vtspecblogger Architecture, History, International Archive of Women in Architecture (IAWA)

Frank Lloyd Wright, Taliesin, and the IAWA

At a time when women could find little work or credibility in the field of architecture Frank Lloyd Wright unhesitatingly employed and mentored women accepting them into his Taliesin Fellowship as peers. Over the years more than 100 women architects, designers, and artisans worked with Wright. The IAWA has architectural collections from three of these women: Eleanore Pettersen (1941-1943); A. Jane Duncombe (1948-1949); and Lois Davisdon Gottlieb (1948-1949).

From A Way of Life: An Apprenticeship with Frank Lloyd Wright by Lois Davidson Gottlieb (2001). Caption reads: “Lee Kawahara and Peter Mathews watch Mr. Wright at work on the site, making changes to the plans for one of the farm buildings.”
From A Way of Life: An Apprenticeship with Frank Lloyd Wright by Lois Davidson Gottlieb (2001). Caption reads: “Mr. and Mrs. Wright, their family, and the apprentices with their spouses and children – having Easter breakfast.”

Taliesin

Longtime proponents of Learn by Doing, Frank Lloyd Wright and his third-wife Olgivanna Wright envisioned a self-sufficient school and community where architecture and the arts would flourish. Therefore, when they established the Taliesin Fellows at Wrights summer home, Taliesin, near Spring Green, Wisconsin in 1932 they put into place a system that would emphasize painting, sculpture, music, drama, and dance in their places as divisions of architecture as well as requiring that the apprentices be responsible for the entire work of feeding and caring for the student body.

Apprentices at Taliesin worked in the gardens and fields, did laundry, cooking, and cleaning while simultaneously working on the construction, daily operations, and maintenance of the school. Taliesin quickly developed into an architectural laboratory producing some of the nations best design work and attracting talented artists and creative thinkers from around the word.

Under Wrights direction apprentices created renderings, made models, did the engineering and produced construction drawings. They supervised construction on projects like the Johnson Wax Headquarters (Racine, WI), Fallingwater (Bear Run, PA), and the first Usonian houses. In the winter of 1935, the entire Fellowship moved to Arizona, where they eventually established Taliesin West in Scottsdale (1937) after spending the first two winters in temporary quarters. The 1935 migration inaugurated the tradition of seasonally moving the school between Wisconsin and Arizona.

Wright passed away in 1959 and upon his passing the ownership of the Taliesin estate in Spring Green, as well as Taliesin West, passed into the hands of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. The Foundation continues the educational mission of Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesin Fellowship has evolved into the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture.

Apprentices

Eleanore Pettersen (1913-2003); apprentice at Taliesin from 1941-1943.

Pettersen studio and home in Saddle River, NJ.
From Ms2003-018 Eleanore Pettersen Architectural Collection. Pettersen in her studio and home a renovated 200-year-old barn in Saddle River, NJ.

Pettersen was one of the first womenlicensed as an architect in the state of New Jersey in 1950, and was the first woman in New Jersey to open her own architectural office. She primarily designed residences. Among her clients were President Richard Nixon and jazz artist George Benson. She became a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects in 1991.

Pettersen on Wright: I am a tactile person and must really enter into the process of a given field. In this case, the process is construction. In 1941, such an aspiration seemed impossible for a woman. Being an apprentice afforded me the opportunity to participate in the building process concrete, wood, electrical work, etc. This experience I have carried with me my whole life. It was the foundation of my architecture career. Mr. Wright was my architectural father and from him came my desire for excellence and architectural integrity.

Pettersen on Taliesin: It was a beautiful life. We had time for everything, time to be creative. We made our own music and entertainment, had our own dress parties. The only thing was that it was so insular; you didnt see anyone from the outside. It was like living on the moon. When I left, my bloodstream ran differently.

Thurkauf House, Amador City, CA
From Ms2002-004 A. Jane Duncombe Architectural Collection. The west elevation of the Thurkauf House, Amador City, CA designed by A. Jane Duncombe (1987).

A. Jane Duncombe (1925-); apprentice at Taliesin from 1948-1949. A. Jane Duncombe graduated from the Art Institute of Chicago’s School of Industrial Design where she studied under Marya Lilien. Lilien was the first woman to receive an architectural degree in Poland and was a Charter Apprentice at Taliesin. Lilien told Duncombe early in her studies, “You must be an architect, you have it!” Duncombe teamed up with fellow Taliesin apprentice Lois Davidson Gottlieb to form the design team Duncombe-Davidson, based in Sausalito. During their partnership (1951-1956) they designed residences in Marin County starting with the Val Goeschen house, a one-room unit with 576 square feet, in Inverness, CA. Duncombe continued to practice in the San Francisco Bay area for forty years where she completed a broad range of projects.

Duncombe on Taliesin: The impact of Taliesin was Taliesin itself. I am convinced that having lived in those incredible buildings was the teaching that was necessary. For the first time I was aware of the wonder possible in buildings. It changed the way I look at everything and I know it is essential to all of us who work with land, light, space, and materials.

Lois Davisdon Gottlieb (1926- ); apprentice at Taliesin from 1948-1949.

Woman at loom
From A Way of Life: An Apprenticeship with Frank Lloyd Wright by Lois Davidson Gottlieb (2001). Caption reads: “Lois Davidson weaving at the loom (Davidson was my maiden name before I married in 1955.)”

Gottlieb is a residential designer based in San Francisco, CA. After her partnership with A. Jane Duncombe (see above) she worked as a freelance designer on over 100 projects in the Bay Area and in Riverside, CA, as well as in Washington, Idaho, and Virginia. She also published several books including, Environment and Design in Housing (a book based on her lectures for a course of the same name published in 1966) and A Way of Life: An Apprenticeship with Frank Lloyd Wright (which was based on the traveling exhibit of her photos taken while at Taliesin in the late 1940s).

Gottlieb on Wright: The first time I saw a house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright it was as if I suddenly heard a Beethoven Symphony, never having listened to music before. It was the Hanna house on the Stanford campus. During my last quarter as a student there my architecture class went on a tour of the house. Stunned by the experience I had to do something about it.

Gottlieb on Taliesin: Mrs. Wright informed me, the first time that we met, that at Taliesin everything was done from scratch. We sleep in sleeping bags, weave our own cloth, grow our own food, and play live music. Fortunately, I knew how to play the piano and weave. True to my word I made new pillows for the living room.

vtspecblogger Architecture, History, International Archive of Women in Architecture (IAWA), News

WANTED: Researchers interested in women’s contributions to the built environment

Want an opportunity to win $2500 and take a road trip to Virginia Tech Special Collections? (Airlines, cruise ships, or a brief walk across the Drillfield are other forms of acceptable transportation.)

Photo: Milka Bliznakov in a car
Milka Bliznakov, IAWA founder

Well, you are in luck because proposals are now being accepted for the 13th Annual Milka Bliznakov Research Prize sponsored by the International Archive of Women in Architecture Center, Virginia Tech.

The Board of Advisors of the International Archive of Women in Architecture Center (IAWA) presents this Annual Prize of $2500 (with an additional $500 available for travel) in honor of IAWA founder Milka Bliznakov.

The Prize is open to architects, scholars, professionals, students, and independent researchers with research projects that would benefit from access to the IAWAs collections.

More details and submission guidelines can be found here. The proposal must be submitted by May 1st, 2013. The winner will be announced by June 15th, 2013.

vtspecblogger About Special Collections and University Archives, Architecture, History, Feature Items

Love, Life & Work: Advice and Art for the Ages

Title Pages from Love, Life & Work by Elbert Hubbard (East Aurora, NY: The Roycrofters, 1906.)
Title Pages from Love, Life & Work by Elbert Hubbard (East Aurora, NY: The Roycrofters, 1906.)

At the turn of the 20th century, America was in the throes of a remarkable transformation. The great agrarian society was quickly becoming a mechanically driven economy. Some, however, spoke out against the advances of industrialization, arguing that mass production subjugated workers to machines and that no machine could match the quality of craftsmanship that came from an artists hand. It was this reaction that gave rise to the Arts and Crafts Movement.

Elbert Green Hubbard (June 19, 1856 May 7, 1915) was an American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher. Raised in Illinois, he met early success as a traveling salesman with a soap company but dropped out of this lucrative career to become a writer and soon discovered the idealized world of Arts and Crafts. Hubbard is most famous for founding the Roycroft artisan community in East Aurora, New York, an influential exponent of Arts and Crafts in the United States.

During his lifetime, Hubbard became well known throughout the nation as a writer, a philosopher and a lecturer. His eccentric and flamboyant style and seemingly non-conformist ideology endeared him to many readers. He was both a reflection of and a reaction to his times, taking center stage in American thought and becoming an icon of popular culture. Hubbard described himself as an anarchist and a socialist. He believed in social, economic, domestic, political, mental and spiritual freedom and his philosophies are clearly evident in his publication: Love, Life & Work; Being a Book of Opinions Reasonably Good-Natvred Concerning How to Attain the Highest Happiness for Ones Self with the Least Possible Harm to Others, a copy of which is held in Special Collections.

Although the text of this novella is readily available in ebook format, there is something special about examining the physical work. Virginia Tech is home to a first edition, published in 1906, bound in soft leather with the title embossed on the cover and representative of the simplified illustration style and handcrafted appearance that characterized the era.

Bookmaking played an important role in the Arts and Crafts Movement. Like other decorative arts, there was a rising concern over the detrimental effects of mass production on book design. Hubbard and his fellow Roycrofters sought to rectify this through their own private press, which emphasized high quality hand production: handmade papers, heavy inking, original typefaces, and designs that looked back to medieval illuminated manuscripts and incunabula and often included elaborate wood engravings.

The text itself is a compilation of thirty short essays on a variety of topics ranging from Mental Attitude to Love and Faith and although Hubbard makes many references to contemporary issues and personalities, a vast majority of his advice is still relevant in modern times. The following are just a few of the bits of wisdom and insight that Hubbard shares with readers:

Character is the result of two things, mental attitude, and the way we spend our time. It is what we think and what we do that make us what we are.

The world bestows its big prizes, both in money and honors, for but one thing. And that is Initiative. What is Initiative? Ill tell you: It is doing the right thing without being told.

To do your work well to-day, is the certain preparation for something better to-morrow. The past has gone from us forever; the future we cannot reach; the present alone is ours. Each day’s work is a preparation for the next day’s duties. Live in the present–the Day is here, the time is Now.

Members of the Virginia Tech community are invited to come visit us at Special Collections to examine Love, Life & Work, other influential texts by Elbert Hubbard, and additional examples of Arts and Crafts style printing and illustration.

vtspecblogger Architecture, History, Interior Decoration, International Archive of Women in Architecture (IAWA)

Opinion Makers: Women writers on architecture

The world of architecture lost a passionate and opinionated voice when Ada Louise Huxtable, architecture critic for The New York Times (1963-1982) and The Wall Street Journal (1997-), died earlier this month at the age of 91. How opinionated was she? Check out this New Yorker cartoon by Alan Dunn that appeared in 1968. And although the Pulitzer Prize-winner was the first full-time architecture critic at an American newspaper when she started at The New York Times in 1963, she was actually following a tradition of women who wrote about extant architecture.

Book Cover, 'The House in Good Taste' by Elsie de Wolfe
Americas first decorator. Elsie de Wolfe’s seminal book that banished Victorian gloom. Special Collections call number: SPEC Large NK2115 D6 c.2

In the mid-to-late 19th century architecture was a relatively new profession engaged in a public campaign to separate itself from common builders. Authors such as Louisa C. Tuthill, Mariana Van Rensselaer, Mary H. Northend, Edith Wharton, and Elsie de Wolfe served as intermediaries between the lay audience (i.e. potential client base) and architects. Though not trained in architecture per se, these women were often from privileged backgrounds that afforded them the highest levels of private education, an early knowledge of art and culture, and the ability to travel often abroad. They published primarily in general periodicals aimed at the emerging middle class: Century, House and Garden, and American Homes and Gardens, although some such as Van Rensselaer did contribute to the trade publication American Architect and Building News (AABN).

Embracing the 19th-century notion of the cult of domesticity, they served as style dictators endorsing particular aesthetics and architects, and instructing the new glut of middle class homeowners on how to create a domestic sanctuary. Subjects such as the history of architecture and general principles of architecture were also perennial topics during this period.

Book page, 'The History of Architecture' by Louisa C. Tuthill
Page from Louisa C. Tuthill’s “The History of Architecture from the Earliest Times: Its Present Conditions in Europe and the Unites States (1848). Special Collections call number: SPEC LARGE NA200 T8 1848

Their writings did not go unnoticed by the professional architecture establishment. Van Rensselaer was praised by the profession and even had her essay Client and Architecture recommended for reprint and distribution at an American Institute of Architects (AIA) meeting (1890). She was made an honorary member of the AIA that same year. The tables could quickly turn, however, as they did in 1892 when the AABN panned Van Rensselaers book English Cathedrals saying that it smacks of the magazine and so, almost of the literary hack.

The entry of women into an architecture practice that did not center around the domestic sphere would be a gradual one that would eventually make way for renowned critics such as Huxtable and Pritzker-winning starchitects.

Want to know more about women in architecture? Special Collections is home to the International Archive of Women in Architecture. Visit the IAWA page or come see us in person!

**The historical research for this post was culled from Lisa Koenigsberg’s book “Professionalizing domesticity: a tradition of American women writers on architecture, 1848-1913.” and her essay ‘Mariana Van Rensselaer: An architecture critic in context’ published in “Architecture a place for women.” **