Buckminster Fuller and his model of the Dymaxion House ca. 1930. Photographer and place unknown.
(Click on images to enlarge).
Left: Stockade Building System, 103 Park Ave., New York, 1927. Right: Stockade Patent, James Monroe Hewlett and Richard Buckminster Fuller, June 28, 1927. After a stint in the U.S. Navy between 1917 and 1921, Buckminster Fuller and his architect father-in-law James Monroe
Hewlett joined forces in 1922 to form a company which used a compressed fiber block invented by Hewlett to create
modular houses using the Stockade Building System. Hewlett was a well-connected architect who was past president of the New York Architectural League from 1919 to 1921. Hewlett and Fuller received a patent for the system in 1927. (See above right).
Examples of houses built using the Stockade Building System from the above marketing brochure. Ibid., frontispiece and back cover of above left Stockade Building System brochure.
Stockade Building System strength test performed at M.I.T. in 1924 from Becoming Bucky Fuller by Loretta Lorance, MIT Press, Cambridge, 2009, p. 20.
Fuller worked indefatigably to develop the right formula mix for block manufacture and strength-testing of the materials while Hewlett worked on attracting investors and setting up a corporate structure. Fuller also assisted Hewlett in the marketing of the new building system. Fuller was finally rewarded with the leadership of the Stockade Midwest Division in Chicago by the end of 1926.
Left: "The Stockade System of Building," American Architect, January 1926, p. 81. Right: "Blocks of Straw Yet Houses of Reinforced Concrete," Scientific American, May 1926, p. 331.
Hewlett's architectural connections likely brought Stockade to the attention of the editors of The American Architect who were planning a fifty-year "Golden Anniversary" issue for January 1926. Benjamin Betts informed Fuller that "in the preparation on historical data on the development of the building industry during the last fifty years...1875 to 1925... we are writing companies like your own" who manufacture construction materials." A brief article in the May 1926 issue of Scientific American also helped to build credibility in the fledgling system. (B. T. Betts, New York, to RBF, New York, June 1, 1925, Chronofile, Vol. 25 (1926-1926, Lorance, p. 22).
Left: Stockade Building System, Exhibition of Stockade Wall System from Lorance, p. 30. Right: Stockade Residence at Joliet, Illinois, ca. 1926, Ibid. p. 31.
In three and a half years Stockade licensed four subsidiaries and built three block manufacturing factories, including one in Joliet spearheaded by Fuller. Hewlett developed financial difficulties in 1927 forcing him to to sell some of his shares in the company and thus lose control to a new owner, which ultimately resulted in Fuller's ouster in the new corporate restructuring. Fuller's continuing involvement with troublesome conflicting patents with a former fellow Stockade employee finally drew to a close in the spring of 1928. From this point on Fuller focused al his energies on his 4D house vision. (Lorance, pp. 38-41).
Left: 4D Time Lock by Buckminster Fuller, 1927. Right: Model of 4D House, aka "Dymaxion House," designed by Buckminster Fuller, 1928. Right: 4D House, United States Patent Office file no. 1,793, submitted April 1, 1928. Buckminster Fuller, inventor.
On May 16, 1928 the A.I.A. opened their annual convention and that is where Fuller first introduced his 4D House idea by distributing dozens of his mimeographed copies of his 40-page essay "4D Time Lock," essentially a business proposal explaining his plan for a new style of affordable housing. In it he wrote "These new homes are structured after the natural system of humans and trees with a central stem or backbone, from which all else is independently hung, utilizing gravity instead of opposing it. This results in a construction similar to an airplane, light, taut, and profoundly strong." It was signed under what would become his professional name: R. Buckminster Fuller. Unfortunately, Fuller's efforts made little, if any, impact. (From "The Art Story-Buckminster Fuller").
After returning from the convention Fuller sent off most of the remaining copies of "4D Timelock" to dozens of influential people including Paul Frankl, Barry Byrne, Russell Walcott, Henry Ford, Thornton Wilder, Claude Bragdon, Bertrand Russell, John Galsworthy, and many major city newspaper and architectural journal editors and industrialists including ingratiating creative hooks in his introductory letters intended to increase his rate of response. One of the letters began, "Last week it [4D Timelock] was presented to 18 members of the American Institute at St. Louis, who were picked out as being broad and unselfish thinkers, and with more than satisfactory results." He also sent a copy to his father-in-law, James Monroe Hewlett, who was by then vice-president of the A.I.A., who responded thusly,
"I have been trying to get time to write to you ever since I
got back from St. Louis but found things rather piled up. 1 have read your
pamphlet very carefully and it seems to me that you are starting on a perfectly
logical idea but one which involves a greatly improved solution of a great
number of detailed problems before you would possibly be in a position to say
“go” on a quantity production basis.
If you have the backing necessary to engage in the
experimental construction in the many different fields that must be covered, it
would seem to me that it would be wise to go slow on the exploitation of the
idea until you are ready to follow it up with something far more definite than
the general statements contained in your pamphlet.
I should be very much interested to see any plans or more
detailed description of the way you expect to solve these problems and of the
materials you expect to use as it is on such points as these that any
architect’s suggestion would be likely to be helpful.
Love to all." (To R.B.F. from J. Monroe Hewlett of Lord & Hewlett, Architects, 2 W. 45th St., New York City, June 4, 1928).
After a second more explanatory letter from Fuller Hewlett responded again in July.
"I am returning herewith the information you sent me in
regard to the patents-, applications, etc., as I do not think there is any
likelihood that I can contribute any useful ideas unless I get a great deal
more time than at present seems to be available to think over the matter. Granting the economical soundness of the basic idea which I
certainly do grant I am rather appalled by the number of supplementary matters
in regard to which some solution will be necessary before making an actual
plunge into production but that of course is a matter that you have been giving
constant thought to and those things when they are put into the form of a
complete schedule sometimes appear less formidable than when simply thought
about. I shall be interested to hear further of your plans as they
develop and, also, whether the backing that you are relying upon is in your
judgment sufficient to tide you over what must necessarily, I should think, be
a long period of experimentation and promotion." (To R.B.F. from J. Monroe Hewlett, New York City, July 9, 1928). From Buckyverse.
The unabashed Fuller also sent a copy to Dr. A. Lawrence Powell, President, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.,
"As the fifth generation of Harvard men (my father and
grandfathers having been in the classes of 1740, 1801, 1843, 1883, and, though
of unenviable scholastic record, myself, none the less a proud member of the
class of 1917) the writer in deep earnestness asks that you immediately read
the attached paper, making a suitable comment. The expediency of the
multi-letter is obvious and its informality inconsequential." (From BuckyVerse, "4D Timelock").
Within this time period Fuller also organized a "4D class" of bright, young Chicago architects to help him develop his patent design and build his first model. In a letter to his friend, French architect Paul Nelson, describing the class Fuller wrote,
"The leader ... is Leland Atwood, 27 years old, artist and draftsman. He has studied at the University of Michigan....Others...are Robert Paul Schwiekher, 25...who won the scholarship of the Chicago Architectural Sketch Club, which sent him to Yale University Architectural School...Another is Clair Hinkley, 30...who attained the highest marks at the Armour Institute School....A young member is...Tad E. Samuelson, honor student of the Armour Institute." (RBF to Paul Nelson, sailing from New York to Paris, August 11, 1928, Chronofile, vol. 36 (1928) from Lorance, pp. 164, 166). (Author's note: Leland Atwood and Paul Schweikher were at one time both chief draftsmen in the office of George Fred Keck and were involved in the designs of both the "House of Tomorrow" in 1933 and the "Crystal House" in 1934 at the Chicago World's Fair.).
Left: Interior drawing of Dymaxion House by Lee Atwood, February 1929 from Becoming Bucky Fuller by Loretta Lorance, MIT Press, Cambridge, 2009, Plate 7, p. 130. Right: Postcard for Le Petit Gourmet Restaurant, 615 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago. Date unknown. From eBay.
Fuller sent another ingratiating introductory letter to novelist and poet Jean Toomer with a copy of "4D Timelock" on Jun 15th in which he suggested, "We might arrange supper, or lunch, or a walk. I walk the length of Lincoln Park at least once a day," Toomer responded enthusiastically on the 17th, "I have an increasing interest in your whole idea and work." (Nevala-Lee, p. 114).
Toomer was able to arrange the first ever private showing of a model of the 4D House in September 1928 at Le Petit Gourmet Restaurant on North Michigan Avenue in Chicago. (See above right). A sketch of the "Hexagonal House" was also shown in the restaurant and published in the local paper. (See above and "Tree-Like Style of Dwelling Planned," Chicago Evening Post, December 18, 1928).
Marshall Field's Invitation, Dymaxion House Lecture Announcement, April 6-20, 1929.
After an exhibit and lecture at the studio of Rudolph Weisenborn Fuller next landed an exhibition at Marshall Field's flagship department store on State Street, where, according to Fuller, the retailer had received a consignment of modernist furniture from Europe, which it hoped would seem less radical in comparison with his house. Field's advertising manager Waldo Warren coined the name "Dymaxion" for Fuller's 4D House as a combination of the terms taken from Fuller's presentation, i.e., "dynamism, maximum and tension." Fuller loved the name and used it ever since. Beginning on April 6th, Fuller lectured at Marshall Fields Interior Decorating Galleries six times a day for the next two weeks. He later claimed that Chicago modern architects George Fred Keck and Howard Fisher had been inspired to start housing projects of their own after hearing him speak. (Nevala-Lee, p. 116. and also "Builds Unique House to Sell by the Ton," Chicago Herald & Examiner, April 13, 1929. Author's note: I his Chicago Art Institute oral history architect Bertrand Goldberg remembered attending a four-hour Bucky Fuller lecture at Rudolph Weisenborn's studio.).
Left: "Dymaxion House Has Ultra Design," Washington Evening Star, April 26, 1929, p. 5. Right: "Not Before the Mast, but Around It, Pneumatic House, Built Like a Tree," Christian Science Monitor, Boston, May 23, 1929, p. 4.
Fuller tried the annual A.I.A. convention again in May of 1929, this time in Washington, D.C., where he at least garnered some newspaper publicity with a 700 word article in the
Evening Star.
(See above). At the convention he also chanced to meet Harvey Wiley Corbett, the head of the architectural committee for the upcoming 1933 Chicago World's Fair and, after talking to Corbett, felt confident that his Dymaxion House would end up being selected to be displayed at the fair.
(Inventor of the Future by Alec Nevala-Lee, Dey St., New York, 2020, p. 116).
"The Wonder City You May Live to See" by Harvey Wiley Corbett, Popular Science Monthly, August, 1925, pp. 40-1.
If perhaps by chance Fuller had seen Corbett's 1925 article "The Wonder City You May Live to See," (see above) he would have been extremely encouraged. After perusing Fuller's 4D Time Lock at the A.I.A. convention Corbett likely saw in Fuller a fellow futurist and encouraged him in his ongoing efforts to market his idea by offering him space in his own offices to fine-tune his drawings. (Nevala-Lee, p. 126).
The architectural journal Pencil Points published a review of the 1929 A.I.A. Convention activities including a few paragraphs on Fuller's "Dymaxion" House:
"...for example, designed and patented by Buckminster Fuller, the model on exhibit in room 563, was a most ingenious and ingenuous contraption, calculated to upset all established theories of building. The materials are duralumin, and piano wire and everything is in tension, automatic and pneumatic. No description can do it justice, certainly it takes a lot of explaining, but its appearance calls to mind the limerick concerning the invention of a certain young man from Racine. We suggest a post-graduate course in the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design for Mr. Fuller, so that he may soften and humanize his mechanical nudities. We were so upset over the Dymaxion House that we left the morning session hurriedly, even forgetting to return till late in the afternoon." ("Tale-Lights of the A.I.A. Convention," Pencil Points, June 1929, pp. 405-408).
Left: Statement of Purpose and Membership Form for the Harvard Society For Contemporary Art, 1928. (Weber, p. 28). Right: John Walker, III, Lincoln Kirsten, and Edward M. M. Warburg, the founders of the Harvard Society for Contemporary Art. (Weber, p. 5).
The following month the tireless Fuller accepted an invitation from the recently formed
Harvard Society for Contemporary Art for their fourth ever exhibition just two months after being formed. Twenty-two year-old Lincoln Kirsten and Edward Warburg, age eighteen, (both in their junior year at Harvard), started the organization which was housed in two
small rooms on the second floor of the
Harvard Cooperative Building at 1400 Massachusetts Avenue across from Harvard Square. Future 1936 Richard Neutra client John Nichols Brown headed a prestigious list of the organization's trustees along with Harvard Museum director Paul Sachs and Edward Warburg's father Felix.
(See HSCA letterhead above left).
Fuller's exhibition "Richard B. Fuller, 4D - Dymaxion House," which ran from May 20th to 24th, was an important return to Cambridge where the former Harvard student reportedly displayed his model to numerous professors as well as to a senior named Philip Johnson, who was intrigued by Fuller's showmanship and use of aluminum - the basis of his family's fortune.
"Unique Dynamic House, Arborial Design, Solve Dwelling Problem," Harvard Crimsom, May 21, !929, "Dymaxion," Ibid., May 22, 1929, "Dwelling of Tomorrow Suspended Around Central Mast, Boston Traveler, May 21, 1929, " "Not Before the Mast But Around It," Boston Post, May 23, 1929, "Visions Modern Home Circular and High, Chicago Evening American, May 23, 1929, "Six Sided House Hung From Mast is Latest Model, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 23, 1929, p. 4,"Twice "Fired" Harvard, Returns Startle Profs with Hanging House" by Victor O. Jones, Boston Globe, May 25, 1929, and artist-info Blog).
Left: Descriptive flyer for "The Dymaxion House" by Buckminster Fuller, Harvard Society for Contemporary Art, May 20-24, 1929, Harvard Cooperative Building, Cambridge. (Original printed on bright lemon yellow paper printed in gaudy valentine red. (Weber, p. 62). Right: Buckminster Fuller with model of his Dymaxion House, photograph from "Hangs His House From a Mast,"Boston Globe, May 20, 1929. (Ibid., p. 63).
Before the exhibition the executive committee sent out formal invitations to selected invitees which stated,
"This house, built like a tree, with inflatable doors and floors, can be sold for $500 dollars a ton on a mass production basis ... We would appreciate you telling whomever else you think would be interested and bringing them here to the rooms."
Left: Philip Johnson by Carl Van Vechten, ca. 1932. (Weber, p. 67). Right: "Not Before the Mast, but Around It," Christian Science Monitor, Boston, May 23, 1929, p. 4.
At the exhibition Fuller conducted two one-hour lectures each morning and two each afternoon and a three-hour lecture each evening. Johnson had not previously met any of the Harvard Society fellows, he simply stopped in to see the Dymaxion exhibit because it was there, and it was new and exciting.
"Johnson had a vested interest in Fuller's use of aluminum. Homer Johnson, Philip’s father, was a lawyer who had done the patent work for the process to make that new substance, and had taken his legal fees in the form of stock in the company that was to become ALCOA. In 1926, Homer had turned those stock shares over to Philip. But whether or not it was financial concern that drew Philip Johnson in to Fuller’s exhibition, it made “an indelible impression” on him. “That Dymaxion House, I disliked it very much, but that made no difference. You see the point is . . that [from it] I learned vast amounts of the potentialities of architecture that I never forgot."
(Weber, p. 68. Author's note: Johnson himself, three years later would co-curate with Henry-Russell Hitchcock "Modern Architecture, International Exhibition" at New York's newly formed Museum of Modern Art which included work by Kocher and Frey and Richard Neutra whom he also had his father hire to design aluminum bus bodies in Cleveland, Ohio. See much more at my "A. Lawrence Kocher, Architectural Record, Richard Neutra, R.M. Schindler, Frank Lloyd Wright, Albert Frey and the Evolution of Modern Architecture in New York and Southern California")."
Theodore Morrison published a 5000 word article "The House of the Future" in the September issue of House Beautiful in which he referenced Fuller's May exhibition in Cambridge:
"A visitor to the Cambridge meetings can testify that Mr.
Fuller held in complete absorption a crowded roomful of people, many of them
standing, for an hour and a half while he exhibited his models and explained
their structure and significance. His hearers listened in delight, applauded
when he had finished, and stayed to ask questions." (See below).
("The House of the Future," by Theodore Morrison, House Beautiful, September 1929, pp. 292-3, 324, 326, 328, 330). Isamu Noguchi had received a Guggenheim Fellowship to study in Paris in 1927 and the quality of his work qualified him for a renewal of his fellowship for 1928. ("Art Fellowships Awarded," New York Times, May 10, 1928, p. 26).
Piece recently exhibited in Paris by Isamu Noguchi from "Paintings and Sculpture Shown in Paris," by Ruth Green Harris, New York Times, March 31, 1929, p. 113. Piece identified as "Face Form," 1928 at Noguchi Archive.
Noguchi then made a big splash upon returning from his Guggenheim studies under Brancusi to New York in April of 1929 with the
New York Times publishing a photograph of one of his Paris pieces in an article submitted from Paris by Ruth Green Harris along with a quite favorable review. Two weeks later his two-man show with Arthur Dove at the Schoen's Galleries at 115 E. 60th St. opened with similar raves:
"One of the pieces (we published a photograph of it with Miss Harris's article), resembles the rudder of a ship. But it could not be mistaken for a rudder, not even by a customs officer, for Mr. Noguchi has sublimated it, with just a deft stroke, and in his skilled hands it becomes a work of art. ... But Isamu Noguchi, who is a very modest man, guiltless of pomp and arrogance, has produced sincere and often eloquent expressions in metal, which are legitimate, and never cheaply clever, sparks from the contemporary wheel. There are also some excellent drawings." ("Two Cryptic Artists," New York Times, April 14, 1929, p. 133. While in Paris Noguchi met Ione Robinson and Marion Greenwood and became lifelong friends. For more on this see my "Richard Neutra and the California Art Club" (RNCAC)).
In early May the prize winners for the 1929 Prix de Rome also included Isamu Noguchi with his sculpture winning an honorable mention award being announced in the New York Times rounding out a very successful spring of publicity for the young sculptor. ("Prix de Rome Won by Student Painter," New York Times, May 7, 1929, p. 3).
Buckminster Fuller 4D House lecture announcement, Chicago City Club Bulletin, May 27, 1929, p. 113.
Chicago architect Howard Fisher killed two birds with one stone by joining the prestigious Chicago City Club sponsored by his brother Arthur Fisher and noted architect Irving Pond. He at the same time also arranged a City Club Forum Luncheon lecture by Buckminster Fuller on his 4D House which he most likely had recently seen at Marshall Field's. ("Nineteen More Members Join, Chicago City Club Bulletin, May 27, 1929, p. 114. "Inventor to Tell of the 4D House," by Howard Fisher, Ibid., p. 114).
Left: "Fuller Tells of His Amazing 4D Five Room House," by Howard T. Fisher, The City Club Bulletin, June 3, 1929, p. 120. Right: Chicago City Club, 81 E. Van Buren St.., Chicago, Granger and Bollenbacher, Architects, 1929. Wikipedia.
Howard's older brother, City Club of Chicago President, Walter T. Fisher, sponsored Fuller's City Club Forum luncheon lecture on his freshly coined Dymaxion House. Walter had in 1926 commissioned his own house in Winnetka by brother Howard who designed the project as his senior thesis at Harvard University. Howard Fisher later in the early 1930's designed a penthouse apartment for his other brother Tom and his wife, dancer Ruth Page, who had a year-long affair with artist Isamu Noguchi after meeting him at his exhibition at the Chicago Arts Club in 1932, as discussed in more detail below. (Nevala-Lee, p. 116,
Left: "House for Mr. and Mrs. Walter T. Fisher, Winnetka, Illinois, Howard T. Fisher, Architect, Architectural Record, November, 1929, pp. 461-464. Right: Sketch of 4D tower installation proposal for the 1929 Chicago Own Your Own Home Exposition ca. May 1929 from Buckminster Fuller: Designing for Mobility by Michael John Gorman, Skira Editore, Milan, 2005, p. 35.
Fuller next displayed the Dymaxion House model on May 25th at the Chicago Homeowners Exposition at the
Chicago Coliseum followed by the 42nd Annual Chicago Architects Exhibition at the
Arts Club of Chicago through June 13th through the sponsorship of
Rue Winterbotham Carpenter, one of the Arts Club founders and its president until her death in 1931.
(Nevala-Lee, p. 117).
After his side trip back to Chicago Fuller was back in Cambridge in June for the Harvard Artists and Architects Exhibit. ("Public Presentations of Fuller and Dymaxion Titles," p. 1).
Left: Byline for "The Dymaxion House," by Buckminster Fuller, Architecture, June 1929. Right: "A House for Mass Production by Buckminster Fuller," Architectural Forum, July 1929, pp. 103-104.
In an attempt to gain ever more publicity for his Dymaxion House Fuller submitted a 2,000 word piece to Architecture magazine at the same time he was exhibiting the house at the 1929 A.I.A. convention in Washington, D.C. Editor Henry Saylor published the article in the June 1929 issue and referenced Fuller in the next two issues in his "The Editor's Diary" column. In July under his "Friday, April 26" entry he wrote,
"Back again in New York where the convention delegates are come to see the Architectural and Allied Arts Exhibition and to gather at the banquet which closes the Sixty-second Convention of the A.I.A.. Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion House model continues to draw the interest of forward-looking architects at the Architectural League library, just as it did in an upper private room at the hotel in Washington during the convention. It stimulates the brain as setting-up exercises and a cold shower stimulate the body." ("The Editor's Diary," Architecture, July 1929, p. 46).
July also found Fuller's 600 word article, "A House for Mass Production," published by Kenneth Stowell in Architectural Forum. (See above right). Henry Saylor's 50 word August 1929 diary entry described a recent lunch he enjoyed with Fuller at which one of their topics was regarding his interest in a potential book on Fuller to be written by Lewis Mumford for Scribner, for which Fuller had recorded a lecture for the Architectural League of New York on July 9th. After an introduction at the League meeting by Harvey Corbett, whom Fuller had recently met at the A.I.A. convention in Washington, D.C. and who confirmed that he wanted a Dymaxion House exhibit at the upcoming Chicago World's Fair, Fuller made a presentation of his house to a League audience that likely included, besides Mumford, Raymond Hood, Joseph Urban and Ely Jacques Kahn. (Buckminster Fuller and Isamu Noguchi, Best of Friends, Shoji Sadao, Noguchi Museum and Garden Foundation, New York, 2011, p. 52 and Nevala-Lee, p. 117).
Left: Isamu Noguchi and Grace Greenwood at the 1929 Harvester Maverick Festival at Woodstock, New York, August 1929. Right: Grace Greenwood (circled) and sister Marion and Noguchi on the right. From Maverick Festival Personalities.
Noguchi and painter Marion Greenwood reconnected in New York after his return and spent some time in August at the Maverick Festival in Woodstock with her and her sister Grace. The New York Times published an illustrated three-page spread in its Sunday Magazine in late August. ("An Eden of Artists Fights a Serpent," New York Times Magazine, pp. 6-7, 23).
Fuller moved to Greenwich Village for six months in mid-1929 into the studio of sculptor
Antonio Salemme, a friend of his architect father-in-law James Monroe Hewlett. From there he rediscovered Romany Marie's - the perfect venue for cultivating the connections that he needed.
The tavern had recently moved to 15 Minetta St. and Fuller offered to redecorate it. Around the same time Marie introduced Fuller to Isamu Noguchi who had himself recently arrived from Paris with a recommendation from his mentor Brancusi to make his own discovery of Romany Marie's.
(Nevala-Lee, p. 118).
Portrait bust of Julian Levy by Isamu Noguchi, 1929 from Isamu Noguchi Archive.
The art dealer Julien Levy met Noguchi in Paris in 1927 and was sculpted by Noguchi after he arrived in New York in 1929. Levy observed of Noguchi,
"Noguchi was discovering a means of applying the formal elements of sculpture to enhance the psychological implications of a portrait. Everything from the general outline to the most minute details of texture, was significant of his estimate of his subject. The choice of material, determination of scale, even the shape of the base, all were part of the general consideration, so that, if the portrait were featureless, there would still remain a sort of impression of the subject." (Herrera, p. 104).
Romany Marie fondly reminisced Bucky's salad days in Greenwich Village,
"His family had thrown him out because they thought he was meshugah. His wife Anne, was a daughter of a great architect of the old school, Hewlett. So I carried through with Bucky. One friend [Salemme] gave him a room in the village and I gave him food, and Fuller and I began to sit up all night, discussing philosophy of the future and of living. And he was working on this house model. I could see the truth of his philosophy, and it is what Bucky proceeded to apply to his Dymaxion House, the first model of which he exhibited in my place there on Minetta Street." (Romany Marie: The Queen of Greenwich Village by Robert Schulman, Butler Books, Louisville, KY, 2006, p. 107).
Left: Romany Marie ca. 1929-30. Photographer unknown. Right: Proposed Dymaxion Hanging Restaurant for Romany Marie, 1929 by Buckminster Fuller. From Isamu Noguchi Archive.
The theme of Fuller's redesign for Marie's cafe was aluminum. Marie recalled Fuller saying,
"I'm going to fix this place up in a Dymaxion way. I'm going to throw out all the old things, and will create something new that will have essential character and lift up your spirit. He was experimenting but it wouldn't cost much, he said. The fact is, it cost plenty. I had to pay about six dollars a quart for that aluminum paint he planned to put on the walls. Well, so what, I thought. Bucky is creating for me." (Ibid., p. 105).
It was then that Marie introduced Fuller to Isamu Noguchi who had been sent by Brancusi who had told him, "Do like I and Matisse did, go first to Romany Marie's." Fuller and Noguchi painted everything but the kitchen in aluminum, all the walls and exposed ceiling pipes, the lights were described by Marie as "horns of aluminum." He designed "aeroplane" chairs and tables "that wiggled when you put food on them." Marie continued with a description of opening night,
"It was the most ridiculous spectacle you ever saw in your life. It wasn't enough there was a deviation with all the luminosity - when they sat down, they all fell down. We had to bring out chairs - real chairs - and do what we could that night. And next morning I had to have a carpenter make me benches like I had before." (Ibid., pp. 106, 109).
Proposed Design for Interior of Romany Marie Tavern by Buckminster Fuller, 1929 from Buckminster Fuller: Staring With the Universe edited by K. Michael Hays and Dana Miller, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2009, p. 89.
"Night after night there developed a kinship that you could see influenced the work of the other. It seemed like every time I looked up there was these two little men talking, talking. And no question in my mind, it was what Noguchi took from Bucky that led him into his period of striking portrait busts in various new metals." (Ibid., p. 110).
Architect Hugh Ferris purportedly told Marie, "Marie, if you will give a hand to Bucky Fuller, you will go down in history." And this I believed, but of course the reason I helped Bucky was because of my belief in his philosophy, regardless of the [chairs] falling down and the luminosity. Bucky's experiment was a failure but Marie promised Fuller one free meal a day for the rest of his life. (Ibid., p. 106).
Left: Bust of Lajos Tihanyi, 1929 by Isamu Noguchi from Noguchi Archive. Right: Bust of Buckminster Fuller, 1929 by Isamu Noguchi from Noguchi Archive.
On October 27th of 1929, two days before the stock market crash that heralded the Great Depression, Romany Marie staged an exhibition of paintings by Lajos Tihanyi, a painter Noguchi knew from Paris, sculpture by Isamu Noguchi, including busts of Tihanyi and Fuller, and Fuller's model of his "Dymaxion House", which ran until November 4th. ("Art News in Brief," New York Times, October 27, 1929, p. X12).
"The portrait of R. Buckminster Fuller, a likeness of the inventor, theorist and architect who became a life-long friend, is covered in extremely reflective industrial chrome. These high-tech materials created "form without shadow," Noguchi stated, meaning that the reflection itself became a sculptural element."
(From Art Story).
"Plans to Move Homes by Airship," John E. Lodge, Popular Science Monthly, September 1929, p. 47.
Fuller's 4D fantasies kept gaining traction throughout the year with another full-page spread making the pages of Popular Science Monthly in September of 1929. Fuller predicted in the piece that within fifty years that dirigibles moving Dymaxion Houses and 4D Towers from place to place would be a "commonplace occurrence." The same month Fuller had an exhibit, perhaps a two-man show with his sculptor landlord, and presented two lectures in the studio of Antonio Salemme where he was then still residing in Greenwich Village at 2 West 13th St., New York City.
Buckminster Fuller presenting first model of the Dymaxion House in Fox Movietone Newsreel outtake, October 10, 1929.
The next month Fuller made a short trip to Princeton University where he had a one man exhibit of his model and lecture on October 18th which was reported upon in a lengthy article in the Daily Princetonian. The previous week Fox Movie Tone filmed a newsreel of the Dymaxion model and Fuller talking. (See above). ("Dymaxion House of Fuller Forerunner of Economic Revolution in House Building," Daily Princetonian, October 23, 1929, p. 5).
Howard Fisher led off the November 1929 issue of Architectural Record with a six-page piece, "New Elements of House Design" in which he expounded on which direction he saw various elements of the residential house evolving in the future. He sounded like he had just attended a Buckminster Fuller lecture on the Dymaxion House, in fact he touted Buckminster Fuller's new bathroom ideas of which he wrote:
"The most interesting prophecy for the bathroom of the future is that of Buckminster Fuller. His design calls for the entire room to be formed in one piece with all the fixtures to be made integral. This would be delivered by truck to the job completely piped and ready to install." ("New Elements of House Design," Architectural Record, November 1929, pp. 397-403. Author's note: This quote presaged Fuller's work at the Pierce Foundation in 1931 developing his Dymaxion Bathroom concept as discussed later below. Fisher's article pleased editor Kocher so much that he commissioned him to prepare the entire 1930 Country House issue in November 1930 and invited him to be a contributing editor, a position he retained on the magazine masthead until 1937.).
Poster for "An Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture by the School of New York," October 17 to November 1, 1929, The Harvard Society for Contemporary Art, 1400 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge.
Perhaps through his association with Fuller, work by Noguchi was selected for display in an October exhibition at the Harvard Society for Contemporary Art in the Coop Building. Inspired by the success of the young Harvard student's Lincoln Kirsten, Edward Warburg and John Walker with the Harvard Society, at almost the same time Abby Rockefeller and friends formed the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York. At the recommendation of Harvard's Paul Sachs, Alfred Barr was selected by MOMA's trustees as the new museum's founding director.
"It is difficult to assess the precise role that the Harvard Society for Contemporary Art played in the early development of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. But in April of 1930 the Modern's trustees did invite the three undergraduates, along with Philip Johnson, onto its newly formed Advisory Committee. This new committee, consisting of "young people interested in the Museum," was intended to propose ideas to the trustees. ... Agendas for the trustees' meetings were sent to each member of the Advisory Committee." (Weber, pp. 107-8).
In addition to Kirsten, Warburg, Walker and Johnson, the Committee consisted of the Harvard Society's trustee (and later Richard Neutra client) John Nicholas Brown, Nelson Rockefeller, George Howe and many notable others. The local press made much of the connection of the Harvard Society Executive Committee and MOMA's Junior Advisory Committee. The early history of the museum was summed up in the New York Evening Post thusly,
"The almost instantaneous success for the Society for Contemporary Art was followed before many months by the founding of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, more pretentious and with more substantial backing than the Harvard Society, but identical with its Cambridge predecessor in its basic aims. The undergraduate directors of the Harvard organization were elected to the directorate of the New York museum - acknowledgement of how much the latter owed to the germ of that idea born at Harvard." (Weber, p. 108).
Left: Ruth Parks bronze portrait bust by Isamu Noguchi, 1929 from the Isamu Noguchi Archive. Right: "On View at New York Galleries," Parnassus, no date, ca., December 1929. From Isamu Noguchi Archive.
Noguchi was next on display at the inaugural exhibition for the Whitney Museum of American Art which opened on November 18, 1929. His bronze portrait bust of waitress Ruth Parks was also published in a February 1930 review of the exhibition in Parnassus. Noguchi had a penchant for sculpting people who caught his attention, such as Parks, whose 1929 bust with her hair tied on top of her perfectly oval head has all the elegance of his recent mentor Brancusi. (Listening to Stone: The Art and Life of Isamu Noguchi by Hayden Herrera, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2015, p. 100).
"Housekeeping in the Air," by Amy MacMaster, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, December 8, 1929, pp. G1-G2.
Fuller scored a big coup in December landing a lengthy two-page spread opening the
Brooklyn Daily Eagle Sunday Magazine. The author Amy MacMaster opened the article with almost a full-page illustration by
Harve Stein fantasizing Dymaxion living with the fashionably-dressed female owner standing next to a coffee table adorned with a Noguchi-like sculpture pressing an elevator button above the caption, "The doors of the house roll upward by the pressing of a button." MacMaster clearly spent much time with Fuller while researching the article evidenced by her following comment,
"Buckminster Fuller is amazingly painstaking and clear in explaining his invention. He is a serious and yet high-spirited man with bright eyes and an extremely high forehead. He has a great love of beautiful things, a nimble wit and the absorption of the inventor. There are three things about Mr. Fuller's life that have had the most influence on him and may be considered the basis of his invention. First, he learned to sail boats when he was little more than a baby; secondly, he is the grandnephew of
Margaret Fuller, a women noted as a rebel against traditional conventions; and thirdly, he married the daughter of a famous architect,
James Monroe Hewlett."
(Ibid., p. G-2).
Fuller had yet another "Invitation Exhibit" in the Studio of Isamu Noguchi after moving in with him. Noguchi had just moved from his old studio in the Carnegie Building to a top floor space on Madison Ave. and 28th Street. It had formerly been a laundry and sported high windows all the way around. "By then under Bucky's sway I painted the whole place silver, top, bottom, and sides, to the effect that one was almost blinded by the lack of shadows. There I made his portrait head in chrome-plated bronze, also form without shadow." (Herrera, p. 105).
"A Japanese American Sculptor Comes to New York: Isamu Noguchi," New York Times, Midweek Pictorial 30, no. 18, (December 21, 1929), p. 18.
Also in December of 1929 novelist John Erskine sat for a portrait bust by Noguchi which was scheduled to be on display at a showing of the artist's work at the Marie Sterner Gallery in the following February. (See above and below).
Exhibition photograph: "Fifteen Heads by Isamu Noguchi," Marie Sterner Gallery, New York (February 1 - February 14, 1930) - Photograph: Peter A. Juley & Son. From Isamu Noguchi Archive. (See also "Work by Six Japanese Artists," by Edward Allen Jewell, New York Times, February 9, 1930, p. X13). Evidenced by his early February 1930 show at Marie Sterner's Gallery, Noguchi was busy throughout 1929 making busts of people that would potentially help further the careers of his close pal and roommate Bucky Fuller and himself.
Left and right: Martha Graham portrait busts by Isamu Noguchi, 1929 from Isamu Noguchi Archive.
During this period Noguchi met dancer Martha Graham. His mother lived near Martha and helped with costumes for her dance company and sister Ailes came to study at her studio and joined her dance company. Noguchi remembered,
"I made a head of the great dancer Martha Graham soon after I got back to America. At the time she was not well known, but she lived around the corner from Carnegie Hall, nearby where I had a studio, so I used to go and watch her classes. There were many pretty girls there, and I would draw them."
Graham did not like the original bust. Noguchi remembered, "The first one was rather tragic. And Martha didn't like it, she didn't want to be tragic. She wanted to be forward looking and full of expectations, hope. So I did another head representing the other Martha." (Herrera, pp. 107-8).
Left: Harvey Wiley Corbett portrait bust by Isamu Noguchi, 1929, from Isamu Noguchi Archive. F. S. Lincoln photograph. Right:"A Vision of Midtown New York," by Harvey Wiley Corbett, New York Times, October 6, 1929, 5-1.
Harvey Wiley Corbett, Fuller and Noguchi were obviously socializing during the period Fuller was working on his Dymaxion drawings in Corbett's architectural offices evidenced by the portrait bust Noguchi created of Corbett around the time his Roerich Building was nearing completion as will be discussed below. (See above right).
New York Times art critic Edward Alden Jewell gave Isamu Noguchi's Marie Sterner show a rave review in early February 1930.
"Isamu Noguchi was introduced to the New York public last season, when he had a small show of abstract sculptural forms at Eugene Schoen's. It was a surpassingly good show, so that young Mr. Noguchi's introduction was auspicious. But it did not adumbrate the success with portrait heads that the present affair at Mrs. Sterner's gallery establishes beyond doubt. ... Among the best of the portraits are those of Harvey Corbett, Bernice Abbot, Charles Allen with the deep-set eyes, George Gershwin, Edla Frankau, whose monocle has been astonishingly conceived, and Buckminster Fuller the architect. Mr. Fuller has just invented a miraculous sort of house that maintains itself around a center of gravity, and miraculous he looks, too, in this bust of chromium plate, smoothed and highly polished. ... Isamu Noguchi is decidedly a man with a future, unless the present have anything to do with the case." ("Work by Six Japanese Artists," by Edward Alden Jewell, New York Times, February 9, 1930, p. X13).
Left: Berenice Abbott portrait bust by Isamu Noguchi from Isamu Noguchi Archive. Right: George Gershwin portrait bust by Isamu Noguchi, 1929 from Isamu Noguchi Archive.
Left: "Ethel Waters" portrait bust by Anotnio Salemme. Photo by Carl Van Vechten, 1932 courtesy of Beinecke Rare Book Library. Right: Lajos Tihanyi portrait bust by Isamu Noguchi from Isamu Noguchi Archive.
In early January Ruth Green Harris wrote in her New
York Times column of the "Portrait Sculpture" exhibition at the
Feragil Gallery of busts by Noguchi and Fuller's recent landlord Antonio
Salemme,
"...Antonio Salemme's "Ethel Waters"
reminds one of the head of an Egyptian Princess. The surface is as smooth as
skin. Isamu Noguchi's "Tihanyi" looks as if the metal had been
mined in this portrait shape. It speaks for Noguchi's great interest in metals.
One can hardly imagine this head drawn any other way." ("A
Round of Galleries," by Ruth Green Harris, New York Times, January
12, 1930, p. 120).
"Mass-Production and the Modern House" by Lewis Mumford, Architectural Record, January 1930, pp. 12-20.
Lawrence Kocher was fascinated by prefabrication and Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion concepts and agreed to publish a two-part series in the January and February 1930 issues by Lewis Mumford which included a critique of Fuller's Dymaxion House design. The first part of the article in January included the quote,
"Novelties in plan or design, such as those suggested in the Dymaxion House, should not obscure the fact that the great change in the shell is only a little change in the building as a whole. For lack of proper cost accounting our experimental architects have been butting their heads against this solid wall for years; but there is no reason that they should continue. ... In short: the manufacture house cannot escape its proper site costs and its communal responsibilities."(See above and also earlier above). (Ibid., p.18)
Mumford included a footnote under Fuller's model which read, "Walls (no windows) of transparent casein; inflated duralumin floors, heat, light, refrigeration supplied to it individually, through central mast, by Diesel engine, water from well."
In Kocher's February issue Mumford continued almost as if he was in conversation with Fuller:
"Since the parts of a building have been industrialized, it has naturally occurred to certain intelligent designers that the whole might be treated in the same manner, hence various schemes for single family unit-houses, designed for greater mechanical efficiency. Those who approach the problem of the modern house from this angle suggest that the mass house may eventually be manufactured as cheaply and distributed as widely as the cheap motor car. ... the mere ability to purchase such houses easily and to plant them anywhere would only add to the communal chaos that now threatens every semi-urban community. *Mr. Buckminster Fuller already perceives this danger. "The Dymaxion Houses," he writes me, "cannot be thrown upon the world without a most adequate 'town plan,' really a universal community plan." ("Mass-Production and the Modern House (Part Two)," Lewis Mumford, Architectural Record, February 1930, p. 110).
Dymaxion House Exhibit-Lecture Announcement, Architectural League of New York, 115 E. 40th St., New York, February 4-11, 1930.
Still having high hopes of exhibiting his Dymaxion House at "The Century of Progress" fair in Chicago, Fuller seemingly collaborated with Harvey Wiley Corbett to have the New York Architectural League host an exhibition of his new and improved house model from February 4th to the 11th, 1930. Fuller presented a lecture to the League on the Friday the 7th at 8:00 p.m. on the "Philosophy-Economics, Dynamics, and Mechanics of Dymaxion Design." (see above).
Left: "4D - Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion House, March 12-14, 1930, Old Fogg Museum, Harvard Society for Contemporary Art. Right: Bronzes by Isamu Noguchi, February 27th through March 15th, 1930, Harvard Society for Contemporary Art, 1400 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge.
Fuller soon convinced Lincoln Kirsten to bring him back in
1930 to exhibit his improved model of the Dymaxion House in the courtyard of
Harvard's Fogg Museum while also exhibiting his friend Noguchi's sculptures and
drawings in the Society's Coop Building rooms on Massachusetts Avenue. Noguchi
also returned with all the busts he had completed the previous year including
Fuller, Marion Greenwood, Martha Graham, George Gershwin, Harvey Wiley Corbett,
Berenice Abbott, Nicholas Roerich and others. Noguchi perhaps took the
opportunity to also capture the bust of Lincoln Kirsten. (See below left).
Fuller's 4D-Dymaxion exhibition was shown immediately after the Harvard show at the Wadsworth Atheneum by A. Everett "
Chick" Austin.
(Gaddis, Eugene R.: 'Magician of the Modern. Chick Austin and the Transformation of the Arts in America', Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2000, p. 140)
Following up on the Mexican West Coast invasion of 1930, The Harvard Society of Contemporary Art scheduled the exhibition "Modern Mexican Art" for March 21st through April 12th hard on the heels of Noguchi and Fuller. Lithographs were solicited from Diego Rivera then still in San Francisco, and an assemblage from several New York galleries of work by Jose Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros and Jean Charlot which were also included. (Weber, pp. 104-5. See also my "Richard Neutra and the California Art Club" for much more.).
Left: Lincoln Kirsten portrait bust by Isamu Noguchi, 1929 from Isamu Noguchi archive. Right: "Sculpture by Noguchi," Arts Club of
Chicago, March 26-April 9, 1930. Portrait bust of Marion Greenwood on the
cover. From Isamu Noguchi Archive.
Fuller and Noguchi packed their materials from the Harvard
show into Fuller's Nash station wagon and left Harvard for Chicago where they
both also exhibited. Noguchi's sculpture exhibition ran first at The Arts
Club of Chicago from March 26th through April 9th, concurrently with
"Paintings by Pablo Picasso." His bust of Marion Greenwood was chosen
for the cover of his exhibition catalogue. Fuller's show "Exhibition
of Models and Drawings of Dymaxion Architecture by Buckminster Fuller,"
ran from May 8th through the 13th alongside "Paintings by George
Rouault." (Listening to Stone, the Art and Life of Isamu Noguchi by
Hayden Herrera, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, New York, 2015, pp. 108. See
also Arts
Club of Chicago. below).
Left: "An Exhibition of Work of 46 Painters & Sculptors Under 35 Yeas of Age," April 12th to April 26th, 1930, Museum of Modern Art, 730 Fifth Avenue, New York. Right: Therese Thorne portrait bust by Isamu Noguchi, 1929-30,
Isamu Noguchi Archive.
After his Chicago Arts Club exhibition was under way Noguchi
left for New York to make sure that his section of the MOMA group
show, "An Exhibition of Work of 46 Painters & Sculptors Under 35
Years of Age," was well displayed before continuing on to
Paris. Between April 12th to April 26th Noguchi's sculpture was on display
"An Exhibit of Work of 46 artists under 35 Years of Age" at the fifth
ever exhibition of the new Museum of Modern Art in the Heckscher
Building.
Noguchi had four works in the show including a portrait bust
of his current paramour, young New York socialite Therese Thorne, which had
also previously appeared in the "Fifteen Heads" show at the Marie
Sterner Gallery. Fuller wrote from Chicago to Noguchi on April 4th asking
him to meet with Harvey Corbett once again before he sailed for Europe to
reinforce his feelings about the Dymaxion House and his plans to accept it for
display at the Chicago's 1933 World's Fair. (Fuller to Noguchi, April 4,
1930, Noguchi
Archive).
Left: Telegram from Buckminster Fuller to Isamu Noguchi on the steamship Aquitania, April 15, 1930. From Isamu Noguchi Archive. Right: Portrait bust of Isamu Noguchi by Arno Breker, 1930. Courtesy Isamu Noguchi Archive.
Just as Noguchi was embarking for Europe Fuller sent him a bon voyage telegram in his own inimitable style which clearly demonstrated the bond which had formed between the two personas. Noguchi found time to sit for his portrait with his 1927 European sculptor neighbor Arno Breker while back in Paris. (See above for example).
As Noguchi sailed for Europe Fuller lectured on the Dymaxion House twice more in Chicago before conducting an Eastern swing and returning to Chicago for his own Arts Club exhibition. Likely through Howard Fisher, who had designed a house for his brother in Winnetka, he gave a public lecture and had a one-man show at Winnetka High School on April 15th. Similarly on the 19th he gave another lecture and one-man show at the
Chicago Fortnightly, a women's club that included notable early members Jane Addams and Harriet Monroe.
.
The next week found Fuller at Carnegie Institute of Technology on April 24th for a general university three hour lecture in the Little Theater and a one-man show in the Fine Arts Department.
(See above). Fuller next traveled on to The Newark Museum for yet another one-man show and lecture on May 1st sponsored by
Holger Cahill.
(See below).
Newark Museum of Art, ca. 1930s.
Fuller next appearance was at the prestigious Yale University Architectural School on May 3rd in a lecture arranged by his 4D House design-mate Paul Schwiekher, who was then attending, Julian Whittlesey and others. Student George Nelson was also in attendance along with Ricky Harrison, who assembled the Dymaxion model without instructions. Having already seen Fuller's presentation at the prevous A.I.A. convention Dean Meeks refused to attend. Fuller finally returned to Chicago for his exhibition at the Arts Club sponsored by club president Rue Winterbotham Carpenter. He followed his May 8th to May 13th run with an appearance at the Chicago Architectural Sketch Club on 15th and the Chicago University Renaissance Club on the 18th.
"Demonstration Health House for Dr. Philip Lovell, Los Angeles, Richard J. Neutra, Architect, Architectural Record, May 1930, pp. 433-439.
Fuller next spent the first week of June at the annual A.I.A. convention in Washington, D.C. which included a symposium on Modern Architecture. In a summary of the happenings at the convention it was reported that,
"Mr. George Howe of Philadelphia fired a salvo to celebrate the victory of the Modernists which he seemed to consider a fait accompli. If he was tempted to speak too lightly, too jestingly, too disrespectfully of the dead, he may be forgiven for an over-confidence bred of zeal. ... From the martial tone of Mr. Howe's remarks one conjured up a bloody picture of Architects in tin hats 'neath the rockets red glare, and bombs bursting in air, shouting the battle cry of freedom; and mopping up their adversaries, so to speak." ("Conventional Behavior," by An Eyewitness, The Octagon, June 1930, p. 4).
The Dymaxion House was on display in the convention's Mayflower Hotel Main Ballroom. Fuller was nonplussed by a mass walkout of his lecture by "Easterners" led by William Delano. Fuller was likely inspired by Howe's talk and perhaps made his initial connection which soon led too his taking over control of Philadelphia's T-Square Journal (Shelter) in early 1932. Fuller's Dymaxion House model finally came to rest for the rest of the summer of 1930 in the showroom of designer Donald Deskey. ("Public Presentations of Fuller and Dymaxion Items," p. 2).
"Dymaxion House designed by R. Buckminster Fuller" in "The Week-End House" by Knud Lonberg-Holm, Architectural Record, August 1930, p. 180.
Fuller was able to attract the attention of Architectural Record assistant editor and technical writer Knud Lonberg-Holm for inclusion of Dymaxion in Holm's piece on "The Week-End House." (See above. Author's note: Lonberg-Holm's fellow assistant editors under A. Lawrence Kocher were Robert L. Davison for whom Fuller would in 1931 work with at the Pierce Foundation in Buffalo on the development of a prefabricated bathroom, and Ted Larson whom, along with Holm, Kocher and Frey would soon became members of Fuller's Structural Study Associates. (Nevala-Lee, p. 129).
Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros were well represented in a huge exhibition of "Mexican Arts" at the Museum of Modern Art from mid-October through early November of 1930. The show, conceived by Ambassador to Mexico, Dwight Morrow, travelled around the country for the next two years. ("Mexican Art Shown in Exhibition Here," New York Times, October 14, 1930, p. 24).
"The Nation's Honor Roll for 1930," The Nation, January 7, 1931, cover and p. 8.
In the January 7, 1931 issue of The Nation Buckminster Fuller was listed along with architects Henry Wright and Eero Saarinen for being on "The Nation's Honor Roll for 1930." Fuller's citation read: "Buckminster Fuller, engineer, of New York, for his
pioneering work in developing the potentialities of mass production, new
materials and new engineering principles for housing that is practical, cheap
and of good design."
Around the same time Richard Neutra arrived in New York from Europe on the way home to Los Angeles from his career-making around the world lecture trip1930. Upon his arrival Neutra doggedly made the rounds of architects, designers and editors in his quest to make a name for himself. He met architects Raymond Hood, Ely Jacques Kahn, Joseph Urban, and Ralph Walker,
editors Henry Saylor of Architecture and A. Lawrence Kocher of Architectural
Record and the artists and designers Bruno Paul, Rockwell Kent, Paul
Poiret, Lucian Bernhard and Buckminster Fuller.
While Neutra was in New York in late 1930 and early 1931, he lectured on "The New Architecture" January 4th at the Art Center under the auspices of the Art Center, Contempora and AUDAC and on January 7th at the Roerich Museum (see below) on "New Architecture Shapes a New Human Environment in Europe, Asia and America" with Kocher, Frey, Lescaze, Fuller, Noguchi and Harvey Wiley Corbett, the building's architect, perhaps in attendance. Fuller himself had lectured at the Roerich Museum during the fall of 1930. ("R. J. Neutra Lectures Tonight," and "What is Going On This Week," New York Times, January 4, 1931).
"Architecture of the Master Building," Roerich Museum, Harvey Wiley Corbett, Architect, Archer, No. 3-4, 1929, pp. 24-25. From Roerich Museum Archive.
Left: Roerich Museum and Manor Apartment Building, New York City, Corbett, Harrison and MacMurray, Sugarman and Berger, Associated Architects, Architectural Record, December 1929. Right: Roerich Museum Bulletin, January 1931, front cover and p. 12 announcing the January 7th Neutra lecture.
The previous January between the 8th and 31st, architectural designs by Harvey Wiley Corbett were on display in the same Roerich Museum in the building he designed and completed on October 17, 1929.
Fuller enjoyed his own one-man show and lecture at the Roerich Museum in the fall of 1930. (Roerich Museum: A Decade of Activity, 1921-1931, Roerich Museum Press, 1931, pp. 14, 63).
Fuller also had fall shows at the Dalton School where he had two exhibits and lectures to both the senior class and the general school. That was followed by another in the apartment of
Mrs. Murray Crane, one of the Museum of Modern Art's founding committee members and patron of the Dalton School. Additional fall of 1931 shows were held at the Downtown Galleries and the Columbia School of Architecture.
("Public Presentations of Fuller and Dymaxion Items," p. 2)
Left: Nicholas Roerich portrait bust by Isamu Noguchi, 1929. Right: Nicholas Roerich posing for Isamu Noguchi, 1929. Both from Isamu Noguchi Archive.
Neutra confirmed the luncheon in a letter to his wife Dione in Zurich,
"Today I was the guest of honor of four of the most influential architects of New York who, together, have a combined building budget of between forty and fifty million dollars: Raymond Hood, Ralph Walker (New York Telephone Building), Ely Kahn (the prolific), and Joe Urban who is the architect for the New School for Social Research where yesterday I gave the opening speech in the new auditorium, to be followed by another one tonight and Friday. My fee is $150 which is a godsend. My financial calculations regarding my stay in New York were somewhat naive; one has to have a front. These four architects dominate the Chicago World's Fair. They prefer to honor me at a luncheon than let me participate in the fair." (Richard Neutra to Dione Neutra December 1930, from Promise and Fulfillment, p. 200. Author's note: The Chicago World's Fair was covered in great detail in the July 1933 issue of Architectural Forum. See discussion later herein.).
Neutra was concerned enough with comments at the luncheon from Kahn regarding his Bonwit Teller project which Schindler had consulted on the previous summer, to mention them to Schindler during a January 14th Architectural League exhibition planning letter.
"By the way I do not know on what terms you stand with Kahn. I thought he was in competition with you in this Teller business. ... Do you believe he would particularly oppose anything you support? (Richard Neutra to R. M. Schindler, January 14, 1931, Schindler Collection, UC-Santa Barbara).
Having arrived in New York in December of 1930 Neutra met with Architecture editor Henry Saylor. He just "dropped in" on his way around the globe. Neutra related to Saylor the Japanese architects insatiable love of books and periodicals on the subject. "The Japanese are hungry for information, and take all the architectural periodicals they can find. Even though the text is unintelligible to most of them, the pictures mean a lot." In the same article Saylor mentioned Buckminster Fuller's making of The Nation's "Honor Roll," "...for his pioneering work in developing the potentialities of mass production, new materials, and new engineering principles for housing that is practical, cheap, and of good design" ("The Editor's Diary," by Henry Saylor, Architecture, February 1931, p. 108).
In January Neutra lectured on "The New Architecture" on the 4th at the Art Center under the auspices of the Art Center, Contempora and AUDAC and on the 7th at the Roerich Museum (see below) on "New Architecture Shapes a New Human Environment in Europe, Asia and America" with Henry Saylor in attendance at the former lecture and Fuller, Kocher, Frey and Lescaze perhaps in attendance at one or all of the others.. ("R. J. Neutra Lectures Tonight," and "What is Going On This Week," New York Times, January 4, 1931. See also "The Editor's Diary, Architecture, March 1931, p. 173.).
During this time Neutra also made a cold call on Buckminster
Fuller after seeing his name in the Nation. Neutra thought that
that Fuller's Dymaxion House represented "a distinctly advanced
segregation of functions" which led them to consider a collaboration.
Fuller had just finished two presentations at banker Frank A. Vanderlip's New
York residence the second week of January trying to interest his financial
colleagues in some fashion. At one of the two Vanderlip dinner meetings Fuller
did meet Clarence Woolley of the American Radiator and Standard Sanitary
Corporation, which operated the Pierce Foundation in Buffalo that was designing
a new type of bathroom. (Nevala-Lee, p. 126).
Fuller asked Neutra to accompany him to follow-up lunch
meeting with Vanderlip, whom he met through the architectural partner of Harvey
Wiley Corbett. Since Neutra had a practical background that Fuller lacked and
he seemed to Fuller a likely candidate for Vanderlip who owned 16,000
acres in Palos Verdes in Southern California that was ripe for major
real estate development. The meeting did not bear any fruit for Neutra but
Fuller, who had kept in touch with Woolley about the Pierce Foundation, ended
up receiving an offer on April 11th from former Architectural Record associate
editor Robert L. Davison whom he had also met at the A.I.A. convention, to join
the Foundation's bathroom program. It was, he thought, a wonderful chance to
develop a prototype of a "Dymaxion" bathroom. (Nevala-Lee, p. 126. See also my "Kocher,
Neutra, Frey").
Left: The New School for Social Research, New York City, Joseph Urban, Architect, Architectural Record, February 1931, pp. 138-145. Right: New School for Social Research Auditorium, Joseph Urban, Architect, bid., p. 145.
Neutra also met
Dr. Alvin Johnson, the director of the
New School for Social Research whose new building was recently completed by Joseph Urban.
(See above). Through Urban's help Neutra was also chosen by Johnson to deliver the opening three lectures in the new auditorium "to test its novel acoustics, as it were." On three successive nights on January 4, 5, and 6, 1931 Neutra lectured on "The Relation of the New Architecture on the Housing Problem," "The American Contribution to the New Architecture," and "The Skyscraper and the New Problem of City Planning." Dr. Johnson would soon become a member of Buckminster Fuller's Structural Study Associates as discussed later herein.
("New Social School Viewed by Public," New York Times, January 2, 1931, p. 27. "R. J. Neutra Lectures Tonight," New York Times, January 4, 1931. Life and Shape
by Richard Neutra, p. 258 and for much on his self-promotional efforts while in New York see Richard Neutra: Promise and Fulfillment, 1919-1932, pp. 193-209. See also Hines, p. 98).
Left: Portrait Bust of Jose Clemente Orozco, 1931 by Isamu Noguchi. Isamu Noguchi Archive. Right: Jose Clemente Orozco, left, and Jorge Juan Crespo de la Serna, right, at work on "Struggle in the Orient" at the New School for Social Research, January 1931.
An artist Neutra had befriended in Los Angeles before he left for his around the world tour, Jose Clemente Orozco, was decorating the walls of the New School with his murals as the building was being completed, thus the two of them most likely reconnected as Neutra was rehearsing and lecturing throughout January.
Left: Richard Neutra, 1930. Photographer unknown. (From
Riley, p. 30). Right: Lovell Health House 1930 model. Richard Neutra,
Architect. From Riley, p. 49. Photographer unknown. Commissioned
by the New York Museum of Science and Industry, 220 E. 42nd St., New York,
Daily News Building. (The model was borrowed by the Museum of Modern Art for
the Modern Architecture, International Exhibition in February 1932.).
As Fuller with his Dymaxion House, Neutra's Lovell
Demonstration Health House gained much exposure during his January lecture
blitz in New York. The Director of the New York Museum of Science and Industry,
C. R. Richards, commissioned Neutra for a model of the his Lovell House
"to complete a permanent exhibit of human habitations from cave dwellings
to the present" for their new location on the fourth floor of Raymond
Hood's soon-to-be completed Daily News Building. Richards chose the house
"as the most convincing and rational specimen of the new
architecture...because of the enthusiastic recognition it accorded it in Paris,
Berlin, New York and Tokyo." ("Architecture is Advancing in
West, California House is Chosen for Museum Display," Pasadena Star
News, August 31, 1931. Hines, p. 100.).
In his oral history Neutra's then apprentice Harwell Hamilton Harris remembered corresponding with Neutra in New York and being allocated $500 to build the model.
"And the present [for the Museum of Science and Industry] was to be represented by the Lovell House. And would I go to Conrad Buff, the painter, and get from him the working drawings of the Lovell House, which he had left with him when he went to Europe.
Five hundred dollars! That knocked me over. Why you could build a house for that, not just a model. And then, because the house was metal, I decided the model should be metal, too. So I went to Harry Schoeppe, who had taught metalwork, jewelry, and things like that at Otis, and asked him if he would help me make it out of metal. Which he agreed to do. So we made it in the garage of his house over in Altadena, and we spent at least three months on it. He did all the metalwork; I did everything else on it. Neutra returned just before we shipped it, I believe; I think he saw it before we shipped it east." (Interview of Harwell Hamilton Harris).
Around the same time Philip Johnson's father Homer and his ALCOA company and White Motor Company were collaborating on a new bus design. Homer asked Philip for a recommendation for someone outside the White Motor Company to design an aluminum bus. Philip immediately thought of Neutra. For a flabbergasted Neutra who knew nothing about bus design, the extravagant design fee of $150 per day and free room and board at Homer's private club in Cleveland was too much to turn down. (Philip Johnson to Neutra, December 30, 1930. Dione Neutra Papers. Hines, p. 121).
Bus Design for White Motor Company (unbuilt), Cleveland, Ohio, 1931, Richard Neutra, Designer. (Hines, p. 100).
During his time in Buffalo between April and July Fuller
kept Neutra, by then back in Los Angeles, informed of his progress on the
bathroom. Neutra offered to provide a draftsman to "ripen and
harvest" it. Word reached Knud Lonberg-Holm, the technical writer and also
an associate editor for Architectural Record, who asked to see the
drawings. Davison, who spent most of his time in New York, was angered by what
he saw as a betrayal. Fuller shot back that he had the right to promote his own
concepts and quit the Pierce Foundation at the end of July 1931. (Nevala-Lee,
p. 127).
Left: Starrett-Lehigh Building, 601-625 W. 26th St., New York, Walter and Russell Cory, Architects, 1931. Photo by Berenice Abbott, 1936. From Wikipedia. Right: Buckminster Fuller on the roof of the Starrett-Lehigh Building with the Empire State Building, 1931. Photographer unknown. Courtesy Fuller Papers, Stanford University.
Upon returning to New York in late 1931 following his stint at the Pierce Foundation in Buffalo and a late summer retreat on the family's Bear Island, Fuller excitedly found and rented a vacant storeroom on the top floor of a recently-completed warehouse and freight terminal at 601 W. 26th St. known as the Starrett-Lehigh Building in the West Chelsea neighborhood. The recently completed building was still mostly unoccupied due to the depression and was soon to be included in Philip Johnson and Henry-Russell Hitchcock's "Modern Architecture, International Exhibition" at the new Museum of Modern Art.
(The International Style: Exhibition 15 and the Museum of Modern Art by Terence Riley, Rizzoli, New York, 1992, p. 175. See also my "Kocher, Neutra, Frey").
Letter from Buckminster Fuller to Evelyn Schwartz, November 24, 1931. From Fuller Collection, Stanford University. Also in Impossible Heights: Skyscrapers, Flight, and the Master Builder by Adnan Morshed, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2015, p. 136.
The rooftop views of New York were spectacular and covered the entire city block. Fuller's storeroom "penthouse" and rooftop served as a perfect location for wild parties, his Structural Study Associate meetings and rendezvous for his then 18-year old lover Evelyn Schwartz whom he had been seeing since meeting her at Romany Marie's in 1930. Fuller had a wonderful view of the recently completed Empire State Building from this location and brought Diego Rivera here while he was engaged in his one-man show at MOMA. Fuller recalled the two of them having to climb nineteen stories after the elevators shut down at closing time and the portly Rivera having to stop to rest at every landing. (Finding My Way: The Autobiography of an Optimist by Evelyn Steffanson Nef, Francis Press, Washington, D. C., 2002, pp. 50-55. Nevala-Lee, p. 128-131).
Left: Catalogue of "Exhibition of Bronzes and Drawings by Isamu Noguchi," Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, from Isamu Noguchi Archive. Right: Berenice Abbott portrait bust by Isamu Noguchi, Ibid.
From December 24, 1930 to January 25, 1931 Noguchi, who had recently returned from Europe, China and Japan, was in a two-man show with Chana Orloff at the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy where his bronze portrait busts of Martha Graham, Berenice Abbott, Marion Morehouse, Lajos Tihanyi and three others were shown along with thirty of his drawings. (See above right).
After Neutra had returned to Los Angeles, February 24th
found Frank Lloyd Wright at the New York Woman's City Club for a lecture and
debate about architecture at the Chicago World's Fair with Buckminster Fuller,
Katherine Dreier, Lewis Mumford and Raymond Hood in attendance. In his
autobiography Wright found Fuller to be "a dripping rag" although he
tolerated him until Fuller, likely confident that Harvey Wiley Corbett still
intended to display his Dymaxion House, described the 1933 Chicago World's Fair
"to be the last word in modern architecture." (Wright in New
York by Anthony Alofsin, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2019, pp.
211-212).
Two additional meetings a few days later in New York were
organized by Wright's supporters, Paul Frankl, Lee Simonson, Douglas Haskell,
Alexander Woolcott and Lewis Mumford, to protest Wright's exclusion from the
Century of Progress exhibition. Harvey Corbett led the opposition to Wright's
involvement. (Ibid., p. 212).
Left: "The Conquest of Mexico" by Diego Rivera. Exhibited at the Architectural and Allied Arts Exposition, April 18th to 25th, 1931, Grand Central Palace, New York. From "The Architectural League and the Rejected Architects," by Douglas Haskell, Parnassus, May 1931, p. 12. Right: "Aluminaire: The House for Contemporary Life," Grand Central Palace, April 18th to 25th, 1931. From Albert Frey, Innovative Modernist, edited by Brad Dunning, Radius Books, Palm Springs Art Museum, 2024, p. 48.
A photo of Diego Rivera's mural "The Conquest of
Mexico" was included in a group of Mexican objects on display in the April
1931 Architectural and Allied Arts Exposition. Photos of Diego's work were
curated by Diego's then agent Frances Flynn Paine at the Grand Central Palace
while Diego and Frida were still in San Francisco. Paine perhaps intended to
hype Rivera's upcoming one-man show at the Museum of Modern Art beginning in
December. Douglas Haskell included a photo of Rivera's "The
Conquest of Mexico" in his review of the expo in the May issue of Parnassus which
he also spent at least half a page extolling the virtues of Kocher and Frey's
Aluminaire House. (See above left and right).
Left: "Mexicans in Our Midst," Survey Graphic, May 1931, front cover. Right: "The Life of the People," by Diego Rivera, Ibid., pp. 178-9. Photos of Rivera frescoes in Mexico City's Public Education Building by Tina Modotti.
Diego Rivera and Frida returned to Mexico from San Francisco for five months in 1931
before returning to New York in November for his second American one-man show at the Museum of Modern Art which opened in December. (Author's note: Photographs of Rivera's work were included in the New York Architectural League's 50th annual anniversary exhibition in the Architecture and Allied Arts Exposition at the Grand Central Palace the previous April and some of his work also appeared in "The Arts of Mexico" exhibition at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art in November of 1930. See my "Schindler-Scheyer-Eaton-Ain" for much more on Rivera's time in San Francisco in 1930-31 and my "Packard Family Architectural Connections" for more on Rivera's time in San Francisco for the 1939-40 Golden Gate International Exposition.)."Collector's Room" for Ely Jacques Kahn, by Buckminster Fuller, 1931.
Shortly after Neutra's meeting with Fuller in early 1931, New York Architectural League vice-president Ely Jacques Kahn commissioned Fuller to design what he called a "Collector's Room" for displaying sculpture intended to be on display in the Grand Central Palace for the upcoming Architectural and Allied Arts Exposition from April 18th to 25th. The room, which resembled the streamlined form of the Dymaxion car, was to have niches for displaying sculpture. It was "an outwardly tensed, ovaloid shaped, hyperbolic parabola, faceted, tension (tent) fabric room for installation in the Grand Central Palace at a proposed Architectural Show for a sculptor's exhibit room - lighting for the room and its sculptural exhibits to diffuse inwardly through the comprehensive translucent, tensed, white fabric 'walling,' from lights exterior to the structure." (Letter from John Dixon, Fuller's assistant, to Donald Robertson, dated December 6, 1954, M1090, ser. 4, box 2, folder 4, Fuller Papers, Stanford).
Left: Contemporary American Architects by Ely Jacques Kahn, Whittlesey House/McGraw-Hill Book Company Inc., New York, 1931. Right: "Fifth Avenue Entrance Bonwit Teller , Fifth Avenue at Fifty-Sixth St., New York City, Ibid., p. 100.
Around the same time Kahn published a book on "modern" architecture which included many photos of his close to fifty projects including his Squibb Building and the Bonwit Teller project (renovation of the Stewart & Company Building by Warren & Wetmore) that R. M. Schindler had worked on in 1930.
Around the same time Kahn asked Noguchi to prepare a proposal for a monument to the Battle of Appomattox Courthouse, the final engagement of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia before General Robert E. Lee surrendered to General U. S. Grant. Noguchi produced a model with 48 stone slabs inscribed with the names of the dead from 48 states in four rows.
If the "Collector's Room" had been built, it undoubtedly would have included Noguchi's portrait busts of Harvey Wiley Corbett, Fuller and Kahn himself among many of Noguchi's other recent work and been on display along with Lawrence Kocher and Albert Frey's Aluminaire House, Diego Rivera's fresco "Conquest of Mexico" and Neutra and R. M. Schindler's displays of their Southern California work mentioned earlier.
(Buckminster Fuller: Starting With the Universe, edited by K. Michael Hays and Dana Miller, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2009, p. 26). (Author's note: See much more pertaining to this exhibition in my "A. Lawrence Kocher, Architectural Record, Richard Neutra, R.M. Schindler, Frank Lloyd Wright, Albert Frey and the Evolution of Modern Architecture in New York and Southern California").
Left: Ely Jacques Kahn portrait bust by Isamu Noguchi, 1931 from Isamu Noguchi Archiive. Right: Aluminaire: A House for Contemporary Life by A. Lawrence Koche and Albert Frey, Architects, The Architectural and Allied Arts Exposition, Grand Central Palace, New York, April 18-25, 1931 from Albert Frey, Inventive Modernist edited by Brad Dunning, Radius Books and Palm Springs Art Museum, 2024, p. 48)..
Left: "Squibb Building, 745 Fifth Avenue, New York City, Kahn. p. 95. Right: Third from left, Ely Jacques Kahn (Squibb Building) 1931 Beaux Arts Ball at the Hotel Astor.
The 1931 Beaux Arts Ball was held at the Hotel Astor and sported a theme "Fete Moderne - a Fantasie in Flame and Silver." his was announced as the last ball for the venerable Hotel Astor as the location will from then on be held at the new Waldorf Astoria. The ball's "Skyline of New York" was made up of
A. Stewart Walker who came dressed as the Fuller Building, Leonard Schultze as the Waldorf-Astoria tower, Ely Jacques Kahn as the Squibb Building, Ralph Walker as his Wall Street Tower, and Joseph Freedlander as the Museum of the City of New York flanked William Van Alen adorned in a striking interpretation of his Chrysler Building. (See above). Others not pictured included William Lamb as the Empire State Building, Raymond Hood as the Daily News Building, and Harvey Corbett as the Bush Building. The whole spectacle was named "The Birth of Modernism." Noted Beaux Arts architect and past president of the Architectural League of New York James Monroe Hewlett, Fuller's estranged father-in-law, and several assistants were responsible for the decorations as they were for some previous years. (See below). ("Beaux Arts Ball to be Held Tonight," New York Times, January 23, 1931, p. 27. See much more on Kahn in my "A. Lawrence Kocher, Architectural Record, Richard Neutra, R.M. Schindler, Frank Lloyd Wright, Albert Frey and the Evolution of Modern Architecture in New York and Southern California." Author's note: Hewlett was president of the Architectural League of New York and headed the Society of Mural Painters. He was elected to the National Academy of Design, was a vice president of the American Institute of Architects, and a director of the Fontainebleau School in Paris. In 1932 Hewlett was appointed resident director of the American Academy in Rome. From Lehman College Art Gallery, CCNY).
Hotel Astor ballroom decorations designed by James Monroe Hewlett, "A Beaux Arts Ball for Fiery Moderns," New York Times, January 18, 1931, p. 81.
Buckminster Fuller also attended the 1931 Beaux Arts Ball accompanied by his new paramour, 18
-year old Evelyn Schwartz. The ball's theme was "The World of the Future" thus Fuller dressed Schwartz as "a stealth advertisement for the Dymaxion House." "The top was made of sheet aluminum lined with cork, which resembled armor with two pointy breast-plates. Bare skin showed between the breast-plates and the short skirt which consisted of a bright silk under slip covered by alternating chains of silver and gold like a hula skirt, which swung out as she dance." (Finding My Way: The Autobiography of an Optimist by Evelyn Stefansson, Francis Press, Washington, D.C., 2002, pp. 53-4 in Nevala-Lee, pp. 124-5. Author's note: Fuller's deign for Schwartz's costume was awarded second place over-all. Nef, p. 54).
In May of 1931 Doug Haskell published a three hundred word article, "The House of the Future," in The New Republic which read as if it could have been written by Fuller.
"Mr. Buckminster Fuller, of course, has gone much further in ideas of standardization. He proposes manufacturing the same house for New York and Timbuctoo, thus taking advantage of the savings of mass production. Briefly, his house is suspended on a mast, has its own self-contained "utilities" independent of city supplies, does everything down to automatically washing your clothes, and is set up by a service company in three days."
Haskell closed his article with,
"At a glance the intelligent reader will realize that the factory-built house, or multi-family dwelling, can be financed as cars and radios are, with an enormous expansion of credit, and an increased independence of the land. When housing finally follows other industries out of its handicraft, special-instance stage into an industrialized one, we shall have twice as good a house at half what it costs today." ("The House of the Future, Douglas Haskell, New Republic, May 13, 1931, pp. 344-5)
As he had with Fuller in his article in the Architectural Record the previous February, Lewis Mumford took exception to what he considered the naivete of Haskell and argued that he ignored the real and economic planning issues behind low-cost housing:
"No decent "house of the future" can be designed in a factory alone. To forget this is to foster specious hopes; and if the mechanized house is placed upon the market before appropriate community and regional plans are made for it, the result will be the same drab, inefficient and nasty environment that the speculative builder creates today. A high total efficiency in the mechanized house, without modern community planning is a myth." ("The Flaw in the Mechanical House," Lewis Mumford, New Republic, June 3, 1931, p. 66 from Wojtowicz, p. 124. Haskell and Mumford traded heated "Communications" in the July 1st and July 8th issues. See Benson, )
"Model for Dymaxion House designed by Buckminster Fuller" in "Technical News and Research: Trends in Lighting," Knud Lonberg-Holn, Architectural Record, October 1931, pp. 279-302.
Fuller ended 1931 with a messy breakup with Evelyn Schwartz
and what his wife Anne called their "partial estrangement." Two
months earlier Fuller had formed a group of architectural editors and critics
first known as 4D Dymaxion to discuss his ideas and mutual interest in
"Tension Theories, liquid compression members, standardization of utility
components, manufacturing and merchandizing methods" and serving as their
"peripatetic guide." The name of the group soon evolved to the
Structural Study Associates (SSA). The core members of the group included
Knud-Lonberg-Holm, Ted Larson and their boss at the Architectural Record,
A. Lawrence Kocher and his then partner Albert Frey, Frederick Kiesler, Simon
Breines, Douglas Haskell, Dr. Alvin Johnson of the New School for Social
Research, Henry Wright, Henry Churchill and lesser regulars named later
herein. (Strum, p. 95 and Nevala-Lee, p. 129).
The SSA's goals included a lecture series by Fuller whose Dymaxion House they planned to fund for the Chicago World's Fair and some of the members covering a percentage of the rent on his "penthouse" where they held gatherings. It became the scene of wild parties attended by the likes of Diego Rivera. After socializing with Fuller at the Starrett-Lehigh
Building while busily preparing for his Museum of Modern Art exhibition, at
editor Maxwell Levinson's request, Diego Rivera submitted a photo of his
"Frozen Assets" mural panel for publication in the February
issue T-Square along with Fuller's first installment of
"Universal Architecture" and articles by Richard Neutra and R. M.
Schindler. (See later below).
The month of January 1932 was a busy period for the Structural Study Associates at the Starrett-Lehigh Building with a series of six lectures and exhibits taking place on the 12th, 15th, 19th, 22nd, 26th and 29th. Fuller had a Dymaxion House exhibit at the Mellon Gallery in Philadelphia on February 24th while he was back working on the April issue of Shelter Magazine. The Museum of Modern Art's International Style exhibition opened on February 19th sans the Dymaxion House due to Philip Johnson's refusal to accept the model despite including Kocher & Frey's Aluminaire House and Howe & Lescaze's Chrystie-Forsyth Housing Project model (built by Albert Frey) and PSFS Building. Newspaper critics made free mention of the oversight. ("Public Presentations of Fuller and Dymaxion Items," p. 3. Author's note: Diego Rivera was in Philadelphia on March 31st attending the premiere of "H. P." as discussed later herein.).
The March issue of Architectural Forum led with Kenneth Stowell's editorial "International Style" with a quite positive review. (See below left). The issue was the magazine's answer to MOMA's International Style show curated by Henry-Russel Hitchcock and Philip Johnson and included a section on housing projects which included work by architects promoted by Hitchcock and Johnson such as Europeans Corbusier, J. J. P. Oud, Walter Gropius, Mies Van Der Rohe, Ernst May, and Americans Claus and Daub, and Howe and Lescaze featuring their Chrystie-Forsyth Housing Development with a four-page spread. (See below right for example).
"The Editor's Forum, The International Style" by Kenneth Stowell, Architectural Forum, March 1932, p. 253. Right: "Chrystie-Forsyth Housing Development, Howe and Lescaze, Architect," Ibid., pp. 265-7.
Unlike Philip Johnson, Stowell had no problem including Fuller's Dymaxion House model, providing it the best description it had received to date as well as 12 detailed photos describing how the model was assembled. Fuller had to be extremely pleased with the article as the April issue of Shelter was completely dedicated to MOMA's concurrent International Style exhibition.
"Dymaxion House by R. Buckminster Fuller, Architect," Architectural Forum, March 1932, pp. 285-8.
"Dymaxion House by R. Buckminster Fuller, Architect," Architectural Forum, March 1932, pp. 285-8.
Fuller's article coincided with MOMA's landmark exhibition
curated by Philip Johnson and Henry-Russel Hitchcock which attempted to define
the new "International Style" in architecture. The style's modular
forms, industrial materials, and lack of ornamentation had obvious affinities
to Fuller, but Johnson, just as the first time he viewed the Dymaxion House in
Cambridge two years earlier, rejected the house for his exhibition saying that
it had "nothing at all to do with architecture." (Nevala-Lee, p.
130).
Philip Johnson made a financial investment with George Howe
and Maxwell Levinson to edit the next issue of T-Square along
with Hitchcock and Alfred Barr. T-Square was renamed Shelter by
Fuller beginning with the April issue due to a title dispute with Scribner.
Johnson had made an agreement with Frank Lloyd Wright to publish his article
"Of Thee I Sing" in return for his not dropping out of the MOMA
exhibition. Fuller also sold his life insurance policy for $800 to fund
taking over total control of the magazine from Howe beginning with the May
issue. Fuller's second installment of "Universal Architecture" was
also included in April as was Richard Neutra's "The International
Congresses for New Building" which included listing himself and Knud
Lonberg-Holm as official American delegates.
Fuller returned to New York from working on the magazine in
Philadelphia to find himself evicted from the Starrett-Lehigh Building. He had
failed to pay rental fees and other expenses for the year to date and was
replaced by Lawrence Kocher's erstwhile Architectural Record assistant
editor Robert Davison himself who offered to pay higher rent. Davison's Pierce
Foundation proceeded to construct an experimental prefabricated house on the
Starett-Lehigh roof under his direction as described later herein. A perplexed
Fuller next found a place to live at the Hotel Winthrop where he agreed to
display the Dymaxion House in exchange for a room. Noguchi then moved in with
Fuller and they both slept on air mattresses and survived on coffee and donuts.
Fuller then began spending more time in Philadelphia assembling the May issue
of Shelter. (Nevala-Lee, p. 131).
Left: Catalogue of "Exhibition of Bronzes and Drawings by Isamu Noguchi," Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, from Isamu Noguchi Archive. Right: Berenice Abbott portrait bust by Isamu Noguchi, Ibid.
From December 24, 1930 to January 25, 1931 Noguchi, who had recently returned from Europe, China and Japan, was in a two-man show with Chana Orloff at the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy where his bronze portrait busts of Martha Graham, Berenice Abbott, Marion Morehouse, Lajos Tihanyi and three others were shown along with thirty of his drawings. (See above right).
Noguchi had an exhibition at the Harvard Society for
Contemporary Art from February 27 through March 15, 1930 and was joined by
Bucky Fuller March 12th-14th. (See above).
In 1929 Noguchi "moved to New York from Paris and rented a studio on top of Carnegie
Hall. At that point,
“There was nothing to do but make heads. It was a matter
of eating, and this was the only way I knew of making money.” He took
commissions from friends and friends’ friends, one of whom was Bucky Fuller. Fuller was
going to be showing an updated version of the Dymaxion House at Harvard, and by
the time he was heading to Cambridge with the model for it in the back of his
station wagon, he packed several dozen of Noguchi’s bronze portrait busts in
with it, and invited Noguchi to take the passenger seat. It was these boldly
simplified and direct portraits of modernist heroes—among them Fuller himself,
Martha Graham, and George Gershwin—that occupied the two rooms above the Coop." (Patron Saints: Five Rebels Who Opened America to a New Art, 1928-1943by Nicholas Fox Weber, Knopf, New York, 1992, p. 104).
Fuller's 4D-Dymaxion exhibition was shown immediately after the Harvard show at the Wadsworth Atheneum by A. Everett "
Chick" Austin.
(Gaddis, Eugene R.: 'Magician of the Modern. Chick Austin
and the Transformation of the Arts in America', Alfred A. Knopf, New York,
2000, p. 140) Left: Letter from Lincoln Kirstein to Alfred H. Barr Jr. requesting
funding for The Harvard Society for Contemporary Art, Inc., December 16, 1930.
Alfred H. Barr Jr. Papers, I.A.3. The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York. Right: Lincoln Kirsten portrait bust by Isamu Noguchi from Isamu Noguchi Archive. (Author's note: Future Neutra and Fuller client John Nicholas Brown heads the list of Board of Trustees members along with MOMA's A. Conger Goodyear.).
"Collector's Room" for Ely Jacques Kahn, by Buckminster Fuller, 1931.
Shortly after Neutra's meeting with Fuller in early 1931, New York Architectural League vice-president Ely Jacques Kahn commissioned Fuller to design what he called a "Collector's Room" for displaying sculpture intended to be on display in the Grand Central Palace for the upcoming Architectural and Allied Arts Exposition from April 18th to 25th. The room, which resembled the streamlined form of the Dymaxion car, was to have niches for displaying sculpture. It was "an outwardly tensed, ovaloid shaped, hyperbolic parabola, faceted, tension (tent) fabric room for installation in the Grand Central Palace at a proposed Architectural Show for a sculptor's exhibit room - lighting for the room and its sculptural exhibits to diffuse inwardly through the comprehensive translucent, tensed, white fabric 'walling,' from lights exterior to the structure." (Letter from John Dixon, Fuller's assistant, to Donald Robertson, dated December 6, 1954, M1090, ser. 4, box 2, folder 4, Fuller Papers, Stanford).
Left: Contemporary American Architects by Ely Jacques
Kahn, Whittlesey House/McGraw-Hill Book Company Inc., New York, 1931. Right:
"Fifth Avenue Entrance Bonwit Teller, Fifth Avenue at
Fifty-Sixth St., New York City, Ibid., p. 100.
Also around this time Kahn asked Noguchi to prepare a proposal for the War Department for a monument to the Battle of Appomattox Courthouse, the final engagement of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia before General Robert E. Lee surrendered to General U. S. Grant. Noguchi produced a model with 48 stone slabs inscribed with the names of the dead from 48 states in four rows. "Kahn was horrified and said this would never do because the War Department did not commission war monuments against the war." (Isamu Noguchi to Jewel Stern, June 31, 1983 from the Noguchi Archive).
If the "Collector's Room" had been built, it undoubtedly would have included Noguchi's portrait busts of Harvey Wiley Corbett, Fuller and Kahn himself among many of Noguchi's other recent work and been on display along with Lawrence Kocher and Albert Frey's Aluminaire House, Diego Rivera's fresco and Neutra and R. M. Schindler's displays of their Southern California work mentioned earlier.
(Buckminster Fuller: Starting With the Universe, edited by K. Michael Hays and Dana Miller, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2009, p. 26). (Author's note: See much more pertaining to this exhibition in my "A. Lawrence Kocher, Architectural Record, Richard Neutra, R.M. Schindler, Frank Lloyd Wright, Albert Frey and the Evolution of Modern Architecture in New York and Southern California").
Left: Ely Jacques Kahn portrait bust by Isamu Noguchi, 1931 from Isamu Noguchi Archiive. Right: Aluminaire: A House for Contemporary Life by A. Lawrence Koche and Albert Frey, Architects, The Architectural and Allied Arts Exposition, Grand Central Palace, New York, April 18-25, 1931 from Albert Frey, Inventive Modernist edited by Brad Dunning, Radius Books and Palm Springs Art Museum, 2024, p. 48)..
Left: Third from left, Ely Jacques Kahn (Squibb Building) 1931 Beaux Arts Ball at the Hotel Astor. Right: "Squibb Building, 745 Fifth Avenue, New York City, Kahn. p. 95.
The 1931 Beaux Arts Ball was held at the Hotel Astor and sported a theme "Fete Moderne - a Fantasie in Flame and Silver." his was announced as the last ball for the venerable Hotel Astor as the location will from then on be held at the new Waldorf Astoria. The ball's "Skyline of New York" was made up of
A. Stewart Walker who came dressed as the Fuller Building, Leonard Schultze
as the Waldorf-Astoria tower, Ely Jacques Kahn as the Squibb Building, Ralph
Walker as his Wall Street Tower, and Joseph Freedlander as the Museum of the
City of New York flanked William Van Alen adorned in a striking interpretation of his Chrysler Building. (See above). Others not pictured included William Lamb as the Empire State Building, Raymond Hood as the Daily News Building, and Harvey Corbett as the Bush Building. The whole spectacle was named "The Birth of Modernism." Noted Beaux Arts architect and past president of the Architectural League of New York James Monroe Hewlett, Fuller's estranged father-in-law, and several assistants were responsible for the decorations as they were for some previous years. (See below). ("Beaux Arts Ball to be Held Tonight," New York Times, January 23, 1931, p. 27. See much more on Kahn in my "A. Lawrence Kocher, Architectural Record, Richard Neutra, R.M. Schindler, Frank Lloyd Wright, Albert Frey and the Evolution of Modern Architecture in New York and Southern California." Author's note: Hewlett was president of the Architectural League of New
York and headed the Society of Mural Painters. He was elected to the National
Academy of Design, was a vice president of the American Institute of
Architects, and a director of the Fontainebleau School in Paris. In 1932
Hewlett was appointed resident director of the American Academy in Rome. From Lehman College Art Gallery, CCNY).
Hotel Astor ballroom decorations designed by James Monroe Hewlett, "A Beaux Arts Ball for Fiery Moderns," New York Times, January 18, 1931, p. 81.
In February of 1931 Fuller lectured on "Scientific Simplicity, the Essential Material Characteristic of an Impending Architecture" at the Harvard Club in Boston. He demonstrated the talk with a model of the "Dymaxion House," and pictures showing the application of new and revolutionary ideas to the business of everyday living. ("Buckminster Fuller Will Give Talk at Harvard Club, Harvard Crimson, February 2, 1931).
In May of 1931 Doug Haskell published a three hundred word article, "The House of the Future," in The New Republic which read as if it could have been written by Fuller.
"Mr. Buckminster Fuller, of course, has gone much further in ideas of standardization. He proposes manufacturing the same house for New York and Timbuctoo, thus taking advantage of the savings of mass production. Briefly, his house is suspended on a mast, has its own self-contained "utilities" independent of city supplies, does everything down to automatically washing your clothes, and is set up by a service company in three days."
Haskell closed his article with,
"At a glance the intelligent reader will realize that the factory-built house, or multi-family dwelling, can be financed as cars and radios are, with an enormous expansion of credit, and an increased independence of the land. When housing finally follows other industries out of its handicraft, special-instance stage into an industrialized one, we shall have twice as good a house at half what it costs today." ("The House of the Future, Douglas Haskell, New Republic, May 13, 1931, pp. 344-5)
As he had with Fuller in his article in the Architectural Record the previous February, Lewis Mumford took exception to what he considered the naivete of Haskell and argued that he ignored the real and economic planning issues behind low-cost housing:
"No decent "house of the future" can be designed in a factory alone. To forget this is to foster specious hopes; and if the mechanized house is placed upon the market before appropriate community and regional plans are made for it, the result will be the same drab, inefficient and nasty environment that the speculative builder creates today. A high total efficiency in the mechanized house, without modern community planning is a myth." ("The Flaw in the Mechanical House," Lewis Mumford, New Republic, June 3, 1931, p. 66 from Wojtowicz, p. 124. Haskell and Mumford traded heated "Communications" in the July 1st and July 8th issues. See Benson, )
Left: "Isamu Noguchi" exhibition catalogue for John Becker Gallery, 520 Madison Ave., New York, February 15th to March 10, 1932. Center: Ibid., Exhibition checklist. Right: "The Glad Day," photo by Berenice Abbott, bronzes cast by Austin Kunst. From Isamu Noguchi Archive.
Noguchi's February-March 1932 exhibition at the John Becker Gallery coincided with the Modern Architecture; International Exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. (See above).
Left: Exhibition Catalogue, Diego Rivera, California Palace of the Legion of Honor, November 15 to December 25, 1930. From my collection. Center: "Diego Rivera Introduces Blue Four," San Francisco Examiner, April 1931. Right: "The Blue Four," California Palace of the Legion of Honor, Apri6th to May 8th, 1931. Courtesy Peg Weiss Papers, Getty Research Institute.
Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo spent from December of 1930 and until spring of 1931 in San Francisco creating a big splash in the West Coast art scene. Besides his December one-man show at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in December 1930, Rivera painted murals at both the Pacific Stock Exchange Building in March ("Allegory of California") and the California School of Fine Arts ("The Making of a Mural") in May of 1931. (See much more in my "Schindler-Scheyer-Eaton-Ain").
Galka Scheyer befriended the couple and collaborated with Diego on the preparation for a Blue Four exhibition following his three months later. Correspondence with Frida Kahlo from the Galka Scheyer Papers at the Norton Simon Museum evidences the collaboration between Scheyer and Rivera to sponsor the Blue Four exhibition at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in April of 1931 and in Mexico City in November of 1931 after Rivera and Kahlo had already left for New York and his one-man exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art. In a late November letter from New York Frida Kahlo wrote to Galka Scheyer staying at Diego and Frida's house in Coyoucan, regarding the Blue Four exhibition and imploring Scheyer to feel free to contact their architect Juan O'Gorman if she needed any assistance related to her exhibition at the Biblioteca Nacional. (Frida Kahlo at the Hotel Barbizon in New York to Galka Scheyer in Mexico City, November 25, 1931. Scheyer Papers, Norton Simon Museum.). (See above and below).
"Cuatro Azules" exhibition catalog, Biblioteca Nacional de Mexico, Mexico City, November 24 - December 1, 1931.
Left: "Brush Drawings and Sculpture by Isamu Noguchi," The Arts Club of Chicago, March 4 to March 30, 1932 from the Isamu Nogichi Archive. Right: "The Blue Four," The Arts Club of Chicago, April 1 to April 15, 1932, from Peg Weiss Papers, Getty Research Institute.
Coincidentally, Galka Scheyer arranged exhibitions of The Blue Four that ran immediately following Noguchi at both the Chicago Arts Club April 1-15 and and the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago April 16-19, 1932. During this time Frida Kahlo telegrammed Galka Scheyer staying at the Shoreland Hotel regarding her and Diego's trip to Detroit and possibly getting together either in Detroit or Chicago.
(See below). (For much more on Galka Scheyer and Diego Rivera see my "Schindler-Scheyer-Eaton-Ain: A Case Study in Adobe.").
Telegram from Frida Kahlo in New York to Galka Scheyer at the Shoreland Hotel in Chicago, April 18, 1932. From Galka Scheyer Papers, Norton Simon Museum).
"Dymaxion House" by R. Buckminster Fuller, Architect, Architectural Forum, March 1932, pp. 286-288.
At the same time Neutra, Howe & Lecaze and Kocher and Frey were appearing in "Modern Architecture, International Exhibition" at New York's Museum of Modern Art, Buckminster Fuller enjoyed a three-page spread on the Dymaxion House in Architectural Forum. Fuller was also busy with creation of the April issue of Shelter in Philadelphia. (See above).
Left: "Chrystie-Forsyth Housing Development," Howe & Lescaze, Architects, Architectural Forum, March 1932, pp. . Right: "Chrystie-Forsyth Housing Development," Howe & Lescaze, Architects, Architectural Record, March 1932, pp. .
Noguchi's 1932 Arts Club of Chicago show in the Wrigley Building on Michigan Ave. comprised of fifteen of his Chinese brush drawings and twenty portrait busts also ended up touring twenty West Coast museums (see above for example) before proceeding on to Honolulu. Noguchi once said that his 1932 traveling exhibition received more attention than any of his future shows. (Herrera, p. 128).
For example during the show's March 1933 stop at the Pasadena Art Institute (see below), Los Angeles Times art critic Arthur Millier raved:
Pasadena, 1933. (Pasadena Art Institute was then at the northeast corner of Orange Grove and Colorado Blvds. From Reddit. "He is the possessor of a precocious ability. There are some "correct" portraits of children, then, suddenly one confronts the amazing head of Orozco, just a lump of earth mysteriously endowed with the Mexican painter's expression. He makes unusual people and makes them live - sometimes as expression, the Orozco and John Erskine heads for example, sometimes through carefully arranged forms, like the fine head of Marion Greenwood. ... The most impressive head in the show however, is the "Portrait of My Uncle." ... It is difficult to believe this is the work of a 28-year old. Wherever he goes Noguchi should be worth following." ("East-West Races Join to Produce Art Prodigy," by Arthur Millier, Los Angeles Times, March 19, 1933, p. A4. Author's note: In 1931-2 Orozco, Siqueiros and Rivera had recently made a big splash on the California art scene, for example see my "Richard Neutra and the California Art Club.").
It was during Noguchi's 1932 exhibition in Chicago that he and Ruth Page fell in "love at first sight."
"Page and Noguchi’s love affair lasted just over a year, a
brief but catalytic period during which they both produced strikingly original
work, each inspired by the other, and also by the city of Chicago. Their
intimacy—and the art it produced—is a story largely absent from their
biographies, buried in archival collections, including their correspondence,
which they kept sealed. If Page deserves a larger spotlight in the
history of modern dance, then Noguchi also should be considered in relation to
Page, and to Chicago, a Midwestern metropolis central to the history of
American art and design. Through Page and his relationships with several other
Midwesterners, Noguchi found a network of artists, curators, and industrialists
who supported his creative vision. The most stunning of Noguchi’s
Chicago-inspired work is "Miss Expanding Universe" (1932), a gleaming
aluminum suspension, strong but lightweight, a futuristic figure radiating her
limbs outward." ("Flicker of an Eyelid: Isamu Noguchi, Ruth Page, and the Universe of Chicago," Isamu Noguchi Archive. Author's note: "Miss Expanding Universe" was given its title by Buckminster Fuller.).
Left: Thornton Wilder portrait bust, 1932 by Isamu Noguchi from Isamu Noguchi Archive. Right: John Alden Carpenter portrait bust by Isamu Noguchi from Isamu Noguchi Archive.
While in Chicago for his Arts Club show Noguchi also made two portrait busts of composer John Alden Carpenter, the husband of Fuller's 1929 Arts Club sponsor Rue Winterbotham Carpenter, and author Thornton Wilder which he included in his next show, "Isamu Noguchi Paintings and Sculpture" which ran from April 7 to 15, 1932 at the Renaissance Society of the University of Chicago.
(See above left and right from Isamu Noguchi Archive. Author's note: At some point during Noguchi's presence in Chicago he also made a portrait bust of Carpenter's wife Rue Winterbotham, from Isamu Noguchi Archive).
Right: Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and MOMA's first president, Anson Conger Goodyear, November 13, 1931. MOMA Exhibition Archives.
While in Moscow, Rivera met Jere Abbott and Alfred H. Barr, Jr. Barr who would soon become the founding director of The Museum of Modern Art, and Abbott the Museum’s first associate director. At the time of their meeting, however, the Museum was not yet established. Barr and Abbott were not long out of college and were making a grand tour of Europe to study the latest tendencies in contemporary art. Barr in particular was keen to meet Rivera when he heard that he was in Moscow. He knew of his reputation as a muralist and he made an effort to track him down. There is a series of events that are reported in Abbott and Barr’s diaries about going to the movies and looking at exhibitions with Rivera. (MOMA Curator Leah Dickerman).
This fortuitous meeting presaged Rivera being offered a one-man show the year after the Museum of Modern Art opened hard on the heels of Rivera's highly successful American debut the previous year in San Francisco. (See much more on this at my "Schindler-Scheyer-Eaton-Ain").
Left: Exhibition Catalogue for Diego Rivera, Museum of Modern Art, New York, December 27, 1931-January 27, 1932. Right: Catalogue frontispiece, Diego Rivera at work on the Pacific Stock Exchange mural "Allegory of California," San Francisco, 1931.
Ely Jacque Kahn, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, New York ca. 1931. Photographer unknown.
Left: "Eiffel Tower" by Diego Rivera, 1914. Right: "The Architect" by Diego Rivera, 1914. Both on display at MOMA, 1931-2.
Isamu Noguchi was well-connected in the New York art world as evidenced by his inclusion into the Museum of Modern Art's 1932 "Summer Exhibition." Coincident to MOMA's show Fuller published an article on the Dymaxion House in Fortune magazine. (See elsewhere herin).
Left: "The Rivals" by Diego Rivera, 1931. From MOMA exhibition 17, 1932, "Summer Exhibition, Painting and Sculpture," June 7th to October 30, 1932. Also earlier on display in the 1931-2 Diego Rivera exhibition seen above. Right: "A. Conger Goodyear," President of MOMA by Isamu Noguchi, 1933 from Isamu Noguchi Archive.
MOMA's exhibition included work by, besides Noguchi; Picasso, Gaugin, Van Gogh, Matisse, Degas, Klee, Braque, Bonnard, Modigliani, Rouault, Mondrian, Rivera, Orozco, Charlot and many others. Art for the show was lent by museum president A. Conger Goodyear, but did not include Noguchi's bust of Goodyear which was made the following year. (See above right.). Other lenders included John D. Rockefeller and Philip Johnson. Noguchi's portrait bust from the show was next shown in a travelling exhibition that went to twenty other venues as far away as Honolulu.
Left: An Exhibition of Sculpture by Isamu Noguchi, February 15th to March 10th, 1932, John Becker Gallery, 520 Madison Ave., New York. Right: Japanese Drawings by Isamu Noguchi, February 15-29, 1932, at the DeMotte Gallery, 25 W. 78th St., New York.
Sculptures of J. B. Neumann, Orozco, and Lincoln Kirsten at John Becker Gallery
"He is young and brilliant. Needless to say, he has inherited abundant artistic feelings from his father, who was a great poet. At the same time his sculptures now being shown at the John Becker Gallery show skill, a skill only a man with strong conceptive mind can posess. One critic remarks that apparently he definitely decides upon a mode of procedure before starting to work. Let me put it another way. The artist had organized his feelings into one definite idea before starting to work." ("John Becker Shows Noguchi's Sculptures, Drawings Also Shown at DeMotte," unidentified and undated newspaper clipping ca. February 15, 1932 in Noguchi Archive. See also ("Noguchi Sculptures, Becker Gallery, American Art News, February 20, 1932 and "A Deluge of Art Exhibitions," by Edward Alden Jewell,"New York Times, February 15, 1932, p. 15).
Left: Installation view of "Summer Exhibition, Painting and Sculpture," MOMA June 7-October 8, 1932. Far left, identified on the MOMA Master Checklist for the exhibition simply as "Portrait" plaster. ("Francise Clow" by Isamu Noguchi, 1930 from MOMA Exhitition Archive). Right: Francise Clow by Isamu Noguchi, 1930 from Isamu Noguchi Archive.
The 1932 Summer Exhibition at MOMA included a mysterious work by Noguchi simply listed as a plaster bust with an unidentified model. The Noguchi Catalogue Raisonne identifies the model as Francise Clow. The Museum of Modern Art master checklist for the exhibition lists others whom Noguchi later produced busts of or interacted with in some manner including: Mexican artists Jose Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, and Jean Charlot; MOMA president A. Conger Goodyear and curator Philip Johnson, gallerists Lincoln Kirsten and J. B. Neumann, and collector and patron John Dunbar. Noguchi himself was likely the lender since he was having an affair with then 18-year old Francise "Baby" Clow at this time which continued until he left for California and Mexico in 1935 in a Hudson he had bought from Fuller. (Author's note: Noguchi introduced Clow to Fuller when he went to Mexico in 1935 and Fuller immediately proceeded to have an affair with the then 21-year-old heiress. (Nevala-Lee, pp. 154-5).
Left: General Houses Ad, Fortune, July 1932, p. 66. Right: "Mass-Produced Houses in Review, Builders All," Fortune, July 1932, p. 67.
In July Fortune followed five months of issues describing what was wrong with the housing industry in America with a special issue focused on solutions focused upon the current status of prefabrication and featuring mainly the work of Buckminster Fuller and his Dymaxion House, Howard Fisher and his General Houses Corporation and Robert L. Davison and the Pierce Foundation. None of the men mentioned in the article had yet to complete a house but many drawings and models were shown including renderings by Fuller and Fisher, Kocher & Frey, the Bowman Brothers, S. C. Horsley and Claus & Daub.
"The Dymaxion House:...a Creative Essay in Shelter," by Buckminster Fuller, Fortune, July, 1932, pp. 64-65.
Fuller published a fascinating anecdote pertaining to the above article in the January 1934 issue of A. Lawrence Kocher's Architectural Record which was included in a lengthy piece on experimental housing,
"Fortune's editors were eager to have their readers envision the Dymaxion House or its progeny as a plausible article to be reproduced within a reasonable amount of years. ... When Fortune had determined to illustrate the Dymaxion House in attractive color setting as above related they employed an artist skilled in the presentation of automobiles and boats. The artist held lengthy and detailed discussions with the designer of the Dymaxion House and acquired an excellent knowledge of its many details. He prepared and submitted his illustrations to Fortune. Fortune was pleased with the illustrations, with but one exception. Automotive vehicles were shown in the drawing like none they had ever seen. They were purely streamlined fishlike forms. The editors instructed the artist to remove these "incredible vehicles" from the picture and substitute everyday automobiles fearing that the display of the former would tend to discredit the Dymaxion Houses, deemed indigestible enough. ... By July, 1933 the second Dymaxion car had been finished and at the present writing industry is hastening its quantity reproduction. ... Fortune, an acknowledged modern, could not see one year ahead, even though declared friends of Dymaxion." ("Dymaxion Houses: An Attitude," by Buckminster Fuller in "New Housing Designs and Construction Systems," by Theodore Larson, Architectural Record, January 1934, pp. 9-11).
"Mass-Produced Housing in Review," Fortune, July 1932, pp. 69-69.
Left: "Mass-Produced Houses in Review," Circled in Black, The Mysterious House of Prefabrication, Fortune, April 1933, p. 56. Right: "Sketch of the Mysterious Pierce Foundation House," Ibid., p. 78.
Just before the opening of the Chicago World's Fair, the April 1933 issue of Fortune published an article on prefabricated housing featuring photos of some completed prefabricated houses. Featured were Fuller's former nemesis from the Pierce Foundation and Lawrence Kocher's former technical editor, Robert L. Davison and his associate Clarence Woolley, and Howard Fisher representing his new organization General Houses, Inc. Fisher had also succeded Davison at Architectural Record as an assistant editor. Apparently Davison had attended one of Fuller's parties at the Starrett-Lehigh Building and fell in love with the location which he commandeered when Fuller failed to pay his rent. (Nevala-Lee, pp. 126-7).
Left: "Lincolns and Cadillacs," Fortune, July 1932, p. 106. Right: "The Stages of Prefabrication," Fortune, April, 1933, p. 57. (Author's note: The above left house is a larger model designed for himself by Howard Fisher for a bluff-side lot above Lake Michigan. Right: The above right house was General Service's first house built for dancer Ruth Page in Hubbard Woods, Illinois by her brother-in-law Howard Fisher.). Fortune had, between 1932 and 1933, performed a great service to the prefabrication of houses in America by publishing the evolution and development of prefabrication, or what Buckminster Fuller had been stumping religiously about for the previous four years. Howard Fisher, who through his family connections had made possible Fuller's 1929 promotional lecture for his Dymaxion House at the Chicgo City Club in May of 1929, was obviously inspired by Fuller and proceeded to further develop his Dymaxion principles by forming General Housing Corporation which the article captured the history of in great detail. His efforts resulted in much publicity in
Fortune and other architectural journals and his being selected to build houses at the Chicago World's Fair in both 1933 and 1934. He was also selected by Philip Johnson to appear in the Museum of Modern Art's "The Work of Young Architects of the Middle West" in April 1933 as mentioned elsewhere herein. Richard Neutra's as yet unbuilt
"One-Plus-Two" Diatom House also was briefly described as was Kocher & Frey's soon-to-be-built "Week-End House" on Long Island. Neutra had obviously been spending much thime on the development of a prefabrivated house since being exposed to Fuller's Dymaxion House the previous year.
Harvey Wiley Corbett in "Mass-Produced Houses in Review," Fortune, April, 1933, p. 87.
Harvey Wiley Corbett was included with Fuller in the April 1933 Fortune issue as "possibly prefabrication's most fluent advocate."
Noguchi's exhibit at New York's Reinhardt Gallery from December 1932-January 1933 included portrait busts of Harvey Wiley Corbett, J. B. Neumann and a sculpture of Ruth Page's "Miss Expanding Universe."
"In response to
the exhibition, Fuller mobilized a critique of the International Style. As Marc
Dessauce analyzed with great acuity, Fuller turned to the Philadelphia-based
T-Square Club Journal, which had undergone a transformation in the early 1930s
from an organ of Beaux-Arts design to modernism (led by George Howe). Fuller and Wright published
critical reviews of the exhibition. Fuller took issue with the curators’
transmutation of a European “quasi-functional style” associated with
metaphorical allusions into aesthetic dogma. By April 1932 Fuller had taken
control of the journal, renamed it Shelter and turned it into an avant-garde
revue advancing the productivist project." ("Architecture, Regionalism, and the Vernacular: Reconceptualizing
Modernism in America" by Mardges Bacon. From Rethinking the Limits: Architecture through Space, Time and Disciplines, OpenEdition Books, 2017.).
T-Square Club Journal was created under George Howe's leadership in January of 1931 and was evolved from the old Philadelphia T-Square Club sponsorship to a broader base in 1931 but still under the editorship of Maxwell and Leon Levinson. The magazine's title was shortened to T-Square in January of 1932 and by then the magazine was relying on survival through the considerable financial support of George Howe. Fuller later recalled:
"George Howe’s interests were changing rapidly at that time,
and discouraged at the need for a new name [to replace
T-Square which
it turned out was held under copyright by Charles Scribner’s] he decided to discontinue
financial backing of the ... magazine. The men who did the actual publishing work
were the two Levinson boys of Philadelphia ... [who] came to me in New York hoping
that I could help them out and I decided to take over the magazine, giving it
the name
Shelter. In order to be able to carry it, I sold a considerable amount
of my life insurance policies. The Levinsons had already been promised some
financial help from Philip Johnson so the first issue of
Shelter embraced a
packet of items entitled International Architecture, which Johnson wished to
publish."
(George Howe: Toward a Modern Architecture, Robert A. M. Stern, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1975, p. 145).
Left: T-Square, Vol. 2, No. 2, February, 1932, front cover. From R. M. Schindler Collection, UC-Santa Barbara. Right: Table of Contents, T-Square, February 1932, Ibid.
"Knowledge of the history of the T-Square Club Journal and
its successors, T-Square and Shelter, is basic to an understanding of the
architectural climate of the years 1930-32. In its pages appear virtually all
the important architectural ideas of the time. Quickly outgrowing its origins as a local Philadelphia magazine, it
reflected the three distinct phases that marked the architectural upheaval
following the Crash in 1929: the rejection of Beaux Arts design forms, the
sudden acceptance of the Machine Phase of the International Style,
and the almost immediate challenge to the validity of that style on the part of
a technologically oriented avant-garde. George Howe, in his preface to the first
issue in January 1930, set the character for the first year of the magazine's life as an open forum
for architectural debate among men representing all phases of contemporary
architectural thought." (George Howe: Toward a Modern Architecture, Robert A. M. Stern, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1975, p. 138).
In January 1932 the magazine's title was shortened to T-Square with Howe retaining Maxwell Levinson as editor. For the February issue Maxwell Levinson had requested material with the knowledge of the upcoming International Style exhibition at New York's Museum of Modern Art. He also asked Frank Lloyd Wright to submit an article which he titled "For All May Raise the Flowers Now, For All Have Got the Seed." Wright's anti-International Style diatribe was read by Howe before publication and prompted his angry response, "Moses Turns Pharaoh." (See Langmead No. 251).
"Biographical Sketch, Richard J. Neutra" by B. E. McLoney, T-Square, February 1932, pp. 26-30.
Left: "Frozen Assets" by Diego Rivera, T-Square, February 1932, frontispiece. Right: "Universal Architecture" by Buckminster Fuller, Ibid., pp. 22-25.
Diego Rivera contributed "Frozen Assets" to the
February 1932 issue of George Howe's T-Square which had also
published an article on Fuller's Dymaxion House titled "Universal
Architecture." Fuller had just made a cash infusion into the magazine
along with Philip Johnson and was traveling to Philadelphia to work on the next
issues. Fuller sold his Navy life insurance policy to finance taking
over T-Square. Because of a title dispute with Scribner's, Fuller renamed
it Shelter beginning with the April 1932 issue. At the same time
Fuller formed a group he called the Structural Study Associates that initially
met in the Fuller Starrett-Lehigh Building "penthouse." The key
founding members of the group were Knud Lonberg-Holm, Ted Larson, Frederick Kiesler,
A. Lawrence Kocher and his partner Albert Frey, Simon Breines, Henry Churchill,
and later Douglas Haskell and others. (Strum, p. 95).
After lengthy disputes over the magazine's layout and content Henry-Russell Hitchcock resigned from the editorial board criticizing Fuller's "obscurantist writing, sophomoric suggestions, unintelligible work and meaningless cover." Philip Johnson and Alfred Barr left after the May issue leaving Levinson as the only remaining editor and Fuller was left as being effectively responsible for the contents of the journal. ("The 'Shelter Project' and Multiple Itineraries
of American Modernism" by Gaia Caramellino in Las Revistas de
Arquitectura (1900-1975: Cronicas, Manifestos, Propaganda, Actas Preliminares,
Pamplona, 3/4 Mayo 2012, Universidad de Navarra, p. 140).
Structural Study Associate Sketches for the Dymaxion 20-Worker Shelter for Russian Co-operative Farming, 1931-2. From Gorman, pp. 68-69.
In Fuller's "Universal Architecture" introduction in the above issue of T-Square he introduced the existence of a nearly fifty-member group called the Structural Study Associates who were then working together on "a five year longevity shelter unit, suitable for immediate scientific reproduction in Russia, in due consideration of their elemental and organizational elements, for supplementation of their first five-year, heavy industries development plan." ("Universal Architecture," by Buckminster Fuller, T-Square, February 1932, p. 22).
The March issue of Architectural Forum led with Kenneth Stowell's editorial "International Style" with a quite positive review. (See below left). The issue was the magazine's answer to MOMA's International Style show curated by Henry-Russel Hitchcock and Philip Johnson and included a section on housing projects which included work by architects promoted by Hitchcock and Johnson such as Europeans Corbusier, J. J. P. Oud, Walter Gropius, Mies Van Der Rohe, Ernst May, and Americans Claus and Daub, and Howe and Lescaze featuring their Chrystie-Forsyth Housing Development with a three-page spread. (See below right for example).
"The Editor's Forum, The International Style" by Kenneth Stowell, Architectural Forum, March 1932, p. 253. Right: "Chrystie-Forsyth Housing Development, Howe and Lescaze, Architect," Ibid., pp. 265-7.
Unlike Philip Johnson, Stowell had no problem including Fuller's Dymaxion House model, providing it the best description and 12 detailed photos describing in detail how the model was pieced together. Fuller had to be extremely pleased with the article as the April issue of Shelter was fully dedicated to MOMA's recent International Style exhibition.
Left: "Chrystie-Forsyth Housing Development," Howe and Lescaze, Architects, Shelter, April 1932, Vol. 2, No. 3, front cover. (Author's note: Albert Frey worked on the design and model for Chrystie-Forsyth while working for Howe and Lescaze in 1932. For much more on this do an Albert Frey search in my "A. Lawrence Kocher, Architectural Record, Richard Neutra, R. M. Schindler, Frank Lloyd Wright, Albert Frey and the Evolution of Modern Architecture in New York and Southern California."). Right: Shelter, April 1932 Contents.
Philip Johnson, Henry-Russel Hitchcock and Alfred Barr were
invited by George Howe and the Levinson brothers to be associate editors of the
April issue of Shelter which was dedicated to the recently completed
"Modern Architecture, International Exhibition" at the Museum of
Modern Art which included work by Neutra, Howe and Lescaze and SSA members A.
Lawrence Kocher and Albert Frey. Philip Johnson used his financial backing
to ensure that Frank Lloyd Wright's article "Of Thee I Sing" was
published as a quid pro quo for his participation in the "International
Style" exhibition at MOMA. (Riley, p. 88).
Wright's article was preceded by a codicil:
"The following article was written by Mr. Wright for
the Architectural Exposition of the Museum of Modern Art as a clarification of
his stand against the international style. Besides Mr. Wright, the
exhibition includes work by Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier & Pierre
Jeanneret, J. J. P. Oud, Mies Van Der Rohe, Raymond Hood, Howe & Lescaze
and Richard Neutra. The "self-appointed committee on a style" who are
attacked in the last paragraphs include Messers. Barr, Hitchcock & Johnson,
who are chiefly responsible for the choice of architects in the exhibit. -
Ed." ("Of Thee I Sing" by Frank Lloyd Wright, Shelter,
April 1932, pp. 10-11. Langmead 256.).
Model for Ring Plan School, Richard J. Neutra, Architect, from Modern Architecture, International Exhibition catalogue, February 10 to March 12, 1932, Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1932, p. 169 and "Notes on the Manufactured Ring Plan School," by Richard Neutra, Shelter, April 1932, p. 26. "Aluminaire: A House for Contemporary Life," A. Lawrence Kocher and Albert Frey, Architects, Shelter, May 1932, Vol. 2, No. 4, pp. 56-58. Right: Dymaxion Filling Station" by Simon Breines, Ibid.
As George Howe extricated himself from Shelter magazine, Maxwell Levinson, the technical editor sought
financing. Buckminster Fuller cashed out his life insurance policy to be able
to take over the magazine, but by then Levinson had already procured financing
from Philip Johnson as well.
Left: Postcard for Hotel Winthrop, Frank S. Nute, Architect, 1927, Lexington Ave. at 47th St. from eBay. Right: Structural Study Associates Symposium & 4D Essays," Winthrop Hotel, Lexington Ave. New York. On August 8, 1932, a Structural Study Associates Symposium
was held at the Winthrop Hotel where Fuller and Noguchi were then
staying. (See below for example). Earlier that year Fuller
founded a group of New York architects and housing reformers called Structural
Study Associates, or SSA. Members of the group included, besides Fuller and
Noguchi, Knud Lonberg-Holm and his boss at the Architectural Record, A.
Lawrence Kocher and his partner Albert Frey, his assistant editor Ted Larson,
William Lescaze, Frederick Kiesler, Simon Brienes, Harry Churchill, Dr. Alvin
Johnson, and many other notables. Devoted to increasing efficiency in the
housing industry, SSA and its journal, Shelter, advocated technically
sophisticated visions of industrial architecture for a high-technology
society. The above announcement for the show repurposed Knud Lonberg-Holm's
cover design for the May 1932 issue of Shelter. Fuller claimed that there
were over fifty SSA members most of which likely attended. Besides the Dymaxion
House the show also perhaps included photos of Kocher and Frey's Aluminaire
House which had been included in the Museum of Modern Art's International Style
exhibition in February and in Fuller's Shelter magazine in the May
issue. Howe and Lescaze's Chrystie-Forsyth Housing Development model also
appeared in the MOMA exhibition besides gracing the cover of the April issue
of Shelter on which Albert Frey also made significant design
contributions. (Nevala-Lee, p. 132).
One of the projects likely discussed at the symposium was an issue close to Fuller's heart, homeless housing. This is evidenced by an article appearing in the local press the following month.
"The New York Times for 10 September 1932 includes
an uncredited article titled “Single Jobless Men to Get Lodging House / Social
Worker and Engineer Obtain Use of Tenement for Those Ineligible for City Aid.”
The building in question was a then-deserted seven-story building located at
145 Ridge Street in New York City, New York. The social worker was Ben Howe and
the engineer was Buckminster Fuller. Fuller is described as “editor of the
magazine Shelter and head of Structural Study Associates, an
engineering firm.” According to the article, the men who were renovating the
building were hoping to live in it afterward." ("Buckminster Fuller and the Homeless of New York," by Trevor Blake, Synchronofile).
Left: Carlos Chavez portrait by Diego Rivera, 1932. Right: Set Design for "H. P." by Diego Rivera, 1927-32. From MOMA Archives.
Just after a photo of his mural "Frozen Assets"
was published in the February issue of Philadelphia's T-Square, Diego
Rivera was collaborating with Mexican composer Carlos Chavez on the staging of
the opera "H. P." by the Philadelphia
Grand Opera Company conducted by Leopold
Stokowski by designing costumes and stage sets. The March 31st
premiere was attended by composers George Gershwin and Aaron Copland and Diego
Rivera and wife Frida Kahlo who all traveled together from New York on a
special train. I have as yet been unable to determine whether Fuller and/or
Noguchi were in attendance but since Fuller was then spending much time in
Philadelphia working on Shelter magazine it seems plausible. Frida Kahlo
wrote to Galka Scheyer from New York on April 11th telling her of the
collaboration of Diego and Chavez and Stokowski and the Philadelphia
performance of "H. P." and also mentioned viewing the Museum of
Modern Art's recent architecture exhibition and seeing things by Richard Neutra
that she liked very much as well as their impending trip to Detroit to complete
the Industry murals at the Detroit Institute of Art. ("Music in
Review, To Give Mexican Ballet," New York Times, January 18, 1932, p.
19. Frida Kahlo to Galka Scheyer, April 11, 1932, Author's note: A third
Dymaxion Car produced by Fuller in 1934 was almost sold to the wife of
conductor Leopold Stokowski indicating that Fuller was perhaps in attendance at
his 1932 premiere performance of "H. P." in Philadelphia.).
Left: Shelter, April 1932, front cover, model of Howe & Lescaze's Chrystie-Forsythe Housing Project. Right: Shelter Contents, Ibid. (Author's note: The Chrystie-Forsyth cover model was built by Albert Frey in 1931 before he became partners with A. Lawrence Kocher and one of many of Fuller's Structural Study Associates. See much more in my "Kocher, Neutra, Frey"). By the April issue of Shelter, the recently renamed T-Square, three of Fuller's Structural Study Associates, Knud Lonberg-Holm, Frederick Kiesler, and Henry Wright (four if you count Albert Frey who built the model appearing on the cover of the issue while in the employ of Howe & Lescaze) were involved with Fuller in the preparation of the magazine's contents as was Richard Neutra with two more articles. This would also mark the last month of George Howe's involvement with the magazine. Philip Johnson, on the masthead as an associate editor, had trouble getting along with Fuller and would also cut ties with Shelter the following month. By May Fuller and the SSA were in complete control of the magazine. The April issue was devoted to the Museum of Modern Art's "International Style" exhibition with Johnson agreeing to publish Frank Lloyd Wright's "Of Thee I Sing" as a quid pro quo for him not dropping out of the MOMA show. (Riley, p. 88).
Left: Shelter, Vol. 2, No. 4, May 1932 front cover designed by Knud Lonberg-Holm. Right: "Aluminaire: A House for Contemporary Life" by A. Lawrence Kocher and Albert Frey, Ibid.
By May Fuller was totally in control of the content of Shelter evidenced
by both the front and back covers being designed by SSA member Knud
Lonberg-Holm. Fellow SSAers A. Lawrence Kocher and his partner Albert Frey
publishing an article on their Dymaxion-inspired Aluminaire House and Simon Breines
and Ted Larson contributing articles as well. With regard to Shelter's new
editorial policy Fuller wrote,
"In the first issue of the magazine, under the name of SHELTER, the publication was turned over to Messrs. Johnson and Hitchcock, representing the International School of Architecture, that they might be given an able chance to plead the cause of their devotion. Likewise ... the current May issue ... will be guided by the Structural Study Associates, a spontaneous grouping who will indicate in the coming issue the character of their cohesiveness."
Organized by Bucky, the SSA was a group focused on technical
development, industrial production, and commercial distribution of
Dymaxion-style houses. This change in editorial style led to the resignation of
George Howe and Philip Johnson from the magazine's editorial board. In addition
to Bucky, SSA contributors to Shelter were Kocher & Frey, Knud
Lonberg-Holm, Frederick Kiesler, Ted Larson, Henry Wright, Simon Breines, Isamu
Noguchi, and remotely, Richard Neutra among others. (Sadao, p. 84).
Philip Johnson was still somewhat peripherally involved as
associate editor with Shelter for the May issue evidenced by his
April letter soliciting an article from another soon-to-be SSA member
Douglas Haskell:
"Dear Mr. Haskell,
I enjoyed your review in The Nation very much and
am sending you a copy of Shelter so that you can see what this young
magazine is trying to do.
I hope we can have a contribution from
you in our next issue. I'm sorry we can't pay contributors yet but with
cooperation from people like yourself I'm sure we will have enough success to
do so soon.
Any contribution you want to make for
the next issue must be here by the 25th of April. And I would very much
appreciate hearing from you as to whether or not you can do this to help us
make a success of this new venture.
I hope to have the pleasure of talking
over the points of this review (in The Nation) personally with you.
Very sincerely yours , (signed) Philip Johnson. (Author's
note: The article in The Nation Johnson was referring to was
Haskell's recent review of his and Hitchcock's International Style Exhibition
at the Museum of Modern Art, "Architecture, What the Man About Town Will
Build" which appeared in The Nation's April 13th issue, pp. 441-3.
Author's note: Johnson ended his relationship with Shelter in May due
to irreconcilable differences with Fuller.).
Haskell submitted what ended up being the lead article in
the May issue, "Building With Money." In it he wrote,
"Money, like foundations or columns, is merely one element used in the present technique of erecting the necessary shelter. And as such an element it must eventually be subject to radical redesigning. Not making money but making shelter is the aim." ("Building With Money," Shelter, May 1932, pp. 2-3 from "Douglas Putnam Haskell.").
"When the Chicago dancer and choreographer Ruth Page
saw Isamu Noguchi for the very first time, she felt an electric charge. It was
March 1932. Noguchi was in town for an exhibition of his sculpture and brush
drawings at the Arts Club of Chicago, then located in the north tower of the
Wrigley Building. One of the few places in Chicago that promoted avant-garde
art, the Arts Club, had given Noguchi and Fuller their first Chicago shows in
1930. ("Flicker
of an Eyelid: Isamu Noguchi, Ruth Page, and the Universe of Chicago,"
Lisel Olson, Isamu Noguchi Museum).
Front and Back covers of Shelter Vol. 2, no. 5 (November 1932)
featuring Isamu Noguchi’s sculptures "Expanding Universe" and "Glad Day." (1930). The Noguchi
Museum Archives. (Author's note: Noguchi's "Glad Day," a smaller analogue to "Miss Expanding
Universe," was a spiritual portrait of Fuller, the body of a man spreading
his limbs wide. Fuller briefly owned "Glad Day," which Noguchi titled after a poem by William Blake. (Listening to Stone, Hayden Herrera, Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, New York, 2015, p. 111).
The most stunning of Noguchi’s Chicago-inspired work is
"Miss Expanding Universe" as named by Buckminster Fuller upon its
completion in 1932. Fuller selected a photo of the gleaming aluminum
suspension to grace the cover of his last issue of Shelter, i.e., November
1932. Inside of the front and back covers also included images of
Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion House. (See above).
Left: Table of Contents for Shelter, November 1932. Right: "Shelters of the Orient" by Iasmu Noguchi and "New Building in Japan" by Richard J. Neutra. Shelter, November 1923, p. 96.
Left: Mock-up of Fortune cover demonstratimg three typical streamline equivalents by Buckminster Fuller, 1932 from Buckminster Fuller: Starting With the Universe edited by K. Michael Hays and Dana Kelly, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2008, pl. 44. Right: Streamline test diagrams originally published by Fuller in Shelter, November 1932 .
Left: Models of Buckminster Fuller's 4D Transport by Isamu
Noguchi, 1932. From "Streamlining," by Buckminster Fuller, Shelter, November
1932, p. 71. Right: Gypsum models of Fuller's 4D Transport by Isamu
Noguchi, from Hays and Kelly, pl. 46.
Left: The 4D Transport from Shelter, vol. 2, no. 5, November 1932. From Buckminster Fuller: Designing for Mobility, by Michael John Gorman, Skira Editore, Milan, 2005, p. 15. Right: Dymaxion Car models by Isamu Noguchi, 1932. Marks, p. 98.
Cutting ties with Shelter after its last issue freed Fuller to spend more time of the development of the Dymaxion car. Photos of Noguchi's models of the car were prominent in the November issue. (See above for example).
"Die Industriell Hergestelite Wohnung in U. S. A.,Typisierungsschwierigkeiten, (One-Plus-Two Diatom House)" by R. Neutra, Die Form, November 1932, pp. 349-350.
Clearly inspired by Buckminster Fuller, especially after collaborating on articles for Fuller's T-Square and Shelter magazines in 1932, Neutra developed his own version of prefabrication in the "One-Plus-Two Diatom House" which was imbued with Fuller's Dymaxion concepts which he absorbed when he first met him in January of 1931. Perhaps emboldened by his recent success of the traveling Museum of Modern Art International Style exhibition Neutra published an article in the November 1932 issue of the German publication Die Form entitled "The industrially manufactured apartment in the U.S.A.
typification difficulties." It was his first ever publication of his mast-hung residential design completed shortly after his return to Los Angeles after meeting Fuller in New York in January 1931. (See above and below).
Left: "Dymaxion House" by Buckminster Fuller, Ibid., p. 352. Right: "Aluminaire House," 1931, by A. Lawrence Kocher and Albert Frey, Architects, Ibid., p. 351.
Neutra also included in the article Fuller's Dymaxion House and A. Lawrence Kocher and Albert Frey's Aluminaire House which was also on display in the Museum of Modern Art show. After he returned to Los Angeles from New York he had little on the drawing boards so he embarked on expanding and melding his Rush City Reformed metropolis concept with Fuller's Dymaxion theories resulting in his specifying the use of diatomaceous earth as a property of prefabrication material for use in walls and flooring and prefabricated metal footings for which he, like Fuller on his Dymaxion House, submitted his own patent application. He modified Fuller's hexagonal approach into a more conventional rectangular arrangement. (See below for example).
"One plus two" Prefabricated House by Richard Neutra from From Richard Neutra: Buildings and Projects, Editions Girsberger, Zurich, 1950, pp. 124-5.
Left: "Prefabricated Diatalum Dwellings" designed by Richard Neutra. From Richard Neutra: Buildings and Projects, Editions Girsberger, Zurich, 1950, p. 121. Right: Prefabricated Footings, Ibid., p. 122.
Neutra's Diatom Series became a proposed housing project and was an exploration of new materials and building systems, while implying a modern treatment of the house and the impact of the car. The term “Diatom” refers to the sediment of algae called diatoms. Even during the 1950s, Neutra continued his belief that “diatomaceous earth” was the key to making “hardened soil with steam, similar to the lightweight concrete, which could be manufactured for walls and floors in the form of insulation panels called "diatalum." He even tried to market this product. In the end the material proved to be too soft and brittle, although it still continues to use in different applications.
Carlyle Hotel, 35 E. 76th St. at Madison Ave., Sylvan Bien
and Harry M. Prince, Architects, 1930. From Pinterest.
In the fall of 1932 Fuller lost his arrangement at the
Winthrop Hotel and relocated to the recently completed, and similarly
financially troubled Carlyle Hotel at the northeast corner of 76th St. and
Madison Ave. The interiors were designed by Dorothy Draper in the Art Deco
style. Most of Fuller's energy during this period was spent on Shelter magazine.
Sensing that the magazine's days were numbered, he decided to put everything into
one enormous issue in November shown earlier above. (Nevala-Lee, p. 133).
Left: Diana Court by Michigan Square Building, 540 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, by Holabird and Roche, Architects, 1930. Right: Lobby of Diana Court Building. Both photos from Preservation Chicago.
Noguchi's muse, Ruth Page and her husband Tom lived in the only residential apartment in the Diana Court Building which was almost entirely commercial. Tom's brother, Howard T. Fisher, designed a penthouse studio for the couple which he had published in House Beautiful magazine in also November 1932. (See below. Author's note: Howard Fisher had been hired by the prefabrication aficionado Lawrence Kocher as a contributing editor for the Architectural Record in August of 1931 where he remained on the masthead until mid-1937.).
"A Business Office Reception Room, Wrigley building, Chicago, Howard T. Fisher, Architect, Architectural Record, September 1930, pp. 199-204.
Howard Fisher had gained enough confidence with Lawrence Kocher to be entrusted with producing Architectural Record's entire Country House issue for November 1930. Fisher greatly expanded upon his previous November's "New Elements of House Design" offering a "Check List of House Requirements" and including descriptive text and illustrative photos from houses included in the issue. (See below coverage of windows using Corbusier's Ville d'Avray and Neutra's entrance to the Studio of Conrad Buff for example.).
Left: "The Country House," by Howard T. Fisher, Architectural Record, November 1930, pp. 363-385. Right: "Entrance to the Studio of Conrad Buff, R.J. Neutra, Architect. Ibid. p. 438. (See much more on this in my "A. Lawrence Kocher, Architectural Record, Richard Neutra, R. M. Schindler, Frank Lloyd Wright, Albert Frey and the Evolution of Modern Architecture in New York and Southern California"). The issue was so successful that Kocher hired Fisher as a contributing editor alongside Knud Lonberg-Holm and Ted Larson and he continued to appear on the masthead from 1931 until 1937. Fisher was at the same time forming his own company General Houses and would be included in Philip Johnson's 1933 "Work of Young Architects of the Middle West" exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York preceding Chicago's Century of Progress Exposition as discussed later below.
"Recent Heads in Noguchi Exhibition," Town and Country, February 1, 1933, p. 67.
In December 1932 and January of 1933 Noguchi exhibited at the Reinhardt Gallery and received rave reviews from New York Times art critic Edward Alden Jewell. Town and Country magazine also ran a piece on the show highlighting the portrait busts of Nitze and Dorothy Dillon. (See above).("Noguchi's Abstract Sculpture at Reinhardt Gallery is Puzzling But Indicative of His Brilliance," Edward Alden Jewell, New York Times, December 17, 1932, p. 20).
Clare Boothe Brokaw portrait bust by Isamu Noguchi, 1933 from Isamu Noguchi Archive.
Noguchi produced portrait busts of Clare Boothe Brokaw and Dorothy Hale in 1933. Brokaw had been divorced from her alcoholic husband George Tuttle Brokaw since 1929 and Hale was widowed the same year when her husband Gardner was killed in an automobile accident. Brokaw had previously met Fuller while he was working at the Pierce Foundation in 1931 and through her Vanity Fair column was named to the magazine's "Hall of Fame" before Brokaw later became its managing editor. (Herrera, p. 132).
"Early in 1933, Hale and Noguchi took a Caribbean cruise where he was introduced to many of her
wealthy and influential friends from New York, several of whom commissioned
portraits, including Clare Boothe Brokaw for a sculpture bust. (See above). In the spring of 1933 Noguchi
traveled to London and Paris with Hale, hoping to find more patrons. Noguchi
had begun a portrait sculpture of Hale, but it was never finished, and its fate
is unknown." (Listed as "unlocated" in the Smithsonian Art Museum Art Inventories Database and "image not available" in the Isamu Noguchi Archive.).
Left: Color Reproductions of Mexican Frescoes by Diego Rivera at the Museum of Modern Art, February 20th to March 12th, 1933. Right: From MOMA Exhibition Archives. Shortly before presenting his "The Work of Young Architects of the Middle West" in April of 1933, Philip Johnson finished creating the permanent "Architecture Room" highlighting modern interior design in a motif supervised by himself and furniture designed by Le Courbusier and Charlotte Perriand. The first exhibition to be on display in the new Architecture Room was "Color Reproductions of the Mexican Frescoes by Diego Rivera." (See above). In conjunction with the show a special publication of a portfolio of 19 color plates was printed by the Ganymed Press in Berlin,
Germany. The plates were selected from the Rivera frescoes on the walls of the Ministry of Education
and the National Palace in Mexico City, the Agricultural School in Chapingo,
and the Palace of Cortez in Cuernavaca.
Man at the Crossroads, Diego Rivera, 1933. Rockefeller Center. Photo by Lucienne Bloch.
Fuller's 1931 friendship with Diego Rivera continued with River's return to New York from Detroit in for the opening of the above frescoe show in 1933 and to work on a huge mural called "American Crossroads" at the recently completed Rockefeller Center. Before the mural could be completed, the building's architect Raymond Hood discovered Lenin's face prominently displayed "And then the fun began." The ensuing scandal resulted in cancellation of Rivera's contract on May 9th. On May 12th Rivera also received a telegram from Albert Kahn, architect of the General Motors Building at the Chicago World's Fair cancelling Rivera's contract for a decorative mural in that building as well. (Dreaming With His Eyes Open, A Life of Diego Rivera by Patrick Marnham, Knopf, New York, 1998, pp. 255-256 See also "Rockefellers Ban Lenin in RCA Mural and Dismiss Lenin," New York Times, May 10, 1933, p. 1, "Rivera Loses Order for World's Fair," New York Times, May 12, 1933, p. 19.).
Left: Diego Rivera working on "Expansion and the American Dream" at the New Workers School, New York, ca. July 1933. Photo by Lucienne Bloch. Right: "Unity House, Forest Park, PA, William Lescaze, Architect, Architectural Record, March 1936, pp. 185-189.
A deeply depressed Rivera finally mustered the energy to commence work on a series of frescos at new York's "New Workers School," Bertram Wolfe described as a ramshackle old building due to be demolished. Here Rivera made a series of twenty-one paintings on movable panels entitled Portrait of America. The fresco panels were reproduced and described in great depth in a publication under the same title the following year. (See below). (Marnham, p. 257. See also ""America to the Wall," by Edward Alden Jewell, New York Times, October 8, 1933, p. X5. Author's Note: Thirteen of the twenty-one frescos Rivera painted for the New Workers School were a few years later transferred to the new International Ladies' Garment Workers' Unity House designed by William Lescaze in 1936 in Forest Park, PA).
Left: Portrait of America by Diego Rivera, Covici, Freide, New York, 1934. Right: "Rivera Murals, Permanent Exhibition Sponsored by the International Ladies" Garment Workers Union, at the Unity House, Forest Park, PA, 1942. (Author's note: The above right cover photo is a photo of a terra cotta head of Diego Rivera by sculptor Urbici Soler which was positively reviewed by New York Times art critic Howard DeVree on May 17, 1942 in his "Reviewers Notebook" column.)
Left: Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, Bridgeport, CT, July 21, 1933. Photographer unknown. Right: Costumes designed by Diego Rivera for the opera "H. P." ("Horsepower") performed in Philadelphia in March of 1932. Photo from L.A. Times.) Left: Unveiling of Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion Car, Bridgeport, Connecticut, July 21, 1933. Lonberg-Holm can be seen holding the car door open while the artist Diego Rivera (who was in attendance with his wife and artist Frida Kahlo) looks on, coat on his arm. Right: Ad for "4 Saints in 3 Acts," 44th St. Theater, New York, New York Times, February 26, 1934, p. 20.
Bridgeport, Connecticut, spring of 1933. Clockwise from top left, E 23: The first Dymaxion Car was fabricated in the renamed old Locomobile Company of America factory in Bridgeport; E 24: Design offices in the factory: E 25: Factory machine shop; E 26: First Dymaxion Car prototype under construction. Fuller kneeling at far left. From Marks, p. 101.
"Off the Record: Dymaxion Auto," Fortune, June 1933, pp. 8-9.
While Rivera was bussy painting fresco panels at the New Workers School in New York Fuller was nearing completion of his first prototype of the Dymaxion Car in Bridgeport, Connecticut evidenced by the above June 1933 Fortune article. Around the same time Isamu Noguchi and Dorothy Hale were in London. After Noguchi returned from London he was one of the first, other than Fuller, to drive the second version of the car.
"Noguchi is credited with helping to design the Dymaxion Car and he also drove it. In February 1934, Noguchi borrowed the car for a drive with two friends, the actress Dorothy Hale and writer Clare Boothe Brokaw (later Luce). They drove to the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut for the premiere of "Four Saints and Three Acts," the controversial opera with an all-Black cast with libretto by Gertrude Stein and and music Virgil Thomson. Buckminster Fuller joined them there." (See Herrera, Listening to Stone, 138.).
Left: Dorothy Hale and Isamu Noguchi at the premeire of "Four Saints in Three Acts, February 7, 1934, Hartford, Connecticut. Courtesy of Lisa's History Room. Right: Thornton Wilder portrait bust by Isamu Noguchi, 1932. From Isamu Noguchi Archive. On the way home from the Wadsworth premiere Fuller, Brokaw, Hale and Noguchi visited author Thornton Wilder whom Noguchi had sculpted a portrait bust in 1932. (See above right). Fuller had also developed a strong attachment for Brokaw during the trip. They exchanged a series of love letters shortly thereafter. (Fuller to Brokaw, February 13, 1934. Brokaw to Fuller, February 14, 1934. In Nevala-Lee, p. 150).
Douglas Haskell published an article in The Nation in February 1934 titled "New Shapes for Automobiles" in which he included a table which listed the the horsepower required to achieve certain speeds comparing the Dymaxion Car with the average 1933 car design. He favorably reviewed the other benefits of Fuller's design and closed with a description of the next much-needed improvement in the automobile, i.e., the automatic transmission. ("New Shapes for Automobiles," by Douglas Fuller, The Nation, February 7, 1934, pp. 157-58).
"Crystal House" designed by George Fred Keck and Lee Atwood for the Chicago World's Fair, 1934. Buckminster Fuller's second iteration of his Dymaxion Car in the garage. Photo courtesy Getty Images.
Left: Suzanne Ziegler, white-washed wood portrait bust by Isamu Noguchi, 1932, Isamu Noguchi Archive. Right: "Recent Heads in the Noguchi Exhibition," Town and Country, February 1933, p. 37. From Isamu Noguchi Archive.
Noguchi exhibited at the Reinhardt Gallery in New York from December 12, 1932 to January 7, 1933. The show included the first ever exhibition of "Miss Expanding Universe," depicting the dancer Ruth Page. New York Times art critic Edward Alden Jewell raved,
"This surprising bit of sculpture is called "Miss Expanding Universe." ...when Noguchi decides to do an abstraction, you may be sure that he will not rest satisfied until the theme in hand has been abstracted to (your) last gasp of astonishment. Take the piece de resistance, as it should probably be called, in the present show. ... A figure such as this may not just as well as not be accepted as the symbol of the universe, at any rate until something more satisfying has been produced." ("Noguchi's Abstract Sculpture at Reinhardt Gallery is Puzzling but Indicative of His Brilliance," Edward Alden Jewell, New York Times, December 17, 1932, p. 20).
Isamu Noguchi Exhibition, January 25 to March 14, 1933, Mellon Galleries, 27 South 18th Street, Philadelphia. From Isamu Noguchi Archives.
The same show traveled to the Mellon Galleries in Philadelphia directly from the Reinhardt Gallery and ran from January 25 to March 14, 1933. His positive review read in part:
"...At one end of the big room is suspended the aluminum creation "Miss Expanding Universe," a merely intimated flying figure of a woman, while opposite has been placed "Draped Torso," in chrome nickel plate, for a genuine appreciation of which it is necessary to have a deeply ingrained aesthetic sense, and an ability to take joy in simple lines and gleaming surfaces. Here, it seems to me, is the embodiment of Noguchi's own phrase, "pure nothingness made tangible", and it doesn't appear to be in the least degree important." ("In Gallery and Studio: Isamu Noguchi Proves a Strong Attachment at The Mellon Galleries," Philadelphia Inquirer, March 1933 from the Isamu Noguchi Archive).
Left: Work of Young Architects of the Middle West, April 3-30, 1933, Museum of Modern Art, New York. Right: George Fred Keck checklist of exhibits.
Philip Johnson curated an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in the spring of 1933 scheduling it to open a month before the Chicago World's Fair. Johnson featured in his show seven young Chicago architects, three of whom, seemingly unbeknownst to him, also had previous connections with Buckminster Fuller, i.e., Howard Fisher, Paul Schweikher and George Fred Keck. The exhibition also traveled to Chicago where it was on display in the World's Fair Home Planning Building (designed by Ely Jacques Kahn) beginning in June shortly after the Fair's grand opening. In Philip Johnson's introduction to the catalogue he singled out Howard Fisher and his General Houses for building its first prefabricated house near Chicago. Other architects included in the show with connections to Buckminster Fuller included Paul Schweikher and George Fred Keck as discussed below. Johnson ended his catalogue introduction reminiscing of his and Henry-Russel Hitchcock's now legendary "International Style" show of the previous year:
Left: Milagro Ballroom and Shops, Cook Co., Illinois, George Fred Keck, Architect, 1929. Right: Rendering of a Country House, (House of Tomorrow),
Johnson included work from the dean of young Chicago modern architects, 38 year-old George Fred Keck, including the Milagro Ballroom and Shops (above left) on a bluff overlooking Lake Michigan and a rendering of his "House of Tomorrow." Johnson also included work done by Robert Paul Schwiekher who had previously collaborated with Keck on the unbuilt Housing Project "A" and his own house for Charles W. Eliason. (See below left and right).
Left: Model of Housing Project "A," George Fred Keck and Robert Paul Schwiekher, Architects. Right: Rendering of Interior of Charles W. Eliason House, Robert Paul Schwiekher, Architect.
Bios and Checklists for Robert Paul Schwiekher and Howard T. Fisher from "Work of Young Architects of the Middle West," April 3-30, 1933, Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Paul Schwiekher was working for Howard Fisher on the General Houses projects of 1933-4 while through his largesse, his Fuller 4D House design-mate Lee Atwood was working on Keck's Chicago Fair Crystal House design.
"Howard T. Fisher, director of General Houses, spent two years studying building materials and methods as a reaction to the academic nature of architectural schools. He sought out manufacturers interested in his ideas of prefabrication and in 1931 formed General Houses, the first commercial integration of housing prefabrication interests. By 1933 the business had a staff of twenty-seven persons responsible for research, design, production, sales, and erection. Fisher's exposition house was a prefabricated dwelling." (Boyce, pp. 35-6. Author's note: Fuller was also undoubtedly inspired by Fuller's Dymaxion House lecture he arranged at the Chicago City Club in May of 1929 discussed elsewhere herein.).
Left: "Early General Houses House,"(construction photo of Ruth Page House and completed house), Howard T. Fisher, Architect, from from The Prefabrication of Houses by Burnham Kelly, M.I.T. Press, New York, 1951, p. 128. Right: Interior of Ruth Page House, Winnetka, Illinois, 1933 (not in exhibit).
Left: General Houses House, Chicago World's Fair, 1933, Howard Fisher, Architect. Right: Exhibit House at Century of Progress, Chicago, 1934, Howard T. Fisher, Architect.
Howard Fisher's Ruth Page House, the first house designed under the banner of his General Houses Company, was the focus of his Museum of Modern Art exhibition contribution which included the model and three photos. (See two above).
A description of the World's Fair House from the Official Guide Book of the Fair, 1933 reads,
"General Houses, Inc., House
This is another all-steel, frameless house, with nothing made at the site except the concrete piers. The steel chassis was set in place, and the panels bolted on to form a complete shell; then the roof panels were bolted on, windows and doors installed, and the house was ready for paint. It has been estimated by the General Houses, Inc., that these simple units make possible an almost endless variety of designs, and that a week's time could suffice for the erection of a four or five-room house. Howard T. Fisher, of Chicago, was the architect. Cost, exclusive of equipment, $4,500.00. Furniture by Kroehler Furniture Company." (Official Guide, Book of the Fair 1933, "Beautiful Home of Today and Tomorrow," Century of Progress Administration, Chicago, 1933, p. 68).
For financial reasons Fuller had given up by 1933 of having the Dymaxion House exhibited at the Fair but still had hopes for his Dymaxion Car being on display. Noguchi, who had most likely seen Philip Johnson's spring 1933 exhibition "Work of Young Architects of the Middle West" at the Museum of Modern Art and thus knowing of her new home by Fisher, pleaded with Ruth Page,
“Induce Howard to help Fuller! Those with kindred interest should, in my opinion, work together, cheering each other on—philosophically, altruistic, selfish, those who lend their lives to adequate housing for the masses must cooperate or nothing results.”
("The Flicker of An Eyelid: Isamu Noguchi, Ruth Page and the Universe of Chicago" by Liesl Olson, Isamu Noguchi Archive).
Architectural Forum dedicated its July 1933 issue to the Chicago Century of Progress World's Fair with Harvey Wiley Corbett contributing the lead introductory article "The Significance of the Exposition." He perhaps had Fuller and his Dymaxion House in mind when he opined within his introductory remarks:
"...The Architectural Commission of a Century of Progress felt that an opportunity to show enclosed space for exposition purposes, in which the new and lighter materials of the immediate future became the basis of design, was an opportunity not to be overlooked if the title of this exposition had any significant meaning. A full-size working example carries more weight than diagrams, drawings, models and conversation." ("The Significance of the Exposition" by Harvey Wiley Corbett, Architectural Forum, July 1933, p. 1).
The Fair included buildings by Ely Jacques Kahn, Raymond Hood and Corbett from New York and articles by Frank Lloyd Wright and Buckminster Fuller who both had been excluded from participation for various reasons. Wright's predictably critical review "Another 'Pseudo'" was followed by Fuller's "Profit Control and Pseudo-Scientific" which negatively compared the impacts of both the current fair and Chicago's first World's Fair in 1893. (Wright and Fuller, Ibid., pp. 25-26. Not in Langmead. Sweeney No. 366.).
Building that were illustrated included Corbett's General Exhibits Group and House of Today, Raymond Hood's Electrical Group and Hall of Science Buildings, Ely Jacques Kahn's Home Planning Building and Kohler Building, Howard Fisher's General Houses House, and George Fred Keck's House of Tomorrow among many others.
Left: "Streamlines: Thoughts on a Dymaxion Car" by Christopher Morley, Saturday Review of Literature, March 24, 1934, p. 591. Right: "H. G. Wells with the Dymaxion Car," Saturday Review of Literature, June 2, 1934, front cover from Gorman, p. 64.
Fisher had previously been responsible for Fuller's May 1929 lecture at the Chicago City Club and perhaps, at the pleading of Isamu Noguchi, arranged for Fuller to exhibit his Dymaxion Car at the Chicago Fair alongside George Fred Keck and Lee Atwood's "Crystal House" in 1934. Atwood, along with Schweikher, was also part of Fuller's original 4D team that helped him design the original house. The intertwined involvement of Fisher, Keck, Schwiekher and Atwood almost guaranteed the inclusion of Fuller's Dymaxion Car alongside Keck and Atwood's Crystal House. (See earlier above and below).
Fuller's original Dymaxion car had a wooden body and was wrecked on its maiden voyage to Chicago in the fall of 1933. The second edition had an all-steel body and was being field-tested in Harvard Square in the spring of 1934 as Fuller was harboring high hopes for displaying it during the second year of the Fair. The Harvard Crimsom reported,
"The dymaxion, invented by Buckminster Fuller '17 and built by Phillip C. Pearson '18, has the appearance of an airplane without wings: it contains a Ford V-8 engine, and is supported by only three wheels, two in the front and one in the rear. The original dymaxion had a wooden body, and was wrecked in an accident on its maiden trip to Chicago. Its descendant, however, has an all steel body and cannot be smashed in, it weighs 3600 pounds, has a 182 inch wheelbase, and will turn in an 11 foot circle. One of the cars, which sell for $6500, was recently purchased by [the wife of] Leopold Stokowski, of the Philadelphia Symphony orchestra." ("Three-Wheeled "Dymaxion" Demonstrates on the Square," Harvard Crimsom, April 16, 1934. Author's note: Other sources credit Lee Atwood's largesse for Fuller exhibiting the Dymaxion Car alongside Keck's Crystal House.).
Left: Buckminster Fuller and his Dymaxion Car at the Chicago World's Fair next to George Fred Keck's Crystal Palace, 1934. Photographer unknown. Right: Crystal House, Keck and Keck, Architects with Fuller's Dymaxion Car in the garage, Chicago, 1934.
The Crystal House was Keck and Keck Project #183 in 1934.
This project was completed for the second year of the Chicago World's Fair, named
The Century of Progress. The Crystal House was built with glass walls suspended
within an external structural steel cage. Keck considered this building a
candidate for prefabricated construction and similar to Fuller's claims for the Dymaxion House, he estimated that the house could be
built for $3,500 each if production runs would exceed 10,000 units. The above right exterior photograph of the Crystal House shows the silhouette of Buckminster
Fuller's Dymaxion three wheeled automobile parked in the garage. Fuller later made claims that Chicago modern architects George Fred Keck and Howard Fisher had been inspired to start prefabricated housing projects of their own inspired by his earlier Dymaxion House. (Nevala-Lee, p. 116).
"Noguchi is credited with helping to design the Dymaxion Car and he also drove it. In February 1934, Noguchi borrowed the car for a drive with two friends, the actress Dorothy Hale and writer Clare Boothe Brokaw (later Luce). They drove to the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut for the premiere of "Four Saints and Three Acts," the controversial opera with an all-Black cast by Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson. Buckminster Fuller joined them there." (See Herrera, Listening to Stone, 138.).
Left: ""Dymaxion Houses: An Attitude," by Buckminster Fuller, Architectural Record, January 1934, p. 9. Right: Ibid., p. 10.
In an article obviously expanding on Buckminster Fuller's Structural Study Associates dominated November 1932 issue of Shelter, in January of 1934 SSA member A. Lawrence Kocher published fellow SSA member and assistant editor Ted Larson's article "New Housing Design and Construction Systems" which in essence detailed the present state of prefabricated housing in the United States illustrated by construction details of over twenty houses. The article led off with SSA leader Buckminster Fuller's "Dymaxion Houses," and also included many houses from the Chicago World's Fair including Architectural Record assistant editor Howard Fisher's General Houses, George Fred Keck's Fuller-inspired "House of Tomorrow" as well as Richard Neutra's "One-Plus-Two" Diatom House" which first appeared in the November 1932 issue of Die Form shown elsewhere herein. Kocher also included a 19-page spread on fellow SSA member Frederick Kiesler's "Space House." (See all below).
Left: "General Houses, Inc., Chicago, Howard T. Fisher, Architect, Ibid., pp. 18-19. Right: "Stran-Steel House, Chicago World's Fair," O'Dell and Rowland, Architects, Ibid., p. 14.
Left: "Low-Cost Farmhouse," by A. Lawrence Kocher & Albert Frey, Architects, Ibid., p. 30. Right: House of Tomorrow, Chicago World's Faier," George Fred Keck, Architect, Ibid., p, 29.
"One-Plus-Two" Diatom House, Richard J. Neutra, Architect, Ibid., p. 32. Right: "Week-End House," A. Lawrence Kocher & Albert Frey, Architects, Ibid., p. 34.
"Space House" by Frederick Kiesler, Architect, Ibid., p. 45. (Also appeared in the May 1932 issue of Shelter, Strum, p. 99).
In February Noguchi wrote to Ruth Page about her upcoming visit to New York reporting his heavy work load and asking her and husband Tom to stop in and see what he is doing. He also reported that Buckie stays with him while in New York. (Isamu Noguchi letter to Ruth Page, February 5, 1934 from Isamu Noguchi Archive).
Left: Modern Works of Art, 5th Anniversary of the Museum of Modern Art, November 20, 1934 to January 20, 1935. Right: "George Gershwin" by Isamu Noguchi, 1931 from Isamu Noguchi Archive.
Noguchi exhibited his portrait bust of George Gershwin in the exhibition commemorating the fifth anniversary of the Museum of Modern Art. On display along with Noguchi were the three Mexican muralists Rivera, Orozco ("Zapata") and Siqueiros ("Proletarian Victim"). (See below). Rivera's "The Rivals" was previously shown in his original one-man MOMA exhibition in 1930-31 while Orozco's "Zapata" was originally painted in California and brought to New York in 1930 by gallerist Alma Reed while Orozco was also painting murals in the New School for Social Research prior to its opening in January 1931. (For much more on Orozco and Siqueiros earlier time in Southern California see my "Richard Neutra and the California Art Club").
Second from left: "Proletarian Victim" by David Alfaro Siqueiros and on the right: "Zapata' by Jose Clemente Orozco, both on display with Diego Rivera's "Rivals" and Noguchi's portrait bust of George Gershwin, Fifth Anniversary of the Museum of Modern Art. (See two above left and right).
Exhibition Catalogue for Isamu Noguchi at the Marie Harriman Gallery in New York, January 29th to February 16th, 1935.
Noguchi had an exhibition at the
Marie Harriman Gallery in early 1935. Notable pieces were "Death", a portrait bust of Claire Boothe Brokaw, "Play Mountain," and and a "Monument to the Plow," one of three projects he had unsuccessfully submitted to the Public Works of Art Project, part of President Roosevelt's New Deal.
(See below for example and Herrera, p. 140.).
Left: "Death" by Isamu Noguchi, 1934, from Isamu Noguchi Archive. Right: Model of "Play Mountain," 1934, from Isamu Noguchi Archive.
Noguchi's early 1935 exhibit at the Marie Harriman Gallery was well-reviewed by New York Times art critic Edward Alden Jewell on January 31st. In the review Jewell made much of Noguchi's sculpture "Death" in the Harriman Gallery's first foray into the field of sculpture.
"... its debut into this field will probably be long remembered - if principally because the sole exhibitor, Isamu Noguchi, has audaciously essayed the portrayal of a lynching. ... There is a gallows and the writhing form is shown suspended by an actual rope around the neck. This rope drawn sickeningly taut by the weight of the lynched figure..."
Jewell went on to describe Noguchi's four models to public monuments including "Play Mountain" and "Monument to the Plow." He lauded Noguchi near the end of his lengthy review,
"He is a young sculptor of unusual artistic fertility and imagination, with a sincere respect for craftsmanship. The last few seasons have witnessed an increasing absorption, on Noguchi's part, in the bizarre and experimental." ("Noguchi Sculpture in Metal Exhibited: Grim Portrayal of Lynching Among Subjects at Marie Harriman Gallery, Models for Monuments," Edward Alden Jewell, New York Times, January 31, 1935).
Left: Helen Gahagan portrait bust by Isamu Noguchi, 1935. From Isamu Noguchi Archive. Right: Walter P. Douglas posing for Isamu Noguchi, Stendahl Gallery, 1935.
Noguchi happened to be briefly in Los Angeles during August 1935 while on his way to Mexico to again to reunite with Marion Greenwood and her sister Grace. His reason for the Los Angeles stopover was commissions to do busts of actress Helen Gahagan and Walter Douglas to make some money for his stay in Mexico. (See above left and right. ("Famous Sculptor Returns to This City of His Birth; Isamu Noguchi Pauses in His Search for a 'Community' to Model Portraits and Design a Swim Pool," by Arthur Millier, Los Angeles Times, September 1, 1935, p. A9).
Neutra likely heard of this sitting from Weston and invited Noguchi to design what would have become the first ever "kidney-shaped" swimming pool for film director Josef von Sternberg's home. A plaster model of the pool (see below right) was made in a temporary studio he set up in the inner court of the Stendahl Gallery while Noguchi was also working on the Gahagan and Douglas busts.
Left: Josef Von Sternberg House, 1935, Richard Neutra, Architect. Right: Swimming pool model designed for the Josef von Sternberg House by Isamu Noguchi, 1935. From the Isamu Noguchi Archive.
The pool design was such that on one side the water could flow down a ramp,
while another area would allow visitors to be completely dry and in the sun. A
third part of the pool would be deep enough for swimming. According to Noguchi
von Sternberg liked the design but Neutra decided not to use it.
(Noguchi's Imaginary Landscapes
by
Martin L. Friedman, p. 43). Though his pool was never built, a bronze
sculpture was cast as an example of the artist's inventive use of shape and
function. He often included the
bronze model in later
exhibitions. Noguchi's interest in making sculptures that were also useful
objects led him to his future designs of playground equipment, parks, and
plazas.
("Review of Art: Famous Sculptor Returns to This
City of His Birth: Isamu Noguchi Pauses in His Search for a 'Community' to
Model Portraits and Design a Swim Pool" by Arthur Millier, Los
Angeles Times, 1 September 1935).
About this same time Neutra also tried to include his friend Weston for a meal
at the bountiful Von Sternberg trough. The Noguchi pool design and the below
Weston letter to Ansel Adams indicate that Neutra was perhaps being challenged
by von Sternberg to come up with unique art objects to be woven into the fabric
of the house.
"Dear Ansel,
I have a proposition which calls for 5 x 40 ft.
photo-mural. I at once thought of you as the only one I knew who could
handle the technical ends and cooperate with me. But the architect wants to get
away from paper, wants them on aluminum or silver! What can we
do? There should be something worthwhile in this for both of us. Party has
plenty of money to spend. But has to be "shown." Any
suggestions? Write me air-mail. How can we land the order on paper?
or is metal a possibility? Keep this to yourself. Architect
Neutra. Home of von Sternberg. greetings,
Edward" (No date, ca. 1935. Courtesy of Esther McCoy biographer
Susan Morgan via the Edward Weston Papers at the University of Arizona's Center
for Creative Photography).
In a letter to Diego Rivera in 1936, at von Sternberg's request, Stendahl implored the artist to paint a mural "for a special price" on an exterior wall of the film director's new Neutra-designed estate. Like Noguchi's pool and Weston's photo-mural it did not come to pass. (Exhibitionist: Earl Stendahl, Art Dealer as Impresario by April Damman, Angel City Press, Los Angeles, 2011, pp. 171-2. Author's note: At the Stendahl Gallery Galka Scheyer organized a Kandinsky exhibition in February 1936 and a Jawlensky show the following November. From Galka Scheyer and the Blue Four Correspondence, 1924-1945, edited by Isabel Wunsche, Benteli, Berne, 2006, p. 231.).
Right after finishing the Gahagan and Douglas busts and von Sternberg
pool design in September 1935, Isamu left for Mexico City to visit the
Greenwoods in a car he had earlier purchased for the trip from his friend
Buckminster Fuller, carpooling as far as the Texas border with a destitute Romany Marie compatriot E. E. Cummings and his then girlfriend and erstwhile 1929 Noguchi portrait bust sitter Marion Morehouse (see below) who were on their way back to New York. (E. E. Cummings: A Biography by
Christopher Sawyer-Laucanno, p.
402 and "Noguchi in Mexico: International Theme for a
Working-Class Market," by James Oles, American Art, Summer 2001, p.
16).
Left: Marion Morehouse portrait bust by Isamu Noguchi, 1929. Isamu Noguvhi Archive. Right: Two Proposed Neutra Projects in 1935. From Isamu Noguchi, Index of Work, p. 8. Isamu Noguchi Archive.
Neutra and Noguchi collaborated on two unbuilt projects in 1935 (see above right) while the latter was artist-in-residence in the Stendahl Gallery Los Angeles. Besides the "Ramped Swimming Pool" for the Josef von Sternberg House the two discussed a "Recreation Area for a Texas Airplane Factory." (Author's note: Current research uncovered only two aircraft factories in operation in Texas in 1935, i.e., the Waco Aircraft Company and the Bell Aircraft Company founded in 1935 in Fort Worth. Neutra also designed a home for Pan Am pilot George Kraigher in Brownsville in 1936 and a housing complex named Avion Village in Grand Prairie, Texas in 1940-41, but neither project seems to have had any links to Noguchi.).
Left: "V.D.L. Research House, Los Angeles, 1934, Richard Neutra, Architect, Architectural Forum, November 1934. Right: "House for Galka Scheyer, Santa Monica Bay, Richard Neutra, Architect, Architectural Record, October 1935, pp. 237-7.
In October of 1935 Richard Neutra's recent Southern California work, including his own V.D.L. Research House, and houses for Galka Scheyer, William Beard, Ana Sten and others were on display at New York's Museum of Modern Art's "Modern Architecture in California" exhibition along with projects by R. M. Schindler and Kocher and Frey's Palm Springs Office and Apartment Building for Kocher's brother.
(See above and below for example. Author's note: See much more on this at my "Kocher, Neutra Frey.").
Left: Office and Apartment Building at Palm Springs by A. Lawrence Kocher and Albert Frey, Architects, Architectural Record, October 1935, pp. 268-275. Right: "Cellular Copper Bearing Steel House Built for William Beard, Altadena, California, Richard J. Neutra, Architect, Gregory Ain, Associate, Architectural Record, August, 1935, pp. 120-124. See much more about this exhibition at my "A. Lawrence Kocher, Architectural Record, Richard Neutra, R. M. Schindler, Frank Lloyd Wright, Albert Frey and the Evolution of Modern Architecture in New York and Southern California."
The New York exhibition took place a month after Noguchi had left Los Angeles for Mexico.
Left: "Abelardo Rodriguez Market, Mexico City, Antonio Munoz Garcia, Architect, Architectural Record, April 1937, pp. 52-53. Right: Marion Grenwood at work on her mural at the Abelardo Rodriguez Market, 1936. From esotericsurvey. The Greenwood sisters were working on at the behest of Diego Rivera at the Abelardo
L. Rodriguez Market. (See above). Through the largesse of Diego Rivera, with the help of Marion Greenwood, Noguchi was able to take over space on the second floor that had originally been designated for the sisters to paint. Here he created his History
as Seen From Mexico in 1936. (See below right). Noguchi's choice of tinted cement
and concrete for his three-dimensional sculptured mural was perhaps influenced
by Siqueiros' waterproof cement-based work in Los Angeles which he undoubtedly had viewed before leaving Los Angeles. (See more on this at my "Richard Neutra and the California Art Club.").
Left: Buckminster Fuller telegram to Isamu Noguchi explaining Einstein's E=MC2, 1936. From Buckminster Fuller: Starting With the Universe edited by K. Michael Hays and Dana Kelly, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2008, pl. 5. Right: "Cement," New Masses, September 15, 1936, p. 10.
Noguchi cabled a request to Fuller: "Please wire me rush Einstein's formula and explanation thereof." Fuller replied with the above left lengthy telegram which cost him ten dollars to send. Noguchi included E=MC2 in his mural. Francine Clow, then in the middle of a love triangle with Noguchi and Fuller, was relieved by Noguchi's request: "You cannot imagine what joy it gives me to have him ask for it" she wrote to Fuller. "I think its a sign." (Nevala-Lee, p. 159).
"Abelardo Rodriguez Market, Mexico City, Antonio Munoz Garcia, Architect, Architectural Record, April 1937, pp. 52-53. Right: "House for Cecil O'Gorman, San Angel, D. F., Juan O'Gorman, Architect, Ibid., pp. 64-65. Author's note: Article states that the house is located next to the house of Diego Rivera.
Left: Rendering of the Studio of Painter Diego Rivera, 1931, Juan O'Gorman, Architect. Right: Rendering of the House of Frida Kahlo, 1931, Juan O'Gorman, Architect.
Left: H. H. Robertson advertising featuring Richard Neutra's Beard House, Sweet's Catalog, 1936 from The Ideal of Total Environmental Control: Knud Lonberg-Holm, Buckminster Fuller and the SSA by Suzanne Strum, Routledge, New York, 2018, p. 163). Right: "Model for Dymaxion House Designed by Buckminster Fuller" in "Trends in Lighting" by Knud Lonberg-Holm, Architectural Record, October 1931, p. 282.
Fortuitously for Richard Neutra, fellow SSA members Knud Lonberg-Holm and Ted Larson were demoted from Architectural Record's editorial staff in 1936 to Sweet's Catalog based on the controversy surrounding their two co-authored texts which
labeled them as red suspects, advocates of the Soviet system. 1936's “Design for
Environmental Controls” and “The Technician on the Cultural Front” are effectively technological manifestos with affinities to Buckminster Fuller and their
former involvement in Buckminster Fuller's SSA and Shelter magazine. They approached design based on the
interrelation of invisible forces of energy beyond any tradition of architecture. These
articles formed the conceptual base for their later projects and offer a systems approach to design. Neutra was able to use his connections with Lonberg-Holm and Larson to enable the publication of his Beard House in the 1936 edition of Sweet's. (See above left). (Strum, Nexus Journal, Vol. 14, January 2012, pp. 35-52. Author's note: Lönberg-Holm’s articles for the Technical News and Research Section of Architectural Record included the following articles: “New Theatres in Europe” (May 1930: 490-496); “The Gasoline Filling and Service Station” (June 1930: 561-584); “Heating, Cooling and Ventilating the Theatre” (July 1930: 93-94); “The Week-End House” (August 1930: 175-192; “Glass” (October 1930: 327-358); “Recent Technical Developments; Reducing dead load, saving time and increasing control” (December 1930: 473-482); “Planning the Retail Store” (June 1931: 495-514); “Trends in Lighting” (October 1931: 279-302); “Technical Developments” (January 1932: 59-72); “City Planning, Survey of Detroit, Michigan with Otto Sen and S. Washizuka” (March 1933: 148-149)."
American Architect and Architecture, September 1936, front cover featuring Richard Neutra's prefabricated plywood house.
Editor Kenneth Stowell's September 1936 issue of American Architect and Architecture focused almost its entire issue on prefabricated housing and a rendering of Richard Neutra's Plywood Demonstration House on the cover.
"Two Studies in Recent Prefabrication," American Architect and Architecture, September 1936, pp. 23-27.
Richard Neutra placed himself in the prefabrication mix with Howard Fisher and Buckminster Fuller again with his model plywood house and his prize-winning Beard Residence both appearing in the September 1936 issue of American Architect and Architecture dedicated to the current status of prefabrication.
"The Super-Plywood model home (above left) is based on Mr. Neutra's second prize design in the General Electric Competition of 1935, and expresses the most advanced theories of prefabrication and mobility. The cellular steel unit William Beard House (above right) Gold Medal award in Better Homes in America Competition in 1935, is an admirable example of the complete correlation of function both internally, in the relation of parts and the circulation between them, and externally in relation to orientation and climatic requirements." (Ibid.).
Left: A-6. General Houses, Howard Fisher. Center: Diatom House, Richard Neutra. Right: Stockade House, Buckminster Fuller. All in American Architect and Architecture, September 1936, pp. 28-40.
The issue led with "Influences for and Against Prefabrication" by Eugene Raskin and was followed by "Two Studies in Prefabrication" by Richard Neutra featuring his prize-winning Plywood Demonstration and William Beard Houses. (See two above). Next came "Forty-Eight Systems of Prefabrication" by Raskin and magazine staff. The latter article included "A. Frame and Panel Construction," listing Howard Fisher's General Houses as A-6 and Neutra's Diatom House as A-27; "B. Block or Precast Construction" listing Neutra's V.D.L. (Van der Lleuw) House as B-40; and "C. Frameless (Cellular Steel, etc.) Construction" listing Buckminster Fuller's erstwhile Stockade System as C-48. (See above).
Left: The Evolving House, Volume III, Rational Design by Albert Farwell Bemis, Technology Press, Cambridge, 1936. Right: "Aluminaire" by A. Lawrene Kocher and Albert Frey, Ibid., pp. 336-7.
Around the same time as the July 1936 article in American
Architect and Architecture the above book The Evolving House, Volume
III, Rational Design was published. The treatise, the last of
three volumes by Albert Falwell Bemis, greatly expanded upon the
evolution of prefabrication in the housing industry and also included an
introduction by Albert Frey's partner A. Lawrence Kocher. As can be seen above
and below, the book included sections on Richard Neutra's Diatom and V.D.L.
Research Houses, Fuller's Dymaxion House, Kocher and Frey's Aluminaire House
and Howard Fisher's General Houses.
Left: Neutra V. D. L., Ibid., pp. 366-7. Right: Neutra Diatom, Ibid., pp. 482-3.
Left: General Houses by Howard Fisher, Ibid., pp. 434-5. Right: Dymaxion House by Buckminster Fuller, Ibid., pp. 400-401.
"Integrated Bathroom, Phelps-Dodge Bathroom Designed for Mass-Production," Architectural Record, January 1937, pp. 40-42.
Richard Neutra followed Fuller's progress in his bathroom development and in an early December letter to John Nicholas Brown (JNB) suggested using his "sensationally new 'one piece' copper bathroom." JNB knew Fuller from his Dymaxion House exhibit at the Harvard Society for Contemporary Art in 1929. The Browns visited Fuller and the Phelps-Dodge factory later that month and were quite impressed. Brown immediately ordered two units for the large guest room on the first floor. (Richard Neutra's Windshield House edited by Dietrich Neumann, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2001, pp. 48-9).
Neutra and the Browns couldn't help but notice Buckminster Fuller's Phelps-Dodge bathroom featured in the above January 1937 issue of Architectural Record with a photo of Fuller himself demonstrating the shower. The bathrooms were personally delivered by Fuller to the Windshield House job site on New York's Fishers Island in January 1938. (See below right).
Left: "The Phelps-Dodge Bathroom Unit, Buckminster Fuller, Designer," Survey Graphic, July 1937, p. 379. Right: Two Dymaxion Bathroom Units on a trailer being delivered to the job site of Richard Neutra's John Nicholas Brown House on Fisher's Island, New York in 1938. Buckminster Fuller at right. From The Dymaxion World of Buckminster Fuller by Richard Marks, Reinhold, New York, 1960, p. 91.
"An "integrated bathroom" only five feet square in
plan has been developed in the Phelps Dodge research laboratories by
Buckminster Fuller, the Dymaxion inventor, as an outlet for copper. The product
is to be marketed under the slogan, "a bathroom for every bedroom."
Completely prefabricated and self-contained, it has its own ventilating and its
own lighting systems. The copper fixtures are an integral part of the copper
floor and walls of the lower third or "splash sector." Upper walls
and ceiling are aluminum. The bathing chamber and lavatory-and-toilet compartment,
identical in shape, are so designed that the units can be carried through
ordinary doorways, assembled and quickly connected to the plumbing system. They
can be just as quickly removed elsewhere and fitted into any dwelling, old or
new. In short, the bathroom becomes a piece of furniture that the family takes
along on moving day." ("Packaged Houses," by SSA member C. Theodore Larson, Survey Graphic, July 1937, pp. 377-382). (See above left).
Left: John Nicholas Brown Residence, "Windshield House," Fisher's Island, New York, 1938. From Richard Neutra's Windshield House, edited by Dietrich Neumann, Harvard School of Design and Yale University Press, 2001, p. xxiv. Right: The model for Windshield prepared in April 1938 for an exhibition in Paris. Ibid., p. 53.
Neutra prepared a model for the Windshield House
(see above right) to be displayed in Paris in 1938 in the Museum of Modern Art's blockbuster "Exhibition of American Art, 1609-1938" on display from May 24th to July 13th. The model was shown in the exhibit's architecture section alongside models of Frank Lloyd Wright's Robie House, Howe and Lescaze's Philadelphia Savings Fund Society Building, Goodwin and Stone's model for the new Museum of Modern Art, and A. Lawrence Kocher's model for his plywood house which was also on display at the New York World's Fair the following year.
(Press Release: Museum of Modern Art, April 20, 1938. It is not clear whether Albert Frey assisted with Kocher's model and house design or Goodwin and Stone's model for the new museum before he returned to Palm Springs in 1939. For more on this see my "A. Lawrence Kocher, Architectural Record, Richard Neutra, R.M. Schindler, Frank Lloyd Wright, Albert Frey and the Evolution of ModernArchitecture in New York and Southern California").
Left: John Nicholas Brown Residence, Fisher's Island, New York, Richard Neutra, Architect, 1936, from Richard Neutra: Buildings and Projects, edited by Willy Boesiger, introduction by Sigfried Giedion, Editions Girsberger, 1950, p. 42. Right: "How America Builds, 1937-38," Architectural Record, January 1938, pp. 60-63.
Fuller inspired Neutra to design his own prefabricated bathroom which he also published in Kocher's Architectural Record in January of 1938 (above right) about the time Fuller was delivering his units to the job site on Fisher's Island as seen earlier above.
Left: Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera at the Tenayuca Pyramid, drawing by Richard Neutra, Mexico, 1937. Neutra Collection, Charles Young Research Library, UCLA. Right: "Una Tarde des Toros" by Richard Neutra, Mexico, 1937, Ibid.
Richard Neutra visited Mexico for the third time in 1937 visiting the Tenayuca Pyramid and granite serpent with Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo and also attended a bullfight. He met Diego and Frida's architect Juan O'Gorman and visited their studios on which he began design in 1930 as seen earlier above. It is almost certain that Neutra drew upon the mutual connection with Galka Scheyer and Frida Kahlo when he approached Diego Rivera and her evidenced by what he wrote to Dione of the meeting,
"...on the sunny street, I meet the immense, the colossus Rivera and soon afterwards his diminutive, black-haired doll, his wife. Later I meet O'Gorman..." The Riveras "drive me in their car through the endless metropolitan region...I see the Piazza del Duomo, old palazzi. Finally we drive to Guadaloupe where thousands of Indians are on a pilgrimage from December 12th to observe the yearly Fiesta of the Holy Virgin. ... On the way I see an excellent housing project as well as Aztec villages unchanged from a thousand years ago. Finally we reach the ... fantastic pyramid encircled by granite stone snakes. Night falls as we carefully climb higher and higher, not wanting to break our necks on this steep incline. Then a long drive back in the darkness. We have a good time together....The diminutive Mrs. Rivera lays her manicured hand on my knee or her elbow on my shoulder. (Richard Neutra in Mexico City to Dione Neutra in Los Angeles. n.d., Dione Neutra Papers. Hines, p. 189).
Left: MOMA Goes to Paris in 1938" by Caroline M. Riley, University of California Press, Oakland, 2023. Right: Entrance to the exhibition from MOMA Exhibition Archives.
As mentioned elsewhere herein Neutra's model of the John Nicholas Brown "Windshield House" was exhibited in MOMA's Three Centuries of American Art at the Musee du Jeu de Paume in Paris from May 24 through July 31, 1938. Also on display was Isamu Noguchi's terra cotta bust "Portrait of My Uncle" and Kocher & Frey's 1934 Palm Springs project among others. (See above. Noguchi on p. 106 and Neutra on p. 274, Table 5, item 10.).
Fuller's relationship with Claire Both Brokaw did not evolve to his liking but they remained friends and Brokaw later included Fuller in her Vanity Fair column's "Hall of Fame" and after her 1935 marriage to Henry Luce her largesse likely helped Fuller find a job as a technical advisor at Fortune Magazine by October of 1938. Shortly thereafter as Fuller was collaborating with Noguchi on the design of his 1938 sculpture Chassis Fountain for the Ford Pavilion at New York World's Fair when they attended a party at Noguchi's former muse Dorothy Hale's apartment. Hale ended her tragic life after the party by jumping out her sixteenth floor window across the street from Central Park South. Fuller attended Hale's funeral with Clare Boothe Luce, nee Brokaw, and in a note to a friend he expressed how he and Noguchi had been affected, "Dorothy has given us through brave love new clarity and significance of our kinship and its responsibilities." (Nevala-Lee, p. 168. See also "Dorothy Hale Dies in 16-Story Plunge," New York Times, October 22, 1938, p. 34).
"The Suicide of Dorothy Hale," by Frida Kahlo, 1938.
Ten days later Fuller and Luce attended a preview of an exhibit at the Julian Levy Gallery by Frida Kahlo which coincidentally happened to be her first ever exhibition. Luce took the opportunity to commission from Kahlo a commemorative portrait of Hale. When the portrait was delivered (see above) Luce almost fainted. In a series of images, it showed Hale standing on her balcony, falling through the air and lying in a pool of blood. Luce contemplated destroying the painting but instead asked Noguchi to paint out the part with her own name. (See above). (Nevala-Lee, p. 168).
Left: MacDougal Alley, 1936. Photo by Berenice Abbott. Courtesy Smithsonian Art Museum. Right: Isamu Noguchi Studio, MacDougal Alley. Date and photographer unknown. Isamu Noguchi Archive.
The spring of 1938 found Fuller exhibiting his Dymaxion Bathroom (below left) with Isamu Noguchi and his Radio Nurse (below right) in Noguchi's studio in Greenwich Village. Ruth Green Harris positively reviewed their efforts with a lengthy piece in the New York Times entitled "Art in Our Daily Lives: Esthetic Considerations Into Housing, Utilities and Other Fields." She wrote,
". ... When Buckminster Fuller cooperates with Buckminster Fuller, artist cooperates with engineer. This combination, so essential to successful designing, is rarely found operating within one man. When it is we may be provided with yet another definition og genius. Neither scientist nor artist is completely one or the other unless he is thoroughly both. ... Isamu Noguchi has designed something he calls a radio nurse, a sort of private radiotelephone to be carried from one room to another, keeping you in touch with all the sounds that issue from the nursery. As a matter of fact, I mistook the beautiful, head-shaped object for a piece of abstract sculpture. ... If only Mr. Fuller or Mr. Noguchi could be persuade to design a chair!' ("Art in Our Daily Lives: Esthetic Considerations That Reach Out Into Housing, Utilities and Other Fields," Ruth Green Harris, New York Times, May 1, 1938, p. 158).
Left: Dymaxion Bathroom designed by Buckminser Fuller, 1937. Right: Radio Nurse designed by Isamu Noguchi, 1937. From Isamu Noguchi Archive.
Left: "An Experimental Public School for the Los
Angeles Board of Education" by Richard J. Neutra, Architect, Shelter,
February 1938, front cover. Right: V. D. L. House, Los Angeles, Richard J.
Neutra, Architect, Shelter, March 1938, front cover.
Shelter editor Maxwell Levinson tried unsuccessfully to
resurrect the magazine in 1935 but briefly succeeded 1938-9. Neutra was listed on the masthead of Shelter's editorial
advisory board in its second configuration in the late 1930s, appearing on the
cover on its first two issues of same. In the March issue appeared "The
Architecture of Richard Neutra" with a Luckhaus cover photo of the VDL
Research House and many excellent perspectives, diagrams and plans of Neutra's
Rush City Reformed. The article also included individual residences (Lovell
Health House with 3 Luckhaus photos) and apartment houses (Landfair with 2
Luckhaus photos) and statistics. Also included were 4 Julius Shulman photos of
Neutra's Miller House in Palm Springs. The February issue included an
uncredited cover photo (Luckhaus?) of the Corona Avenue School in Bell. (See above left and right).
Nine Chains to the Moon by Buckminster Fuller, Lippincott, Philadelphia, 1938.
After years and many attempts Fuller finally succeeded in publishing Nine Chains to the Moon in the fall of 1938.
Left: Chassis Fountain, 1938, for the Ford Pavilion at the New York World's Fair. From the Isamu Noguchi Archive. Right: Art in Our Time, 10th Anniversary Exhibition, Museum of Modern Art, 1939.
Isamu Noguchi and Buckminster Fuller collaborated on the design of Chassis Fountain for the Ford Pavilion at the 1939 New York World's Fair. The same two were also included in MOMA's tenth anniversary "Art in Our Time" exhibition which was the opening exhibition in their new building designed by Philip L. Goodwin and Edward Durrell Stone in conjunction with the World's Fair. Richard Neutra and Diego Rivera were also included in the omnibus show.
Left: "Capital" by Isamu Noguchi, 1939. Art in Our Time, Museum of Modern Art, New York, May 10-September 30, 1939, No. 322. Right: "Miss Expanding Universe" by Isamu Noguchi, Ibid., No 323.
Noguchi was represented by two pieces of sculpture, his recently completed "Capital" and 1932's "Miss Expanding Universe" modeled after Chicago dancer Ruth Page and named by Buckminster Fuller.
Left: "Model for a Dymaxion House" by Buckminster Fuller, 1927. Art in Our Time, Museum of Modern Art, New York, May 10-September 30, 1939, No. 307. Right: "One-piece (Dymaxion) Bathroom" by Buckminster Fuller, 1926-38, Ibid., No. 334.
Fuller also had two pieces on display with a model of his Dymaxion House and his "One-Piece" (Dymaxion) Bathroom which was also exhibited in Noguchi's Greenwich Village studio the previous year and installed in Richard Neutra's house designed for John Nicholas Brown on Fisher's Island in New York in 1937.
Left: "Superplywood Model House" by Richard J. Neutra, No. 303, Art in Our Time, Museum of Modern Art, New York, May 10-September 30, 1939. Right: "Fiesta in Tehauntepec" by Diego Rivera, 1928. Art in Our Time, Ibid., No. 151.
Neutra's Superplywood Model House exhibited Dymaxion elements of prefabrication by being quickly disassembled at it's original location at the California House & Garden Exhibition in Los Angeles and re-erected in a new location in Brentwood after being raffled off to it's new owner at the end of the House and Garden Exhibition.
(See above left). (See much more on this in my "Julius Shulman's First Published Architectural Photograph:
Richard Neutra's 1936 Plywood Demonstration House").
Diego Rivera was also included in
Art in Our Time with his "Fiesta in Tehauntepec" which was exhibited previously in his first one-man show at MOMA from December 22, 1931 to January 27, 1932 under the title "Fiesta Tehauna."
(See above right). (For much on Diego and Frida's stay in San Francisco in 1930-31 see my "Schindler-Scheyer-Eaton-Ain" and during the Golden Gate Exposition in 1939-40 see my "Packard Family Architectural Connections."
Architectural Forum, September 1942.
The September 1942 issue of Architectural Forum featured "The New House, 194X" a compendium of 32 examples of prefabricated post-war houses for future post-war consideration. The article led with,
"MEMO TO: Designers of the House of 194x , FROM: THE FORUM'S
Editors
The following is a compilation of various ideas, theories and schemes for
the house of the future. It makes no pretense of being all-inclusive but does
represent our thinking about some of the problems the postwar designer must
solve. As such, it may be valuable in suggesting new avenues of approach. The
various ideas are grouped under five headings: "Planning, "
"Kitchen-Work-Center," "Bathrooms," "Storage" and
"Living Rooms."
"No. 15, Diatalum Dwellings" by Richard Neutra. Architectural Forum, September 1942, pp. 108-111.
The article featured a four-page spread by Richard Neutra which included the fourth variation of his as yet unbuilt Diatom House first inspired by Buckminster Fuller in 1931. Further, it also included a rendering and floorplan for a factory to manufacture an estimated fifty different diatomaceous earth-based panels needed for the final construction of a variety of those houses. Building upon Fuller, Neutra laid out in the article a fairly well-detailed process for panel manufacture by using various levels of steam pressure and hot air dehydration. Examples of work by former Neutra apprentices Harwell Hamilton Harris and Raphael Soriano were also included.
No. 22, New Architectural Elements" by Albert Frey and John Porter Clark, Ibid., pp. 122-127.
The same article also included examples by A. Lawrence Kocher's erstwhile partner and Buckminster Fuller SSA member Albert Frey and his new Palm Springs partner John Porter Clark. The above two houses were built for each architect after Frey returned to Palm Springs in 1939.
(See much more on Frey and Neutra in my "Kocher, Neutra, Frey").
Left: Buckminster Fuller (second from top) in "The Prefabricated House" in Architectural Forum, December 1942, p. 49. Right: Buckminster Fuller and Richard Neutra in "The Prefabricated House, Ides, The Stimulus to Change," Architectural Forum, January 1943, p. 54.
Buckminster Fuller and Richard Neutra were respected voices
in the field of prefabrication throughout the 1930s and early 1940s.
Architectural Forum produced a six-part series in from December 1942 through March 1943 that featured the two
designers as can be seen above and below.
Left: Mast Houses, Dymaxion House by Buckminster Fuller in "The Prefabricated House", Architectural Record, January 1943, p. 55. Right: Dymaxion Bathroom by Buckminster Fuller, Ibid., p. 63.
Fuller first conceived of what became known as the Dymaxion House in 1928 when he and a group of architecture students including Lee Atwood and Paul Schweikher developed the first iteration of the 4D model. The idea was first published the following year as mentioned earlier above. Refinements of the model have been frequently published and exhibited ever since, the above being the latest.
Left: Richard Neutra's One-Plus-Two Diatom House, 1931 in "The Prefabricated House", Architectural Record, January 1943, p. 57. Right: Moto Unit, Fuller Bathroom, Ibid., p. 64.
Richard Neutra first became exposed to, and fascinated by, the Dymaxion mast hung house design concept when he first met Fuller in New York early 1931 and first published his own concept of the design in Germany's
Die Form in November 1932, concurrent with his appearance in Fuller's last issue of
Shelter magazine the same month. As mentioned earlier Neutra also installed two of Fuller's Dymaxion Bathrooms seen above right in his Windshield House for John Nicholas Brown on New York's Fisher Island in 1938.
Left: "The Prefabricated House IV: Steel Frame" Lovell House by Richard Neutra, 1929 in Architectural Forum, March 1943, p. 74. Right: Von Sternberg House by Richard Neutra, 1935, Ibid., p. 79.
Richard Neutra's revolutionary use of steel frames in residential housing was featured in the March 1943 issue dedicated to steel prefabrication. His iconic Lovell Health House of 1929, prize-winning Beard House of 1935 and Von Sternberg House, also of 1935 were singled out for prefabrication recognition. Neutra's more conventional Nesbitt House was also featured in a six-page spread in a separate article "Houses" in the same issue.
Afterword:
My other article with Buckminster Fuller:
My other articles with Diego Rivera:
("The House of the Future," by Theodore Morrison, House Beautiful, September 1929, pp. 292-3, 324, 326, 328, 330). 
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Left: A-6. General Houses, Howard Fisher. Center: Diatom House, Richard Neutra. Right: Stockade House, Buckminster Fuller. All in American Architect and Architecture, September 1936, pp. 28-40. 
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