Assault on the ecole: Student campaigns against the beaux arts, 1925-1950

Journal of Architectural Education

Volumn 53, Issue 3, 2000, Pages 159-166

  Littmann, William ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 61049198070     PISSN: 10464883     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1162/104648800564554     Document Type: Review

References (54)

1. For an introduction to the interwar period in American architectural education, see Turpin Bannister, ed., The Architect at Mid-Century (New York: Reinhold Publishing Corp., 1954)
2. Discussions of architectural education in America in the interwar period often slight the important role of students in changing traditional pedagogy. However, two articles that do address students are: Marta Gutman and Richard Plunz, "Anatomy of Insurrection," in Richard Oliver, ed., The Making of an Architect, 1881-1981, Columbia University in the City of New York (New York: Rizzoli, 1981), pp. 183-210
3. William Jordy, "The Aftermath of the Bauhaus in America: Gropius, Mies, and Breuer," in Donald Fleming and Bernard Bailyn, eds., The Intellectual Migration: Europe and America, 1930-1960 (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1969), pp. 493-496
4. On the creation of the architecture program at the University of California, see Sally Woodbridge, En Charette/On Deadline: An Architectural History of North Gate Hall, University of California, Berkeley (Berkeley, CA: Graduate School of Journalism, 1993)
5. Joan Draper, "The Ecole des Beaux-Arts and the Architectural Profession in the United States: The Case of John Galen Howard," in Spiro Kostof, ed., The Architect: Chapters in the History of the Profession (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), pp. 209-234
6. Gwendolyn Wright, "History for Architects," in Wright and Janet Parks, eds., The History of History in American Schools of Architecture, 1865-1975 (New York: Princeton Architectural Press; Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture, 1990), pp. 23-26
7. Vernon DeMars, A Life in Architecture: Indian Dancing, Migrant Housing, Telesis, Design for Urban Living, Theater, Teaching (Berkeley, CA: University of California Regional Oral History Office, Bancroft Library, Berkeley, CA, 1992), pp. 51-65
8. Joan Draper, "John Galen Howard," JAE 33 (Nov. 1979): 30-35
9. Warren Perry describes his career and life at the architecture school in Julia Morgan, Architectural History (Berkeley, CA: University of California Regional Oral History Office, Bancroft Library, Berkeley, CA, 1976), pp. 187b-225
10. Also on Perry's life, see Roy Starbird, telephone conversation with author, 4 Aug. 1995; DeMars, Life in Architecture, pp. 51-63
11. Descriptions of life at the architecture department in this period can be found in DeMars, Life in Architecture, pp. 48-59; as well as DeMars, interview with author, Oakland, CA, 28 Mar. 1993
12. and Woodbridge, En Charette/On Deadline
13. Warren Perry, "The School of Architecture at Berkeley Has Completed Its Twenty-Second Year," The Journal of the State Association of California Architects, Southern Section (Aug. 9, 1935): 19-20
14. Robert Roycroft, telephone conversation with author, 7 Sept. 1995; DeMars, interview
15. DeMars, Life in Architecture, p. 51
16. Jordy, "The Aftermath of the Bauhaus," pp. 493-496
17. Rosemarie Haag Bletter, "Modernism Rears Its Head - The Twenties and Thirties," in Oliver, Making of an Architect, pp. 108-110
18. and Robert Ratcliff, The Ratcliff Architects, in Berkeley Since 1909 (Berkeley: University of California Regional Oral History Office, Bancroft Library, Berkeley, CA, 1990), pp. 83-101
19. T. J. Kent, interview by author, Inverness, California, 13 July 1995; DeMars, interview
20. Also see Roger Montgomery, "Mass Producing Bay Area Architecture," in Sally Woodbridge, ed., Bay Area Houses (Salt Lake City, UT: Peregrine Smith Books, 1988), pp. 229-238
21. On declining standards of living for college students in Berkeley and throughout the nation, see David O. Levine, The American College and the Culture of Aspiration, 1915-1940 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986), pp. 185-209
22. Verne Stadtman, The University of California, 1868-1968 (New York: McGraw Hill, 1970), pp. 289-298
23. Mongomery, "Mass Producing," pp. 231-236
24. On the Farm Security Administration, see Greg Hise, Magnetic Los Angeles: Planning the Twentieth-Century Metropolis (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), pp. 86-116
25. Ratcliff, Ratcliff Architects, p. 100
26. On Wurster and Bauer's role in educating students about modernism, see Kent, interview; Roger Montgomery, "William Wilson Wurster and the College of Environmental Design C.E.D. News 13 (fall 1994): 5-6
27. Richard Peters, "W. W. Wurster," Journal of Architectural Education 33 (Nov. 1979): 36-41
28. On this period in collegiate education, see Robert Cohen, When the Old Left Was Young: Student Radicals and America's First Mass Student Movement, 1929-1941 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993)
29. Eileen Eagan, Class, Culture, and the Classroom: The Student Peace Movement of the 1930s (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1981)
30. Seymour Lipset, Rebellion in the University (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1976), pp. 159-160
31. Eagan, Class, Culture, and the Classroom, pp. 15-47
32. Levine, American College, pp. 185-209
33. Lipset, Rebellion in the University, pp. 159-183
34. Warren Perry to Howard Moise, 11 Sept. 1940, Warren Charles Perry Papers, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (hereafter cited as Perry Papers)
35. Kent, interview; Perry to Robert Sproul, 19 Feb. 1949, Perry Papers
36. New Design 5 (3 Oct. 1939) and 7 (22 Nov. 1939), President's Files
37. On the student press activity, see Stadtman, University of California, pp. 285-287
38. Bletter, "Modernism Rears Its Head," p. 112
39. George Herbert Gray, "The Schools and the New Architecture," The Octagon 5 (Feb. 1933): 10
40. Trips to these institutions were described in The New Design 5 (3 Oct. 1939). It should be noted that several schools moved away from Ecole-based methods before 1930. The University of Oregon abandoned its Ecole-influenced curriculum shortly after the First World War and attempted to establish a noncompetitive atmosphere at the school in which students could work at their own pace. Other programs focused on giving students practical experience with construction and the nature of materials. Second-year students at the University of Cincinnati, for example, alternated on successive months between fieldwork and academic training. On new approaches to design education in the interwar period, see Bannister, Architect at Mid-Century, pp. 102-109
41. Wright, "History for Architects," pp. 23-35
42. New York Times, 7 Apr. 1932
43. Columbia Spectator, 5 Apr.-8 Apr. 1932
44. Joseph Esherick, interview with author, San Francisco, CA, 12 April 1997
45. Ann Strong and George Thomas, The Book of the School: 100 Years: The Graduate School of Fine Arts of the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania, 1990) pp. 97-107 and 131-135
46. Joseph Esherick, "Architectural Education in the Thirties and Seventies," in Kostof, Architect, pp. 238-279. Esherick is quoted on p. 273
47. The leading architects of the modern movement wrote Sproul in support of Chermayeff, including Gropius, Hudnut, Neutra, Mumford, and Lescaze. Letters from outside architects to Sproul about Chermayeff and the department are in the President's Files
48. On the possible hiring of Wurster by the University of California, see Sproul to Deutsch, 12 Apr. 1944; Wurster to Sproul, 3 Nov. 1943, President's Files; William Wurster College of Environmental Design, University of California, Campus Planning and Architectural Practice (Berkeley, CA: Regional Cultural History Project, University of California, 1964), pp. 134-140
49. Starbird, interview. Enrollment figures for the Berkeley program are from Bannister, Architect at Mid-Century, table 56
50. Perry to Sproul, 30 Aug. 1948, President's Files
51. Perry to Sproul, 30 Nov. 1949, President's Files
52. On the department after 1950, see Peters, "W. W. Wurster," pp. 36-41
53. Montgomery, "William Wilson Wurster," pp. 5-6
54. Dell Upton, "Architectural History or Landscape History?" JAE 44 (August 1991): 195-198