July 2010 » book review

Enduring Legacy

Julius Shulman: Chicago Mid-Century Modernism
by Gary Gand
Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., New York, NY; 2010
208 pages; hardcover; 127 color and 29 b&w illustrations; $60
ISBN 978-0-8478-3287-3

Reviewed by Eve M. Kahn

The second generation of Modernists, the successors to the hardcore humorless dogmatists like Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius, has lived into their 90s and beyond. They kept steadily creating and giving interviews: think of Charlotte Perriand (1903-1999), Viktor Schreckengost (1906-2008) and Eva Zeisel, who's still designing at age 103. (Personal note: I've known Eva for two decades, and whenever I visit her Manhattan apartment, I leaf through her datebook to marvel at how many visits she's had from journalists and manufacturers checking out her latest prototypes for housewares and furniture; "The Playful Search for Beauty" was the title of one of several recent traveling retrospectives of her work.)

The photographer Julius Shulman (1910-2009) likewise spent his career looking for Modernism's liveliest sides. He promoted the warmer materials and looser forms, and played up how well glass-walled buildings flow into the landscape by day and glow enticingly at night. Based in Los Angeles, he was hired to flatter architecture by 20th-century powerhouses including Frank Lloyd Wright, Eero Saarinen and John Lautner. In the 21st century, book publishers have mined his archive again and again and commissioned new photography. For Julius Shulman: Chicago Mid-Century Modernism, Shulman and an entourage spent two weeks trolling the suburbs from 9 a.m. until dusk. They were accompanied by author Gary Gand, a musician, Modernist homeowner and activist who helped found the preservation group Chicago Bauhaus & Beyond.

During the photo shoots, Gand writes, "Much of our time was spent lighting the homes to achieve the explosive interior views from outdoors that are a Shulman trademark. I can't say enough about trimming trees, tying back branches, and waiting for the sun to come around to the exact spot where Julius envisioned it."

Despite the book's sweeping title, perhaps meant to appeal to collectors in the still-thriving market for mid-century furniture, it only covers suburban houses. Its 15 case histories, built between 1937 and 1968, come with half-a-dozen images apiece and are organized by architect. The names are as bold-face as Bertrand Goldberg, known for Chicago's corncob Marina City towers, and Harry Weese. Six of the houses profiled are the architects' work for their own families.

Shulman's photos, as Gand puts it, excel at "removing the cold, hard technical side of architecture" and making viewers think, "I could live there." The photographer's angles and lighting and Gand's text also reveal how well the houses suit Chicago's climate extremes. Brick and stone nooks maintain steady temperatures year-round, and vertical louver bands between wide windowpanes can vent summer heat. Even traditionalist diehards may find themselves admiring the best of Chicago's Modernism. Unpainted redwood siding has mellowed gracefully, exposed wood beams and rivets gleam on peaked ceilings, and concrete cantilevers on pipe columns form shady porches. The staircase ideas alone are worth studying. Architect Edward Dart ran walnut handrails along a whitewashed helical spiral, and Ralph Rapson punctured porthole-inspired round holes into the risers at a house with a nautical theme extending to sailcloth balcony railings and a submarine engine in the basement powering the HVAC.

Industrial-strength engineering like that submarine engine recurs throughout the houses. Gand points out reinforced concrete columns, steel lintels and cylindrical smokestacks. These specs, however, have sometimes turned out less practical and durable than they must have seemed on the drafting boards. Gand describes owners tearing out pipes embedded in concrete floors, struggling to find replacements for Rapson's windowpanes over 10 ft. wide, and dealing with leaks in Goldberg's "shallow rooftop pools for evaporative cooling." The homeowners, like office workers required to coordinate window treatments in glassy Modernist skyscrapers, also have to worry about public appearances. "There's no place to be messy," report the owners of a 1964 glass-and-gravel box that H. P. Davis Rockwell designed for himself.

Although Gand does supply much fascinating detail about technology and user-friendliness, he too often lapses into realtor-speak about houses' "very nice features" or opportunities for "an easy cosmopolitan lifestyle." Gand also lets owners and architects ramble about their "great place to live" or "abundant storage and elegant spaces in which to display cherished interior décor."

The editing seems to have been so rushed that typos crept into the proper names: John Johansen becomes Johannson, Marianne Willisch becomes Maryanne, and László Moholy-Nagy becomes Lázló. Worse, entire passages repeat in descriptions of designs and architects' careers. Not to belabor the point, but this exact sentence about the firm Keck and Keck appears on pages 89 and 100: "While some modernists focused on their own personal vision, the Kecks focused on modern solutions that best served their clients' needs."

Gand is one of the homeowners profiled in the book; while helping run Chicago Bauhaus, he and his wife Joan have devoted two decades to restoring a 1955 Keck glass-and-brick box deep in woodlands. Shulman's photos pay deserved tribute to the couple's period furnishings by the Eameses, George Nelson, Isamu Noguchi and Alvar Aalto, among other luminaries, and bright-colored Italian glass vases displayed on glass shelves along glass walls.

Gand and his fellow activists have made laudable efforts and investments in keeping alive the legacies of creative, underappreciated architects. They have let the public tour their homes and defended endangered landmarks in other towns. Gand clearly knows his material, and knows people who know more. With a little more gestating and scholarly input, the book's prose would have lived up to Shulman's rhapsodic, late-in-life photographs.  

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