beaux-arts theory and rational expressionism - stern

PSFS: Beaux-Arts Theory and Rational ExpressionismAuthor(s): Robert A. M. SternSource: Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 21, No. 2 (May, 1962), pp. 84-102Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the Society of Architectural HistoriansStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/988144 .Accessed: 21/03/2014 23:04

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PSFS: Beaux-Arts Theory and

Rational Exressionism1

ROBERT A. M. STERN Yale University

WITHOUT question the thirty-two-story bank and office

building at 12th and Market streets, designed for the

Philadelphia Saving Fund Society by the architectural firm of Howe & Lescaze and completed in 1932, is the

leading monument of the International Style in its first American phase.2 More remarkable though is the fact that PSFS, radical in composition and forms as it may appear to be, owes some of its successful compositional achieve- ments, as well as much of the implied theory upon which such composition was based, not to the writings and

buildings of the European practitioners and propagan- dists of the International Style, but to the still discredited

teaching of the French Ecole des Beaux Arts.3 Perhaps PSFS is even more significant as a modern composition derived from Beaux-Arts principles than as a synthesis of

1. I wish to thank Mr. John Entenza and the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts for granting the funds which made the research leading to this paper possible. I wish also to thank Mr. Philip Johnson, A.I.A., and Mr. Adolf K. Placzek, Avery Librarian, Columbia University, for their many courtesies, and Professor Vincent Scully, Yale University, for his invaluable sug- gestions. I am indebted to Professor William Jordy, not only for his initial suggestion of collaboration, but also for his assistance. Like Mr. Jordy, I am grateful to Mr. William Lescaze, F.A.I.A., Mr. Louis McAllister, A.I.A., and Mr. Donaldson Cresswell. All have read and commented on the manuscript.

2. William Jordy has pointed out that the Lovell House rivals PSFS in importance and quality. Nonetheless, in terms of promi- nence, PSFS has the advantage, both for sheer size and for its for- tuitous location in the downtown district of an important eastern

city. 3. Reyner Banham in his Theory and Design in the First Machine

Age (New York, 1961), pp. 14-34, has done much toward making us aware of the positive side of the Beaux-Arts system of design and its influence on modern architecture. Unfortunately, his researches have been almost exclusively confined to European events. The best recent evaluation of the Beaux-Arts from an American point of view is, in this author's opinion, the brief section in John Ely Burchard and Albert Bush-Brown, The Architecture of America (Bos- ton, 1961), pp. 248-250. See, however, the review by Carroll L. V. Meeks in Yale Review L (Summer 1961), 618-622, for an excellent criticism of the work considered in its entirety.

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'. .. the two basic approaches to the machine which un-

derlay the range of personal expression in what Henry- Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson termed the Inter- national Style....'4 These two approaches were attitudes to the machine whereas Beaux-Arts theory concerned itself with fundamental principles of architecture.5

Beaux-Arts theory has many aspects. The specific side of that theory with which I am concerned here, and which I would call rational expressionism, is that which derived from Gothic Revival technological determinism and was

partly transformed by the Beaux-Arts' own pervasively classicizing predilections. This side was concerned with structure. The emphasis was on its expression rather than its revelation. That is to say, the structure was most of all to look right and was to make the spaces and define the form. In the same way, as Banham has shown, the sci- entism of Viollet-le-Duc was given aesthetic expression by the painter Charles Blanc.6

No American architect better understood the meaning of Beaux-Arts theory than did George Howe (1886-1955), co-designer of PSFS. In his long and distinguished career Howe succeeded in applying the architectural theories learned from Charles H. Moore (1840-1930), under whom he studied at Harvard (Class of 1908), and Victor Laloux

(1850-1937), in whose atelier he was enrolled while a student at the Ecole between 1908 and 1913. In addition Howe came into close professional and personal contact with Paul P. Cret (1876-1945) a French-born graduate of the Ecole (enrolled in 1897) and a distinguished architect of Philadelphia.7 The Philadelphia Saving Fund Society Building, then, is worth consideration not only as a lead-

4. William Jordy in the accompanying article.

5. Charles H. Moore, 'Training for the Practice of Architecture', The Architectural Record XLIX (1921), 57.

6. Banham, Theory and Design, pp. 14-34. It is interesting to note the similarities between Blanc and Moore, both artists first, architectural theorists second.

7. Moore has been the subject of a biography by Frank Jewett Mather, Charles Herbert Moore, Landscape Painter (Princeton, 1957).


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ing monument of both the International Style and the Beaux-Arts but also as the fulfillment of Howe's own search for a coherent way of building and for a system of architectural thought concentrated upon structural expression and seeking form appropriate to modern materials and ideals.

As a member of the second generation of American architects to be trained at the Ecole, Howe was typical of them all in his effort to find a means of architectural expression consonant with traditional theories of composition and design while at the same time suited to modern needs. Almost all the other Americans who attended the Ecole in this period, and who in later years were to achieve success in architectural practice, attempted either to sim- plify or streamline the vocabulary of Beaux-Arts forms or to invent a new vocabulary suited to Beaux-Arts principles. Any list of such men must include, in the former category, Harvey Wiley Corbett who enrolled in 1896, Paul P. Cret (1897), H. Van Buren Magonigle (1906), Raymond M. Hood (1905), and Ely Jacques Kahn (1907). Clarence S. Stein (1907), William Van Alen (1910), and Philip L. Goodwin were all important participants in the latter attempt. Interestingly enough the architect who carried Beaux-Arts forms furthest in their most eclectic vein was neither a graduate of the Ecole nor quite of the generation under discussion: Bertram Grosvenor Good- hue (1869-1924).8

Howe's career at the Ecole was relatively undistin- guished.9 He does tell us, in an autobiographical statement published in 1930, that his many hours in the atelier of Victor Laloux taught him the 'relation between plan and elevation .. .', but it was Charles H. Moore, an American landscapist, historian, and critic, who was to

This is concerned primarily with Moore as artist and is very brief in its treatment of his career as teacher, critic, and historian. Ialoux has not, as yet, been the subject of any major study. A brief, though excellent, analysis of Cret's work appears in George B. Tatum, Penn's Great Town (Philadelphia, 1961), pp. 129-130, 201- 203. Francis Biddle, A Casual Past (Garden City, N. Y., 1961), refers to the friendship between Howe and Cret.

8. James P. Noffsinger, The Influence of the Ecole des Beaux Arts on the Architecture of the United States (Washington, 1955). Noff- singer is primarily useful as a source of statistical information, but he does divide his book into four important sections: The First Americans, 1846-72; The Rise of Ecole Influence, 1872-96; The Peak Years, 1897-1921; The Gradual Decline, 1922-55. Only in the groups comprising sections two and three were there enough Americans studying at the Ecole to constitute what I choose to refer to as 'generations'.

9. Howe stated that only his last design at the tcole reflected the current architectural thought which he associated with the Germans and which he believed to have given rise to the International Style. This design was stigmatized by one of the critics as 'tres boche'. George Howe, 'George Howe, An Architectural Biography', T- Square II (January 1932), 21. Maxwell Levinson, the editor of T- Square, informed me in an interview in August 1961 that the article was autobiographical.

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exert the greatest influence upon him.10 Howe was indebted to Moore's philosophical insistence . . . on structural significance as the only dignity of architectural style. . . .1 Moore's ideas, unlike Laloux's, were readily available to American readers in his books on the Gothic and the Renaissance as well as in his frequent articles which dealt with the more abstract problems of form and structure.12 Moore tells us that the great structural consideration in masonry architecture, even beyond the necessities of structural soundness itself, is the satisfaction of the eye. In the matter of materials, the thoughtful designer takes into consideration the 'imaginative sense of the material' as well as the 'manual means by which it is realized'.13

In its concern for structural integrity Moore's theory leads to a conception of the art of building as the result of 'artistic aptitudes and constructive facilities', a synthesis of imagination and intellect.14 The form and the way one builds the form must be completely integrated. Architec- ture is primarily an art of construction. The disciplined disposition of structure yielding '.. . purposed expression of beauty transcending that of mere utility . . .', distin- guishes architecture from building. Structure, for Moore, is concerned not with engineering but with the 'requisite knowledge of the strength of materials and their proper forms and adjustments . . . .' In other words, clarity of structure has nothing to do with its revelation. The latter is the product of morality and honesty. The former de- rives from a thoughtful arrangement of the parts of the building which, when carefully studied, will consequently yield a clear conception of the way a building was built. All historical styles of architecture should be studied in

lo. This is borne out not only by remarks made in the 'Biography' cited in footnote 9, but also by the fact that when George Howe himself, at the end of his career, became an architectural educator (Chairman, Department of Architecture, Yale University, 1950- 1954), he, like Moore in 1921, stated his philosophy of architectural education as 'Training for the Practice of Architecture'. This paper was read before the Department of Architecture in September 1951 and reprinted in Perspecta, The Yale Architectural Journal I (Sum- mer 1952), 2-5.

11. Howe, 'George Howe, An Architectural Biography', p. 21. 12. Charles H. Moore, Development and Character of Gothic Archi-

tecture (New York, 1890); Character of Renaissance Architecture (New York, 1905); The Medieval Church Architecture of England (New York, 1912); 'Training for the Practice of Architecture', Architec- tural Record XLIX (1921), 56-61; 'University Instruction in Architec- ture', Architectural Record L (1921), 407-412; 'Conditions Condu- cive to Architecture', Architectural Record LVIII (1925), 211-215.

13. Moore, 'Training for the Practice ...', p. 60. 14. Moore, 'Training for the Practice ...', p. 60. A logical exten-

sion of this and other ideas found in Moore and Cret can be seen in the work of the Philadelphia architect Louis I. Kahn. In his architecture and writings Kahn seems much involved with an expression of ideals resembling those of the Beaux-Arts. He had always been close to that tradition through his training under Paul Cret and his association with George Howe as the latter's architectural partner and as a professor under him in the Department of Architecture at Yale.



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terms of their structure, since 'a habit of critical discrimi- nation in respect to construction cannot be formed too early.'15

Moore suggests that the great obstacle to quality in modern architecture is the isolation of the architect from his materials. The student must be '. . . exercised in the building craft. . .' because a new, modern, restatement of the understanding of the craftsman for his materials, always present in earlier phases of architecture, could best be achieved through an understanding of the 'manual processes' of building. Architecture, for Moore, is less concerned with design than with construction; more concerned with how a building got to be than with the aes- thetics of the building itself. The great architecture of the past has always been well within the 'common tradition of building'. Only the 'inventive genius' and 'best inspira- tion' of men personally involved in that tradition 'made their work their own in the proper sense.'16 For in the knowledge of the how lies the understanding of the what.17

Moore goes on: The great architecture of the past has been built of masonry-and without masonry there can be no great architecture. To Moore tall buildings were the products of excessive industrialism. Because of the 'haste and cheapness' of their construction, they are not worthy of real architectural thought. The tall building as executed in New York City is a sham; the faSade, which seeks to evoke the intentions of masonry architecture by copying its forms, is merely a 'revetment' affixed to the structure. A steel-framed building can never be a pleasant object to behold. If such buildings must exist let them at least have the honesty of articulated structure. Moore denies the claims of some architects, engineers, and potential clients that there are new conditions, new programs, new methods, and new materials, when he states that

.. there are no new conditions, and there is no call for new meth-

ods; though new forms may be evolved in the future as in the past. The only materials suitable for architecture have been long estab-

lished, and are the same now as in former times. The present use of iron and steel-which indeed requires new methods-comes of no needs of architecture. It is destructive of architecture if it is not

kept apart from it.

Indeed, for Moore, the demands of the business and in- dustrial community are economic and not architectural. Functionalism, the making of buildings for tutilitarian ends', is dangerous, leading to a confusion of roles and intentions between architects and engineers. Out of this confusion is produced not an architecture of significant form and significant structure but one merely of ex- pedient use.18

15. Moore, 'University Instruction. ..', pp. 408-409. 16. Moore, 'Training for the Practice. . .', p. 60. 17. This idea is carried to its logical conclusion in the work of

Kahn; see note 31. 18. Moore, 'Training for the Practice . ..', p. 61. Louis I. Kahn

has restated, in modern terms, Moore's preference for an architec-

So Moore presents his view of architecture as an art, a way of building which produced, in his favorite period, the Gothic, what was to him an incredible integration of structure and space, thus wholly significant form. For him the significance of Gothic architecture lay not in its actual structural advances over the Romanesque but in its conception of a structure where weight and thrust were given unmistakably visual expression through the plastic man- ipulation of vaults, buttresses, columns, and ribs. The significance of the forms arose, for Moore, from the brilliant statement in masonry of the dynamism of the structure. Thus the forms dramatically expressed their purpose, and the grandeur of the space was the logical outcome.19 As much as this philosophy of structure and form owes to Viollet-le-Duc and the rationalists of the nineteenth century, it yet departs significantly from them in its concern for the visual effects of structural forms rather than for the simple revelation of structure in and for itself. Thus in Moore we find an integration of Viollet-le-Duc's insistence on structural integrity with an aestheticism which recalls, for example, Ruskin and Blanc. Other men of Moore's generation were to attempt similar syntheses. The insistence on craftsmanship and rational forms in the work of William Morris and his group also come to mind: engineering and architecture. The distinctions are clearly, if not at first obviously, drawn.

Another influence on Howe's architectural thought was that exerted by Paul P. Cret. Cret was at first a teacher at the University of Pennsylvania rather than a practicing architect. In 19o8-19go he wrote a series of articles in which he set out to explain the nature of Beaux-Arts education. Initially Cret quotes Guadet's Elements and Theory of Architecture with its insistence upon the program as the dictate of the character of the building and its emphasis on the necessary constructability of every scheme by the

simplest means. Truth is demanded, and the eye must be satisfied in matters of construction-'Effective strength is not sufficient.' A beautiful building is a building with character, and character is obtained by variety.20 All this recalls Moore, but Cret goes on to call for an architecture which dares to experiment with new forms that will give new life to itself, an architecture which embodies its period. There is an artistic 'morality . . . higher than the simple honesty which is called professional ethics', and

ture of masonry rather than one of steel. See Walter McQuade, 'Architect Louis I. Kahn and His Strong-Boned Structure', Archi- tectural Forum cvii (October 1957), 135-142.

19. Mather, Charles Moore, sees Moore as a functionalist. In my opinion only the broadest interpretation of function could so char- acterize Moore's viewpoint which was avowedly antiengineering and

antimechanical, and concerned with essential relationships of form and structure as interpretations, not results, of programmatic re-

quirements. 20. Paul P. Cret, The Ecole des Beaux Arts: What Its Architec-

tural Teaching Means', Architectural Record xxIII (1908), 367-371.



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which 'prefers to run the chance of failure in experiment, rather than follow established precedent.' Architectural forms '. . . are transformed very slowly and without much

regard for the rules which we would like to establish. But what remains is our power to use these forms in giving expression to our own ideas.... 21

Here, stated by Moore and Cret, were the premises of an architecture with rules indeed so broad as to admit of no exceptions. George Howe understood these rules and was able to do two things with them: to develop a working theory and to build buildings. Howe's theory of architecture is '. . the occupation, with intent to create significant form, of producing designs for and procuring the execution of, any and every sort of work constructed for the use of man.' To this end all considerations, economic, technological, and sociological, were to be directed. Every building must be a contribution to architecture; each must be built for architecture. Architecture is significant form built out of imagination and intellect. Only when these two streams unite do we have style. Style is not made, but discovered. It is '. . . full of the thoughts and

feelings . . . of the day and when it is discovered it be- comes the property of a whole culture, to draw on as it will, until it has been sucked dry of its meaning in its turn.'22 Intention and form, intellect and imagination, are thus theoretically combined by Howe upon a Beaux-Arts basis provided by Moore and Cret.

So much for theory. What of building? Here the significant sequence is provided by the series of commissions executed by Howe for the Philadelphia Saving Fund Society.

Howe's first commissions for the Philadelphia Saving Fund Society were two identical branch banks (fig. 7).23 The use of Italian Renaissance precedent in their design leads us to the inevitable question concerning the Beaux- Arts: Why, in the light of this seemingly tough and work- able theory, were the formal intentions of the architects so eclectic? Why, when faced with an actual commission, did they borrow in so wholesale a manner from the past? Two answers come to mind, both of which can be pre- dicted from Howe's use of Renaissance precedent. First, the Ecole based its teachings on the forms of classic an-

tiquity and the neoclassic Renaissance. Thus when a de-

signer such as Howe was presented with a commission for a type of structure he had never designed before, he first

sought a solution in terms of the theoretical education of his youth. Yet, in so turning to that theory he was auto-

matically confronted by the forms of the Beaux-Arts which were held to be the proper expression of it. These were strictly eclectic. Second, there was the tendency to-

21. Paul P. Cret, 'The Training of the Designer', American Ar- chitect xcv (April 1909), 116, 128, 131-134, 138-139.

22. Howe, 'Training for the Practice . . .', p. 5. 23. Figure references through number 44 are located in the pre-

ceding article.

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ward a literary conception of architecture, endemic in the nineteenth-century past as a whole, and in the Beaux- Arts in particular. Thus, in the America of the twenties, a bank was classic or, even better, Renaissance in origin. It was considered proper, indeed logical, to associate banking with the Medicis: John Q. Banker, in turn, with Lorenzo the Magnificent. Nonetheless, despite the dead- ness of the forms of Beaux-Arts architecture, its better examples show the theories applied with understanding to create buildings at once logical and clear.

So it was with those first Renaissance branch banks. In them Howe grafted onto a simple floor plan his intentions to give form to '. .. the double function of the savings bank building, first as a magnified strong box, and second as a working space.' The heavy rustication and the nail- studded oak door enhance the image of strength and en- closure, while the large windows indicate an ample work-

ing area, well lighted. The design conforms to 'accepted tradition' for bank architecture. It has, in addition, the merit of clearly expressed structure, affording satisfaction to the eye. Structural methods are clearly articulated in the careful piling of elements: the heavy base and the less thick bearing walls receiving the weight of the vaulted

ceiling above.24 In 1926 Howe was called upon to add electric signs to

his Renaissance banks. He declined, pointing out to the client the obvious inappropriateness of such an anachron- istic feature. 'But why', the client asked, 'if my business will benefit by it, shouldn't I have it?' On reflection this demand seemed reasonable enough, and Howe promised to 'incorporate the most blazing and beautiful specimen in existence' in his (the client's) next building. 'Though this concession to the machine age necessitated a superficial change in . . . method of design it did not involve a

complete abandonment .. .' of Howe's accustomed approach.25

The next two designs, again twins, are freer in their

conception and represent Howe's growing perception of an architecture reconciled to 'modern commercial practice' (fig. 8). Abandoning the idea of a strongbox, literary in its associations of treasure house and private strong- hold, Howe still wished to preserve 'solidity of aspect'. Thus the fortified base was eliminated in an attempt to make the building 'more inviting to the timid public'. Once again a design was conceived which was based on a double intent: a '. . . large hospitable entrance door', closed only at the bottom by a richly ornamented grille, and the illuminated inscriptions, which necessitated, or rather suggested, the service balconies and the multiple

24. George Howe, 'The Philadelphia Saving Fund Society Branch Offices', Architectural Forum XLIX (1928), 881.

25. George Howe, 'Why I Became a Functionalist', a paper read before the Symposium of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 19 February 1932, and now deposited in the vertical file of the Museum library, p. 3 f.



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Fig. 45. Detail of ornament, Number 2 Park Avenue, New York, 1927, by Ely Jacques Kahn (from Contemporary American Architects:

Ely Jacques Kahn).

reflectors of wrought iron which form the chief features of the elevations.26 The inclusion of the illuminated sign, and the simplification leading to a less forbidding exterior, reflect not so much Howe's concern for an increasingly demanding machine technology as the realities of business

practice. The need for advertising and for a bank which was not forbidding were herein given suitable expression without compromising design or composition. Other men of Howe's generation, faced with similar commissions, approached the problem differently. Ely Jacques Kahn, for example, attempted to give form to the rush and anxi-

ety of the commercial world through a system of zig-zag ornament and bright, clashing colors applied to his many office buildings (fig. 45). These seemed to have . . . the

aspect of vernissage day at a competition for apprentice pastry cooks.'27 Still others, seeing the machine as the

great force of our age, sought to glorify it rather than

merely to regard it as Howe did, . . as the symbol of the social ideal, the greatest good for the greatest number.'28

Raymond M. Hood was one of these. When he built, in

1931, a showroom for refrigerators, which were just com-

26. Howe, 'The PSFS Branch Offices', p. 881. 27. Howe, 'Why I Became a Functionalist', p. 2. 28. Howe, 'Why I Became a Functionalist', p. 2.

ing to replace nonmechanical ice boxes, Hood imagined the display area as the cooling box (fig. 46). Atop this he applied, on the exterior, a penthouse having no ascertain- able justification in engineering or use. This was made to resemble the refrigerator motors which, at that archaic period, were round in shape and located at the top. Against such gaucheries Howe's conception of a bank as a single space simply spanned stands out as refreshing and pure.

Other architects sought to freshen Beaux-Arts forms, among them Paul P. Cret. His Folger Library in Wash- ington, completed in 1932, was the result of such an attempt (fig. 47). On the exterior it compares with Howe's second bank design. Its neo-neoclassicism is chaste and well-proportioned. The Tudor interior, however, bears no relationship to it. The building is two notions uninte- grated and conceptually unrelated. Certainly Guadet's insistence on truth above all has been given short shrift. By contrast, Howe's design is a simple, geometrical statement entirely consistent in its structure, space, mass, and detailing. A masonry building, with slag roof which demands no cornice, its neoclassicism is well rooted in the tradition of Soane. Clear and crisp, it is also logical and straightforward.

The temporary branch bank erected on 12th Street, just south of Market, was designed to test the feasibility of building a larger and more permanent office on this choice site in the center of Philadelphia (fig. 9). Executed in simple materials, it was a spartan conception, with brick bearing walls carrying the weight of exposed iron trusses down to a base of rough cast concrete. The building was interesting as an 'experiment in the use of modern mechanical elements and methods in the design of utili- tarian and ornamental features' (fig. lo).29 The cast concrete, handled as cut stone, somewhat denies the dictum of truth to materials in favor of a construction which would have satisfied Moore's eye.

In April 1926 Howe was asked by the Society to prepare designs for a large bank, store, and office building combination (fig. 13).30 His first solution constituted a tacit

acknowledgment of the need for a thorough reinvestiga- tion of his architectural philosophy. Here was a problem which could not be solved in the tradition of the masonry structure and was not compatible to a conception of architecture as sculpture in mass. On the other hand, Moore and other theoreticians had relegated the tall

building to an inferior architectural position, emphasizing structural articulation and regularity. Thus Howe's first

project, discussed by Jordy, attempted to synthesize ar-

29. Howe, The PSFS Branch Offices', p. 881. 30. The chronology is rather confusing. The Renaissance banks

were built in 1924. Those in extended Beaux-Arts forms date from 1926. The temporary branch did not come until 1927, after, that is, one design for a tall office building and the two branch banks in extended Beaux-Arts forms had already been submitted.



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Fig. 46. Rex Cole Showroom, Long Island, New York, 1931, by Ray- mond M. Hood (from Contemporary American Architects: Raymond M. Hood).

chitectural mass and articulated structure. This was to be achieved by sheathing the building in a revetment of stone which expressed the structure it concealed but was still visually appropriate to masonry. Thus the band of stonework above the banking room, in spirit similar to a cornice, conceals and expresses the trusswork. The big steel columns which carry the trusses are expressed by broad panels of stone set between the high windows of the banking room. The two mezzanines of that space are also expressed. The sheathing is bolted to the structure. Bolts are left exposed to clarify the nature of the construction technique, in the same way that Otto Wagner, twenty-one years before had bolted the marble revetment, but to a masonry structure, in his design for the Postal Savings Bank Building in Vienna, so announcing that the marble was a nonstructural facing material and calling out, clearly, its dimensions.31

The fenestration is carefully controlled in an effort to articulate columns and bays. The building, conceived as a column rather more literally than Sullivan had done, is given an imposing space at the ground level. The twenty- sixth floor also receives elaborate treatment. It includes board rooms, a kitchen, and a dining room for the bank staff. The building had been intended only as a branch office for the Society. The provision of executive space was the result of Howe's faith in the new location and in the building as a better symbol for the bank than its old main office at Seventh and Walnut.

31. Kahn, at the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, and in his Mill Creek Housing in Philadelphia (designed in association with Kenneth Day and Louis McAllister), and in his Richards Medi- cal Research Building, did much the same thing when he left the cone holes, used in securing the formwork in place, exposed in the concrete walls.

Fig. 47. Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C., 1932, by Paul P. Cret (courtesy Yale University Slide Collection).

The scheme as a whole emphasizes the possibilities of steel construction only so far as it is a ... bold recognition of a great mass of masonry, standing on stilts and devoid of meaningless mouldings.'32 Jordy has indicated its relationship not only to Otto Wagner but also to Olbrich's building for the Vienna Secession, and Frank Lloyd Wright's Larkin Building. Decoration is used solely to achieve variety. The facades conform to principles of masonry construction but are expressed as a revetment. The fault of this design lies not in the principles employed but in the confusion between an architecture of facades and an architecture of integrated structure. The structure is not sufficiently revealed. The problem of making architecture in steel is approached through the back door, hesitatingly. Howe conceives of a building that is so big as to be possible only in steel, and then details it in mason-

ry. Never denying the former, the latter is not yet a satis-

factory solution. Engineering is, in this scheme, still a . .. shameful secret of the architectural family . . .' just

barely being let out, like a skeleton from the closet. The

remaining schemes for PSFS would all be concerned with a search for a way of building in which engineering, considered as 'material order', would be reconciled to architecture, considered as 'emotional intensity in the field of structural design.'33

Yet the series of buildings just discussed retains a two- fold interest: first, as documents of a thoughtful search for suitable expression; second, as important statements about the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, its preferences for ma-

sonry, its peculiar brands of classicism and archaeology, and the fundamental eclecticism which overrode its the-

32. Appendix: Howe to Willcox, 25 July 1930. 33. Howe, 'Why I Became a Functionalist', p. 1.



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ory. Thus the bank designs clearly show the limitations of Beaux-Arts forms in practice. Later designs for PSFS demonstrate the wider applicability of its principles. Mod- ern theory was the catalyst which released the progressive elements in Howe's Beaux-Arts theory. When, early in

1929, the Society decided to realize the potentialities of their site at 12th and Market streets, they commissioned

George Howe, now practicing alone, to prepare new schemes.34 Scheme number 2 of these, dated 28 March

1929, is significant in its freestanding tower slab, set back from street and property lines and composed of horizontal window layers (fig. 18). These are continuous around the corners but interrupted at column points. The

interplay of columnar acknowledgment and horizontal windows is carried out on three sides of the tower; the

pattern of support and supported is clearly established. The south wall, with its peculiar systems of setbacks, employed no doubt to express the decreasing number of elevators in the upper floors of the tower, is not yet a

separate element in the design. The banking room, still at street level, is a cage of glass and steel encased by columns. The changes in fenestration patterns, setbacks, and cantilevered planes, in addition to the bold treatment of the air-conditioning grilles and chimney, make for an

exciting terminal effect. This design, scheme number 2, drawn up early in 1929,

represents Howe's personal interpretation of the Inter- national Style which was just becoming known in Amer- ica. This was a major break with the forms of the past. Nonetheless, Howe's ability and even his desire to design in the forms of the International Style were tempered by his theoretical beliefs. Thus the insistent horizontality which came to be associated with the Style in America is modified by Howe's constructive sense, while his compositional instincts, still attuned to formal precepts of Beaux-Arts design, fall back on an automatic symmetry when faced with the problem of the end elevations. Con- fused between his desire to articulate structure and at the same time to have that structure mean something in terms of the interior spaces, Howe moves the columns at the north wall (over Market Street) near to the center. This breaks the rhythm of the structure, although it does make the end space, in many ways the choicest, usable. He then

34. A listing of Howe's partnerships and their dates would seem appropriate here: Mellor, Meigs & Howe, 1916-1928; Howe & Les- caze, 1929-1934; George Howe & Norman Bel Geddes, 1935; Howe & Kahn, 1940-1941; Howe, Stonorov & Kahn, 1941-1944; George Howe & Robert Montgomery Brown, 1949-1955. At other times Howe was in practice alone except for the period 1914-1916 when he was employed in a number of capacities in the firm of Furness, Evans & Company. It should be noted that in the Mellor, Meigs & Howe association each of the architects practiced more or less inde- pendently. The Philadelphia Saving Fund Society was a client of Howe's and all designs issued from the Mellor, Meigs & Howe firm for the Society were his work.

Fig. 48. Showroom for Nudelman and Conti, New York, 1928, by William Lescaze (from The Arts xiv, 1928).

places a stairway in the narrow space between the two columns and lights it with a continuous vertical window. Thus the integrity of a separation between service space in the form of vertical circulation and rentable space in the form of lofts is compromised, and a rather too simple solution is substituted.

In terms of previous American skyscraper design this

project of March 1929 stands as a synthesis between Sul- livan's concern for horizontal and vertical interplay, best seen in the Bayard and Guaranty buildings, and the de-

sign, not so refined structurally and concerned more with a big statement of power, produced by Frank Lloyd Wright for the San Francisco Call in 1912. Howe's project represents an advance over these in its careful composition not only of structural but also functional elements as seen in the careful distinction made between the nature of the slab of offices and the vertical circulation core, and the

sophisticated treatment of mechanical elements at the roof. Its forced symmetry, its impractical arrangement of elevators within the core, and the vertical window strip on the north elevation are less successful. Urbane, self-

contained, and carefully composed its inconsistencies can be attributed to a lingering mental habit of symmetry. This scheme for PSFS needs no illuminated spheres or red neon letters to proclaim its quality.

In May 1929 George Howe entered into an architectural partnership with William Lescaze. There were few commissions for a young and radical architect in New York in the twenties and Lescaze, who settled there after

studying under Karl Moser, had to content himself with

designing interiors for apartments and showrooms.35 Typ-

35. Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson, Modern Archi- tecture (New York, 1932), p. 144. Howe in 'Modern Architecture', USA I (Spring 1930), 23, wrote that Moser produced in Switzerland



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Fig. 50. Capital Bus Terminal, New York, 1927, by William Lescaze (from H. R. Hitchcock and P. Johnson, Modern Architecture.)

Fig. 49. Penthouse Studio, Macy's International Exposition of Art in Industry, New York, 1928, by William Lescaze (from The Arts xm, 1928).

ical of these is a display room for Nudelman and Conti

(fig. 48). Visual interest is centered on an overly clever treatment of the door and display cases. These employ mirrors and plaques of brass, and blue and white glass. Treated in a flat two-dimensional and insistently asym- metrical manner, this detail lacks the measured restraint of De Stijl aesthetic to which it otherwise owes a great deal. The curved corner, here used on the chrome railings, was a favorite motif of Lescaze and became, by the early thir-

ties, a symbol of modernity. Lescaze's imagination was given freer play in his design

for a Penthouse Studio commissioned by the R. H. Macy Company for its International Exposition of Art in Indus-

try of 1928 (fig. 49). The space is dominated by the treatment of the floor with its overlapping circles of color. The

steps seem too big for the room, especially in their solidity and lack of articulation where they join the wall and floor

planes. Curves are employed in the chromium and white leather furniture. The use of the constructivist chair of

rectangular planes is inharmonious. The walls, though treated simply, suffer from the inclusion of various small

objects seemingly placed at random and out of scale with

... .the most striking religious edifice of recent times.' Lescaze tells us that in 1927, on a trip to Paris, he met Le Corbusier, to whom he

complained that he was commissioned to do nothing but interiors. Le Corbusier replied: 'That's the way it always is. I didn't do anything else myself for years, besides writing articles and giving lec- tures. Keep it up.' Perhaps in this lack of building experience, the contact with construction as part of the post-educational process, lies the origin of the relatively unimaginative approach to structure seen in the early work of Lescaze and Le Corbusier alike. Quotation is from William Lescaze, On Being An Architect (New York, 1942), p. 134.

their bold planar treatment. Although startling, the de-

sign fails on close inspection for lack of a unifying idea. It suffers also from its two dimensional quality which seems to bear greater relationship to graphic design than to architecture.36

Lescaze also designed a house at Mount Kisco, New

York, which Hitchcock and Johnson characterized as

'fundamentally traditional' despite its large windows and

horizontality.37 His only other architectural commission was a small bus terminal in New York City, built in 1927 and destroyed before 1932 (fig. 50). The crudity of de-

tailing and materials make this a minor work. The am- bivalence between a structure suspended from cables and walls that appear to be bearing is apparent. Relatively in-

experienced in the art of building, William Lescaze

brought to his partnership with Howe a lively, fairly vig- orous, but as yet rather unconsidered vocabulary of modern forms.

Not until 2 December 1929 did the first sketch for PSFS emanate from the office of Howe & Lescaze. The nature of the partnership was a matter of mystery to

knowledgeable contemporaries, even during the very period of its existence. To some, as to young modernists such as Philip Johnson who felt an intense revulsion for all

things having to do with the Beaux-Arts, it seemed incredible initially that George Howe should have played a

very active role in the firm's design.38 Lescaze, despite his

previous acknowledgment of PSFS as the product of a

36. C. Adolph Glassgold, 'The Decorative Arts', The Arts xiv

(October 1928), 215. 37. Hitchcock and Johnson, Modern Architecture, p. 144. 38. Conversation with Philip C. Johnson, New Canaan, Connecti-

cut, April 1961.


http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

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collaborative effort, has, in recent years, advanced this

misconception by relegating to Howe the role of 'business

partner'. In an interview with the author in July 1961 Lescaze asserted his position as sole designer in the partnership. Howe's criticism was welcomed, Lescaze relates, although it embodied no consistent point of view.39

The question of authorship is aggravated by the fact that Howe rarely worked alone. Yet the designs for PSFS

by Howe, when in practice by himself in the early part of

1929, but hitherto unpublished, indicate quite clearly his

conceptions of the nature of a tall building. We have al-

ready seen that Howe's scheme number 2 of 1929 was

nearly as fully advanced in massing and in functional and structural expression as the final design for PSFS com-

pleted in 1932. But Howe was much more an intellectual than an im-

aginative architect. He had carried the forms as far as he could. This he realized was not sufficient and he entered into partnership with Lescaze whose great contribution was the dramatic skin which envelopes the building. Un-

doubtedly, in the final scheme it was Lescaze's imagination which led Howe on. But from Howe's scheme number 2 in 1929 it can safely be inferred that its structural and functional theory was the decisive contribution. Al- most all of Howe's partnerships were with men who were more imaginative if not as disciplined or experienced as he. For this very reason, with the exception of Louis I.

Kahn, none of Howe's partners have achieved as great a success working alone as they did in collaboration with him. This is strikingly true of Lescaze.40

William Jordy, in the accompanying article, discusses those qualities which make PSFS a significant monument in American architectural history, one worth special ex- amination for its classic solution to the basic problems of the tall building as well as for the unique role it played in the acceptance of the International Style in America. For William Lescaze this important commission was a rare

opportunity. For George Howe it was a daring expression of deep personal conviction, an intellectual and aesthetic

breakthrough unprecedented in American architecture. No other American architect of his generation and his Beaux-Arts training was possessed of Howe's magnificent combination of intellect, imagination, and deep personal courage. No other architect gave up the kind of architectural career which, in 1929, was not only financially lu-

39. Lescaze referred to Howe as a 'business partner' in his On

Being An Architect, p. 133. In a letter to Jordy, a copy of which was sent to me, dated 25 January 1962, Lescaze reasserted his claim to

be considered as sole designer of PSFS, although he had earlier sent both Jordy and me copies of the letter quoted by Jordy above, p. 61. I should like to emphasize my conviction that PSFS is clearly the

product of two distinct sensibilities.

40. Witness his 711 Third Avenue in New York City (1956) which is, in my opinion, an overly massive restatement of the

original PSFS parti.

crative, but also highly regarded by students and fellow practitioners alike, in an effort to find greater meaning in his art. To the generation of Philadelphia architects just younger than Howe, the Beaux-Arts work of his firm had

already become a revelation and a beacon. They felt that it embodied a spirit of youthful romanticism and anti- academicism and typified '. .. a kind of simplicity that is a fact, not a fad.... Materials, design, planning and furniture all reflect a new sincerity, a new freedom from affec- tation.'41 Paul Cret, the leading architectural figure in

Philadelphia in the twenties, accurately characterized Howe's architecture when he wrote that'. . . it is free from an archaeological imitation as it is devoid of a pretentious striving for originality . . . the good breeding asserts itself.'42 Howe, in other words, staked all.

Briefly then, the architecture of William Lescaze is typical of that special outlook of the International Style which

Jordy calls the 'cubist container'. Long engaged in interior decoration, Lescaze imagines an architecture arising from the arrangement of planes enclosing a regular and

aesthetically neutral structural system. Howe, on the other hand, envisaged a modern architecture which should be a return to 'sound tradition, as opposed to stylistic tra-

dition, that is to say, to the interpretation of function, spiritual as well as material, logically and imaginatively, in terms of modern materials, internally structural as well as visable.' It is an architecture of 'character' which is im-

portant; beautiful forms or dazzling effects are not the

prime consideration.43 It is therefore important to investigate PSFS in terms of

Howe's contribution to it and of the Beaux-Arts theory which nurtured that contribution.

The great success of PSFS arose from its resolutions of the horizontal floor slab with the vertical support. It is

very ironical that this most important development did not grow directly out of a desire on the part of the architects for an expression of vertical support. While it is true that Howe had, in his own scheme number 2 of March

1929, established such a relationship, it was not incorpo- rated into the early Howe & Lescaze proposals. Influenced

by the insistent horizontality of European International

41. Matlack Price, 'The House of Robert T. McCracken, Esq., Germantown', Arts and Decoration (September 1921) reprinted in

A Monograph of the Work of Mellor, Meigs and Howe (New York,

1923) pp. 61-64. 42. Paul P. Cret, 'High Hollow, The Property of George Howe,

Esq., Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia', The Architectural Record (August

192o), reprinted in Work of Mellor, Meigs and Howe, pp. 24-27.

43. In addition to William Jordy's discussion of the 'cubist con-

tainer' and the 'constructivist component' in the preceding article, note Vincent Scully's discussion of cubism and constructivism and

of'containers' and 'skeletons' in his, 'Modern Architecture: Toward

A Redefinition of Style', Perspecta, The Yale Architectural Journal

Iv (1957), 5-10. The quotation is from Howe's article, 'Modern

Architecture'.



Style designs, Howe & Lescaze produced a scheme com-

posed of a slab of unrelieved horizontals visually cantilevered from a vertical service core. These were given their theoretical justification in Howe's letter to James R. Will- cox, president of the Society, dated 26 May 1930, already quoted and discussed by Jordy. In this Howe returns to a position which was essentially the same as that of 1926 when, apparently influenced by Moore's writings, he had last engaged in this particular form of architectural ra- tionalization. Howe was able to convince Willcox of the merits of this aspect of the design. But Mr. Willcox re- mained intractable in his desire for some expression of vertical support in the tower. This Philadelphian was ready to concede that a banking room did not need to be surrounded by a colonnade in order to be dignified, but he would not accept the possibilities of a thirty-two-story tower which betrayed no obvious signs of vertical structure (figs. 22, 23). Nonetheless it is important to remember that the Howe & Lescaze proposals went far beyond the 1926 design in their extensive use of metal and, more importantly, in their structural justification of the envelope. In his demand for such vertical structural expression Mr. Willcox was asking no more than Moore had always demanded. Howe was willing to depart from his accepted belief in a particular kind of structural expression, but not from the principle of structural expression itself. To this end he was able to convince himself that the horizontality of the design was an expression of the structural nature of the exterior sheathing.44

There is no question that Howe was involved in Beaux- Arts theory as well as modern theory at this time. Not only did he acquire a copy of Choisy about 1930 but he also expressed his indebtedness to Moore and Laloux in the autobiographical statement he published in T-Square in 1930 which I referred to earlier. In addition, other architects interested in advancing Beaux-Arts theories beyond rigid archaeology and in making the skyscraper a 'proper' architectural type saw in PSFS a fulfillment of their search. Paul Cret saw it as just that, an expression of 'that same doctrine' which he had been 'preaching' for the last ten years.45 In a letter to I-owe, dated 28 March 1931, Cret writes of PSFS: 'It is excellent, and I have an idea it will establish an epoch in Philadelphia.' He goes on to say that with well-chosen materials, which he feels certain Howe will employ, the building will be a 'very beautiful work'. Howe's reply refers to the vast amount of adverse criticism that he and Lescaze, as architects of a radical building, had been subjected to. Especially irk- some was the 'weight of external criticism . . . from our

44. Appendix: Howe to Willcox, 26 May 1930. 45. Howe's library remains nearly intact. It is in the possession

of his daughter, Mrs. Walter West, Jr., who has been most helpful in providi;n me with biographical data. The quotation is from Arthur I. Meigs, 'Paul Phillippe Cret', T-Square Club Journal I (May 1931), 11.

93

own colleagues. It is therefore a great source of strength and encouragement to be assured of a good opinion which I prize so highly.'46

Variety is achieved in PSFS through the use of contrasts. The success of the building varies directly with the success of its calculated oppositions. The treatment of the tower carries out this series of contrasts in its opposition of horizontal floor slab and vertical support. Its hardness of forms has its opposite in the richly textured smoky-gray brick spandrels which in turn contrast with the glass. The banking room with its mutually responsive curves at the corners is composed of a series of contrasting wall planes executed in gray and white marbles, glass and nubble curtains. It is interesting to note that the columns are treated simply as a '. .. piece of the wall moved out.' The sides parallel to the dark gray wall are of dark gray marble, the other two sides are of white marble. John Harbeson has demonstrated the similarity between the use of this device by Howe and the treatment of the moldings on the columns in Frank Furness' Broad Street Station, also in Philadelphia.47 These are not the stark contrasts employed so frequently and effectively in International Style building. Rather, these are the subtle oppositions of structure, materials, and textures which enhance the total image and aim at a synthesis.

The separation of the vertical circulation core from the stack of horizontal floor slabs was the great theoretical and visual innovation of PSFS.48 The origins of this feature lie ultimately in that point of view which has been described by Banham as the:

. . design philosophy that was common [in the early years of the twentieth century] to Academics and Moderns alike. The approach [was] particulate; small structural and functional members (elements of architecture) are assembled to make functional volumes, and these (elements of composition) are assembled to make whole buildings. To do this is to compose in the literal and derivational sense of the word, to put together.49

The key word here for the history of the modern movement as it actually developed during the 1920S is 'volumes' rather than 'structure'. The concept of composition by parts had in fact come to concern itself more with volumetric boxes of space than with the structural elements which made the space.

But this is not the whole story, since the architecture of the first ten years after the Great War was marked by

46. These letters are in the possession of Louis McAllister. 47. John Harbeson, 'Philadelphia's Victorian Architecture, 1860-

1890', The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography LXVII (1943), 269-270.

48. Vincent Scully in his Modern Architecture (New York, 1961), p. 118, refers to PSFS as a 'remarkably inventive achievement [wherein] . . . a neutrally cladded service tower is articulated from the main office tower of vertically continuous columns and cantilevered floor slabs.'

49. Banham, Theory and Design, p. 2o.



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at least three different attitudes toward building. One attitude, which might be called 'positivistic functionalism', produced an extensive body of pretentious sociological, economic, and technological theory and almost no important architecture. It insisted that the forms of buildings developed solely from a pragmatic diagrammatization of their functional areas and structural systems. This theoretical side had little appeal to American architects at the time, since, with some justification, they already believed American architecture to be more advanced in those ways than European.

The second attitude, the one which Hitchcock and

Johnson isolated as the International Style, was concerned with architectural design in the abstract. It was based on a set of very definite aesthetic criteria, and came to be focused primarily upon a purity of building shape, with

special reference to the pristine envelope and its skin.

Among the principles of the International Style, therefore, were an insistence upon volume rather than mass, upon the elimination of ornament, and so on. These formal principles were demonstrated by a corpus of works which comprise, for most architects and critics today, the

leading monuments of the early modern movement. Their

relationship to machine culture was purely symbolic. Structure was regularized in order to be ignored and was considered independent of space and facade. Space was conceived almost exclusively in terms of interlocked volumes, more or less in movement, or in what Giedion came later to insist upon as 'flow'. Indeed, the memorable

images of the International Style lie, for the most part, in

tight-drawn facades and geometric volumes, 'the play ... of forms under the light.' It was the International Style, with this clearly perceptible set of modern formal images, which had the greatest influence on modern architecture at the end of the 1920S. And American architects, sati- ated with Beaux-Arts classicism, sought architectural

meaning precisely in such easily apprehended forms. But, in their enthusiasm, the vast majority of them merely grafted onto their technology a set of shapes more or less

appropriate but hardly intrinsic to it. The third attitude, as yet relatively undiscussed by his-

torians, was what I would like to call 'rational expressionism'. It differed from positivistic functionalism precisely in its belief that there could be no true function without art. To use Hugo Haering's terms, architecture was concerned with Organwerk, the task of developing the functional program, and Gestaltwerk, the task of finding 'the

adequate image'. In varying degrees, such architects as Duiker and Mendelsohn shared with Haering his desire to '. . . examine things and allow them to discover their own images.'50 Howe, at heart, was closest to this third

50. Jurgen Joedicke, 'Haering at Garkau', Architectural Review (May 1960), pp. 317-318. See also Colin St. John Wilson, 'Open and Closed', Perspecta, The Yale Architectural Journal vii (Decem- ber 1961), 97-102.

point of view, although he was probably not aware of its existence within the modern movement, but for a time allowed himself to accept the second, probably in an effort to overcome the excesses of his architectural past through a newly redisciplined geometry. Yet he never allowed himself, as so many were later to do, to espouse both the first and second points of view together, since he was always intelligent enough to recognize their fundamental incompatibility.

Thus it is possible to look at the relationship between the spine and the slabs in PSFS as a demonstration of 'particulate' composition employing principles which were in one way or another both Beaux-Arts and rationally ex- pressive. The expression of function was achieved by a volume of uninterrupted verticality whose structure was ignored and sheathed in a carefully designed Interna- tional-Style skin. But, aside from the nature of the skin, there is little here that can be specifically identified with the aesthetic of the International Style, since that aesthetic was in rebellion against the vertical emphasis cus- tomary to many tall buildings. Neutra's project for Rush City Reformed (fig. 41), for example, despite the bold verticality of its projecting piers, hides the circulation core within the building itself; similarly, Eric Mendel- sohn's Schocken Store in Stuttgart (fig. 40) partially denies the vertical nature of the stair tower, which is placed in a cage of horizontals. Howe's theoretical distinction between usable space and service space, between circulation and destination, is definitely a heritage from the academic theories of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Its boldness is similar in spirit to, if not

directly derivative from, the efforts of the rational ex-

pressionists. Function in its most general and most mean-

ingful sense was to be given formal expression: the excitement of vertical transport, the lateral expansion of vast horizontal spaces.

To sum up: the theoretical source of PSFS was primarily the Beaux-Arts, which was purely formalistic on a

superficial level. But behind its somewhat empty forms was a body of theory, passed on to Howe by Moore and

Cret, in which the profounder aspects of architecture as a way of building were stressed. Today, when we seem to be surrounded by an unlimited variety of forms and

shapes in architecture, many seemingly undisciplined, the

teachings of the Beaux-Arts seem to hold renewed appeal for many architects. In its theory they find an approach to

building which can make, of imaginative creation, solid architecture. Many of the innovations of PSFS were skin

deep and have either survived or become irrelevant as our tastes have changed. These innovations were for the most

part Lescaze's, for it was this Swiss-trained Internation- alist who brought to PSFS-as the dramatic renderings of the building show-the excitement, in a sense the show-

manship, necessary to attract attention to the building in 1932. But those things which are more purely conceptual



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in their intentions, those features which have as their base a logic of rational expression, would seem to have been George Howe's.

The International Style, through its brilliant gestures, created most persuasive images of modern life. But in its

forty-year history, now drawing to a close, many architects have come to 'question some of the early dogmas, especially the romanticisms regarding the machine ....' They have come to realize, as did Paul Rudolph, that there are 'many ways of organizing a building or, more

importantly an environment . .. The International Style was only the opening chord in a great movement.'51 These

'principles' of design which once seemed so right are no

longer adequate, and all that remains, as Rudolph states it, is the uneasy knowledge that 'change is the only constant.' Yet the story of PSFS tends to indicate the existence of certain broad and permanent values beneath such

change. That is to say: George Howe's contact with the forms and intentions of the International Style surely opened up a whole new life in architecture for him, but he

brought something to it as well. He brought a simple concern for sound 'fundamental principles' of building. At the present moment in what seems to be the decadence of the International Style, many architects and critics feel that same concern anew.52

The great Philadelphia architects have always believed this. The first of them, Frank Furness, whose crude and violent forms attempted to express the bravado of the nouveau riche boldness of his era, was himself a product of the Ecole, having studied under Richard M. Hunt, just returned from Paris. Furness understood the best of the

theory and rejected the archaeology. He too faced, as Howe did later, the realities of the machine in his time, and explored the possibilities of new effects achieved

through application of machine techniques to traditional materials. To him, as to Howe, the machine was a tool, not a product. Furness' architecture was always daring and innovative. Individual and original, it was '. . . inde-

pendent in conception, and in it may be found the germs of much contemporary architectural thought.'53

Louis 1. Kahn, in many ways a spiritual successor to

George Howe, seems to understand, better than any architect alive today, the Beaux-Arts theories of architecture. These he learned from Paul Cret and from his years of association with Howe. In his actual building Kahn has not always been able to find suitable expressions for his theoretical convictions, and his growth has been slow. But it seems fitting that today it is Kahn who speaks for an

51. Paul Rudolph, untitled article, Perspecta, The Yale Architec- tural Journal vii (December 1961), p. 51.

52. George Howe, 'Why Then, Why Now?' a talk delivered on 15 May 1953 at the opening of the exhibition of 'Philadelphia Archi- tecture in the Nineteenth Century' at the Philadelphia Art Alliance.

53. Harbeson, 'Philadelphia Victorian ...', p. 266.

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architecture of 'meaningful form' and 'meaningful spaces', an architecture which seeks to use what Howe called

imaginative gifts', for what he also called a 'penetration of the meaning of things.'54 Furness, Cret, Howe, and Kahn perhaps constitute a Philadelphia School, one based

upon principles other than those of simple parochialism or regionalism. In their architecture of imagination and intellect PSFS will always hold a central and honorable

place.55

54. Peter and Alison Smithson used the phrases 'meaningful form' and 'meaningful spaces' in their article, 'Louis Kahn', Archi- tects' Yearbook ix (1960), 102. George Howe, in 1930, referred to Clive Bell's use of the phrase 'significant form', as the comprehen- sive expression of . . the assimilation of the spiritual significance of the program in terms of its material fulfillment, and the ordering of its elements, with due emphasis on the important and subordi- nation of the unimportant, in such a way as to produce a work of art', 'Modern Architecture', p. 20.

55. Jan C. Rowan's application of the term 'Philadelphia School' to the architects currently practicing and studying in that city seems to me a bit premature. See Progressive Architecture XLII (April 1961).

APPENDIX1

April 29, 1930 Stacy B. Lloyd, Esq.,2 The Philadelphia Saving Fund Society, 700 Walnut Street, Philadelphia.

Dear Stacy: This letter is merely a recapitulation of my conversation with you

on the telephone to-day. As I said, I am not urging any course of action, but merely setting before you certain facts in order that you may determine the best course for the Saving Fund yourself.

First of all then, we have now reached a stage where certain definite decisions must be made in order that we may continue to study the proposed building at 12th & Market Streets. We have already presented a scheme based on Mr. Willcox's general plan comprising:

(a)-A store on the street level; (b) -A banking room on the second floor approached by a stair-

case, escalator and elevators; (c) -Several floors above banking room dedicated to the purposes

of the store on the ground floor and approached by separate elevators; (d) -An office building comprising about 25 stories of rentable

office space, in addition to the floors presumed to be assigned to the store and the bank.

In connection with the plans we have presented a preliminary estimate prepared by the George A. Fuller Company,3 accompanied by a financial set-up, giving a very close approximation of constric- tion and operating costs, as well as revenue.

1. The documents in this appendix are among those in the Build- ing File at PSFS. Louis McAllister also possesses copies of some of them.

2. Then a vice-president, and Willcox's successor as president of PSFS.

3. The contractor for the building.



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These data are sufficient to arrive at certain broad decisions: 1.-As to whether there shall be an office building in connection

with the bank; 2.-As to whether there shall be a store on the street level. Mr. Willcox has given me to understand that the first question

has to all intents and purposes been decided in the affirmative. As to the second question, however, he has indicated no definite decision. On the other hand, until such time as it is settled we cannot

continue our studies of structural and mechanical problems without a possibility that the entire effort and money thus expended will go to waste if Mr. Willcox and the Building Committee should ulti-

mately decide that a store was undesirable for any reason whatsoever. The fundamental changes brought about by the omission of a

store are evident when one considers that the plan of the entire

basement and sub-basement of the building is dependent on the

store; that the entrance to the bank with its escalator and elevators, as well as the freight and passenger elevators provided for the in-

ternal use of the store become unnecessary if the store is omitted; that with the change in location and function of the entrance of the

bank and the liberation of the basement for the bank's own use, the

entire question of the internal disposition of the banking room pro-

per, as well as the location and disposition of the vault is re-opened. Every functional change of the sort described above entails very

fundamental changes in mechanical equipment and construction. A store would require certain special provisions in the way of venti-

lation, sprinkler system, etc. etc., while the presence of the store in

the building affects the entire question of the foundations, on ac-

count of the disposition of the basement, and even very probably the

number of stories and therefore the height of the building. You will

therefore see that until the store and its dependent elements are

adopted in principle we have nothing to guide us in any further

studies. As to the desirability of reaching a decision at the earliest possible

date, I can only say that it is our opinion, as well as that of the

Fuller Company, that the present is a very good time to buy building material. Furthermore, the further in advance of the inception of

the operation these materials can be ordered and the further the

architects' plans can be completed in anticipation of their absolute

requirement, the more rapid and orderly will be the erection of the

building when once started and the earlier the date of completion. The Philadelphia Saving Fund Society would therefore benefit in

two ways by an early decision,-first, in actual economy and quality of construction, and second, through early occupancy of the premises. On the other hand, if a decision is reached six months before

the building operation is to begin, say in June, 1930, there will still

be time to complete the architects' plans and specifications and

order some structural materials, on condition that all decisions sub-

sequent to the fundamental decisions outlined above be made

promptly, so that work on the plans may proceed without the neces-

sity of constant change. Please give my kindest regards to Mr. and Mrs. Willcox and wish

them from me the pleasantest of journeys. I shall be in New York

during the few days they will be in Philadelphia before sailing for California.

Sincerely yours, George Howe

May 26th, 1930

James M. Willcox, Esq., The Philadelphia Saving Fund Society, Philadelphia.

My dear Mr. Willcox: You have asked me whether it would not be possible and desirable

to introduce certain external vertical elements in the design of the

Society's new building. I cannot answer you without going into the general question of architectural design. I shall be as brief as possible, and if I appear didactic it is only because I have tried to state certain beliefs in the most concise and clear form.

You are aware that ever since you first asked me to design a branch bank around an electric sign4 I have been looking for a means

of architectural expression which should not be in conflict with any form of modern activity outside the field of architecture. I felt I had failed either to evolve or discover such an expression until I became conscious of the meaning of the so-called modern system of

design to the west in America and to the east in Europe. It was then I entered into my present partnership with a man5 who had long been studying and practising the new system. I feel it is fundamen-

tally an architectural rediscovery of the meaning of the past and above the mere whims of individual taste. On that basis I shall defend it without personal bias since it is not my own discovery but that of

many other men seeking a technically and expressively satisfactory solution of modern architectural problems.

I know that you agree with me that architecture is an art and that its imaginative productions are to be judged on its fundamental laws of subject, expression and technique like those of any other art.

In an easel painting the laws are established by the painter himself within the limits of the frame which detaches his work from its

surroundings. The painter may choose his subject, his way of ex-

pressing it and his technique. Once he has chosen them, however, every one recognises that since they are personal to him every portion of the picture must be a consequence of the same momentary

personal attitude. No one would believe that he was obtaining the

equivalent of an original Winslow Homer by commissioning some one else to make a freely adapted copy of some early work of that

painter, nor would any one who commissioned him to paint a picture suggest that certain portions of a Gainsborough should be in- troduced as a concession to the client's or the public's personal taste. In the same way if the collector's taste ran to i8th Century

English portraits he would purchase an original and not commission

some contemporary painter to produce a copy or a freely adapted modern revision. It would be obvious that such infringements of the

painter's law could not produce satisfactory artistic results.

In music the artist is more restricted because he is part of a

larger system. He may choose his subject and his way of expressing

it, but his technique is imposed by the instruments at his disposal, none of which he has invented and most of which he cannot play, and the skill of the performers, most of whom he does not know, who interpret his compositions. It is obvious that he must observe

the common law which gives us instrumentation and performance in order to produce satisfactory playable contemporary works.

The architect is even more restricted because he is part of the

whole life of the community. Not only is his technique today im-

posed by a thousand trades so complex and separated geographi-

cally that he cannot possibly control their development, which is

involved with innumerable human needs not directly connected

with architecture, but his subject also is limited to the requirements of other men and his way of expressing it by the nature of the physi- cal structural fabric necessary to house those requirements. His

proper function is restricted and always has been in the great peri- ods of the past to giving practical and formal expression to his im-

aginative conceptions within the limits of laws which he may help to expound and extend but which he cannot make. He can produce

good work only by penetrating their meaning and potentialities. I shall consider only that portion of the architectural law which

in our opinion imposes an external recognition of the horizontal

subdivisions of an office building, leaving aside all questions of plan and material.

4. The 1926 branch offices; see fig. 8. 5. William Lescaze.



The architectural intention of a civilization in any well-recognized type of building may be deduced only from the internal form and

significance of the spaces it demands for its purposes. In these

spaces where men live, work and worship is the heart of the problem. Men have built towers for defense filled with small cells enclosed in solid masonry, which is the inevitable external expression of the intuition of military power and the internal economy of the building it demands. They have built cathedrals for worship with vast vertical internal spaces to stir men to mystical adoration. These spaces were

inevitably expressed externally in vertical piers and buttresses

framing great stained glass windows. Today men extend the area of their buildings by superposing a great number of horizontal spaces for their cooperative convenience in attaining the modern ideal of the greatest good of the greatest number. The inevitable external

expression of their intention is a series of alternating horizontals of masonry and glass to express the horizontal spaces and give a maximum of light and air to the workers.

To compare skyscrapers to the towers of Ilium or Mediaeval

Europe is literary and poetic, not architectural. The similarity ends with towering mass. By its internal purposes the skyscraper presents a new problem in external subdivisions and expression.

Structural logic also imposes a horizontal expression. All sound

architecture, however elaborate and complicated in detail, has al-

ways been constructed with the simple logic of toy blocks. Each

piece is placed successively in its most natural order and direction on the last and decoration follows this order and direction. In the steel frame of the skyscraper the actual supports of the external cas-

ing are not the vertical columns but the continuous horizontal brackets which run around the building at each floor. The logical way to build is to set horizontal courses on these brackets and not to form verticals by breaking the apparent lines at right angles to the natural supports.

Aspect also imposes a horizontal treatment. The fact that street- level stores are required in practically every business building, and that retailers demand continuous plate glass in return for high rent-

als, makes it impossible to provide a solid masonry base to the skyscraper. Both continuous walls and derivative Gothic verticals demand a solid base for apparent stability. They must therefore be abandoned. It is the conception underlying modern architecture that fundamental necessity is to be regarded as an opportunity rather than an obstacle. Since it is necessary to treat the base of the skyscraper visibly as a glass shell around a steel frame, the entire casing of the building must be treated as a light veil supported in horizontal bands on successive brackets attached to the steel structure. This veil visibly does not rest on the glass substructure any more than it does in reality.

The horizontal treatment therefore seems to be imposed by human intention, construction and aspect alike. This I believe is the truth and transcends personal taste. It is arguable that if one does not like the truth one may disregard it in art. It is my own firm conviction that the truth must prevail sooner or later and that it is the designer's task not to deny it but to discover it and make the most of it.

On first utterance the truth is often charged with being cold and lacking in sentiment. Artistic truth is particularly subject to the accusation. The new conception of skyscraper design will undoubt- edly conflict with certain preconceptions of beauty. The use of horizontal subdivisions in vertical buildings may seem a retrogres- sion, producing a heavy and unprepossessing exterior, because men are accustomed to interpreting external aspect in terms of masonry construction. Their minds go back to the heavy belt-courses of the early skyscrapers. When they actually see the development of the suspended veil in execution and become used to it I am certain they will see in it beauties they had not suspected. Such has been my own experience. What I once thought a radical departure now seems to me the normal method of architectural expression. It will

97 become universal just as the new formulation of artistic perception which was regarded as eccentricity in the revolutionary painters of fifty years ago is now the commonplace of the exhibition gallery and illustration.

There is an element of the skyscraper, however, which is inten- tionally vertical and inseparable from the idea of great height and accessibility. The elevator, stairway and firetower are vertical com- munications and must be expressed as such. In designing the building of the Saving Fund Society we have developed these elements to the south as a strong spine to which the horizontal office floors are attached as a sort of ribs. This arrangement produces we believe a sense of organic unity in a visible combination of intention, structure and expression.

Finally, Mr. Seltzer6 reports that the prospective tenants he has approached have criticized the design as being ugly and like a loft building. The first criticism I have answered above. The second I take rather as a compliment. The loft building has been more honest than the monumental office buildings and herein lies its similarity to our design. On the other hand the loft building has been put up in cheap materials without regard to the finer forms of composition or mechanical order. We can assure you that when the Society's building is completed in handsome materials and in well ordered forms no one will reasonably be able to disparage it on the score of commercialism. As to any serious prospective tenant I think if you will allow me to interview him personally I can change his critical attitude to one of enthusiastic approval.

I trust you are having a delightful time and that you will come back in the best of health and spirits. I look forward to your return both professionally and personally.

Please remember me most kindly to Mrs. Willcox.

Sincerely yours, George Howe

June Third

1930 Mr. George Howe, 414 South 19th Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Dear George: I was very glad to get your letter of May 26th, and regret we can-

not sit down and talk the matter over. The way of the innovator is hard, and although my sympathies

are generally with him he is not always right. In all that man does constructively he aims at the useful or the

beautiful or both. The pagan poet said two thousand years ago, 'Omne punctum tulit qui miscuit utile dulci'.7

In architecture above all things exist the desirability and possibility of combining these two ends. I have not changed my point of view since our talk on the roof of the hospital. In fact, the more I have thought over and studied your theory and sketch the more they commend themselves to my judgment. I don't think that there is anything in your design which would decide a prospective tenant against taking space in the building if the matter were properly presented. It is impossible to take the architect along every time a prospect is to be interviewed. I think that I would be more convinc- ing than the average layman simply because I have probably given more thought to the matter than anyone outside of your office. We

6. R. J. Seltzer, the real estate expert retained by PSFS as a con- sultant on the building.

7. 'He has won every vote who blended profit with pleasure.' Horace, Art of Poetry, Epistle II, 3, 343.



98

must recognize the fact that there is something in your design which

requires explanation. The first impulse of everyone I have shown it to is away from it.

On the other hand, its uniqueness-at least in Philadelphia- gives it an advertising value that is worth something. My suggestion of introducing some perpendicular lines was not a very happy one as it would likely mean a complete abandonment of your idea. After all when we get down to the basic fact, is there such a radical de-

parture? Whether the perpendicular or horizontal effect is attained is largely a matter of looking at the design in detail instead of as a whole. In both cases we have a perpendicular mass or shaft, the purpose being to go up. In one case (yours) the manner of doing it by laying one segment on another is disclosed; in the other it is con-

cealed, but the perpendicular mass is the objective in both cases. In discussing the subject a few days ago with a man of decided

artistic cultivation and accomplishments, he said your sketch with its explanation is very interesting, but he added, why not follow out the idea to its logical conclusion. If the walls of the building are

only a curtain why not get away from anything that suggests mason-

ry and substitute large units of flat material that would look more like a curtain and not a wall, heavy glass if you will that will keep out the weather and could be made

beaux-arts theory and rational expressionism - stern

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