George E. Thomas - Frank Furness: Architecture in the Age of the Great Machines

ARCHITECTURE IN THE AGE OF THE GREAT MACHINES

GEORGE E. THOMAS

FOREWORD BY ALAN HESS

A volume in the Haney Foundation Series, established in 1961 with the generous support of Dr. John Louis Haney.

Publication of this book has been aided by a grant from the Wyeth Foundation for American Art Publication Fund of the College Art Association.

Copyright 2018 University of Pennsylvania Press

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher.

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University of Pennsylvania Press

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 191044112

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Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Thomas, George E., author. | Hess, Alan, writer of foreword.

Title: Frank Furness : architecture in the age of the great machines / George E.Thomas ; foreword by Alan Hess.

Other titles: Haney Foundation series.

Description: 1st edition. | Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2018] | Series: Haney Foundation series | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017033925 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4952-1 (hardcover : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Furness, Frank, 18391912. | ArchitectureUnited StatesHistory19th century. | ArchitectureUnited StatesHistory20th century. | ArchitecturePennsylvaniaPhiladelphia.

Classification: LCC NA737.F84 T49 2018 | DDC 720.973/09034dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017033925

ALAN HESS

As an architectural historian of the American West, I have always been drawn to the exuberance of the regions modern designs that hang from poles, jut out from cliffs, border great highways, and disrupt the narrative of modern architecture as it has been written since the Museum of Modern Arts first exhibit on the International Style in 1932. The West was a region of tremendous growth and innovation in the twentieth century, just as, in the decades following the Civil War, the East had been. It was there, mostly east of the Mississippi River in the realm of the Pennsylvania Railroad, that Frank Furness helped lay the foundation that shapes modern American architecture as we know it today.

What does Frank Furness still mean to us? What were the circumstances that allowed him to see and creatively interpret, free of conventional biases, the forces at work in his day? How did similar approaches devised by other, later architects inspire significant modern architecture after him, even as his own work was largely ignored or misunderstood in the high art and architecture histories? The usual story historians tell about the birth of modern architecture sidetracked Frank Furness long ago. How could they have mistaken such a pivotal figure as a mere curiosity?

Furness grew his modernism not from speculative theories or blue-sky philosophy but from life as the industrial age was creating it all around him. His modern approach was just as much about technical innovations in engineering and construction as it was about the way modern factories and their products were reinventing the lives of people at all levels of society. Baldwin Locomotive Works thousands of steam engines, manufactured in Philadelphia, and the Pennsylvania Railroad, headquartered and created in Philadelphia, tied the expansive nation together in a way that transformed both corporate commerce and family vacations. A thriving and democratic American economy was creating wealth, enlarging cities, and creating leisure time. Some of the most influential and culturally transformative companies of his daythe Apple, Microsoft, and Google of those timeswere in Philadelphia, and their leaders were Furnesss clients. Independent of history and disinterested in European fashion, Furnesss Philadelphia was still the spiritual home of Ben Franklin, and quite willing to overthrow old traditions, fashions, or theories for a good reason. This was the modernity that Furness captured in his new architecture.

That pragmatic, reality-based spirit would never disappear from the course of modernism, especially in America; but like Furnesss career, it wasnt usually reported in the standard histories. The legions of critics and historians documenting the rise of the Bauhaus in Europe in the 1920s favored the European tradition of high art culture wherein academic theory had to underpin any architecture that was to be considered seriously. By the time New Yorks Museum of Modern Art spotlighted modern architectures achievements in the 1932 International Style exhibit, the groundwork had been laid for the story of modernism as the province of an elite avant-garde. Even if these historians had heard of Furness (perhaps from reading the memoirs of Louis Sullivan, his one-time employee), his significance was not recognized. Ensconced in New York, Paris, or London, they were unprepared to see how modern life, in all its phases, had developed in unheralded Philadelphia and how its industrial design, technologies, and values had shaped Furnesss designs. Reflecting the multiplying power of the commercial economy, the raw power of technology, and the desires and needs of the popular audience, Furness generated forms and solutions that would usually rile the critics as crude, exaggerated, and (from their educated perspective) tasteless. Later critics would have a similar response.

When modernist historians began to look back to find the roots of modernism, Furness appeared to be a fussy historicist Victorianexactly what modern architecture was meant to overthrow. George Thomass text correctly identifies Furness as the very embodiment of his modern times. He drew upon the pistons, the raw combination of forms and functions of locomotive designs, the factory skylights, the towering and emblematic smokestacks, and the energetic commercial districts that were as much a part of the Age of Furness as columns and pediments were part of the Age of Pericles.

Furnesss approach, incorporating the new materials and the new technologies of his day and making forms to meet specific purposes, would be repeated again and again in the actual course of modern architectureas it was built and lived in, not just as it was reported in history books and journalsreflecting the symbiotic relationship between modern architecture and modern society that persisted through the next century. The most remarkable results that appeared in commercial buildings and resorts would rarely be noticed, or praised, by critics and historians following the mainstream narrative. They would often be controversial. Yet they are essential to modernism.

Furnesss impact on two of his employees, Louis Sullivan and William Price, demonstrated the immediate revolutionary effect of the way he drew on a real, rather than a theoretically idealized, modern life. Sullivan gave shape to the modern office building, a practical architectural tool that improved commerce by combining new steel frame and elevator technologies to create appealing efficiencies and densities. Like Furness, Sullivan saw an artistic expression in this new way of life. Will Price responded to the way Philadelphias modern industrial economy created wealth and leisure time for a broad cross section of the public by designing magnificent resorts in Atlantic City, where his Traymore Hotel (19141915) unleashed the verticality and ahistoricism of so-called American Vertical Style, which Prices firm called the modern style.