopher
Prairie are to have an architecture of their own it will have to
come about through very different methods from those in vogue
anywhere in the world and its coming about won't happen I
fancy for some thousands of years."I45
Louis Sullivan, to the contrary, wrote to Lorch that the East
ern schools "are wasting four years of the plastic period of young
men, and that you can improve upon these methods by supply
ing the missing element of sanity." 146 No matter what the vary
ing points of view, Lorch felt that the question was not only valid
but important since "the architectural point of view is still a
relatively new one in the middle west and hence needs whole
hearted support." !47 A few years after his survey, Lorch con tin
ued to highlight the differences in his efforts to distinguish
midwestern pedagogy. In 1928 he complained that there was
MISSI G ELEME T
51
MISSI G ELEME T too much standardization in design due to Beaux-Arts competi
tions held among schools in the East. '48 Lorch's questions, al
though directed at men of contrasting opinions, seem to have
confirmed his preconceived distinctions. Over time he evinced
a "continuing faith in western architectural progressivism."'49
What is just as informative as his Midwestern orientation is
the continuing urge to compare and the confident, albeit some
what confusing, accommodation of varying points of view.
Lorch was credited by his immediate administrative superior,
Dean Mortimer Cooley, with developing for the college a "catholic
attitude towards the views held on architectural education by
different groups of architects."'5°
Numbers alone created an image for the University of Michi
gan as an increasingly significant school of architecture. Given
the lack of adequate physical facilities, it is a wonder that the
school both retained faculty who were eight men to an office
and attracted more freshmen, who found themselves sharing
desks "as close to one another as office buildings in a big city." '5'
By 1922, the architecture program was the third largest in the
country. By 1925, its enrollment had risen to 337· Lorch claimed
that growth was not at the expense of quality since he did not
flinch from dismissing unsuccessful students. '52
A small minority of female students claimed even more of a
place in the crowded classrooms and occasionally among the
recipients of college honors. One of these women no doubt con
fused matters with her masculine name of Lawrence Sims,
which contrasts impressively with her very feminine visage in the student yearbook.' 53 To underscore the importance of gen
der, Lorch would continue to refer to coeds as "young women"
alongside references to "architectural students."'54 The official
exclusion of women from certain social activities on campus
was insured by the opening in 1919 of the Michigan Union,
a location into which men only were allowed to enter through
the front doors, to congregate for congenial "smokers" with
visiting architects. '55
Faculty expected women to specialize in decorative design
rather than architecture per se. In 1925, this assumption was
strengthened by the creation of a formally separate degree pro
gram in decorative design which was approved by the Board of
Regents. Upon successful completion of four years of study, a
candidate could earn a Bachelor of Science in Design. Lorch
was pleased that such an education could apply equally at home
as in business. '56 It filled a need, he felt, since it opened a career
path for "men and women of artistic ability, who lack the con
structive sense required of the architect, but have the ability and
good taste to make our homes and public meeting places more
attractive."'57 The design program drew impressively upon the
talents of regional artisans including Mary Chase Stratton of
Pewabic Pottery.
The establishment in the 1920s of the University of Michigan's
new academic programs in design, social work, library science,
and nursing; the decision to build even more women's dormito
ries; and the discussion of a women's side of campus, with gym
nasium, league, and homes planned and built to the east or north of campus, occurred in an era when female students constituted
a significant campus population. What might later be interpreted
as marginalization was then praised by both men and women
as a recognition of women's distinctive place in academia. This
differentiation continued beyond graduation. Three Michigan
women who majored in architecture in the 1920s maintained
their support of one another by establishing the Women's
Architectural Club, Chicago Chapter. They were Juliet Peddle,
Bertha Yerex Whitman, and Ruth H. Perkins. '58 And at least a
couple of their contemporaries who did not major in design
or architecture went on to significant careers documenting the
MISSI G ELEME T
Emil Lorch, far left, with architecture students in their cramped quarters in the Engineering Building2
5
53
MISSING ELEMENT
Dance card for Architects May Party, May I I, I92f6
54
evolution of modern American architecture: Margaret Bourke
White as a premier photographer of industrial architecture and
Esther McCoy as a critic of Californian modern architecture. '59
Other students of architecture also experienced isolation from
their fellow classmates. Louis Redstone, class of 1929, recalled
incidents of both blatant and insidious racism during his days
as a student at Michigan: "The first greeting I received from
the student who was to share a double-drafting table with me
was 'Hello Abe. "'' 60 Housing in Ann Arbor was difficult to find
for Redstone, fraternities were virtually inaccessible for him,
and he knew of only one other Jewish student in his freshman
architectural class.
The Architects' May Party aimed to be an inclusive festivity
for students and faculty alike. The talents of the students were
exercised in the design of the ballroom, costumes, posters, and
other details. Their craftsmanship drew attention from around
campus. Progress in the preparation was reported in the Michi
gan Daily and the results appeared both in this campus newspa
per and in the Michigan Alumnus. Scrapbooks of the era provide
much evidence of the entire student body's desire to celebrate
college life by creating and sharing personal photographs, dance
cards, cartoons, commencement programs, and other memora
bilia. The Architects' ball was the most ambitious of these shared
experiences since it required months of preparation with the
pressure of high expectations, both social and academic. Class
mates competed for the judgement of the faculty who treated
the preparation as seriously as any other design assignment. One
year the setting was the deep sea; another time it was the Ori
ent, with Lorch presiding in a pink cape, shiny black boots, and
turban. '6 '
The curriculum for all architecture students was debated and
changed throughout the 1920s. In 1919, outside critics from
Detroit had started to participate in the students' juries. Lorch
wished that professional architects could come from beyond
Detroit for very brief visits, but recognized that funds were not
available for their travel to participate in juries. '62
Despite the growing numbers of students in the 1920s, archi
tecture was still situated within the College of Engineering and
Architecture. Working against any effort at autonomy was
President Burton's concern about over-specialization among
costums pa-rty
\
chitects a II
27
MISSI G ELEME T the students. 163 Braving the resistance of Burton and the out
right intimidation of Burton's successor, President Clarence
C. Little , Lorch continued his campaign for the establishment
of an autonomous program of architecture which would allow
for an even stronger distinction in pedagogy between architec
ture, engineering, and the liberal arts. President Little was
the greatest threat to Lorch's interminable effort at autonomy,
which he had started already in 1913. This combative president,
who offended many with his advocacy of birth control and gen
eral tolerance of students' indiscretions, had plans to the con
trary by envisioning a fine arts division under which architec
ture would sit. His concept was effectively weakened with his
rather ignominious departure from the university, leaving Lorch
relieved at the victory over an arrangement which he had feared
would equate architecture with "dilettantism" in the eyes of
the general university. 164
Even though the architecture program would not gain its
administrative independence until 1931, it nevertheless was al
ready achieving a high national, and even international, profile
in the 1920s. While many references were made at the time to
Michigan's connections with Europe, one of the program's first
engagements was in Montevideo. "Michigan has scored in South
America!" was the opening salutation of a letter from Lorch to
Burton on March 7, 1921. Students had won a gold medal there,
along with silver medals and diplomas of merit for their sub
missions to this first Pan American Congress of Architects. 165
One of the great beneficiaries of these extroverted students and faculty was Louis Sullivan. In his last years, he expressed his
appreciation for the attention paid to him by the University of
Michigan. The welcome extended by Michigan not only gave
comfort to an elderly savant out of favor; it also signified the pro
gram's almost unique respect then for ''America's pioneering
spokesman for modern architecture." 166 George Elmslie, who rare
ly came to see his sister's family in Ann Arbor, nonetheless en
couraged the ongoing contact between Lorch and Sullivan. The
possibility of Sullivan teaching at Michigan was discussed by
Lorch and Elmslie, but they agreed that Sullivan's personal prob
lems were too inhibiting. 167 The students nevertheless eagerly
attended his occasional speaking engagements and showed their
respects to him by escorting him from campus to his train for
Chicago. After one of his last outings in 1924, Sullivan recalled
his "bully" time in Ann Arbor, writing later that the visit had been
"very eloquent on my part," and included "much mutual admi
ration."' 68 At this final visit to Ann Arbor just a few months be
fore his death in April 1924, he spent an evening with the Larches
and their new acquaintances, Mr. and Mrs. Eliel Saarinen.
The arrival of Eliel Saarinen at Michigan in November 1923
was a triumph for Lorch. Saarinen's appointment matched
President Burton's interest in a formal program for visiting fac
ulty in the creative arts, which had brought Robert Frost to
campus two years before Saarinen. The Finn's decision to teach
at Michigan was the result of letters between Ann Arbor and
Chicago, where Saarinen was residing temporarily. Because
Lorch was so uncertain about Saarinen's interest in Michigan,
he pursued at the same time another international visitor who
was referred to in one letter as "Monsieur Grapin of Paris." Grapin
receded from Lorch's list of desired visitors once Saarinen ac
cepted the invitation. (The Frenchman took a position instead
at Carnegie Institute of Technology). '69 Shortly after Saarinen's
arrival, a special reception was held at which "a pageant of arts
and crafts" was produced by student Henry S. Booth. Archi
tects from Detroit, Toledo, Grand Rapids, and Kalamazoo were
part of the gathering in a room lit only by fifty candles at an
"altar of pagan design."' 7°
A special work area was reserved for Saarinen and his select
group of students, who were seniors, graduate students, and
alumni. '7' Their projects included civic and community centers,
waterfronts, aviation fields, and a proposed Michigan School of
Architecture and the Allied Arts. This last project was intended
for the site where Lorch Hall was later built. '72 The students' models were published in the college's Michigan Technic upon
their completion. '73 They appreciated Saarinen's day-long pres
ence in their drafting room where he promoted the simultaneous
development of drawing and clay models for three dimension
al studies of architectural design. Modeling and casting work
as part of the design process were novelties claimed by Mich
igan thanks to Saarinen and his fellow Nordic visitor, Knud
Lon berg-Holm. '74 As he counseled his small group, Saarinen
also worked on developing his own proposal for the Detroit
Riverfront project. Interaction was most convenient in the
MISSI G ELEMENT
Eliel Saarinen with son E ero at the University of Michigan 28
57
MISSI G ELEME T drafting room anyway since Saarinen had no office of his own.
He shared one with Lorch, who had to ask him to leave his desk
in a dark corner of the room whenever there was need for a private meeting. l75
While in Ann Arbor, Saarinen became acquainted with George
G. Booth, whose son Henry had organized the welcoming re
ception. The senior Booth was a major newspaper publisher,
patron of the arts in Detroit, and occasional correspondent with
Lorch. Already in 1918, Lorch and Booth were sharing ideas
about a new instructor in design. 176 The Booth family moved
quickly to secure Saarinen's interest in Michigan by offering
him design responsibilities for the new Cranbrook Academy in
Bloomfield Hills. After an appointment of two academic years
at the university, Saarinen moved a few miles eastward to this pri
vate campus. Lorch recognized that the university could not com
pete with the offer of Booth. '77 At his departure, the senior class
commemorated Saarinen's valuable presence by giving a commis
sioned portrait of him to the college in his honor. 178 A few years
later, in 1932, the university paid a much more public tribute to
him by awarding him an honorary degree. His munificent patron,
Mr. Booth, continued to serve the university as a benevolent neigh
bor in advocating better physical facilities for the architecture
program and, most importantly, in establishing the George G.
Booth Traveling Fellowship for Architecture students. l79
The success of Saarinen at Michigan encouraged Lorch to
seek out other prominent designers , especially from Europe.
Lonberg-Holm had arrived during the same semester as Saarinen. He, too, had been interested in the Chicago Tribune competi
tion. He had prepared an entry but never submitted it. His, like Saarinen's, achieved its own significance. While he was at
the University of Michigan, his design was published in Walter
Gropius' Internationale Architektur (1925) and was cited as inspiration in the Howe and Lescaze PSFS tower in Philadelphia. 180
Lonberg-Holm did not arrive with the same publicity as
Saarinen. Nor was his innovative, modernist pedagogy compen
sated as well by either salary or title. Saarinen was professor,
Lonberg-Holm was instructor. Saarinen earned the princely sum
of s4,ooo per year and Lon berg-Holm only s2,400. 181 A student
remembered him though as "a young Danish architect more
enlightened than all the others ... Holm stimulated many of us
by his logic and analyses. He demonstrated that the essence of
architectural design was based on these things without fashion
or traditional styles." 182 Lonberg-Holm left Michigan to return
to New York (having emigrated from Denmark) and shortly
after his Ann Arbor days he became involved in C.I.A.M. Both
Saarinen and Lonberg-Holm retained an interest in architec
ture at Michigan. (Lonberg-Holm would return years later to
help establish a formal architectural research program).
Lorch hired others from abroad during this decade of pros
perity. Francis Onderdonk came in 1925 from Vienna. His essays
in the Michigan Technic about the marvels of concrete illus
trate the program's appreciation for new technology and mate
rials. His articulation of these values at the crossroads of tech
nology and aesthetics is rare, precise evidence of the Michigan
faculty's version of modernism. He asserted that, "no other mode
of construction can so well express the supremacy of man's
mind. " 183 Concrete tracery will allow the architect to fulfill his
poetic duty, he wrote in one essay, but at the same time concrete
can also insure "clear, simple outlines, large spaces of even sur
face, set off by outstanding features, [which] alone can stand the
test of the automobilist who flashes by, or the business man
who sends up a quick glance." 184 Such references to the civic and
capitalist benefits of modern architecture paralleled the claims
of the university's engineers, who by the 1920s were proudly
attracting attention to Michigan's exploratory collaboration
between business and academia in advertisements about their
new Department of Engineering Research.
Lorch asked other prominent architects to stop by cam
pus, if only briefly. A year after the arrival of Saarinen and Lcmberg-Holm, Erich Mendelsohn paid his first visit to Ann
Arbor. And for years thereafter, Lorch corresponded with H.P.
Berlage about his prospects of coming. This stretch for a contin
ual international repertoire transcended Lorch's simultaneous
fixation upon the role of the Midwest in shaping architecture.
He wrote in his "Report of the College of Architecture, 1927-
1928" that, "Europe has been so far in advance of the United
States in the development of modern design that such distin
guished representatives [as Eliel Saarinen and H.P. Berlage]
are quite invaluable." Lorch even tried to extend this Continen
tal association into his home life by speaking French at the
MISSING ELEMENT
59
MISS! G ELEMENT
6o
dinner table. Daughter Betty remembered him saying often, "I
think I'm really a Frenchman." 18s
Exhibits of architects' works expanded further the program's
exposure to architecture elsewhere. Among the twenty-five
exhibitions in 1927- 28 were pencil sketches by Hugh Ferriss
and photographs brought by Lars Marnus, architect from
Copenhagen, showing old and modern Danish architecture. 186
Such shows were good local public relations for the college and
complemented those of the Ann Arbor Art Association, which
Lorch had helped establish upon his arrival in 1906.
The students themselves contributed more than once to the
international identity of the school through their own travelling
exhibitions. At the invitation of Dr. Edmund Schuler, who vis
ited Ann Arbor in 1924, a select group of students sent their
work to an exhibition at the Akademie der Ki.inste zu Berlin. 187
The school's cultivation of impressive associations yielded big
dividends in this one show since the Michigan students' draw
ings were featured along with those of Sullivan, Saarinen, the
Pond brothers, Albert Kahn, and other leading American ar
chitects. The idea for the show, with the title Ausstellung Neuer
Amerikanischer Baukunst, was attributed to Sullivan. Irving K. Pond
wrote a general framework about modern development for the
show's published catalog in collaboration with an unidentified
German-language author, who concluded that the show's partic
ular cohort of modernists were most capable of confronting "der
phantasielosen Anbefung des Technik, der Mechanisierung
des Geistes und der Entmannung der Kunst" (the unimagina
tive worship of technique, the mechanization of the spirit, and the neutering of art). 188 It is remarkable that eighteen- and
nineteen-year-old Ann Arbor students would play a part in this
show addressing the evolving distinctions within modernism
just shortly after the Bauhaus had held its own International
Architecture Exhibition in Weimar. They were even recognized
in the catalog for their "surprisingly good models of buildings
and monumental complexes" which could not be transported
to Berlin because of their fragile materials. Saarinen had deliv
ered an international visibility to novices whose later work
would not be so conveniently favored.
As of 1928, the architecture faculty could welcome with greater
pride both distinguished guests and aspiring students. At long
Saal 8 Saal 9 Ann Arbor
Saal 7
PENNELL
-Saal 6
SCHULE UND
UNIVER-SIT .AT
-Saal 5
WACH
I
I •• I
STADTEBAU
PRESSE
Saal 4
DIE HEUTIGE
STADT
Saal 3
SULLIVAN
Saal 2
DIE HEUTIGE STADT
Saal 1
ALTAMERIKA
VorlaaJJe
I I
·r
Saal 10
-Saal 11
LAND-HAUS
r-Saal 12
I MaBetah 1:30
Floor plan for th e exhibit at the Akademie der Kunste zu Berlin29
MISSI G ELEME T last a new building stood ready for the exclusive use of archi
tects . Designed by Lorch, the four-story edifice served as the
southern anchor of the campus. It drew praises most strongly
from Lewis Mumford who congratulated Lorch in writing that,
"it is a worthy brother of the Union: and I trust that the two will
set the pattern for all the buildings that remain to be built on
the canvas [sic] - a reproach to the bastard gothic and the dull
classic." 189 The new facilities were still not impressive enough to
entice Henry-Russell Hitchcock to leave Vassar for Michigan.
His youth had not prevented him from insisting upon a senior
title, which ultimately led to an impasse in his hiring. 19°
Curiously, in a decade of considerable land acquisitions and
building, the Architecture Building was the only evidence on
campus of the practicing abilities of the architectural faculty.
Under President Burton, a "Committee of Five" had been estab
lished to oversee the university's building program. Members of
this committee included Regent Clements, President Burton,
Secretary Smith, Professor of Engineeringjohn Shepard, archi
tect Albert Kahn, but no member of the architecture faculty.19
1
The concerns of this quintet were structures, sewers, sidewalks,
streetlamps, and landscaping. The removal of older fixtures like
the campus outhouses was discussed in the same meeting that
Kahn presented sketches of his proposed literary building (later
named Angell Hall). 192 Lorch had at first thought that Burton
and his committee would support a new building for architec
ture, but realized during the president's five-year tenure that
other units, and architects, were priorities. l93
President Burton's utilitarian pragmatism about architecture
echoed remarkably the much earlier proclamations of President
Angell. Burton stated that, "When the University of Michigan
succumbs [sic] to megalomania her vitality will begin to dimin
ish. All of our statements about brick and mortar, all of our
descriptions of the expansion of the campus and the develop
ment of shops and laboratories are of value just in proportion
as they bear, not upon the means, but upon the ends of a true
institution of higher learning." 194 Furthermore, he stated else
where, "It is not our function to pile up stones and brick, but
to inspire young people with the ideals of good citizenship. We
rejoice in our new buildings, of course, but only as we see in them a means to this end." 195 Kahn understood this restraint of
the administrators and successfully entered into contracts on
their terms. Design alterations in his building projects caused
furious remonstrances but never prevented future work. In the
rg2os alone, he designed ten new buildings on campus, includ
ing Betsy Barbour dormitory, the General Library, the William
Clements Library, Angell Hall, East Physics, Couzens Hall,
East Medical building, University Hospital, Simpson Memo
rial Institute, and University Museums building. H e was so
successful at public relations around town that his office even
designed the Ann Arbor News building.
Students as well as faculty could be frustrated in their efforts to influence the design of new architecture on campus. When
President Burton died in 1925, student committees wanted to fulfill his desire for a campus campanile. ' 96 Led by Alfred
Connable, President of the Student Council, they on their own
approached Saarinen with the request to prepare a design for a
tower. He obliged, with a structure reminiscent of his Chicago
Tribune entry. The students enthusiastically endorsed his pro
posal and the successor to Burton, acting president Alfred Lloyd,
must have as well since for a while the drawing hung in the
office of the president. ' 97 The proposed Saarinen tower seemed
Architectural fragm ents on the la wn adjacent to th e Art and Architecture Building30
MISSI G ELEME T
The Albert Kahn office in the Lorch era secured choice commissions both at the center of campus and along its expanding peripheryJ'
MISSING ELEME T
MISSING ELEMENT
Eliel Saarinen's proposal for a campanile on the Uni versity of Michigan campus, 192532
66
almost a fait accompli in its appearance in red leather on the cover
of the 1927 Michiganensian. Town and gown alike realized the
tourist value of a tower. One Ann Arbor newspaper predicted
that the city would become a "motorists' mecca" because of the
attraction. '98
More than six decades later, Connable could still recall the
frustration felt by the students as their initiative was derailed by
university administrators who advised them that the tower pro
ject was too ambitious for them to handle alone.'99 The universi
ty's Board of Regents appointed a committee to study various
other plans. Irving K. Pond claimed his rights to the design of
any future tower, complaining that his office had already pre
pared one at the request of the university. In the end, Albert
Kahn once again won the commission for his office. His first
proposal for a campus tower, sharing space with Saarinen's in a
1925 Michigan Alumnus article, imagined three temples ascend
ing to the top of the structure. Insufficient funds delayed build
ing for a decade, until finally in 1935 the university could cele
brate the erection of a much revised plan by Kahn, which might
be interpreted as a stunted version of Saarinen's. Kahn issued a
written statement that perhaps anticipated facile comparisons.
He wrote that, "in its exterior treatment no particular prece
dent has been followed ... [and] in construction a rather novel
scheme has been followed. " 200 He did not acknowledge that the
tower was his second tribute to the memory of Burton since in
1925, soon after the president's death, he offered his services to
design the new home for Burton's widow with funds collected by generous alumni and other friends.
A few years after Lorch's own structure on campus was
opened, he felt finally able in 1930 to take a long-postponed trip to Europe with his close colleague, Detroit architect George D.
Mason. 20' In his absence, the modern architecture of Europe
once again reached Ann Arbor, this time in the form of an ex
hibit of the work of Peter Behrens. Lorch's daughter Betty pre
viewed the event in a letter to her father, writing "from what I
already know of the work of Peter Behrens it promises to be a
very thrilling affair. " 202
Lorch returned home from his journey to a university facing
the Depression. The hardship was not immediate. In fact, in 1931
the architecture faculty could finally celebrate the university's
approval of a separate college of architecture. What is more,
three new faculty members were hired that year, including Roger
Bailey, Beaver Edwards, and Ralph Hammett. 203 However, by
1933 the campus infrastructure was seriously threatened by
bank holidays and desperate legislatorS.204 Salaries were reduced
and vacant positions around campus were left unfilled. Enroll
ment declined, commencement addresses were cautious, and the
architects' ball was considered an unnecessary extravaganza.
As of 1932, the course catalog no longer included the claim that
"never before has there been so excellent an outlook for the trained
architect." 205 In 1933, the George G. Booth Traveling Fellowship
was cancelled for the first time since 1924, due to "unusual cir
cumstances. " 206 Alumnus Irving K. Pond came back to campus
as a distinguished visiting lecturer, perhaps to generate a little
revenue for himself while his office waited for work. 207
A more common means for architects to remain profession
ally active during the Depression, albeit with minimal support,
was the federal Works Progress Administration project to sur
vey historic architecture. Lorch, although at no risk of unem
ployment, joined the project as of 1934. 208 He oversaw the efforts
of architects throughout the state to document its architectural
heritage. His own appraisal appeared in the WPA guide to the
state, for which he wrote a section entitled "The Development
of Architecture." His piece was not entirely a survey of the past;
he also addressed contemporary building, and the importance
of a "fresh concept of architecture needed to produce new forms
and revitalize tradition. " 2 og He acknowledged the good work of
his contemporaries, including Michigan faculty and alumni,
with praise in particular for those buildings which showed
a "quality of independence." (These in his opinion were Detroit's Federal Building, Naval Armory, Wardell Garage, and Deaconess Hospital). 210
Lorch had been successful in many of his invitations to visit
ing faculty, but he realized more than ever during the Depression
that salaries did not compensate his more permanent staff ad
equately. He complained in 1935 to President Alexander Ruthven
that, "for many years the salaries of our faculty have been low,
perhaps on the theory of substantial outside earnings. This has
never been a true picture since really remunerative architectural
work is not available in Ann Arbor and cannot be done away
MISS! G ELEMENT
MISSI G ELEME T
68
from here by anyone paying adequate attention to teaching and
other university duties." 2" Lorch seemed to appreciate those facul
ty who were loyal, referring to Ernest Wilby as "true blue. " 212
While they in turn valued his commitment, the faculty of the
1930s began to assert its own authority with the establishment
for the first time of a faculty committee. This act was in keeping
with the general movement around campus towards a more com
plex administration less dependent upon single, senior faculty.
Meetings were held, minutes were kept, and the program gradu
ally assumed a more participatory operation. Thirty years after
his arrival in Ann Arbor, Lorch stepped down as director of the
college. The students adorned him with a crown and recognized
him openly by his nickname "the king." Their successors were
more aggressive towards the college administration. The stu
dents of 1940 proposed that they be allowed to grade the fac
ulty, "as is done in other units of the University." The faculty
minutes recorded "no great interest" on the part of the profes
sors present, but allowed the experiment to go forward. 2'3 As
of 1938, such policy issues had become the concern of the new
dean of the college, Wells Bennett.
After retirement, Lorch drove throughout the state to measure
and photograph structures as monumental as Fort Mackinac
and as modest as dilapidated farmhouses exhibiting their ver
nacular twist on Greek Revival. Others would come along on
these rides and thereby contribute with Lorch to the Historic
American Buildings Survey.
Lorch also maintained his habit of correspondence. Elmslie still confided in him, and so too did former students. One of the
most eloquent letters came to him from the college's prize stu
dent of just a few years earlier, Raoul Wallenberg. The letter
of this successful graduate from Sweden was an optimistic
query about the prognosis for employment in the United States:
Dear Professor Lorch, My thoughts very often go back to you and your
school. Now that rrry work in South Africa and Palestine is at an end
I have had more time to remember the wonderful three years and a
half which I spent in Ann Arbor. Many times I have thought that
since I am likely always to have one foot abroad I should at least
see to it that "abroad" would mean America.
I am happy to tell you that I have received some very fine offers for
work, mostly, however, in queer far away places, such as South Af
rica, South America and Persia. It therifore struck me that I ought
to consult you bifore making arry decision. I feel it a pity to turn rrry
back on architecture after all the good times it has given me. I believe
the building industry has an enormous development ahead for the
next few years in America and I would like to do rrry share in the great
things that are to come. Please tell me if you think that conditions
now are such that I would have a chance of finding a paid job as
draftsman in New York or Detroit. Or if not there, then in some other
place in the US. Besides my training at your school I have had
little training in matters architectural - only the bath project of which
I sent you some illustrations. But I have had some business training
that might do somebody some good if he employed me in his firm.
In South Africa I was a rather good salesman and organizer. We
introduced marry new Swedish articles there and it was extremely
important that negotiations were carried on diplomatically, persua
sively, and speedily. They were put in my hands - it was a good train
ing. Maybe you know of somebody who needs a man with a training
on the borderline between architecture and business? I have so much
of a longing to come to America again that I would be coming over on
much less than a definite offer for a job. I would therifore ask you
at any rate to give me a general idea of conditions in the field.
Thanking you in advance for your kindness and asking you to
give my best regards to Mrs. Lorch, Mr. and Mrs. Hebrard and Mr.
and Mrs. Bailey, I am, Yours sincerely, Raoul Wallenberg. 2'4
The response from Lorch is unknown, since no copy survived
in his archives. No matter what the reply, Wallenberg would
never realize the typical career benefits of an education in archi
tecture at Michigan. Instead, he went on just a few years later
to become the heroic savior of thousands of lives in wartime
Hungary. He was thereafter a prisoner of the Cold War and
Soviet secrecy. His ultimate fate remains a mystery.
MISSI G ELEME T
Raoul Wallenberg33
6g
STILL UNCERTAIN BUT LESS CONFUSED
Mid-century University of Michigan was the crowded rendez
vous for dedicated faculty, glamorous guest speakers, and a stu-
dent population diversified by numerous veterans and a growing
coterie of coeds . Student numbers swelled so much with return
ing military that the College of Architecture and Design was
obliged for the first time in its history to turn away qualified
out-of-state applicantS. 215 Shortly after the last year of the war
when 291 students were enrolled, the enrollment figures more
than doubled to 776 by 1950. 216 Some predicted that enrollment
would double again in another twenty years so that by 1970 there D esign Class, 194934
might be over 1,400, whose needs could only be met by devel-
opment of a new facility north of the Huron River. 21 7 While the
return of veterans created a temporary profile of older students,
a more permanent transition in gender ratios of enrollment al-
so occurred. Women numbered forty-two of the 105 freshmen in
1950. (That same year, the university's College of Engineering
admittedjust one woman in its freshman class of 280). 218
As leader of the College of Architecture and Design, Dean
Wells C. Bennett advised the students that the post-war years
were transitional, following the finished "Battle of Styles." He
allowed that, "as after all wars, there remain some misgivings
as to whether there was a victory." He assured the students in
their own publication that, "architectural education is now navi
gating more quiet waters, although the breezes of discussion
are still brisk. We are still uncertain but less confused." 2 '9
Bennett's thoughts reflected the traditional resistance of Michigan's faculty to unite behind any single "style" to the exclusion
of others. He had worked to shape this diversity already in 1937,
when he became the successor to Emil Lorch as the third leader
of the architectural program at the University of Michigan and
the first to carry the title of dean. It was hardly exceptional
under Bennett's leadership that a design studio was taught by
the team of Professor Frederick O'Dell, who favored the Beaux
Arts tradition, and Professor Edward Olencki, a graduate of
the Miesian Illinois Institute of Technology. The dean endorsed
STILL UNCERTAI
72
such a combination, recogmzmg in 1951 that, "the important
schools of Architecture have gone through the process of ad
justment from the highly academic Beaux Arts system to the
more intellectual German approach of the Bauhaus, or to an
independent point of view based on American environment
and American building techniques." 22 0 Michigan preferred an
independent and pluralistic view over any lockstep compliance
with the Bauhaus or any other orientation. 22 1 Graduate Charles
Moore (1948) recalled that, "there was very, very little of the
Kraut-ish persuasion at Michigan." He instead characterized
some of his teachers as "woodsy Finns." 222
A versatile exploration of architectural issues including de
sign became synonymous with the University of Michigan at
mid-century through a series of well-attended meetings known
simply as the Ann Arbor Conferences. The first, held in early
1940, turned the Michigan Union briefly into a salon for pre
mier architects, designers, and academics, including Walter
Gropius, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Eliel and Eero Saarinen, Mies
van der Rohe, Antonin Raymond,James Marston Fitch,Joseph
Hudnut, Albert Kahn, Alden Dow, and other representatives
from the Museum of Modern Art, Architectural Forum, and sig
nificant schools of architecture of both modernist and Beaux
Arts proclivities. Without any set agenda for the meeting, these
participants elected to devote two days to exchanging ideas
across the table about the title of the conference, "Coordination
in Design with Regard to Education in Architecture and Allied
Design."
At the first of these conferences, Walter Gropius delivered a formal paper titled "Contemporary Architecture and the Training
of the Architect," which was subsequently printed by Harvard
rather than Michigan. 223 In this late-afternoon address he delib
erated at length over the challenge in finding "better education
by releasing the creative powers of each individual. " 224 Not sur
prisingly, this former leader of the encyclopedic Bauhaus hoped
that, "we shall advance towards a wider and more profound con
ception of design as one great organic whole." He was troubled
that "our great heritage seems to have left people stunned and
bereft of original impulse and, from being participators and cre
ators, we have changed into connoisseurs and scholars," caus
ing a separation between the public and the expert. He regretted
o~~J•2 b, t·. hou~c~s
s...t.. l'.r•
II ITDfrrn _g:g:otrn 111_1 'I I I I tiTJ ttiJt!I] tJJ[J Lrr!-~-housC'!
that the study of architecture had become less of a creative en- Student Charles Moore's
deavor than an aesthetic one shared exclusively by academics. Malibu Beach house de
In keeping with the tone of his contemplative piece, Gropius sign35
did not mandate any particular blueprint for improved peda-
gogy. Instead, he advocated generally for a manual training
through actual building lessons. This practical application was
perhaps a reflection of his own earlier preferences as a student
towards construction rather than theory. 225 He even endorsed,
perhaps unknowingly, a development in the University of Mich-
igan's architecture program by urging his fellow pedagogues to recognize that more advanced students could learn along with
their faculty in a laboratory workshop for architecture.
Despite the fact that at least two other Bauhaus colleagues in
exile were in the audience (Maholy-Nagy and Mies van der Rohe)
and that the war in his homeland was leading to aggressions to
the north, south, and east, Gropius made no mention in his speech
of the war or its effect on contemporary architecture or archi
tects. (Not until later that year would he speak publicly about
the war). 226 Nor, unfortunately, does there remain any written
evidence of what was probably a fascinating exchange of ideas 73
STILL UNCERTAIN
Projected development of the university's Central
Mall, including an unrealized School of Music building next to the new Burton Tower and across
from the new Horace H.
Rackham School of Graduate StudiesJ6
74
and fresh experiences of Bauhaus emigres and their American
colleagues. Had he chosen to, Bennett could undoubtedly have
engaged his guests knowledgeably in a discussion about the
effects of war upon European architecture, given his own conti
nental travel of 1932 and 1933 when he studied the extensive
rebuilding programs after World War I. Addressing his guests in general terms instead, Dean Bennett
claimed that this conference heightened an awareness of the com
mon interests shared by the architect, "the applied designer," the
artist, and the public. Later he stated enigmatically, and perhaps
with a certain amount of self-deception, that these conferences
in Ann Arbor led the way towards a more "friendly esthetic" than
the international style. 227 The college, in his view, was a clear
inghouse rather than a final repository for the collaborative
thinking achieved among conference participants who agreed
to avoid the permanence of formalities: "no committees ... no
reports ... no resolutions ... no manifestos." 228 Subsequent Ann
Arbor Conferences were limited to specialties within subfields
of architecture and planning including hospital or theater design.
And contrary to the initial preference for impermanence, these
later annual meetings were documented through final reports.
In their own discussions, the Michigan art and architecture
faculty debated over ways for the college to accommodate most
effectively their talents and interests as a diverse staff in charge
of an increasingly complex curriculum. They asserted their self
confidence in the establishment in 1951 of several standing committees to help oversee the college's administration. A sub-
sequent reorganization in 1954 resulted in three separate de-
partments within the college- art, architecture, and landscape
architecture. Leonard Eaton , then a relatively new recruit on the
architecture faculty, recalled much later that, "Bennett accept
ed departmentalization very graciously although he couldn't
understand why nobody liked his benevolent dictatorship. " 229
Bennett did protest at the time to the new president of the uni
versity, Harlan Hatcher, that, "except for a very few men the fac
ulty is without knowledge of or interest in parliamentary
procedures. Again excepting for a very few men, the teaching
spirit of the staff is fine in spite of the attempts of the malcon
tents to sabotage morale."23°
The faculty shared an unbridled "can-do" attitude about their
role in the university, the state of Michigan, and "among our
neighbors on this planet."23' Philip Youtz marvelled at the tech
nical wonders of materials and constructions including the
steel frame, which he claimed "offered a cure for claustropho
bia." 232 The twin Huron Towers, built in rg6o along Huron
River according to his Lift Slab method of construction, became
a landmark in engineering technology and efficiency. Had it
not been for the steel strike and the strike of structural steel
erectors that winter, Huron Towers would have been lifted
floor by floor at an even quicker pace. 233
Along with the college's own faculty, visitors brought innova
tive thinking and practice to Lorch Hall. Peripatetic inventor
Buckminster Fuller was welcomed time and again to Ann Arbor
to inspire students to construct their own cardboard geodesic domes and to discuss "The Comprehensive Designer," ''Archi
tecture as Science," "Energetic Geometry," and "Lightweight
Structure." Intellectual discourse was also enriched through a
STILL UNCERTAIN
Myron Chapin with a student in the Art and Archi-lecture Building37
regular series of other guest lecturers. Steen Eiler Rasmussen, Huron Towers under con
Edmund Bacon, Sibyl Moholy-Nagy, Siegfried Giedion, Frank struction38
Lloyd Wright, Richard Neutra, Paul Rudolph, and Isamu
Noguchi all came to Michigan in an impressive procession
throughout the rgsos.
Even Erich Mendelsohn wrote in gracious appreciation about
his visits to Ann Arbor, despite the fact that back in 1940 the 75
STILL UNCERTAI
Outside the home of the Alpha Rho Chifraternity, students displayed their own geodesic dome. Its bearers include Martin Gehner (far left) and Roderick Warren (secondfrom left)39
Frank Lloyd Wright during his visit to the college in 1958, with '58 class president, Robert L. .{iegelman4°
college had declined to offer him a faculty position. Perhaps he
was unaware that Albert Kahn had attempted unsuccessfully at
the start of the war to secure him refuge through a teaching
position in Ann Arbor. Kahn had written directly to University
of Michigan President Alexander Ruthven, "You undoubtedly
know of the large number of students attracted by Gropius to
Harvard. Mendelsohn, in my opinion, is a far better man and
would have just as large a following because he is well known
in the profession ... the University of Michigan could not possi
bly have a better man in charge of design."234 However, in keeping
with the university's general reluctance to shelter emigres dur
ing the war, Ruthven rejected Kahn's proposal on account of a
lack of funds. The president was following a certain conservative
consistency, leading one historian to observe later that, "given
its great size and prestige, and its relatively cosmopolitan pre
war tradition, Michigan appears to have recruited dispropor
tionately few of these scholars ... The legendary enlivening and
deprovincializing effect these intellectual immigrants had on
American academia was less pronounced at Michigan."235
At the same time that the college invited leading architects,
artists, and critics for brief visits at least, it was also attempting
to project its own image and influence beyond Ann Arbor. Tele
vision beamed a few faculty into living rooms as early as 1950
through the university's pioneering Michigan Media program.
During the first semester of this new form of outreach, Associ
ate Professor of Design Catherine Heller appeared on Univer
sity of Michigan television to present a course on the design of
home interiors. Others, including George Brigham, Wells Bennett, andJean
Hebrard, travelled by car to towns as near as Willow Run and as far as the Upper Peninsula where home builders and commu
nity planners could see first-hand the newer features of domes
tic architecture and community planning. Already during the
Depression, the college had offered an architectural clinic
for the benefit of prospective home builders with minimal re
sources. 236 The home builders' demand for the services of the col
lege increased multifold during and after World War II, when
the college undertook a series of "Home Builders Institutes"
around the state. At that time, the college felt an obligation to
"give proper guidance to the lay public in buying or building a
home. " 237 A series of lectures were offered to Chambers of Com
merce, which coordinated meetings between faculty and residents.
These courses included Choosing the Site; Planning the Home;
The Contractor and Construction; Post War Materials of Con
struction; Financing the Home; Heating and Plumbing; Heat
ing and Air Conditioning; Electrical Equipment and Post War
Gadgets; Furnishings and Color in the Home; and Landscaping
STILL UNCERTAI
George Brigham 's class,
4 June 194041
77
Drawing Class, 194942 the Home. In the winter of 1945- 46, over eleven hundred resi
dents enrolled in the program in Grand Rapids. As a group, the
faculty lecturers in these institutes advocated a certain lifestyle
to match modern design and economy: "The house design of to
day should surpass that of our colonial forefathers and be com
posed of large plates of glass, wall surfaces of brick or sprayed
cinder block, creosote-stained or oiled wood, anything and ev
erything to get away from expensive maintenance. The inside,
too, should be as free as possible from labor-provoking elements
such as white enamelled woodwork, elegantly polished floors
and crystal chandeliers. Homes should be places of comfortable relaxation, not mills of drudgery. " 2
38
These Home Planners Institutes, probably the most ambitious
of the college's civic offerings, lasted only a few seasons. With
the postwar surge in enrollment, faculty returned to duties on cam
pus. Outlasting the institute was the college's commitment to
urban studies and to research in housing. In 1946, Dean Bennett
formalized the college's interests in urban development by es
tablishing a program in city planning, to be headed by John
Hyde. For improved housing, Professor George Brigham devel
oped his "Brigham Building System." His investigation of fac
tory fabrication of standardized building began during the
war with contracts with the War Production Board and federal
expectations for war housing derived from these funds. 2 39
Brigham's system was based upon a joining device for standard
ized wall and roof panels whose uniformity would allow for
mass production and relatively easy assembly. 24° His approach
to the design of this system has been characterized as "Califor
nia modern modified for the Midwest." 24' At least one full-scale
model was constructed on campus. It stood as an early proto
type of collaborative research between the college, the federal
government, and industry. At a time when there were not enough architects as educa
tors, the college hired several of its own graduates as faculty
in design, structure, and building construction. From the classes
of 1948 through 1960 came fifteen new teachers, including
Willard Oberdick (1948), Robert B. Lytle (1950), Robert C. Metcalf
(1950), Lester Fader (1950), Edward Hammarskjold (1951),
Tivadar Balogh (1952), William Carter (1952), Kingsbury Marzolf
(1952), William A. Werner (1952),Joseph Wehrer (1954), ]. Sterling
Crandall (1955), A. Peters Opperman (1955), Harold]. Borkin
(1957), Robert W. Marans (1957), and HenryS. Kowalewski (1960).
Most of these men retained a loyalty to their alma mater by com
mitting entire teaching careers to the University of Michigan.
These graduates of Michigan shared offices in Lorch Hall with
design and research experts from the East, including Theodore
C. Larson, Walter Sanders, and William Muschenheim. This
trio of new faculty came at the personal invitation of Dean
Bennett, who was encouraged to contact them through Knud
Lonberg-Holm, the Danish modernist who had taught in Ann
Arbor. They came with the understanding that the architec
ture program at Michigan needed "revitalization. " 24
2
Their positions were created for them as the result of a criti
cal and confidential review of the college conducted, at the invitation of Dean Bennett, by Harold D. Hauf, chairman of the De
partment of Architecture at Yale University; Joseph Hudnut;
Joseph D. Murphy of the School of Architecture of Washington
University in St. Louis; architect John Root of Chicago; and William W. Wurster, dean of the School of Architecture at MIT.
In its report of April 2, 1948, the review team of five urged the
dean of Michigan's architectural program to leave landscape
architecture to Michigan State College in East Lansing and
instead strive to overcome "the most serious defects in the col
lege," including "a) the lack of sufficient teachers with broad
STILL UNCERTAI
Art and Architecture Build
ing, April 194943
79
STILL UNCERTAIN
8o
vision and aptitudes for leadership in the courses in architec
tural design, and b) the somewhat weak organization of the work
in this field, and c) some confusion in the understanding of the
objectives of architectural design." 243 While this team of review
ers advocated team teaching rather than the singular leadership
of recently retired design professor Hebrard (whom they never
theless praised), they did not extend this division of authority to
the administration of the college. Instead they advised Bennett
to act on his own, stating that, "we believe that you should have
complete freedom to effect such reorganization. " 244 So as one of
his last major initiatives prior to the departmentalization of
the college, Bennett himself travelled eastward to seek out his
new staff.
Soon after Muschenheim, Larson, and Sanders arrived they
were honored with senior titles. They, too, demonstrated a last
ing commitment to the University of Michigan by remaining a
part of the faculty throughout their careers. Michigan's debate
over design and design theory was enlivened by the voices of
these easterners, who together comprised the so-called "design
team" of faculty. 245 By distancing himself from his earlier pur
suit of architectural rationalization and his own publications
in Architectural Record, Muschenheim found himself disagreeing
with Larson and Sanders. Muschenheim recalled later in life that,
"when I went to Michigan, Larson and Sanders were very much
involved with that approach. I saw its value, but I also had ar
guments that it was only a limited part of architectural think
ing. They really came to the conclusion that you could make a design by analyzing it first. In teaching, and in my own work, I
found that that doesn't really work. I mean, it doesn't. So we
had lots of arguments about that. And I also found that when I
started teaching- because I had never done it before- that the
students didn't know why they came up with certain solutions ."
Disagreements were not censored from the classroom either.
Muschenheim delighted in remembering that, "I instituted a
course in architectural theory and philosophy in architecture. I
gave this course with Professor Handler, who was an economist
really. It was very interesting since I learned a lot because of all
of the homework I had to do for this course. Professor Handler
was not an architect, but he knew a lot about philosophy, which
I had read but never, never taken a course in. So it was very
interesting. We had these terrible arguments in front of the stu
dents. I remember one day he was so mad he walked out of the
place and said, 'At least he was an intellectual!' And so we had
to give it up because it was getting too wild." 24
6
Muschenheim's colleague Larson had headed west to Michi
gan with the charge of developing new research for the college.
His appointment was divided in half between teaching and
research; it thus represented a more formal commitment on the
part of the college to research, especially to the many newer
avenues beyond historical studies. The most celebrated evidence
of research undertaken by the team of Larson, his colleagues,
and students was the structural prototypes constructed right in
the courtyard of the college alongside the classical fragments
already on the lawn. University president Hatcher presided over
the dedication of the Unistrut steel framing structure which af
forded a home for the many research possibilities in structural
design, lighting, acoustics, and heating and ventilation . The
significance of this kind of architectural research at Michigan
captured the attention of both Life magazine and Architectural
Forum.
The Unistrut system in particular was a well-publicized ex
ample of collaborative study. It was made possible through the
largesse of college alumnus Charles Attwood, who after his de
gree in 1917 went on to establish the Unistrut Corporation. This
corporation valued the research application of its system of met
al framing, which was easily constructed and demounted at a
relatively low cost. The college attempted through many other
means as well to substantiate research and design as legitimate
modes of inquiry. In March 1959, the College of Architecture and
Design hosted a "forty-man research committee" of the American Institute of Architects whose charge was to formulate a
program of architectural research. 2 47
The college structured this type of collaborative research
through its Architectural Research Laboratory, which was pro
posed to the university in 1949 by a staff of architecture facul
ty working with Knud Lonberg-Holm as their consultant. 24
8
Theodore Larson was its first leader and was for the rest of
his career recognized as a "respected trailblazer in architectural
research."249 Larson's research went well beyond the physical
elements of architecture to consider such areas as "Fields of
STILL U CERTAIN
Willard Oberdick's research on hyperbolic paraboloid roof, September 195544
Unistrut structure adjacent to the Art and Architec ture Building45
Human Activity and Community Relationships." His confi
dence in universal applications of research sources led him and
Lonberg-Holm to create the Development Index, which was to in
dex publications in the rapidly changing building industry so
that architects, manufacturers, and builders could have ready
access to current information on building technology. 25° The
ultimate purpose was an altruistic service to architects and the
building industry; it was at the same time a means to defining
questions of research for the faculty's laboratory: ''Analysis of
the information would certainly reveal many new needs in the
design of all types of buildings and building products. Investi
gation of these needs would follow, constituting fundamental
research. We suggest that the laboratory should have as one of
its principal functions exploration and definition of such rela
tionships."25' Other early research projects considered the effects
of the environment on the learning process and the use of cellu
lar plastics for low-cost housing. 252
The college's emergence as a bona fide research division of
the university occurred during the country's formative period
of substantial investment by private and public interests in the
collaborative benefits of applied research for education, busi
ness, and government. Even though the university as a whole had
not undertaken any major fund-raising campaigns since the
drive to build the Michigan Union (completed in rgrg), its mid
twentieth century program yielded even more than its slogan
S55 million target, especially from private corporations. This
achievement cast the university as a model in fundraising for
public higher education. The contribution of Charles Attwood
was a strong endorsement of the College of Architecture and
Design, and it could be proudly showcased as a recent anteced
ent of the university's capital campaign initiative.
With much of its attention devoted to teaching an increasing
pool of students and to legitimizing research as an essential com
ponent of architecture, the college did not contribute its talents
to the considerable physical expansion of the university well
beyond its original Diag. A roster of mid-century construction
all but excludes the architectural faculty, except for the tempo
rary structures on the lawn of Lorch Hall and Muschenheim's
alterations within the Museum of Art (which were also disas
sembled later).
STILL U CERTAIN
STILL UNCERTAI Instead, the office of Albert Kahn continued a tradition of
several decades by routinely winning commissions from the uni
versity with the result that the campus is a visual genealogy of
Kahn design and technology. West Engineering (1904), Hill
Auditorium (1913), the Clements Library (1923), Angell Hall
(1924), the University Hospital (1925), Burton Memorial Tower
(1936), the Undergraduate Library (1957), the Harlan Hatcher
Graduate Library (1970), and the Thomas Francis School of
Public Health (1971) are only a sample of the multi-generational
Kahn portfolio on the Michigan campus. They constitute a wide
exploration of historical styles, with functional achievements
including the acoustic refinement of Hill Auditorium and the
concrete construction of the engineering building. The Univer
sity of Michigan provided a far-reaching extension into an aca
demic environment of the work of this premier industrialist
architect , whose designs of Detroit automobile plants were
known and adapted as far away as the Soviet Union.
The post-war construction boom brought other firms to the
campus for multiple projects. The names Colvin, Robinson, &
Wright; Giffels & Vallet; Kenneth Black Associates; Smith,
Hinchman & Grylls; and Holabird & Root appeared on build
ing permits more than once.
Such prodigious contributions left the faculty with seemingly
little role in the development of the campus other than the di
rect influence they would have had earlier on those former stu
dents who returned to the campus as practicing architects. The
disengagement did not go unnoticed by the 1948 review team, which suggested that, " the authority and usefulness of the Fac
ulty of Architecture ought to be extended in such a way as to
be a determining influence in the physical environment of the
University. " Furthermore, they wrote, "we are impressed by the
lack of direction and consistency which characterizes the plan
of the University and its many buildings, each of which seems
to have come into existence almost without relevance either to
its neighbor or to a general unity. This has resulted not only in
inefficiency in operation but in a chaos and conflict in appear
ances which destroy in large measure the dignity and beauty
of the campus. The architecture of the University denies the
importance of the arts of design and contradicts their teach
ing. " 253 In the same year that this critical review was submitted
to Bennett, the university designated a new position of Supervis
ing Architect for Plant Extension. The review committee would
no doubt have seen a certain irony in the placement of this ap
pointment within the new Office of Plant Superintendent, with
no formal linkage to the College of Architecture and Design.
Despite the lack of an on-campus engagement, the college
did endorse practice as "a distinct asset to the quality of the
teaching program. " 254 At the periphery of the campus and Ann
Arbor, and beyond, faculty exercised their abilities. While
Youtz's lift slab system was used in the construction of Huron
Towers, which presented the most significant transition in the
city's landscape, a number of other faculty designed and built
their own homes, showcasing their preferences for modernist
living environs . Larson, Muschenheim, and Sanders located
theirs in choice outlying areas of the city. Robert C. Metcalf
began his prolific career of scores of houses in Ann Arbor with
his own in 1952. He recalled that, "in 1950, Ann Arbor seemed
the best place to begin a practice based on contemporary house
design ... During the first decade, our firm- never more than
three people strong- averaged eight completed projects per year. " 255
The university had high expectations of any practice at all of
the faculty, requiring practice to be specifically approved as the
equivalent of an equal amount of research. "Implicit in this staff
arrangement," it was stated, "is the understanding that com
missions be of a research character. " 25
6 One major research op
portunity in design development was the university's new cam
pus to the north of the Huron River. As with most American
institutions of higher education, the University of Michigan an
ticipated the need after the war to match changing expectations in research facilities for scientists, campus residences for fami
lies, and efficient access for commuters including faculty, stu
dents, and clients of the university's continuing education pro
grams. 257 However, the challenges and rewards of transforming
hundreds of acres of open fields into a residential and research
campus went once again to an outside firm with cachet, rather
than the university's own scholars in architecture. In 1951 Eero
Saarinen and Associates were tapped for the project to devel
op the former farmland. Preliminary plans featured an elegant,
comprehensive, and formal pattern of buildings and spaces
STILL UNCERTAIN
86
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centering around an imitative "Diag" and framed symmetrically
by access roads extending from central campus to an envisioned
freeway going off to the western reaches of Detroit. This com
mission was the single largest project of the Saarinen office to
follow the General Motors Technical Center in Warren. For its
part, with its ongoing commissions to the Albert Kahn office,
the University of Michigan was accustomed and sympathetic
to the versatility of Detroit-area architects, Kahn and Saarinen
above all, who could transcend the conventional distinctions
between sites of industry and sites of academia.
Even with a very busy office, this particular assignment no
doubt appealed to Eero Saarinen, at least in the abstract. He
and his firm were at the time addressing all levels of campus
planning, from single buildings to master plans. He observed at
one point that, "universities are the oases of our desert-like civ
ilization ... they are the only beautiful, respectable pedestrian
places left." 258 For the Michigan campus, Saarinen noted in his
memorandum to the university's architect and the vice president
in charge of business and finance that the preliminary building
program "was made with a desire to err on the maximum or
optimistic side in order not to provide too little space for the component units." 2
s9
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Under the Saarinen plan, the College of Engineering was to
lead the way out to the new campus with new research facilities
including the Cooley Engineering Building and the Phoenix
Research Laboratory, which was devoted to the study of the
peaceful use of nuclear energy. While their locations were part
of the master plan, these buildings were designed by architects
other than Saarinen.
Due in part to its own advocacy for much more space, the
College of Architecture and Design figured into Saarinen's plan.
Disregarding the 1948 review committee's warning against de
parting from Central Campus, Dean Bennett allowed in 1954
that, "for us as well as for others the present campus will have become too small." 260 In its earliest articulation, the North Cam
pus was to feature at its western end a Fine Arts Center, com
posed of music, architecture, art, and even television studios and
an open air theater. 26'
Despite its lack of direct involvement in the master plan of
North Campus, the college took an active interest in its evolu
tion. Dean Bennett endorsed the general concept of the campus,
stating in his report to the university's president that, "this new
campus can be one of the most beautiful in the United States."262
His own research on campus design was focused upon traffic
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William M uschenheim )s
color studies for his house at 1251 Heatherway) Ann Arbor46
STILL U CERTAI
Site Plan for North Campus, Eero Saarinen and Associates47
88
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' ' I
circulation. At a time when the University of Michigan was first
allowing students to drive freely about campus, Dean Bennett
was analyzing the problems and producing publications in
cluding "The Personal Car and the Campus. " 263 His successor
as dean, Philip N. Youtz, expressed his many concerns about
the movement between Central and North Campus. He antici
pated and then denounced possible solutions to the commute: "A multi-million dollar bridge spanning the Huron Valley
would not bring the two areas close enough to link them as one
campus ... A subway line would be too expensive. A fleet of
school busses could cope with hundreds of students but not
with thousands. A cavalcade of bicycles would help solve the
transportation requirements, but their speed would be reduced
by the steep rise on either side of the Huron Valley. For safety,
this two wheel traffic would need a lane of its own from which
cars and pedestrians were excluded. The proposal to shuttle fac
ulty back and forth by car would be the most efficient scheme
but would not encourage professional pondering on profound
problems between classes." 264
Talk of a move from the south end of Central Campus to at
least three possible sites on North Campus would occupy fac
ulty discussions and administrators' proposals for over twenty
years . As early as November 1954, Dean Bennett announced that
final plans for a new Architecture and Design Building on North
Campus would be completed in 1956- 1957. 265 At the same time
that the college was envisioning a physical removal from the
center of the university, it was claiming a central role in the
intellectual and cultural life of the entire university community.
Youtz wrote in 1959 that, "In a larger sense the role of the Col
lege of Architecture and Design is to serve the whole university
community as a kind of yeast which will leaven the sometimes
heavy academic loaf. Through its annual open house festivals,
its faculty and student exhibitions at the Museum of Art and
Rackham Galleries, its public lectures, its daily opportunities
for contacts with students of other schools, the College plays a
part in encouraging creativity. This quality or activity of the
mind, or release of the electric currents in the brain, is admit
tedly rare in its highest form. But it appears to be contagious or
communicable and it is shared by students of poetry, physics,
drama, engineering, medicine, and art alike. " 266
A most conspicuous gathering of architects on campus oc
curred when hundreds of alumni returned to Ann Arbor in the
autumn of 1956 to help the college celebrate its fiftieth anniver
sary. While together, they viewed displays, attended meetings led
by MIT's deanjohn Ely Burchard and Harvard's dean emeritus
Hudnut, and honored their earlier leader by naming the occa
sion "Lorch Day." The incoming dean Youtz hoped for much
from their generation, noting later that, "on their extraordi
nary services depends the progress of our nation. " 267
STILL U CERTAIN
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STILL UNCERTAI
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MORE THAN A HANDSOME BOX
Dean Youtz's prophecies of grandeur in 1959 were followed by
a less than idyllic era for the college. By his own admission two
years later, the college was suffering from "certain growing pains"
on account of expanding and expensive programs, changing ex
pectations, and enrollments exceeding the capacity of the Ar
chitecture Building. These were early symptoms of a growing
impatience with the academic status quo. 268 They paralleled
a broader nonconformist activism in Ann Arbor. In 1960, the
local Kresge department store was picketed by civil rights dem
onstrators including Tom Hayden, who had also participated
in the organization of the Students for a Democratic Society
(SDS) .269 Presidential candidateJohn F. Kennedy stopped in Ann
Arbor that same year to introduce his idea of the Peace Corps,
on the front steps of the Michigan Union, to a crowd already
attuned to a youthful and restless initiative.
By retiring in 1963, Youtz was personally spared the challenge
of administering through the worst of the discontent on cam
pus. He would not have to concern himself with the White Pan
ther Party, which moved into a house close by on Hill Street.
Nor would he have to adjust to the flamboyant counter-culture
at home within the Architecture Building or anticipate its prov
ocations. A campus film club, Cinema Guild, showed the film
"Flaming Creatures" in the college's own auditorium. Described
as a "skin flick" by critics and a "purely visual, aesthetic experi
ence" by defenders, the film was seized and four club members
were arrested by Ann Arbor police officer Staudenmaier. 27° Soon thereafter, Professor Willard Oberdick was challenged in the
Architecture Building by unfamiliar students who threatened
that, "if you are a cop, we are going to throw you out. " 27 '
Four years prior to this confrontation, the search for Youtz's
replacement had begun an era of dramatic change within the
college. Michigan's own Walter Sanders was at first a top choice
among some of his colleagues, but his uncertainties over the fu
ture relationship of the art and architecture departments con
vinced him to forfeit his chance. Instead he served on the search
committee which considered over 100 candidates. Recruitment
Invitation to Reginald Malcolmson's exhibition entitled «Visionary Pro jects J)49
competed with concurrent postings for new deans at other ma
jor schools of architecture including MIT and Columbia. 27
2 The
disinterest in academic administration among so many leading
architects caused The New York Times to report on the difficulty of securing deans in the early rg6os. 2 73 MIT decided in the end to
promote Lawrence B. Anderson from within; after a two-year
search Columbia finally asked its acting dean Kenneth Smith to
continue permanently as dean; and Michigan gained Reginald
Malcolmson of the Illinois Institute of Technology. Originally
from Ireland, he had administrative experience as former assis
tant to Mies van der Rohe. He achieved his own international rec
ognition, too, through exhibitions showing his purist, Miesian
theory of linear principles applied to the metropolis. 274
When Mies reached the age of mandatory retirement in 1958,
Malcolmson had been tapped as his temporary replacement as head of the architecture program at liT. However, that
assignment lasted only until the next year, when George E.
Danforth became the new director. Mies was later supportive
of Malcolmson's bid for the deanship at Michigan. He wrote
to the search committee that, "Mr. Malcolmson is not only a
good and experienced architect and thoroughly trained plan
ner, but is above all a highly educated man with an inquisitive
mind. He is at home in the fields of philosophical and sociologi
cal thought and his main interest, in my opinion, is the clarifi
cation of the relationship and interdependence between these
disciplines and that of architecture." 2 75 After eighteen months of
search committee meetings, three visits by the leading candidate,
and endorsements from Mies, John D. Entenza of the Graham
Foundation, and SOM's Walter Netsch, the University of Mich
igan Board of Regents officially recognized Malcolmson as the
new dean. 276
Once in residence, Malcolmson introduced himself to the
larger university community with a show of his work at the Muse
um of Art on central campus. The exhibition was entitled "Pro
jects in Architecture and City Planning." The museum's curator,
Charles Sawyer, was a most appropriate facilitator for this since
he had himself been the dean of the School of Fine Arts at Yale
just a few years previous. 2 77 Malcolmson also arranged for a film
to be made of himself discussing his work, for local and national
distribution. In the script for the program, he recited the ideas
for the "Metro-Linear" city that he had been refining for the
past decade. As the camera filmed him walking past his panels,
he stated that, "the Metro-Linear system is based on the recognition of the linear character of transportation routes- they are
the vertebra of the new city- the metropolitan center consists of
a continuous parking structure 1/ 4 mile wide and 4 stories high
above ground level- this continuous structure has entrances and
exits for automobiles by ramps and bridges and will contain all
the parking necessary for the urban center- parallel to this build
ing are one-way auto routes and at 112 mile intervals on the roof
of the parking structure are 7-story commercial blocks that con
tain all the shopping and retail trade of the center- alongside
this linear parking structure and beyond the auto routes are
HA DSOME BOX
93
HANDSOME BOX
94
office towers 45 stories high, 112 mile apart. " 278 One measure of
Malcolmson's success in promoting this austere concept of the
future city was the range of locations for his exhibitions : New
York, Chicago, Buenos Aires, Paris, and other foreign sites left
unspecified in his resume.
The new dean was met with an Ann Arbor faculty at work at en
larging both its curriculum and research agenda. At least two of
his new colleagues, Edward V Olencki and Joseph P. Albano,
could welcome him as fellow followers of Mies. (Albano had served
on the search committee which nominated Malcolmson). While
nobody echoed Malcolmson's call for a comprehensive revision
of the metropolis in motion, there were however both individual
and collaborative efforts at studying the evolving town and city. 279
Recently-hired instructor Robert Beckley received a Rackham
research grant in 1g6,V6s to consider multiple-level planning for
vehicles and pedestrians in an urban context. In that same aca
demic year, a number of faculty and graduate students worked
on revitalizing the small town of Reed City, located almost 200
miles northwest of Ann Arbor. Their mission, as reported then
in the Michigan Daily, was "to keep Reed City from becoming a
ghost town." 280 They showed more of an inclination to this scale
of consultative analysis and collaboration than to any involve
ment in urban transformation at the magnitude of, for exam
ple, Mies' Lafayette Park in Detroit.
Like Jenney and Lorch before him, Malcolmson had come to
Ann Arbor with the understanding that he could shape curricu
lar change and that he would design new architecture on cam
pus. In the former he oversaw significant developments initi
ated either by himself or by his faculty; in the latter he would
become sorely disappointed.
A single new building at the edge of Ann Arbor could not
have seemed unachievable to the urbane Malcolmson when he
arrived as dean. He assumed to the contrary, and stated quite
firmly, that he would be the architect for the college's future
home on North Campus. 28' His faculty did not share this as
sumption, which Malcolmson had drawn from preliminary
agreements with university administrator John McKevitt. The
misunderstanding over their future home distanced the dean
from the faculty's building committee. "Super-sensitive" was the
description attributed to the college as a whole by the university
architect, who had no officially direct ties to the college but the
obvious interests of an observer whose role was to act as the uni
versity's liaison with architects commissioned to build on the
campus. 282 Professors Olencki, Sanders, Francesco Della Sala,
and Muschenheim had tried their turns at earlier site develop
ment ideas for a North Campus location. 283 Theirs were disre
garded when Malcolmson proceeded with his own six studies
for the junction of Huron Parkway and Hubbard Road. 284 He
presented his to the Board of Regents at an evening meeting on
June 15, 1967. He began the slide show for them with the justifi
cation that, "at the time of my appointment here it was sug
gested that the Dean might have the last word in the design and
planning of the new building. It was , as I saw it, an inducement
to me to accept the role of Dean and I have, therefore, over the
past three years prepared a number of studies relative to a site
on the North Campus." 28s
The long-lasting uncertainty over the college's future facility
seems as a rehearsal for even more contentious issues of the
1g6os. At the same time that Dean Malcolmson was discretely
asking the regents for "virtually a free hand" in bringing about
curricular and staffing changes according to his paternalistic
design, his faculty was mounting its counterclaim to "democratic
freedom in action." 286 Malcolmson advised the regents that,
"change must inevitably take place if this College is to realize
its potential" and that, "we can only make significant changes
by bringing in new faculty members from the outside." Further
more, he wanted to hire without any interference from his fac
ulty. 287 He realized, and acknowledged still four years later, that
the selection of any single individual was all the more critical
since there was no room for a greater number of faculty until the move to North Campus. 288
The faculty challenged this type of leadership publicly, on
the front page of the Michigan Daily, and more privately in their
own internal communications with university administrators. 289
These teachers were both tenured and new, with Sanders label
ling himself the "father confessor" for his worried colleagues. 2 9°
Activist professors were joined by students, who in 1967 were
given a more direct role in deliberating over college policy with
representation on all department committees. The alleged in
sistance upon an uncompromising aesthetic by Malcolmson and
HA DSOME BOX
95
HA DSOME BOX
g6
his closely-allied chairmanjacques Brownson seemed so exclu
sive to studio students that some of them voiced their concerns
about punitive grading. Faculty too criticized the notion of oblig
atory conformity with Miesian modernism, and by inference the
perceived style of Malcolmson's administration as well.
Even more severe was the professors' vote of no confidence in
Brownson, who returned to Chicago just two and a half years
after his arrival. 2 9 ' The faculty's lack of familiarity with him had
foreshadowed misgivings all along. In the chairman search
committee's file was early evidence of a concern about candidate
Brownson: "though obviously intelligent he seems to be some
what non-committal intellectually as evidenced by a reluctance
to submit a statement relative to his philosophy of education." 29
2
Well into his appointment, he admitted his own sense of alien
ation by stating at a late-night meeting of the faculty that, "I
am not one for a lot of discussion and talking." 2 93 No doubt the
very positive international press coverage of the just-completed
Chicago Civic Center, designed by Brownson, eased his departure from Ann Arbor. 2 94
The act of resisting the chairman and dean was a force of
habit rather than a momentary, fashionable manifesto. Michi
gan's faculty neither sought nor approved of any single ideology
as their collective identity. They instead continued to take great
pride in their principle of self governance and in their reputa
tion- not quite strident enough to be considered a muscular
counter-direction- of teaching coursework based on "a real sit
uation, with a real site, a real client and a real problem." 295 There
was therefore no indecision for the majority over rejecting an authoritarian doctrine of either modernist or classical, Euro
centric orientations since these were never a characteristic of the Michigan tradition. The rejection was a reaffirmation of
the contrast of Michigan. Professor Eaton sensed this distinc
tion as key to the college's identity of self-reliance which was
"not liT, not Berkeley, not Harvard, not Yale." 29
6
Although more than half of the faculty sabbaticals during
Malcolmson's era were spent in Europe, these too were typically
focused directly upon contemporary developments in materi
als, housing, planning, and environmental studies rather than
any academic heritage, ideology, or philosophical introspection. 2 97 The aim, at least as it was stated in requests for leaves,
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g8
was comparative or derivative rather than imitative. Eaton's sab
batical even reversed the conventional assumptions about in
fluence by examining the imitation and adaptation of American
architecture in Europe. 298 On the other hand, not a single sab
batical proposal of that decade addressed the then avant-garde
philosophy of postmodernism. This new direction was other
wise bringing fame to alumnus Charles Moore. (The much ear
lier Michigan graduate Joseph Hudnut is credited with intro
ducing the term "post-modern" to the architectural lexicon by
entitling his essay of 1945 "The Post-Modern House."Y99
For all its rejection of what it considered dogma forcing
imitative formalism, Michigan was by no means looking for a
curriculum without discipline. In fact, just as the faculty was
closing ranks against Miesian pedantry, it was fighting, too, to
extend degree requirements into a six-year program which would
demand more rather than less. The idea was not new. Faculty
had been discussing it since 1957 and watching its implementa
tion elsewhere at over a third of the eighty schools comprising
the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture. soo The
appeal of the new curriculum was its increased emphases upon
solid, pre-architecture introductory courses including physics,
mathematics, economics, and English; changes in the environ
ment, technology, and building materials; and the integration
of these factors into design courses at alllevels.3°' This proposal,
too, was divisive. Those opposed claimed that design in par
ticular, and the humanities more generally, would be dimin
ished. s02 But twenty-four professors in favor of change signed
their names to a petition asking Vice President Allan Smith to
overrule the dean and other opponents, in order to allow the
idea to go forward. "The very principle of faculty self-govern
ment is at stake here," they urged heroically. sos Jean-Paul Sartre,
Marshall McLuhan, the U.S. Constitution, and the Ten Com
mandments were all invoked for the sake of an impassioned
argument whose issues were not always well-stated.so4 Smith
responded charitably that the changing nature of the profession
was reason for the faculty's inability to articulate the college's
needs with one clear voice.sos He endorsed the six-year program
anyway.
Along with Michigan's notion of discipline was an internal
conformity of its own fashion. Standards were set high for
structural integrity and honesty of materials, as much in the
studios of the Architecture Building as on the job sites of faculty
and alumni. There was the recognition among newly arrived
faculty that, "structural discipline was regarded as of primary
importance. "3°6
The architectural research laboratory, as the flagship of
scholarship for the college, was also continuing its orientation
towards applied problem solving. Sponsorship by industry,
foundations, and the government brought with it obligations
other than learned disputation. The Unistrut corporation had
expected a commitment to showcase for the building industry
the commercial appeal of easily assembled and demountable
steel framing; and the U.S. Department of State wanted effective
solutions from research in using cellular plastics for low-cost
housing in Third World countries.3o7 These types of collabora
tions suited the larger University of Michigan research commu
nity, which was undergoing a "mainstream academic profes
sionalism." By historian David Hollinger's definition, this
campus-wide trend involved "a suspicion of grand theory and of
epistemological quibbling, a preference for concrete and clear
ly manageable projects, a penchant for technical methodologi
cal refinements, and, above all, attention to aspects of the social
sciences and humanities least likely to be mistaken for political
advocacy, cultural criticism, or journalism. The Michigan that
had come into being by the late rgsos and early rg6os was a
mighty engine of scholarship and science of just this type." 3°8
The research in Michigan's architecture laboratory was no
less ambitious for its pragmatism. Nor did its objective of di
rect applicability in technological development, environmental
design, and international development safeguard it from artificiality.JD9 In following that era's confidence in positivistic
methodology, far-reaching bibliographic surveys were the lab
oratory's bedrock for empirical analysis. (The laboratory was
appropriately characterized later as "an information-gathering
and information-generating unit"). 3' 0
Laboratory director Theodore Larson went even further to
identify and organize categories of cultural factors to conform
to his own perception of a new information system with univer
sal relevance. The very appearance of his system mattered a
great deal to him. He had designed it to resemble a Buckminster
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99
human intelligence
exploration
power
tranapartation
manufaduring
industrial production
conatrudion
education recreation
buaineu finance
FIELDS OF HUMAN ACTIVITY and
COMMUNITY RELATIONSHIPS
Based on diagrams In DEVELOPMENT INDEX by K. Lonberp-Holm and C. Theodore LatsOn
j /
personal well-being
clothing
houaing
papulation
organization
administration
societal control
Fuller dome with equidistant spokes of phenomena such as
manufacturing, sanitation, exploration, and comprehension.
These were all connected and dynamic factors, whose interre
lationships stretched the categories of conventional architec
tural research and aligned it with both behavioral sciences and
ecology. Larson understood this to constitute environmental re
search. The objective was much more than drawing a static, two
dimensional model of the mid-century human cosmos. Larson
aimed at "clocking the future," in a proposed book which would
"present a unified statistical technique for measuring and com
paring the rates of change in various fields of activity as man
develops into an integrated global society. "3"
Because of the goal of universal application of such experi
mentation, it is conceivable that the laboratory's missteps were
made all the more vulnerable to satire later on. Michigan's hy
perbole and imagery from this Sputnik-era research could be
easily maligned in the subsequent alienation from modern
ism, including modernist research. Targets could include the
overview of the laboratory's work entitled "The Architecture
of Ultimate Concern." In it, the wonders of machine-produced
housing components had been exaggerated with the teasing
claim that , "husbands' day-end complaints about misplaced
slippers may expand to include misplaced dens."3'2 Skepticism
from within the college could be just as severe as any later re
view. But when Chairman Brownson characterized Larson's
experimental structures in the college courtyard as a "plastic
slum," Larson responded blithely that the "litter" was from
"structural failures" and that, "we learn more from failures than
successes in research. "3'3
Despite the limited shelf life of some of the laboratory's par
lance and theory, the overall reputation of research at Michigan
was excellent. Laboratory director Larson had been willing to
risk a cheap laugh for the prize of futuristic, multi-disciplinary
research well beyond the traditional equation of architectural
research as history. The gamble literally yielded big dividends
in Michigan's research investigations of computer applications
for architecture. Over a period of almost twenty years, continual
funding amounting to sr.7 million was behind Harold Barkin's
savvy development of computer integrated design programs as
well as applications pushed by]. Sterling Crandall and Willard
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IOI
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I02
Oberdick.314 Foresight had paid off for these early devotees of
computer research on a campus which was among the first to
acquire commercial computers.3I5 Already at an AlA conference
in Washington in the spring of rg64, the college was paid trib
ute.316 Twenty years later the laboratory was still congratulating
itself on its research in computer-aided building design, con
struction, and management: "We do it well, perhaps better than
anyone. It is the central theme of all our research. We now use
the computer as the principal medium for all our work. It is the
intellectual glue used to bind together the disparity of informa
tion from different disciplines. "3I7 Loyalty to the Larson ethos
fit into this computer-based information system, whereby his
successors were still attempting to "seek to build integrated com
puter models, integrated across disciplines and over time. All of
our research projects, present and proposed, to a greater or lesser
degree, harmonize with this theme and build on it. It lends im
mense credibility to anything we propose, for each individual
project advances a much larger project, and can be presented
in context."318 This credibility did not translate into computer
use by design faculty, however. Even though the college had de
cided in rg68 to require an introductory computer course for all
fourth-year students, their studio teachers still chose the draw
ing board over the computer screen.3I9
What constituted research for the laboratory was for its staff
self-evident. This clear of a common vision was not shared
by the rest of the faculty. Nevertheless, by the late rg6os there
was no choice for any individual professor but to address the
question of a future research agenda for himself. The Total Commitment Committee of the Department of Architecture
(Edward Olencki, Joseph Wehrer, Stephen Paraskevopoulos,
and Robert C. Metcalf) initiated a salary reform to compensate
faculty for only 8o% of their academic appointments, in an ef
fort to "provide an equitable situation. "320 The assumption was
that good research would generate sponsorship, just as success
ful practice could. The tensile structures of Kent Hubbell and
the underground law library of Gunnar Birkerts could later
be referred to as justifying examples of the ideal synthesis of
research and remunerative practice.
The college believed that it required researchers as teachers
since it was "training the first generation of architects whose
primary orientation will be towards architectural research."32'
The leaders of that first cohort of students were the candidates
within the college's new doctoral program. That unique status
could be pursued as of the fall of rg6g, when Michigan became
the first architectural program to offer the doctorate of archi
tecture. A direct outgrowth of Larson's laboratory, the doctoral
program quickly accrued a roster of graduates. The first was
James A. Chaffers. His dissertation, completed already in rg7r ,
was entitled "Design and the Urban Core: Creating a Relevant
Milieu." He described it himself as "an attempt to sketch out a
concept of total environmental quality nurturous and protec
tive of the struggle and delicate dynamics akin to a black quest
for liberation and self-determined development. "322 He had
become academically as well as socially versed in the critical
analysis of urban planning through his leadership in Detroit's
"Grass Roots Organization of Workers" (GROW). His sustained
effort to nurture empowerment through community design work
shops for an area comprising roo city blocks earned him praise
at the university and afforded the university in return a sorely
needed example of credibility in the riot-torn neighborhoods
of Detroit's inner city. With Chaffers as an inspirational cata
lyst, the college turned from its earlier community service pro
grams in the small towns of rural Michigan to a new course in
"Conflict and Consensus in Urban Problems. "323
Other doctoral graduates carried their degrees home to
foreign countries including Greece, Germany, Iceland, and
KoreaY 4 Their topics and methodologies were just as varied
as their destinations. Not surprisingly, many relied on the
same computer technologies, survey techniques, and behavioral
sciences investigated by their advisors within the laboratory. Even though it was of little interest to many of these candi
dates of the rg7os, historical analysis was receiving a new kind
of attention outside of the laboratory. The movement was in
direct response to the earlier disregard for an architectural heri
tage, either local or general. Whereas other schools of architec
ture had been promoting a cerebral, self-referential adaptation
of historical styles in the design of new buildings, Michigan
placed its emphasis upon a more community-oriented historic
preservation. By 1975 students could specialize in Building Pre
servation/ Conservation. They shared their classes, which were
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The newly built Art and developed by Kingsbury Marzolf, with townspeople and students Architecture Building52 from other disciplinesY5 Marzolf stepped outside of the class
room to help campaign successfully for the preservation of Ann
Arbor's fire station and the campus observatory, and to convince
restaurateur Chuck Muer to rehabilitate Ann Arbor's Michigan
Central Railroad Depot into the Gandy Dancer.
104
Just as Marzolf and others were becoming involved in promot
ing the preservation of good architecture on and around central
campus, they and their many colleagues in the college were pack
ing to move to the northern edge of town. In the end neither fac
ulty nor dean were in charge of the development of the new Art
and Architecture Building on North Campus. From a tentative
list considering, among others, Mies van der Rohe; Smith,
Hinchman, & Grylls; Glen Paulsen; Giffels & Rossetti; and
Gunnar Birkerts, the state ultimately chose Robert S. Swanson
and Associates of Bloomfield Hills, Michigan as architects for
the new building. At least Swanson was an alumnus. His design
was described as "not precious, rather ... easily modified, es
sentially loft space."326 The construction of the winning proposal
would not occur before the end of Malcolmson's deanship. It fi
nally opened for classes in September 1974, over three decades after the first plans for North Campus were proposed by Swanson's
uncle, Eero SaarinenY 7 There was eventually at least some ap
preciation for the long delay in opening this new building, since
curricular and research changes of the 1g6os redefined the pro
gram for itY 8 The college had by then also vetoed its own ear
lier ideas of housing some of the students within a residential
section of the buildingY9
The public, especially alumni, was invited to tour the build
ing in April 1975. The written invitation encouraged them to
see in particular the Visual Simulation Laboratory, the Build
ing Technology Laboratory, and the Computing Facilities Lab
oratory. 330 Also on display at the public opening was confirma
tion of the new administrative separation of art from architec
ture and urban planning, symbolized in two flags designed for
the occasion. While Malcolmson had earlier resisted the divi
sion, others recognized that "we have been dancing to different
tunes since World War II."33' Art moved into the front of the
new building, and architecture along with urban planning took
the southern half of it. With more than twice the overall space
of the building on central campus, and an architecture/ plan
ning studio measuring go' x 360', this new facility easily accom
modated the new School of Art and the renamed College of
Architecture and Urban Planning.
Contrary to the overall expansion, however, was an eventual
loss beyond the conveniences of central campus. The university
had decided, with no apparent sense of irony, to abandon any
idea of preserving the Unistrut building which had housed the
Architectural Research Laboratory on central campus. Even though college members had argued that this prototypical struc
ture was in fact designed to be conveniently disassembled and
moved, or stored, or adapted to another use, Swanson's final
site plans did not include the laboratory. An investigation led
by Unistrut preservationists among the faculty included the
surmise that, "someone with authority ordered Mr. Swanson
to man the eraser."332 In the fall of 1g8o, the Unistrut Building
was simply demolished. 333
Hosting the otherwise celebratory open house on North
Campus were Dean Robert C. Metcalf as well as Dean George
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The Art and Architecture Building's Slusser Gallery on the building's dedication day53
106
Bayliss for the School of Art. Three immediate predecessors
had earlier anticipated the event as theirs to oversee. Metcalf
had succeeded Malcolmson as dean only after a rigorous re
view of the entire college. He had the advantage of being a well
respected and trusted member of the faculty since 1955 and
chairman of the Department of Architecture for the second half
of Malcolmson's tenure as dean. He knew the abilities and the
tolerances of his colleagues and could mirror their interests for
them. In his notes for his meeting with the dean search commit
tee, he reminded himself to mention, as a candidate, the prefer
ence to move "governance from autocratic to grassroots," in the new "age of communication" where important issues included
the "finite nature of resources and urban decay." 334
One of Metcalf's first acts as dean was to try to assemble
a faculty more diverse than the group whom he had known in
his first twenty years at Michigan. He even used Ms magazine
to announce positions for women architectural educators. 335
The gender profile of his faculty did not change dramatically,
and his own conclusion by 1981 was that, "given their central
role in childbearing and family life, women are not moving in
to professional positions in practice or teaching in anything
like the numbers leaving school."336 Female students, on the other
hand, did occupy more of the classrooms and studios. They
constituted 30% of the student population by the 198os. 337 In
1979, Nancy R. Lickerman had even achieved a grade point av
erage which was a record high for the school_338
Female students outpaced all other underrepresented groups
in their advances in the college. Despite the demands of the
1970 Black Action Movement, the college never succeeded in
approaching the 10% enrollment goal promised by President
Fleming to Black students .339 Metcalf recognized, and regretted,
that the University of Michigan was "not perceived by minori
ties, especially the black community, as a welcoming, nurturing
place. " 34° He relied upon Chaffers in particular for sage advice
on minority recruitment. 34' Detroit architect Howard Sims was
also both a key role model and advisor for Metcalf, as well as a general benefactor who with his wife established a scholarship
fund for Black students. 342
By his own admission, Metcalf was not a theorist. 343 His me
tier was instead a very skillful and productive practice resulting
in modernist residences throughout the upscale neighborhoods
of Ann Arbor. He began his apprenticeship as chief drafts
man of approximately thirty houses for George B. Brigham be
tween 1948 and 1952.344 The legacy of his mentor is evident in
Metcalf 's work, and proudly so. Others who influenced him were
Greene and Greene, Bernard Maybeck, Frank Lloyd Wright,
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James Chqffers in the college s tudio54
107
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Gunnar Birkerts ' University of Michigan Law Library Addition, copyright Timothy Hursley55
108
and Harwell Hamilton Harris. 345 For Metcalf, design was re
search. Its principal ingredient was "thinking, not drawing. "346
His only frustration with it was its low esteem among other aca
demicians: "It bothers me that the design of a building is con
sidered a mere commercial venture, and a conflict of interest,
whereas the University would be happy to report that I wrote a
piece of music, or a book, or painted a picture, or danced on
the stage. They would probably be pleased to report I wrote
some articles about the design of a house. In my view, designing
is a lot more important achievement than writing about it. "347
What is more, his faculty wanted the teaching of design to be further strengthened. 348
Just as Metcalf 's forte in design analysis is evidenced in the
details of his own drawings and the critique of his students', so
too was his administration defined by his attention to precision
in the college's operation. At the same time that he minimized
ideological rhetoric and disdained "egocentric architecture,"
he assumed a personal responsibility for an efficient and cost
effective central office. 349 He began already as chairman a pol
icy of sending letters of appreciation for every gift to the archi
tecture department, regardless of its amount. 35o He had wisely
realized that such private assistance would become all the more
important once the state of Michigan trimmed its support to
the university. 35 ' In part by organizing a CAUP Alumni Society,
producing a newsletter entitled Portico , and conducting a tele
phone fund drive, the college managed to reach an annual giv
ing of over half a million dollars by the end of Metcalf's tenure
as dean. 352 Monies received were directed into a variety of en
dowments to earn annual income. Fund raising was labor in
tensive for the college's central office. Metcalf's administrative
duties kept him from his practice and obliged him to at least
consider displaying with his wife their "celebrated Apache num
ber" for potential School of Art donors on the dance floor. 353
The inevitable frustrations led him once to lament that, "I am the damn dean."354
Brooding was otherwise minimal for this dean and his faculty.
In fact, the appearance of a quite tranquil ambience actually
concerned the team from the National Architectural Accredit
ing Board who visited in 1982. While the reviewers were im
pressed overall with the college, they asked if "this confidence
in the program limit[s] the flow of new ideas and program
changes?"355 They suggested that, "the students of the school and the faculty are less interested in information than in valid
ity; facts rather than hypotheses." Their negative impressions
were arrived at quickly and were perhaps exaggerated during
their abbreviated schedule of three days, which was disrupted
by continuing snowstorms.
The college did in any case decide just a few years later, in
1984, to initiate a new fellowship program whereby younger,
practicing architects could infuse energy into the design curric
ulum and at the same time pursue their own research objectives.
The fellowships carried with them honorary titles in tribute to
HA DSOME BOX
I09
HANDSOME BOX
110
Visiting faculty Ian Taberner, Catherine Wetzel, Eduardo Gascon, Robert Cole, and Bob Henry at their 1987 exhibit entitled "On Our Own: Five Young Architects"57
two earlier faculty who themselves had excelled at design:
William Muschenheim and Walter Sanders. The appointments
also came with certain anticipations on the part of a college
seeking a broader definition of design. In response to a letter
of a few years previous, which questioned Michigan's current
curriculum, Metcalf shared with Carl Arthur Muschenheim of
SOM his hope that, "all of us will be thinking of design as a
good deal more than a handsome box. " 356
Once accustomed to its new home on North Campus, the
College of Architecture and Urban Planning had perhaps real
ized a distance from its own antecedents. The old Architecture Building on Monroe was renamed Lorch Hall as a tribute to its
architect and a recognition that he , rather than the ongoing
program, was the building's permanent affiliation. Yet other
symbolic references were brought to the new facility. One of the
program's heirlooms, a Louis Sullivan grille, was mounted in
the library. A bust of Jean Paul Slusser, the revered teacher of
art, was placed outside of the new gallery which would carry
his name. Lorch's name would also be remembered through
the college's first professorship, established in 1977. Willard
Oberdick was chosen then to hold the title "Emil Lorch Profes
sor of Architecture and Urban Planning."
Dean Metcalf decided to perpetuate the memory of alumnus
Raoul Wallenberg through an ongoing series of lectures, after
the success of the first three by Nikolaus Pevsner (1971), Eric
Larrabee (1973), and Reyner Banham (1975).357 The fourth one
was delivered in 1976 by art theorist and emigre Rudolf
Arnheim. His address, entitled "The Persistence of Goodness in
Time," spoke to the value of dedication and the courage of con
viction. He asked his listeners to consider that for an archi
tect, "one of the motives must surely be a willingness to com
mit oneself in stone. One must feel sure enough to translate
one's thought and vision into so hard a material and be eager to
do so ." 358
The means by which to accomplish this honorable integrity
were left to the imagination of his audience. They were the source
of speculation for a college faculty whose habit was still to de
liberate in democratic fashion and whose newest dean, Robert
M. Beckley, later testified to the value of the lesson itself:
An architectural education is still a good education. It is
one of the few curricula in the University which demands a
mastery of scientific and artistic skills and an understand
ing of the humanities. It is one of the few curricula where
students can immerse themselves in creative activity. It is
one of the few curricula which places equal emphasis on
abstract and practical thinking. It is one of the few curric
ula which : is immersed in historic traditions; has been
involved in the revolutionary changes of the last century;
and continues to explore new aesthetic and philosophical
realms. A student graduating with a professional degree
in architecture, be it undergraduate or graduate, has a
broad range of knowledge, a set of tested analytical skills,
and, I would maintain, a strong set of moral and ethical values. 359
HA DSOME BOX
III
HA DSOME BOX
Beaux arts rendering as taught by Herbert]ohe) drawn by Kitti Kukulprasong58
6o
I I2
HANDSOME BOX
59
I 13
REFERENCES
' University of Michigan Board of Regents, Regents) Proceedings) I8J7- 1864
(Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan, 1915), 5· 2 Burke A. Hinsdale, History of the University of Michigan, edited by Isaac
Demmon (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan, 1906), 48. 3 University of Michigan Board of Regents, Regents) Proceedings) I8J7- 1864
(Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan, 1915), 82- 83.
4 Amelia Peck, ed., Alexander Jackson Davis) American Architect) I80J-I892
(New York, NY: Rizzoli, 1992). s William Le Baron Jenney and Sanford Loring, Principles and Practices of
Architecture (Cleveland, OH, and Chicago, IL: Cobb, Pritchard, and Co.,
1869). 6 William Le Baron Jenney to James B. Angell, 19 August 1875, James B.
Angell collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.
(Hereafter Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan is abbre
viated as BHL, UM).
7 David S. Andrew, Louis Sullivan and the Polemics of Modern Architecture
(Urbana and Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1985), 4· 8 Theodore Turak, William Le Baron Jenney) A Pioneer of Modern Architecture
(Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1986), 331.
9 William Le Baron Jenney to James B. Angell, 19 August 1875, James B.
Angell collection, BHL, UM.
'° C.W. Durham toJames B. Angell, 12 August 1875,James B. Angell col
lection, BHL, UM.
" Andrew Dickson White to James B. Angell, 8 May 1875,James B. Angell
collection, BHL, UM.
" Alexander Wadsworth Longfellow to James B. Angell, 27 August 1875,
James B. Angell collection, BHL, UM. ' 3 The School of Architecture of the University of Illinois was begun in
1867 and announced as the first architecture program in the Midwest.
See the preface to The Midwest in American Architecture, edited by John S.
Garner (Urbana and Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1991). ' 4 William Tecumseh Sherman to James B. Angell, 9 January r876, James
B. Angell collection, BHL, UM. ' 5 Gordon W. Lloyd to James B. Angell, 4 February 1876, James B. Angell
collection, BHL, UM.
' 6 Frederick Law Olmsted to James B. Angell, 12 January 1876, James B.
Angell collection, BHL, UM.
'7 Theodore Turak, William Le Baron Jenney) A Pioneer of Modern Architecture
(Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1986), 106.
' 8 Frederick Law Olmsted to James B. Angell, 12 January 1876, James B.
Angell collection, BHL, UM.
'9 C.W. Durham toJames B. Angell, nJanuary 1876,James B. Angell col
lection, BHL, UM. I 15
REFERE CES
II6
•o James B. Angell, The Reminiscences of James Burrill Angell (New York, NY:
Longmans, Green, and Co., I9I2), 77· See also Victor Roy Wilbee, The Religious Dimensions of Three Presidents in a State University (Ann Arbor, MI:
University Microfilms, I967).
" William Le Baron Jenney to James B. Angell, IO March I876, James B. Angell collection, BHL, UM.
•• Walter A. Donnelly, ed., The University of Michigan, An Encyclopedic Survey
III (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, I953), I289. •3 Burke A. Hinsdale, History of the University of Michigan, edited by Isaac N.
Demmon (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan, I9o6), 82. 24 Howard H . Peckham, The Making of the University of Michigan, I817- I967
(Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, I967), 73· •5 Walter A. Donnelly, ed., The University of Michigan, An Encyclopedic Survey
III (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, I953), I289. • 6 Ibid.
•7 William Le Baron J enney collection, microfilm roll I I, Chicago Micro
film Project, Ryerson-Burnham Library, Art Institute of Chicago.
•8 The Chronicle, 20 May I876.
•g William Le Baron Jenney to James B. Angell, I6 August I876, James B. Angell collection, BHL, UM.
3o William Le Baron Jenney to James B. Angell , 8 June I876, James B. Angell collection, BHL, UM.
3' William Le Baron Jenney to James B. Angell, 8 August I876, James B. Angell collection, BHL, UM.
3• Ibid.
33 William Le Baron Jenney to James B. Angell, I7 August I876, James B. Angell collection, BHL, UM.
34 Ibid.
35 William Le Baron Jenney to James B. Angell, 29 July I876, James B.
Angell collection, BHL, UM.
36 William Le Baron Jenney to James B. Angell, I6 August I876, James B.
Angell collection, BHL, UM. 37 University of Michigan Board of Regents, Proceedings of the Board of Re
gents of the University of Michigan from January 1876 to January 1881 (Ann Arbor, MI: Ann Arbor Printing and Publishing Company, r88r ), 402.
38 University of Michigan, Exercises at the Inauguration of President Angell and
the Laying of the Cornerstone of University Hall (Ann Arbor, MI: University of
Michigan, I87I ), I4. 39 Johns Hopkins University, Johns Hopkins University Celebration of the Twenty
fifth Anniversary of the Founding of the University and Inauguration of Ira Remsen as President of the University (Baltimore, MD : The Johns Hopkins Press,
I902), I36- I37 · 4o Louis Sullivan, The Autobiography of an Idea (New York, NY: Dover Publi
cations, I956), 203. 4' William Le Baron Jenney to the University of Michigan Board of Re
gents, I9 December I878 , University of Michigan Board of Regents rec
ords, BHL, UM.
4• University of Michigan, Calendar rif the University of Michigan, 1876- 77 (Ann
Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan, I877), 70. 43 Ibid., 7r. 44 Ibid., 70.
45 The Chronicle, 7 April I 877. 46 William Le BaronJenney toJames B. Angell, 2I March I876,James B.
Angell collection, BHL, UM. 47 William Le Baron Jenney to James B. Angell, 28 June I87g, James B.
Angell collection, BHL, UM. 48 The Chronicle, 2 December I876, and The Chronicle, I8 November I876. 49 Theodore Turak, William Le Baron Jenney, A Pioneer of Modern Architecture
(Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, Ig86), ISI.
so The Chronicle, I7 March I877. 5' The Chronicle, I4 February I88o. s• Chronological Building Development of the University of Michigan,
Buildings and Grounds, University of Michigan vertical file, BHL, UM.
53 William Le Baron Jenney to James B. Angell, 5 July I87g, James B.
Angell collection, BHL, UM. 54 William Le Baron Jenney to James B. Angell, undated, James B. Angell
collection, BHL, UM. ss Howard H. Peckham, The Making of the University of Michigan, I8IJ-I967
(Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, I967), 79· 56 University of Michigan Board of Regents, Proceedings of the Board of Re
gents rif the University of Michigan from January 1876 to January 188I (Ann Arbor, MI: Ann Arbor Printing and Publishing Company, I88I), 3I2.
57 Ibid.' I 54· ss William Le Baron Jenney to the University of Michigan Board of Re
gents, I9 December I878, University of Michigan Board of Regents rec
ords, BHL, UM. 59 William Le BaronJenney to James B. Angell, I9 November I87g,James
B. Angell collection, BHL, UM. 60 William Le Baron Jenney collection, microfilm roll rr , Chicago Micro-
film Project, Ryerson-Burnham Library, Art Institute of Chicago. 6
' The Chronicle, 3 March I 877. 6• Michigan Dairy, September Igo6. 63 Emil Lorch, draft, folder 37, box r, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM.
He wrote in this same draft about his comprehensive study of the methods and results of architectural schools. He also elaborated that, "In design my first enthusiasm was for Richardson, but at Technology, M.
Litang [Eugene Letang of MIT], that rare and self-sacrificing Frenchman, showed me the true path. And yet the most thorough piece of work I have done is the drawings for the Harvard inch-scale Rheims
model." 64 F.W. Chandler to Emil Lorch, 7 November Igos, folder 4I , box I, Emil
Lorch collection, BHL, UM. 65 George Elmslie to Emil Lorch, IS December Igos, folder 42, box I, Emil
Lorch collection, BHL, UM.
REFERENCES
I I7
REFERE CES
118
66 Louis Sullivan to James B. Angell, 15 December 1905, James B. Angell
collection, BHL, UM. 67 Robert Twombly, Louis Sullivan, His Life and Work (New York, Y: Viking
Penguin, 1986), 387. 68 See Louis Sullivan, Kindergarten Chats, reprint edition (New York, NY:
George Wittenborn, 1947), 68. (Sullivan himself had apprenticed with
William Le Baron Jenney for a brief time in the early 1870s before
Jenney taught in Ann Arbor). 69 Hermine to Emil Lorch, 2 March 1906, folder 46, box 1, Emil Lorch
collection , BHL, UM. 70 Levi L. Barbour to Emil Lorch, 28 November 1905, folder 41, box 1,
Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM. 7' Announcement, Department of Architecture, folder 49, box 1, Emil Lorch
collection, BHL, UM. The announcement states in part that, "Profes
sor Lorch was chosen for this position by the Michigan Chapter of the
American Institute of Architects through its committee consisting of
Messrs. John M. Donaldson, George D. Mason, and Frank C. Baldwin,
of Detroit."
1• Wells Ira Bennett, "College of Architecture and Design," miscellaneous
writings (3), box 1, Wells Ira Bennett collection, BHL, UM, and Burke A.
Hinsdale, History of the University of Michigan, edited by Isaac N. Demmon
(Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan, 1906), 203.
73 Emil Lorch to John M. Donaldson, 25 October 1906, folder 52, box 1,
Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM.
74 Emil Lorch prepared and mailed 2,500 cop1es about the program at
Michigan all around the country. See folder 33, box 2, Emil Lorch col
lection, BHL, UM. 75 Emil Lorch to Mrs. Georgia R. Ferguson, 30 August 1906, folder 51, box
1, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM.
This assessment of female abilities seems to have remained consis
tent throughout Lorch's career. Nearly thirty years after the letter to the
Iowan applicant, Lorch used similar language in reporting to College of Literature, Science, and the Arts Dean Kraus that, "In our judgment
there is little opportunity for women in architecture and so we advise
parents and prospective girl students. Only exceptionally well qualified and vigorous young women should go into architecture." See Emil
Lorch , Conference with Dean Kraus, 7 ovember 1935, folder 27, box 4,
Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM.
On an undated, one-page resume composed sometime after 1927,
Lorch included a list of "successful alumni and former students." All
twenty-nine names are male. See folder 58, box 3, Emil Lorch collection,
BHL, UM.
76 Alice Loui e Hunt taught drawing as an instructor within the College
of Engineering from 1899 to 1919. See University of Michigan Catalogue of
Graduates, Non -graduates) Officers) and Members of the Faculties) I 837- I92 I (Ann
Arbor, MI: University of Michigan, 1923), 27.
77 University of Michigan Alumni Association Alumnae Survey, 1924,
Delight Sweney entry, box 110, University of Michigan Alumni Associa
tion records, BHL, UM.
78 Ibid.
79 Michiganensian, 1921, 637. All women who were enrolled in either engi
neering or architecture were ipso facto members. See Michigan Technic
XXVIII (March 1915), 75· Another early alumna, Bertha Yerex Whitman,
complained to the Alumni Association that one of the outstanding mem
ories of her college days was the "entire lack of any way in which to give
social life to women in professional colleges." See University of Michi
gan Alumni Association Alumnae Survey,1924, Bertha Yerex Whitman
entry, box 109, University of Michigan Alumni Association records,
BHL, UM. 80 Jonathan Marwil, A History of Ann Arbor (Ann Arbor, MI: The Ann Arbor
Observer Company, 1987), 83.
At least Lorch did not endorse Elmslie's proposal to establish a chap
ter of the Scarab Fraternity at the University of Michigan. Elmslie had
supplied Lorch with an information sheet about the fraternity which be
gan with the statement "Membership shall be limited to male members
of the Caucasian race, who profess no other religion than Christianity,
and who are following the profession of, or are students of, architecture,
architectural engineering, or landscape architecture." Elmslie was en
thusiastic about the Scarab Fraternity, in part because it had supported
the publication of Louis Sullivan's Kindergarten Chats and made Sullivan
an honorary member. Lorch responded to Elmslie that, "University life
is so over-organized that we hope that there will be no more fraternities
added here." See folder 24, box 4, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM. 8 ' Jack Travis, ed., African American Architects in Current Practice (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton Architectural Press, 1991), 92. 82 Clair William Ditchy, ''Alpha Rho Chi," The Archi of Alpha Rho Chi II (1)
Uune 1920), Archi- National Magazine 1918- 1931 folder, box 1, Alpha
Rho Chi records, BHL, UM. 83 g April 1909 minutes, minutes volume 1909- 1915, box 1, Alpha Rho Chi
records, BHL, UM.
A social committee was established to organize upcoming events.
Albert Kahn's younger brother Louis, a student from rgo6 to rgog , was
nominated to the committee at the inaugural meeting of the organiza
tion. (Louis Kahn did not graduate. Instead he joined his big brother's
firm in rgro and remained there permanently.) See Grant Hildebrand,
Designing for Industry: the Architecture of Albert Kahn (Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, 1974), 59· 8
4 ''Architectural Lecture Postponed," Michigan Daily, 27 May 1909. 85 Brendan Gill, Many Masks, A Life of Frank Lloyd Wright (New York, NY:
Ballantine Books, 1987), 199. 86 15 November 1909 minutes and 5 December 1912 minutes, minutes vol
ume 1909- 1915, box 1, Alpha Rho Chi records, BHL, UM.
REFERENCES
119
REFERENCES
I20
87 I November I9I2 minutes, minutes volume I909- I9I5, box I, Alpha Rho
Chi records, BHL, UM.
A few years later the women students suggested a "smock dance."
"Can you imagine it?" asked the male reporter to the Michigan Technic readership. "Something unique in costume colors should be present,
and just think fellows, we would scarcely have to leave our own domain
for pretty partners." See Michigan Technic XXXII (2) (May I9I9), I57· 88 Clair William Ditchy, "Alpha Rho Chi," The Archi of Alpha Rho Chi II (I)
(June I920), g, Archi- National Magazine I9I8- I9gi folder, box I, Alpha
Rho Chi records, BHL, UM. 89 The Archi of Alpha Rho Chi I (III), 9- Io, Archi- National Magazine I9I8-
I9gi folder, box I, Alpha Rho Chi records , BHL, UM.
go Wilfred B. Shaw, "The University of Michigan as a Pioneer," The Michi
gan Alumnus Qyarterly Review LXIII, I4 (2 March I957), 9g- Io6.
9' Mortimer Cooley to Mr. M.R. Burrows, Secretary of the Michigan Chap
ter of the AlA, 24 April I9Ig, folder g9, box 2, Emil Lorch collection,
BHL, UM.
9• University of Michigan Board of Regents, Regents' Proceedings, 1906- I9IO ,
88. 93 History of the College of Architecture, folder go, box 4, Emil Lorch col
lection, BHL, UM. Denison must have offered unique company for
Lorch. He had been a member of the Michigan faculty since I872, first
as an instructor in engineering and drawing (I872- I876). Denison's title
after Jenney's departure was Instructor in Engineering and Drawing
and Assistant in Architecture (I876- I88I). By Lorch's arrival his title had
changed to Professor of Stereotomy, Mechanism, and Drawing. He died
in Ann Arbor on go July I9Ig.
94 The notice of the death of William LeBaron Jenney which appeared in
the Michigan Alumnus in October I907 listed him under the category of
Officer rather than Faculty. The lengthier obituary in Chicago's Sunday
Record, appearing on I6June I907, made no mention of his tenure at the
University of Michigan. Lorch did note much later that he regretted the disappearance of a
biography written by one of Jenney's partners. He wrote that, "some of
us are still hoping that it will turn up and tell us more about this won
derful man who was responsible for the creation of what became the
steel skeleton for construction of high buildings." See Emil Lorch to
Dean Philip N. Youtz, I I March I96o, Centennial Weekend, I976, box
I7, University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning
records, BHL, UM.
95 Emil Lorch to Mr. Adelbert Mills, I 9 June I 907, folder 2, box 2, Emil
Lorch collection, BHL, UM.
96 David Van Zanten, "Chicago in Architectural History," in Elisabeth
Blair MacDougall, ed. , The Architectural Historian in America (Washington,
D.C.: National Gallery of Art, I990), 9g. 97 Emil Lorch, "Some Considerations of the Study of Architectural De
sign," paper read 24 May I90I at the Third Annual Convention of the
Architectural League of America, Philadelphia, folder 9, box r, Emil
Lorch collection, BHL, UM. Lorch was quite proud of his contribution to the notion of pure de
sign and was eager to see his thoughts published in the Brickbuilder. He
wrote in a letter to Arthur D. Rogers, "While here in Chicago and else
where many persons have for a long time been favoring a change of archi
tectural design study methods none of these persons have made a practi
cal suggestion ... The proposition of using methods of study employed
in the decorative and fine art field came, as is here known, from me, and
would logically come from someone acquainted with the wider art edu
cational field unfettered by a 'specific application."' See Emil Lorch to
Arthur D. Rogers, 21 June 1901, folder 9, box r, Emil Lorch collection,
BHL, UM.
98 University of Michigan Department of Architecture, Announcement (Ann
Arbor, MI: University of Michigan, 1910).
99 Grant Hildebrand, Designing for Industry: the Architecture of Albert Kahn
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1974), 27. Henry B. Joy, president of Packard
Motor Company and son of University of Michigan regent James
Frederick Joy, entitled Kahn to diverse opportunities at an early stage
in his architectural career. In the first decade of the century Kahn de
signed his first factory buildings for Packard and also established his
ties to the University of Michigan with the Engineering Building (r902-
1903). He also designed in 1908 the home of George Gough Booth ,
whose estate would later include the Cranbrook complex. 100 History of the College of Architecture, folder 30, box 4, Emil Lorch col
lection, BHL, UM. 10 1 "The Campus Plan," The Michigan Alumnus XVIII (3) (December I9II ),
94· I0 2 Ibid.' 95· 103 Emil Lorch to Frederick Law Olmsted, 6July 1907, folder 2, box 2, Emil
Lorch collection, BHL, UM. 10
4 Emil Lorch wrote to F. W. Chandler at MIT, "I was glad to learn that
the heads of the Eastern schools of architecture had met in conference
recently as I feel much good can be accomplished by such meetings ...
such meetings [should] be held annually and that all architectural schools be invited to participate." See Emil Lorch to F.W. Chandler, go
May 1909, folder 12, box 2, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM.
Just a few years after telephones were installed on campus, Lorch had the novel instrument installed in his home. See the 8 September 1908
telephone lease, folder 14, box 2, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM. 100 History of the College of Architecture, folder 30, box 4, Emil Lorch col
lection, BHL, UM. "The department became a charter member of the
ASCA [sic] whose yard-stick for arch. schools, the 'Standard Minima,'
was largely written here." 106 Emil Lorch to D.R. Wells, draft of letter, 19 November 1909, folder 17 ,
box 2, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM.
REFERENCES
121
REFERE CES
122
'0
7 University of Michigan Colleges of Engineering and Architecture, Gen
eral Announcement, 1917- 1918 (Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michi
gan, 1917), 124, 127- 128.
'08 United States Bureau of the Census, Population, 1920, 3: 488.
I09 Detroit Ciry Directory, 1924- 1925, BHL, UM. 110 History of the College of Architecture, folder 30, box 4, Emil Lorch col
lection, BHL, UM. Lorch remembered in this rough draft that, "Many
extension lectures and some courses were given particularly in Detroit
and Grand Rapids and from 1912- 15 volunteer criticism in design was
given by request . .. to a group of Detroit arch. draftsmen some of whom
were former Michigan students unable to continue their studies here."
"' Emil Lorch to C.N. Butler, 19 June 1907, folder 2, box 2, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM.
"' Jonathan Marwil, A History of Ann Arbor (Ann Arbor, MI: The Ann Arbor
Observer Company, 1987), 85.
" 3 Mark L. Peisch, The Chicago School of Architecture, Early Followers of Sullivan
and Wright ( ew York, NY: Random House, 1964), I I. Ricker had been
the first student of the architecture program at Illinois (enrolling in 1870).
He was thereby the first individual to study architecture at an institution
of higher education in the Midwest. See "Preface," in John S. Garner,
ed ., The Midwest in American Architecture (Urbana and Chicago, IL: Uni
versity of Illinois Press, 1991), x. Lorch may have assumed that Ricker
was about to retire. Sidney Fiske Kimball mentioned in a letter to Lorch
on 30 August 1913 that, "On account of Professor Mann's leaving, it
was decided that Professor Ricker should not retire as yet." See Sidney
Fiske Kimball to Emil Lorch, 30 August 1913, Sidney Fiske Kimball col
lection, series 7 ssb, Philadelphia Museum of Art Archives.
"4 University of Illinois President Edmund]. James to Emil Lorch, 22
August 1913, folder 40, box 2, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM.
"' George Grant Elmslie to William L. Steele, 8July 1913, folder 40, box 2, Emil Lorch collection , BHL, UM. True enough, Champaign is "a little
bit nearer" to Chicago, since the distance is ninety-one miles less than the distance between Chicago and Ann Arbor.
In his ongoing correspondence to his brother-in-law, Elmslie routinely tried to persuade Lorch to leave Michigan. "Michigan is out of
line!!!! " was his warning in one typical letter. See George Elmslie to Emil
Lorch, 20 March 1920, folder 12, box 3, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM.
Elmslie himself had never received a formal education in architec
ture. See Craig Zabel, "George Grant Elmslie and the Glory and Bur
den of the Sullivan Legacy," in JohnS. Garner, ed., The Midwest in Ameri
can Architecture (Urbana and Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press,
1991), 3· "
6 David Van Zanten, "Chicago in Architectural History," in Elisabeth
Blair MacDougall, ed., The Architectural Historian in America (Washington,
DC: ational Gallery of Art, 1990), 95· The name "Chicago School" was coined just a few years earlier by Thomas E. Tallmadge in Architectural
Review XV (April 1908), 69- 71.
117 Emil Lorch to Dean Philip N. Youtz, I I March I96o, Centennial Week
end, I976, box I7, University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records, BHL, UM. Lorch wrote that, "Louis Sullivan's
influence played a part here since he was the leading progressive archi
tect of his time, whose work was discussed in many lectures in the his
tory of architecture. When in I909 our first class and I visited Chicago,
we looked up all the local buildings designed by Sullivan, and spent
some time with him in his office where my late brother-in-law, George
G. Elmslie, was associated with Sullivan. Sullivan was much interested
in some plates showing work in abstract design made by the students,
and felt that the approach was sound, as Frank Lloyd Wright stated
later at a meeting of the Chicago Architectural Club, at which I read a
paper on the subject." 118 H.B. Hutchins to Emil Lorch, 29 August I9I3 , folder 40, box 2, Emil
Lorch collection, BHL, UM. 119 Emil Lorch to Sidney Fiske Kimball, 26 August I9I3, Sidney Fiske
Kimball collection, series 7 ssb, Philadelphia Museum of Art Archives. 120 Sidney Fiske Kimball accepted Lorch 's invitation, and at the same time
explained his reasons for leaving Illinois. He wrote that, "I went to Illi
nois at a salary of SI200, with the promise of advancement and the un
derstanding that I was to succeed to Professor Ricker's work on his ex
pected retirement at the end of the year. On account of Professor Mann's
leaving, it was decided that Professor Ricker should not retire yet. At
the same time, through my marriage with the daughter of Professor
Goebel, I became ineligible for reappointment under the University rule
concerning relatives on the faculty." See Sidney Fiske Kimball to Emil
Lorch, 30 August I9I3, Sidney Fiske Kimball collection, series 7 ssb,
Philadelphia Museum of Art Archives.
That same year, William Caldwell Titcomb left the architecture
faculty of Michigan to join that of the University of Illinois. Titcomb
had been one of Lorch's earliest colleagues, joining the school in 1908.
Titcomb returned to Michigan in 1925. See Wells Ira Bennett, "College
of Architecture and Design, History," miscellaneous writings (3), box r,
Wells Ira Bennett collection, BHL, UM. 121 Fiske Kimball, "The Old Houses of Ann Arbor," The Inlander 22 (8) (May
1919): 3-6. 122 Wells Bennett to Fiske Kimball, 6 April 1917, correspondence I9I7- I9I9,
box r, Wells Ira Bennett collection, BHL, UM. 12
3 John C. Parker to H.B. Hutchins, 12 June 1918, folder 6, box 3, Emil
Lorch collection, BHL, UM. 124 Fiske Kimball to Wells Bennett, 3 May 1920, correspondence 1920- 1923,
box r, Wells Bennett collection, BHL, UM.
Bennett and Kimball shared historical research for a few years af
ter Kimball 's departure from Michigan. Despite his disassociation from
the university, Kimball did retain a curiosity about its development. He
ended one letter to Bennett with "Do write me all the news and gossip."
REFERENCES
123
REFERENCES
124
See Fiske Kimball to Wells Bennett, 7 November I922, correspondence
I920- I923, box I, Wells Bennett collection, BHL, UM. 12
5 Emil Lorch to William S. Lowndes, I8 July I9I7, folder g, box g, Emil
Lorch collection, BHL, UM. 126 College of Architecture and Design History, miscellaneous writings (g),
box I, Wells Bennett collection, BHL, UM. 12
7 "Michiganensian," Michigan Technic (March I9I7), 48. 128 J.J. Albert Rousseau, Biography Vertical File, BHL, UM. The article
also relates Rousseau's opinions that, "the building plans of the east
ern portion of the country are too conservative while the west carries
things too far in the Mexican and mission styles." 129 University of Michigan treasurer GeorgeS. Baker to Emil Lorch, I No
vember I9IO, folder 23, box 2, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM. 13° Guy Szuberla, "Irving Kane Pond: A Michigan Architect in Chicago,"
The Old Northwest 5 (2) (Summer I979), I35· 131 Irving Kane Pond, "The College Union," The Architectural Forum (June
I93I ), 771. 132 Irving Kane Pond, "University of Michigan League," University of Mich
igan vertical file, BHL, UM. Pond wrote that, "there will be an expres
sion of character and individuality and a recognition of modernity linked
with the past such as shown in the Union but besides this the building
will exhale an indefinite and subtle something which does not of neces
sity appertain to a building designed primarily for the uses of men. No
little of this charm will be imparted by the presence of the women them
selves; but there will be a spiritual something in the building which shall
minister to this other and furnish a proper background." 133 Ibid.' II I.
l34 Pond and Pond Architectural Firm: Historical Background, box 6, Pond
Family collection, BHL, UM. l35 University of Michigan Alumni Association Alumnae Survey, I924,
Ruth Love Archibald-Burnham entry and Catherine B. Heller entry, box
I09, University of Michigan Alumni Association records, BHL, UM. 136 "Back Again," The Michigan Technic XXXII, 4 (December rgrg), 305. The
architecture fraternity newsletter noted earlier that Battin's assignment
was "due to his dexterity with the drums." See page IO of The Archi of Alpha Rho Chi, I, III. His address was listed a few pages later as Harold
Battin, care Aoecy Jassy Band, IO rue de Paris, A.P. 708, A.E.F. l37 Lorch c.v. for Mr. Trout, folder 58, box g, Emil Lorch collection, BHL,
UM. 138 Emil Lorch to President Burton, 7 May I92I, folder 6, box g, Marion L.
Burton collection, BHL, UM.
l39 Program for "Dinner Honoring Professor Emil Lorch," I November
I9I9 , folder II, box g, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM, and "Honors to
Professor Lorch," The Michigan Technic XXXII, 4 (December I9I9), 302. 14° Warren Laird, professor of architecture at University of Pennsylvania,
wired Lorch a telegram on September IO, I9I8, that, "Today learn offi
cially that courses required in Students Army Training Corps probably
exclude architecture virtually vacating all schools would you advise that
as association official I petition authority in person on behalf schools
generally to accept architecture on par with engineering can go to Wash
ington Monday could you go too wire briefly collect." See Warren P.
Laird to Emil Lorch, IO September I9I8, folder 6, box g, Emil Lorch
collection, BHL, UM. Their efforts were for naught, and many of the
non-exempt students of architecture were enlisted. 141 See folders I and 2 , box g, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM, for discus
sion of this concern. 14
2 Emil Lorch, "Twenty Minute Talk to Engineering Freshmen," I8 Janu
ary I922 , folder I9 , box g, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM.
l43 David Van Zanten, "Chicago in Architectural History," in Elisabeth
Blair MacDougall , ed., The Architectural Historian in America (Washington,
DC: National Gallery of Art, I990), 92. 144 Irving Pond to Emil Lorch, I I May I923, folder 23, box g, Emil Lorch
collection, BHL, UM. 145 Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue to Emil Lorch, II May I923, folder 20, box
g, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM. Goodhue was no more positive
about current architectural practice in New York City. He continued in
his letter to complain to Lorch that, ''At no great distance from me is a
series of columns, stone on the outside but iron frame within, holding a
stone cornice constructed in exactly the same fashion. While such things
are possible isn't all architectural education worse than idle and is there
any place for logic in the profession in which we both practice?" 146 Louis H. Sullivan to Emil Lorch, II May I923, folder 23, box g, Emil
Lorch collection, BHL, UM. 147 Memo, 2 October I922, folder 20, box g, Emil Lorch collection, BHL,
UM. 148 He claimed that, "a deplorable outgrowth of the desire to win competi
tions has been the minimization of non-technical and certain technical
studies in favor of architectural design. Eastern schools allow less time
for non-technical subjects than those schools west of the Alleghenies;
Yale allows but half of what is required at Michigan. " See Emil Lorch to
Clarence Cook Little, I2 June I928, folder 53, box g, Emil Lorch collec
tion, BHL, UM. 149 David Van Zanten, "Chicago in Architectural History," in Elisabeth
Blair MacDougall , ed., The Architectural Historian in America (Washington,
DC: National Gallery of Art, I990), 93· Lorch 's continuing faith in the unique offerings of the Midwest was not always clearly proclaimed. In a
letter to Mortimer Cooley, he wrote that, "Situated as Michigan is, be
tween the East and the West, she has a unique opportunity to respond to
this rising demand for a more vital architecture. The American Institute
of Architects devoted one of its sessions last May to the discussion of
'Plagiarism as a Fine Art' ; yet the things that were said were largely those
which have been taught here ever since the foundation of the architec
tural school." See Emil Lorch to Mortimer Cooley, 22 October I924,
folder go, box g, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM.
REFERENCES
125
REFERE CES •5o The University of Michigan, President 's Report, 1924-25, 106. Cooley
continued that, "the faculty has been chosen to bring together these
views, so far as possible, in order that out of mixed opinions may come a
broader policy, one that shall carry the student beyond a particular cult
and give him knowledge of many. What wiser policy for a people like
ours, made up as it is from the regions of the earth?"
Historian David Hollinger noted that in Lorch's era the University of
Michigan sensed that it was "in the Midwest but not altogether of it,"
and that, by comparison to another large midwestern university, "Mich
igan looked eastward, and with the extensive support of the legislature
in Lansing, fashioned for itself an image more national, more cosmo
politan, and more conservative than that of Wisconsin." See David A.
Hollinger, ''Academic Culture at Michigan, 1930- r988: The Apotheosis
of Pluralism," in Margaret A. Lourie, ed., Intellectual History and Academic
Culture at the University of Michigan: Fresh Explorations (Ann Arbor, MI: The
University of Michigan, 1989), 91- 92.
'5' See Earl Lundin to Marion Burton, 9 December 1922, folder 20, box 3,
Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM.
Lorch himself was encouraged to consider once again relocating
within the Midwest. His brother-in-law, George Elmslie, wanted him to
pursue any possible establishment of an architectural program at the
University of Wisconsin. In a letter of March 20, 1920, Elmslie wrote that,
"If they do establish one, for goodness, apply for the job and get hitched
up with a liberal and great university. The Wisconsin idea, as you know,
is known all over the world. It isn't long since I read an article in the
Contemporary Review (British) on 'the Wisconsin idea.' This great new
day is going to slide along the Mississippi Valley. Michigan is out of
line!!!!" See George Elmslie to Emil Lorch, 20 March 1920, folder 12,
box 3, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM.
With regards to crowded conditions, see also "Teaching Architecture
in a Boiler Shop," The Michigan Alumnus XXXI, 25 (r r April 1925), 547- 549.
'5' "Report of the College of Architecture, 1927- 1928," folder 50, box 3, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM.
'53 Michiganensian, 1920, 665. '54 " otes on a Talk to Architectural Freshmen," 6 October rg2o, folder 14,
box 13, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM. Lorch stated in part that,
"in case of illness, young women should go to Mrs. Jordan for excuses,
while architectural students will come to me."
•55 Women were not privy to meetings with visitors like Mr. Eames of
Smith, Hinchman, & Grylls who spoke about "The Business Relations
of the Architect." See ''Architects' Smoker," The Michigan Technic XXXVII,
3 (March 1924), 31-32.
Elizabeth Lorch Bailey, a student in the College of Architecture and
Design in the 1930s, recalled that her father would invite female students
to join his family for dinner on occasion. She also felt that, "he tried
harder than the results showed." Elizabeth Lorch Bailey, interview with
author, Ann Arbor, MI, May 1991.
'56 See "Report of the College of Architecture, 1927- 28," folder so, box 3,
Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM.
' 57 Emil Lorch to Dean Mortimer E. Cooley, 22 October 1924, folder 30,
box 3, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM. Lorch wrote in his 1927- 28
report that, "Decorative design has attracted and will continue to at
tract more young women than men; there are now thirty-one and six,
respectively." "Report of the College of Architecture 1927-28," folder
so, box 3, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM. According to historian
Howard H. Peckham, Michigan's design program was at the time one
of only three in the country. See Howard H. Peckham, The Making of
the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press,
rg67), I47· ' 58 Mary Otis Stevens, "Struggle for Place: Women in Architecture: rg2o
rg6o," in Susana Torre, ed ., Women in American Architecture: A Historic and
Contemporary Perspective (New York, NY: Whitney Library of Design,
rgn), 8g.
' 59 Margaret Bourke White's famous photographic career began with night
scenes from rooftops of the campus. She received an honorary doctorate
from the univers ity in r 9S r.
Esther McCoy was recognized for her life-long contributions to Cali
fornian architecture through an exhibit in rggo at the Museum of Con
temporary Art in Los Angeles. See The New York Times, 14]anuary rggo.
' 60 Louis G. Redstone, Louis G. Redstone) From Israeli Pioneer to American Archi
tect (Ames, IA: Iowa State University Press, rg8g), 72. In general, how
ever, Michigan was at least more open than Ivy League schools of that
same era. See David Hollinger, ''Academic Culture at Michigan, rg38-
rg88: The Apotheosis of Pluralism," in Margaret A. Lourie, ed., Intellec
tual History and Academic Culture at the University of Michigan: Fresh Explora
tions (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan, rg8g), gr.
'6
' ''Architects' Ball an Evening of Oriental Splendor," Michigan Alumnus
XXXI, 30 (23 May rg2s), 662- 663.
'62 See memo of a conference with President Ruthven, r8June 1931, folder
6, box 4, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM. Lorch noted that, "among
the desiderata would be: funds for jury members coming from other cit
ies. Such men are a stimulus to staff and students."
' 63 Howard Peckham, The Making of the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor,
MI: University of Michigan Press, rg67), I49· '6
4 Emil Lorch to Mr. Lawrence Kocher, Managing Editor of the Architec
tural Record, 8 November 193s, folder 27, box 4, Emil Lorch collection,
BHL, UM. Little's successor, Alexander Ruthven, retained the formal
concept of a Fine Arts Division, but it had a minimal impact on the
administration of the architecture and design program.
'65 Emil Lorch to President Burton, 7 March 1921, folder 6, box 3, Marion
L. Burton collection, BHL, UM.
'66 Leonard K. Eaton, "The Louis Sullivan Spirit in Michigan," Michigan
Alumnus Quarterly Review LXIV, r8 (Spring rgs8), 220.
REFERENCES
127
REFERENCES 167 Elizabeth Lorch Bailey, interview with author, Ann Arbor, MI, May I99I
and Emil Lorch to George Elmslie, I3 October I920, folder I4, box 3, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM.
168 Louis Sullivan to Mr. and Mrs. Pickell, 3IJanuary I924, folder 27, box 3,
Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM. 16
9 John Burchard and Albert Bush-Brown, The Architecture of America (Bos
ton, MA: Little, Brown and Company, I96I ), 376. 17° "The Pageant of Arts and Crafts, " The Michigan Technic XXXVII, 2 (Jan
uary I924), 22.
Hospitality took many forms. Lorch had arranged for living accom
modations for the Saarinen family, in a house across the street from his
own on Church Street. And newcomer Eero Saarinen was accompanied
to school by Lorch 's son Richard. Elizabeth Lorch Bailey, interview with
author, Ann Arbor, MI, May I99I. 17
1 The alumni in Saarinen's advanced design course included Kenneth
Rindge, Horace Wachter, Harold Beam, Catherine Heller, Edward Kline,
Ralph Calder, and Russel Lark. See ''Alumni of '23,'' The Michigan Technic
XXXVII, 2 (January I924), 23. 172 Collections of the College of Architecture, University of Michigan, I906-
I936, folder I I, box rr , Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM. 173 J. Robert Swanson, "Eliel Saarinen," The Michigan Technic XXXVII, 4,
(May I924), 5- 6. 174 Lorch was proud of this type of three-dimensional design, claiming, "Our
school is probably leading most other American architectural schools
in the development of three-dimensional teaching in connection with
design. " See Emil Lorch to Mortimer E. Cooley, 22 October I924, folder
30, box 3, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM. 175 "Teaching Architecture in a Boiler Shop," The Michigan Alumnus XXXI,
25 (I I April I925), 547-549. 17
6 George G. Booth to Emil Lorch, I August I9I8, folder 6, box 3, Emil
Lorch collection, BHL, UM. 177 "The College of Architecture," The University of Michigan, President)s
Report) 1925- 26, 68. He admitted that, "The school cannot ... compete
with large professional opportunities such as now are awaiting him." 17
8 Emil Lorch to Mortimer E. Cooley, 22 October 1924, folder 30, box 3,
Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM. That same year, the college also received as gifts a painting from Henry Ford, SI,ooo from George Booth,
and carving models for the university's new lawyer 's club from archi
tects York and Sawyer.
Eliel Saarinen's son Eero, prepared his own portraiture of the uni
versity's president Burton. This linoleum cut and others appeared in the
university's high school publication, for which he was art editor. See
"The Youngest Adventurers in Campus Journalism," Michigan Alumnus
XXXI, 30 (23 May I925), 665. 179 The rewards of this international travel fellowship were bestowed on
male and female students alike. Miss Marion F. Blood was one of the
first holders of the award.
180 Lorraine Welling Lanmon, William Lescaze, Architect (Cranbury, [J: Asso
ciated University Presses, 1987), 52. 181 "Proposed Budget for College of Architecture for the Year I925- 1926,"
folder ro, box I I, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM. 182 Maynard Lyndon to "Carl," 10 March I988, Dick Croake files, within
current University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban
Planning records retained by the college. 18
3 Francis S. Onderdonk, "Possibilities of a Concrete Architecture," The
Michigan Technic XXXIX, 2 (January 1926), 15. 184 Ibid, I 6. 18
5 Elizabeth Lorch Bailey, interview with author, Ann Arbor, MI, May I99I. 186 Exhibitions in Architectural Building, I927- 28, folder 50, box 3, Emil
Lorch collection, BHL, UM. In his annual "Report of the College of
Architecture I927- I928," Lorch mentioned that, "Mr. Lars Marnus, an
architect of Copenhagen, gave two illustrated lectures on old and mod
ern Danish architecture. He came to this country largely through ar
rangements made by us, and he spoke at several other architectural schools."
187 Emil Lorch to Dean M.E. Cooley, 22 October I924, folder 30, box 3, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM.
188 Akademie der Kunste zu Berlin, Ausstellung Neuer Amerikanischer Baukunst
(Berlin, Germany: Akademie der Kunste zu Berlin, I926), 5· The translation is that of Kent Kleinman.
189 Lewis Mumford to Emil Lorch, 7 March I928, folder 52, box 3, Emil
Lorch collection, BHL, UM. 19° "Conference with President Little," 3 August I928 , folder 54, box 3, Emil
Lorch collection, BHL, UM.
l9l Howard Peckham, The Making of the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor,
Ml: University of Michigan , I967), I4I. This resident architect was giv
en the formal title of "consulting architect." See The University of Mich
igan, President's Report, 1922- 23, 29. 19
2 Minutes of Committee of Five, I9 December I923, folder 5, box 14, Marion Burton collection, BHL, UM.
l93 Emil Lorch to George G. Elmslie, I3 October I920, folder I4, box 3,
Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM. 194 Howard Peckham, The Making of the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor,
MI: University of Michigan , I967), 143.
l95 The University of Michigan, President's Report, 1922- 23, 47· l9
6 The idea for a campus campanile had, according to one article, been
inspired by a sketch of a tower sent by Lorch to Burton as a ew Year's
greeting. See '~Campanile Proposed for Michigan's Campus," The Mich
igan Alumnus XXXII, II (I9 December I925), 229- 232. 197 Ibid. 19
8 Ann Arbor Daily News, '~nn Arbor Seen as Motorists' Mecca Following
Erection of Fine Charles Baird Carillon," 6 March 1936.
l99 Alfred Connable, interview with author, Ann Arbor, MI, 30 June I992.
REFERENCES
129
REFERE CES 200 The Burton Memorial Tower, University of Michigan vertical file, BHL,
UM. 20 1 Lorch had already asked for a leave of absence in 1923 to go to Europe
during which he would meet with M. Grapin and travel further to Italy.
See Mortimer E. Cooley to President M.L. Burton, 14]uly 1923, folder
9, box 14, Marion L. Burton collection, BHL, UM.
George Mason was referred to by his colleagues in the state as the
"Dean of Michigan Architects." See Michigan Society of Architects,
Week(y Bulletin 16, 34 (25 August 1942), folder 13, box 12, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM. Albert Kahn began his career in Mason's office.
202 Betty Lorch to Daddy, 8 O ctober 1930, folder 68, box 3, Emil Lorch
collection, BHL, UM. 203 Miscellaneous writings, folder 3, box 1, Wells Ira Bennett collection, BHL,
UM. 204 Howard Peckham, The Making of the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor,
MI: University of Michigan, 1967), 173. 205 University of Michigan Colleges of Engineering and Architecture, An
nual Announcement 1928- 1929 (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan,
1928), 225. 206 University of Michigan College of Architecture, Annual Announcement 1933-
1934 (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan, 1933), 39· 207 Ibid , 5· 208 Emil Lorch to Richard Raseman, 13 December 1937, folder 52, box 4,
Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM. Lorch related in another letter, to Mr.
Howell Taylor at the American University of Beirut that, "it has been
possible to measure and photograph practically all the important build
ings in Michigan which are worthy of record in the Library of Congress."
Emil Lorch to Mr. Howell Taylor, 16 December 1937, folder 52, box 4,
Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM. 209 Michigan, A Guide to the Wolverine State (New York, Y: Oxford University
Press, 1941), 164. 2 10 Ibid., I7I.
Emil Lorch to Alexander Ruthven, 25 May 1935, folder 26, box 4, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM.
2 12 Emil Lorch to George D. Mason, 5 October 1931, folder 8, box 4, Emil
Lorch collection, BHL, UM. 2 13 Faculty minutes, 28 May 1940, faculty minutes 1929- 1952, box r, Uni
versity of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records,
BHL, UM. 2 14 Raoul Wallenberg to Emil Lorch, 25 November 1936, folder 36, box 4,
Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM. 21 5 The University of Michigan, President's Report, 1951-52, 125. The war
time intimacy of the college was valued by the few who were able to
pursue their studies. Charles Moore (1948) recalls that the college then
"was as intimate as any Ivy League school." See David Littlejohn, Archi
tect, The Life and Work of Charles Moore (New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart and
Winston, 1984), 106.
2 16 Wells Ira Bennett to Harlan Hatcher and Marvin Niehuss, 2 October
I95I, architecture folder, box I, Marvin Niehuss collection, BHL, UM. 2 17 John Ely Burchard, "The City on the Hill," Michigan Alumnus Quarterly
Review LXIII, I4 (Winter I957), I28. 2
'8 The University of Michigan, President's Report, 1950- jl, 200.
21 9 Wells Ira Bennett, "By Way of Introduction," Student Publication I, I (Spring
I 955) , 3· 220 Wells Ira Bennett to Harlan Hatcher and Marvin iehuss, 2 October
I95I, architecture folder, box I, Marvin iehuss collection, BHL, UM. 22 1 Even the nomenclature of architectural style was deliberated over. Philip
Youtz told the Michigan students that, "The high priests of the Museum
of Modern Art have labeled this new product the International Style,
because they perceived that it did not grow from regional roots as did all
historical styles. But, if we had delayed the christening until we could
make the acquaintance of the child, we would have chosen some such
name as the scientific, technical, positivistic, industrial, or dynamic ar
chitecture." See Philip N. Youtz, "The Impact of Science on Architec
ture," Student Publication I , I (Spring I955), 4· 222 David Littlejohn, Architect, The Life and Work of Charles W Moore (New
York, NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, I984), I07- ro8. 223 Through the support of Michigan architecture graduate joseph Hudnut,
Gropius was able to secure a teaching position in the United States at
the outset of World War II. Hudnut, as dean of the Harvard Graduate
School of Design, was one of Gropius' strong supporters and a member
of the audience in Ann Arbor when Gropius delivered his paper at the
conference on design. 22
4 Walter Gropius, "Contemporary Architecture and Training the Archi
tect," paper delivered at the Conference on Co-ordination in Design [sic],
held at the University of Michigan, February 2- 3, I940 .
.. s Reginald R. Isaacs, Gropius: An Illustrated Biography of the Creator of the Bau
haus (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, I99I ), I7. 226 Ibid. 227 Wells Ira Bennett, "Design Today," commencement address delivered at
Cranbrook Academy of Art, 28 May I948. Excerpt located among mis
cellaneous writings, folder 5, box I , Wells Ira Bennett collection , BHL,
UM. 228 Wells Ira Bennett, "The Ann Arbor Conference," miscellaneous writ
ings, folder 6, box I, Wells Ira Bennett collection, BHL, UM. 229 Leonard K. Eaton, interview with author, Ann Arbor, MI, I9 May I988. o3o Wells Ira Bennett to Harlan Hatcher and Marvin Niehuss, 2 October
I95I, architecture folder, box I, Marvin iehuss collection, BHL, UM.
Bennett's antagonistic relationship with certain of his colleagues
was long-standing. In a letter he sent to Emil Lorch from Europe on 28
May I933, Bennett concluded, " ... though most of the staff will not be
lieve it, I should like to see them. Some of them deserve a swift kick but
will you translate it to them as my kindest regards." Wells Bennett to
Emil Lorch, folder 20, box 4, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM.
REFERENCES
REFERENCES 23
1 The University of Michigan, President)s Report, 1959- 60, 20. 23
2 Philip . Youtz, "The Impact of Science on Architecture," Student Publi
cation I , r (Spring 1955), 4· 2
33 Philip . Youtz, "Lifting Huron Towers," Journal of the American Concrete
Institute Uune 1961), 1537- 1548. 2
34 Albert Kahn to Alexander Ruthven, 28 March I940, correspondence
I940- I946, box I, Wells Ira Bennett collection, BHL, UM. 2
35 David Hollinger, "Academic Culture at Michigan, I938- I988: The
Apotheosis of Pluralism," in Margaret Lourie, ed., Intellectual History and
Academic Culture at the University of Michigan: Fresh Explorations (Ann Arbor,
MI: University of Michigan, I989), IOI.
Leonard Eaton, in reminiscing about the selection and retention of
Michigan's mid-century architecture faculty, observed that, "Michigan
hasn't been kind to genius." Leonard K. Eaton, interview with author,
Ann Arbor, MI, I9 May I988. 2
36 University of Michigan College of Architecture and Design and De
partment of Engineering Research, "Housing Research and Education
at the University of Michigan," I December I947· 2 37 Ibid.
238 Ibid., 3· 239 Folder 24, box 3, University of Michigan Phoenix Project records, BHL,
UM. 24° University of Michigan College of Architecture and Design and D e
partment of Engineering Research, "Housing Research and Education
at the University of Michigan," I December I947· 24
1 Leonard K. Eaton , interview with author, Ann Arbor, MI, I9 May I988. 2
42 William Muschenheim, interview with William Jordy, ew York,
I985. Transcript and sound recording on deposit at Columbia University.
243 "Confidential Report of the Survey Committee of the College of Archi
tecture and Design, University of Michigan, April 2, I948," Wells Ira
Bennett folder, box 2, University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records, BHL, UM.
244 Ibid. 2
45 The University of Michigan, President 's Report) 1950-51, I20. 24
6 William Muschenheim, interview with William Jordy, ew York, 1985.
Transcript and sound recording on deposit at Columbia University. 2
47 The University of Michigan, President)s Report, 1958-59, 85. 24
8 Folder 24, box 3, Univers ity of Michigan Phoenix Project records, BHL,
UM. 249 Robert C. Metcalf to james C. Snyder, ro August I98I, Annual reports
I98I- 82, box I I, University of Michigan College of Architecture and
Urban Planning records, BHL, UM. 25° The University of Michigan, President)s Report) 1952-53, I I8.
25
1 ''Architectural Research and Education," folder 24, box 3, University of Michigan Phoenix Project collection, BHL, UM.
2 52 Robert C. Metcalf, "College of Architecture and Design ," in Ferol
Brinkman, ed., University of Michigan, An Encyclopedic Survey V (Ann Arbor,
MI: University of Michigan, 1977), 58. 253 Confidential report of the Survey Committee of the College of Archi
tecture and Design, 2 April 1948, architecture folder, box r, Marvin
Niehuss collection, BHL, UM. 2 54 Progress Report (Spring 195I), IO, folder Ed. Olencki I949- 62, box I, Uni
versity of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records,
BHL, UM. 255 "Metcalf Remembers," Portico (Summer I99I), I5. 2 56 Progress Report (Spring I95I), IO, folder Ed. Olencki I949- 62, box I, Uni
versity of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records,
BHL, UM. 257 Paul Venable Turner, Campus, An American Planning Tradition (Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, I990). 258 Allan Temko, Eero Saarinen (New York, Y: George Braziller, I962), 27. 259 Tentative Building Program for North Campus Area, 23 ovember I95I
exhibits, box 66, University of Michigan Board of Regents records, BHL,
UM. 260 The University of Michigan, President's Report, 1953- 54, II6. 26 ' Progress Report (Spring I95I ), folder Ed. Olencki I949- 62, box I, Univer
sity of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records,
BHL, UM. 262 The University of Michigan, President's Report, 1956-5i, 275· Such a state
ment is considerable contrast to the lack of any mention of the Univer
sity of Michigan North Campus in the recently-published general his
tory of American campus planning by Paul Turner. See footnote 257 for
full citation. 263 Wells Bennett, "The Personal Car and Campus," Journal of the American
Institute of Architects 26 (1956), I05- IIO. 264 Philip N. Youtz, "Planning an Integrated Campus for an Expanding Uni
versity," 25 March I96o, orth Campus Planning 1959- 60, box 20, Uni
versity of Michigan Vice President and Chief Financial Officer records,
BHL, UM. 265 College of Architecture and Design Faculty minutes, 22 ovember 1954,
box r, University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Plan
ning records, BHL, UM. 266 The University of Michigan, President's Report, 1958-59, 84. 267 The University of Michigan, President's Report, 1958-59, 83. 268 The University of Michigan, President's Report, 1960- 61, 22. 269 Tom Hayden, Reunion, A Memoir (New York, NY: Random House, 1988),
32. 27° Paul Sawyer, "Cinema Guild, Underground Film, and Flaming Crea
tures," R.L. Cutler- Student Organizations- Cinema Guild- r967-
1968, box 7, University of Michigan Vice President for Student Affairs
records, BHL, UM.
REFERENCES
133
REFERE CES 27 1 College Faculty Minutes, g February 1967, box 2, University of Michi-
gan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records, BHL, UM. 27
2 Architectural Forum, January 1964, 6g. 2
73 The New York Times, 28 May rg65. 274 The college was at least familiar with him already in 1956, when its pub
lication entitled Dimension included his article "Metro-Linear, A Study of
the Metropolitan Center." See "Biographical Statement," box 2, Uni
versity of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records,
BHL, UM. 275 Faculty Appointment Recommendation, rsJune rg64, box IOI, Univer
sity of Michigan Board of Regents records, BHL, UM. 2
76 Entenza reenforced his new interest in Malcolmson at Michigan by of
fering Graham Scholar grants to qualified University of Michigan stu
dents to attend the International Design Conference in Aspen. See The
University of Michigan, President 's Report, 1964- 65, 31. 277 What is more, during his first year as Michigan's curator, Sawyer had
overseen the installation of William Muschenheim's modernist stair
case and display system within the museum. 278 Reginald Malcolmson, "Outline Text of TV Program," television pro
gram folder, box 4, University of Michigan College of Architecture and
Urban Planning records, BHL, UM. This film seems to have been made
in rg66, according to the U-M TV scripts Bss8-B582, Summer rg66,
"Understanding Our World," Michigan Media records, BHL, UM. 279 There was as well the assertion that landscape architecture would be
more appropriately placed in the university's School of atural Resources;
by rg65 that move had been made. 280 Michigan Daily, ''Architecture Students Try to Help a City," 15 November
1964, r. 281 The Department of Architecture Building Program, Special Meeting,
8 ovember rg66, College Building Committee, rg6o- rg7o , box 6, Uni
versity of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records,
BHL, UM. 282 Virginia Van Dreal, on the part of Howard H akken, to J.F. Brinkerhoff
and J.G. McKevitt, 26 july 1965, College Committee on Space and Plan
ning, rg65- 1972 , box 6, University of Michigan College of Architecture
and Urban Planning records, BHL, UM. 28
3 Minutes, Department of Architecture Building Program Special Meet
ing, 8 ovember rg66, College Building Committee rg6o- rg7o, box 6,
University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning rec
ords, BHL, UM. 28
4 Reginald F. Malcolmson to Professor Gerhard Olving, 28 February 1967,
Ad hoc Building Program Committee rg67- 68, box 6, University of Mich
igan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records, BHL, UM. 28
5 Reginald F. Malcolmson, ''A Report to the Regents of the University of
Michigan, College of Architecture and Design," rsJune rg67, Architec
ture and Design, College of, (Dean Malcolmson) rg66- 7, box 3, Universi
ty of Michigan Vice President for Academic Affairs records, BHL, UM.
286 Ibid., and C. Theodore Larson to Allan F. Smith, goJanuary rg67, Architecture and Design, College of, Department of Architecture rg66- 67,
box g, University of Michigan Vice President for Academic Affairs rec
ords, BHL, UM. 287 Reginald F. Malcolmson, ''A Report to the Regents of the University of
Michigan, College of Architecture and Design," rsJune rg67, Architec
ture and Design, College of (Dean Malcolmson) rg66- 7, box g, Univer
sity of Michigan Vice President for Academic Affairs records, BHL, UM. 288 Department of Architecture Long-Range Master Plan , rg7o- rg8o, Long
Range Master Plan, rg7o- rg8o, box 4, University of Michigan College
of Architecture and Urban Planning records, BHL, UM. 289 Walter Sanders to Allan F. Smith, 13 February rg67, Architecture and
Design, College of, Department of Architecture rg66- 67, box 3, Univer
sity of Michigan Vice President for Academic Affairs records, BHL,
UM. 29° Department of Architecture, Minutes of the Special Faculty Meeting, 24
March rg66, Jacques Brownson, box 4, University of Michigan College
of Architecture and Urban Planning records, BHL, UM. 29 ' Twenty endorsed the vote of no confidence, twelve opposed it, and two
abstained. See Jacques Brownson, box 4, University of Michigan Col
lege of Architecture and Urban Planning records, BHL, UM. 29
2 "Qualifications for Position of Chairman of Department of Architec
ture," Chairman, Department of Architecture Search Committee, rg64-
rg65, box 8, University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban
Planning records, BHL, UM. 293 See Jacques Brownson, box 4, University of Michigan College of Archi
tecture and Urban Planning records, BHL, UM. 294 Pauline Saliga, ed ., A Century of Chicago Skyscrapers, The Sky 's the Limit (New
York, NY: Rizzoli, rggo), rgg. 295 Memorandum "To Whom It May Concern" from Robert C. Metcalf, 17
February rg8r , box rs, University of Michigan College of Architecture
and Urban Planning records, BHL, UM. 296 Leonard K. Eaton, interview with author, Ann Arbor, MI, rg May rg88. 2
97 Sabbatical Leave Reports, box rg, University of Michigan College of Ar
chitecture and Urban Planning records, BHL, UM. 29
8 See Leonard K . Eaton, American Architecture Comes of Age, European Reaction to H.H. Richardson and Louis Sullivan (Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts In
stitute of Technology, 1972). 299 Gwendolyn Wright and Janet Parks, eds., The History of History in Ameri
can Schools of Architecture, r86s- r975 (New York, NY: The Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture and Princeton Ar
chitectural Press, rggo), 88. Hudnut was dean of the Harvard Graduate
School of Design when he authored the essay.
3oo Memorandum to Allan Smith from Chairman and Educational Programs
Committee, Department of Architecture, 6 June rg67, Department of
Architecture 6-Year Program, box 3, University of Michigan Vice Presi
dent for Academic Affairs records, BHL, UM.
REFERE CES
REFERENCES 30 I Ibid.
3o• Memorandum to Allan F. Smith from 24 faculty, 8 February 1967, De
partment of Architecture 6-Year Program, box 3, University of Michi
gan Vice President for Academic Affairs records, BHL, UM. 303 Ibid.
3o4 Memorandum, Robert Darvas to Faculty, Department of Architecture,
27 February 1967, Department of Architecture 6-Year Program, box 3,
University of Michigan Vice President for Academic Affairs records,
BHL, UM. 305 Minutes of the Faculty Meeting, Department of Architecture, 4]anuary
I967, Department of Architecture 6-Year Program, box 3, University of
Michigan Vice President for Academic Affairs records, BHL, UM.
3° 6 Leonard K. Eaton, Gateway Cities & Other Essays (Ames, IA: Iowa State
University Press, I989), xii.
3o7 "The Architecture of Ultimate Concern," Research News XIX, I (July I968),
Office of Research Administration, Annual Reports, I97I- 72, box II,
University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning rec
ords, BHL, UM.
3oa David Hollinger, ''Academic Culture at Michigan, I938- I988: The Apo
theosis of Pluralism," in Margaret A. Lourie, ed ., Intellectual History and
Academic Culture at the University of Michigan: Fresh Explorations (Ann Arbor,
MI: University of Michigan, I989), 99· 3o9 "The Architecture of Ultimate Concern," Research News XIX, I (July I968),
Office of Research Administration, Annual Reports, 197I- 72, box I I,
University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning rec
ords, BHL, M.
3lo Department of Architecture Long-Range Master Plan, I970- I98o, Long
Range Master Plan, I970- I98o, box 4, University of Michigan College
of Architecture and Urban Planning records, BHL, UM.
3" Memorandum to Professor Joseph]. Wehrer from C. Theodore Larson,
I8 October I973, College of Architecture and Urban Planning, Annual
Reports I97I - 72, box II, University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records, BHL, M.
3" "The Architecture of Ultimate Concern ," Research News XIX, r (July 1968),
Office of Research Administration, Annual Reports, I97I- 72, box I I,
University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning rec
ords, BHL, UM. Such esprit found its way into the title of one labo
ratory report, which was "Some Sensible and Outrageous Ideas for the
Future." See Robert C. Metcalf to Allan F. Smith, I3July I973, Research
Review I979, box I I, University of Michigan College of Architecture and
Urban Planning records, BHL, UM. The intention of irony is not a giv
en in another review of the research, in which it was written that, "this
process might be described as the conscious application of conscious
ness to the question of how increased consciousness is achieved." See
Research News XIX, I (July I968), 6. 3l3 See jacques Brownson, box 4, University of Michigan College of Archi
tecture and Urban Planning records, BHL, UM.
3'4 Memorandum to Alfred S. Sussman from Robert C. Metcalf, 26 June
1984, box I5, University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban
Planning records, BHL, UM. 3' 5 The University of Michigan Computing Center, University of Michigan
Computing Center vertical file, BHL, UM.
3' 6 The University of Michigan, President's Report, 1963- 64, 28. 3' 7 Memorandum to Research Policy Committee from John Mcintosh, 28
January 1983, Annual Reports 1983- 84, box II, University of Michigan
College of Architecture and Urban Planning records, BHL, UM.
3' 8 Ibid.
3' 9 The University of Michigan College of Architecture and Design, An
nouncement, 1968- 69 (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan, 1968), 24,
and Robert C. Metcalf to Ronald Lee Johnson, 16 April 1979, box 14,
University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning rec
ords, BHL, UM. 320 Department of Architecture Long-Range Master Plan, I970- 1980, Long
Range Master Plan, 1970- I98o, box 4, University of Michigan College
of Architecture and Urban Planning records, BHL, UM. 32 1 Ibid., 22.
322 Graduates, Doctoral Program in Architecture Dissertation List, Doc
toral Program Files Dissertation List I97I-I986, box I9, University of
Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records, BHL,
UM. 323 Robert C. Metcalf, The College of Architecture and Design, History of
Architecture and Design, 1952- 1974, box 18, University of Michigan Col
lege of Architecture and Urban Planning records, BHL, UM. 32 4 Ibid.
325 Robert C. Metcalf to Leslie Kenyon, 30June 1976, box 14, University of
Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records, BHL,
UM. 326 Robert C. Metcalf toJackJ. Rood, 3 August I977 , box 14, University of
Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records, BHL,
UM. 327 Virginia Van Dreal (secretary to Howard Hakken) to Dean Malcolmson,
College Committee on Space & Planning, I965- I972, box I4, University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records, BHL,
UM.
328 Robert C. Metcalf to Professor Barron Hirsch, I 1 January I978, box I4, University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning rec
ords, BHL, UM. 329 Faculty Meeting Minutes, 8 October 1965, College of Architecture and
Design, box 2, University of Michigan College of Architecture and Ur
ban Planning records, BHL, UM.
33o Robert C. Metcalf to Dear Alumna/Alumnus, 3I March 1975, box I4,
University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning rec
ords, BHL, UM.
REFERE CES
137
REFERE CES 33 ' Robert C. Metcalf to John H. D'Arms, 4 August 1982, box 15, University
of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records, BHL,
UM.
332 Memorandum to William A. Lewis from Robert C. Metcalf, 4 October
1973, Architectural Fragments, box 4, University of Michigan College of
Architecture and Urban Planning records, BHL, UM.
333 Robert C. Metcalf to Harvey K. Jacobsen, 5 May 1981, box 15, Univer
sity of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records,
BHL, UM.
334 Robert C. Metcalf, Points to Discuss in Thursday Talk, Search Commit
tee 1975- 76, box 8, University of Michigan College of Architecture and
Urban Planning records, BHL, UM.
335 Robert C. Metcalf to Sakura Namioka, 6 August 1974, box '4, Univer
sity of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records,
BHL, UM. 336 Memorandum from Robert C. Metcalf to Director of Affirmative Ac
tion, Virginia B. ordby, 3 March 1981, box 15, University of Michigan
College of Architecture and Urban Planning records, BHL, UM. 337 Ibid.
338 Robert C. Metcalf to Ralzemond D. Parker, 28 June 1979, box 14, Uni
versity of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records,
BHL, UM.
339 At the time of the BAM strike, enrollment of Blacks in the Department
of Architecture was only 5 per cent. See Robert C. Metcalf, "Position
Paper on Black and Other Minority Student Enrollment," Minority En
rollment, Annual Reports and Statistics, box 10, University of Michigan
College of Architecture and Urban Planning records, BHL, UM.
340 Robert C. Metcalf to Niara Sudarkasa, 4 February 1985, box 16, Univer
sity of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records,
BHL, UM. 34' Robert C. Metcalf toR. ThomasJaeger, 25January 1974, Minority En
rollment, Annual Reports and Statistics, box 10, University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records, BHL, UM. Metcalf knew how unique Chaffers' insight would be among the local population
of architects since in 1969 there were only twelve Black architects among 450 members of the Detroit Chapter of the AlA. See Robert C. Metcalf
to William L. Cash, 31 March 1969, Minority Enrollment, Annual Re
ports and Statistics, box 10, University of Michigan College of Architec
ture and Urban Planning records, BHL, UM.
342 Robert C. Metcalf to Mr. and Mrs. Howard Sims, 20January 1984, Mi
nority Enrollment, Annual Reports and Statistics, 1983- 84, box 10, Uni
versity of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records,
BHL, UM.
343 Robert C. Metcalf to Sidney Robinson, 19 November 1974, box 14, Uni
versity of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records,
BHL, UM.
344 Robert C. Metcalf Curriculum Vita, Search Committee I975- 76, box 8,
University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning rec
ords, BHL, UM. 345 Robert C. Metcalf to Members of the Committee, North Carolina State
University, 4 February I985, box I6, University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records, BHL, UM.
346 Robert C. Metcalf to Steven Johns, 7 July I98o, box I5, University of
Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records, BHL,
UM.
347 Robert C. Metcalf to Alfred S. Sussman, 29 May I98o, box I5, Univer
sity of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records,
BHL, UM.
348 Memorandum to Faculty of the College from Dean and Executive Com
mittee, 27 August I984, box I6, University of Michigan College of Archi
tecture and Urban Planning records, BHL, UM.
349 Robert C. Metcalf to Members of the Search Committee, 27 August I984,
box I6, University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Plan
ning records, BHL, UM. In a letter to the Associate Vice-President for
Academic Affairs, he remarked that, "we undoubtedly do have the leanest
administrative crew on campus, and perhaps the only unit where all aca
demic administrators teach, including the dean." See Robert C. Metcalf
to Niara Sudarkasa, 26 November I984, box I6, University of Michigan
College of Architecture and Urban Planning records, BHL, UM.
35o Robert C. Metcalf to Wendell R. Lyons, 25 January I979, box I4, Uni
versity of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records,
BHL, UM.
35 ' Memorandum from Robert C. Metcalf to Billy E. Frye, 25January I985,
box I6, University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Plan
ning records, BHL, UM.
35• "History of Giving to the College of Architecture and Urban Planning,"
Portico (Fall I992), I9. 353 George V. Bayliss to Robert C. Metcalf, 8January I98o, box I5, Univer
sity of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records,
BHL, UM. 354 Robert C. Metcalf to David Clarke, II July I974, box 14, University of
Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records, BHL, UM.
355 Visiting Team Report, January 3I - February 3, I982, National Archi
tectural Accrediting Board I98I [sic], box 4, University of Michigan
College of Architecture and Urban Planning records, BHL, UM.
356 Robert C. Metcalf to Carl Arthur Muschenheim, 26 March I979, box I4,
University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning rec
ords, BHL, UM. This statement was prefaced in the letter with the fol
lowing: "I hope you will encourage our B.S. graduates who succeed in
landing a job with SOM to go back to school and finish their profes
sional studies. If they do, I have little doubt in a few years they will be
REFERENCES
139
REFERE CES your best people, in sales, in office management, in programming, in pro
duction, in energy management, in computer applications- and I hope
they will be your best people in design, ... "
357 Robert C. Metcalf to Frank H.T. Rhodes, 6 November 1975, box 14, Uni
versity of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning records,
BHL, UM.
358 Rudolf Arnheim, "The Persistence of Goodness in Time," Rudolf Arnheim,
box 4, University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Plan
ning records, BHL, UM.
359 Robert M. Beckley, ''Architectural Education, The Profession, and the
University: A Question of Credibility?", Journal of Architectural Education
43/ 3 (Spring rggo), 63.
IMAGE CITATIONS
' Vignola, Le dve regole della prospettiva pratica diM. Jacome Baro::;::;i da Vignola
(Rome: Nella Stamparia des Mascardi, 1644). Image provided courtesy
of University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning. 2 University of Michigan Architectural Drawings, Bentley Historical Li
brary, University of Michigan (hereafter cited as BHL, UM).
3 Jasper Cropsey collection, BHL, UM.
4 Oil painting by Cropsey, hangs in the Roscoe 0. and Lillian C. Bonisteel
Room of the Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.
5 University of Michigan map collection, BHL, UM. 6 Portrait of William Le BaronJenney, from The WesternArchitect,June 1907,
courtesy of The Art Institute of Chicago.
7 University of Michigan University Hall folder, University of Michigan
Photographs Vertical File, BHL, UM. 8 University of Michigan Architectural Drawings, BHL, UM. 9 Delta Kappa Epsilon folder, University of Michigan Photographs Verti
cal File, BHL, UM.
'0 William Le Baron Jenney to James B. Angell, folder 49, box 2, James B.
Angell collection, BHL, UM.
" Family Photographs - Irving Pond folder, box 8, Pond Family collection,
BHL, UM. 12 Allen B. Pond folder, box 8, Pond Family collection, BHL, UM.
' 3 Pond - Sketches - Travel - Unidentified Landscapes and Buildings fold
er, box 8, Pond Family collection, BHL, UM.
' 4 Irving Kane Pond to Aunt Esther, Irving Kane Pond correspondence,
1876- 1878 folder, box 4, Pond Family collection, BHL, UM.
' 5 Portraits folder, box r8, Emil Lorch collection, BHL, UM.
'6 Michiganensian, 1920, 665.
'7 University of Michigan West Engineering Building folder, University of
Michigan Photographs Vertical File, BHL, UM.
' 8 University of Michigan maps collection, BHL, UM.
'9 University of Michigan College of Architecture folder, University of Michigan Photographs Vertical File, BHL, UM.
20 Rou-Rowen folder, box 145, University of Michigan Alumni Association
records, BHL, UM. 2
' Ann Arbor Buildings, Masonic Temple folder, Ann Arbor Photographs Vertical File, BHL, UM.
22 Pond Family collection, BHL, UM. 2
3 Architectural Subjects, Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan League Construc
tion folder, box 8, Pond Family collection, BHL, UM. 24 University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning fold
er, University of Michigan Photographs Vertical File, BHL, UM. 25 University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning fold
er, University of Michigan Photographs Vertical File, BHL, UM.
IMAGE CITATIO S 26 University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning fold-
er, University of Michigan Vertical File, BHL, UM. 2 7 University of Michigan Clubs and Organizations broadsides, BHL, UM. 28 Photograph courtesy of Cranbrook Archives. 29 This plan is included in Ausstellung Neuer Amerikanischer Baukunst, published
by the Akademie der Kunste zu Berlin inJanuary, 1926.
3o Images 17-289 and 17-293, Ivory collection, BHL, UM. 3' University of Michigan Alexander Grant Ruthven Building folder, Uni
versity of Michigan Photographs Vertical File, BHL, UM; University of
Michigan Hill Auditorium folder, University of Michigan Photographs
Vertical File, BHL, UM; University of Michigan Angell Hall folder, Uni
versity of Michigan Photographs Vertical File, BHL, UM; University of
Michigan William Clements Library folder, University of Michigan
Photographs Vertical File, BHL, UM;University of Michigan General
Library folder, University of Michigan Photographs Vertical File, BHL,
UM; University of Michigan Simpson Memorial Institute folder, Univer
sity of Michigan Photographs Vertical File, BHL, UM.
32 University of Michigan Proposed Buildings - Burton Tower and Music
School folder, University of Michigan Photographs Vertical File, BHL,
UM. 33 Raoul Wallenberg Photograph Vertical File, BHL, UM. 34 egative sleeves Arch.-32 and Arch.-41, box r, series A, University of Mich
igan News and Information Services records, BHL, UM.
35 University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning rec
ords, BHL, UM.
36 University of Michigan Proposed Buildings folder, University of Michi
gan Photographs Vertical File, BHL, UM.
37 University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning fold
er, University of Michigan Photographs Vertical File, BHL, UM.
38 Photograph courtesy of Huron Towers.
39 Buckminster Fuller Experimental Model Shelter, series A, box r, Univer
sity of Michigan ews and Information Services records, BHL, UM. 4° Photograph courtesy of Robert L. Ziegelman and the University of Mich
igan College of Architecture and Urban Planning.
4 ' egative sleeves rand 2, Brigham's Architecture Class, 6/ 4/ 1940, Box 19,
Ivory collection, BHL, UM. 42 Negative sleeves Arch.-62 and Arch.-74, box r, Series A, University of
Michigan ews and Information Services records, BHL, UM.
43 Negative sleeve Arch.-ro, box r, Series A, University of Michigan News
and Information Services records, BHL, UM.
44 egative sleeve Arch . & Des. 146, box r, Series A, University of Michigan
ews and Information Services records, BHL, UM.
45 egative sleeve Arch. & Des. 134, box r, Series A, University of Michigan
ews and Information Services records, BHL, UM and rendering cour-
tesy of Myra Larson. 46 William Muschenheim collection, BHL, UM. Copyright, William
Muschenheim family.
47 Eero Saarinen and Associates collection, BHL, UM. 48 Negative sleeve ZZ-20, box 1, Series A, University of Michigan News and
Information Services records, BHL, UM. 49 University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning fold
er, University of Michigan Vertical File, BHL, UM.
5o Michigan Daily, BHL, UM. 5' Based on diagrams inK. Lonberg-Holm and C. Theodore Larson, Devel
opment Index (Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan, 1953). Cour
tesy of Myra Larson. 5• Photograph courtesy of the University of Michigan College of Architec
ture and Urban Planning. 53 Photograph courtesy of the University of Michigan College of Architec
ture and Urban Planning. 54 Photograph courtesy of the University of Michigan College of Architec
ture and Urban Planning. 55 Timothy Hursley photograph , courtesy of Gunnar Birkerts and Associ
ates. 56 Photograph courtesy of the University of Michigan College of Architec
ture and Urban Planning. 57 Photograph courtesy of the University of Michigan College of Architec
ture and Urban Planning. 58 Rendering courtesy of the University of Michigan College of Architec
ture and Urban Planning. 59 Drawing courtesy of the University of Michigan College of Architecture
and Urban Planning. 60 Photograph courtesy of the University of Michigan College of Architec
ture and Urban Planning. 6 ' Photograph courtesy of the University of Michigan College of Architec
ture and Urban Planning, photographer D.C. Goings. 6• Photograph courtesy of the University of Michigan College of Architec
ture and Urban Planning. 63 Photograph courtesy of the University of Michigan College of Architec
ture and Urban Planning, photographer Victoria Veenstra. 64 The Louis Sullivan screen is located within the Art and Architecture Li
brary of the University of Michigan. 6
5 Drawing by Professor Kent Kleinman, 1994.
IMAGE CITATIONS
143
6s
