Miller - Heroic Architect

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The Art Institute of Chicago

Burnham, Sullivan, Roark, and the Myth of the Heroic ArchitectAuthor(s): Ross MillerReviewed work(s):Source: Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies, Vol. 13, No. 2 (1988), pp. 86-95Published by: The Art Institute of ChicagoStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4115893 .

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Bumrnham, Sullivan, R o a r k ,a n d t h e M y t h o f t h e H e r o i c ArchitectR 0 S S M I L L E R, University of Connecticut

HOWARD ROARK, as played by Gary Cooper(see fig. 1) in the movie version of The Foun-tainhead, epitomized the myth of the architecturalhero.' Tall,handsome, and poetic, he more than person-ified Ayn Rand's protagonist; in affect and pose,Cooper-as-Roark embodied the way a professionwished to be known. Rand's novel provided an oftenless-than-glamorous business with a kitsch identity thatarchitectshad fantasized but were too pious or self-con-scious to assert so unapologetically. Since the time ofDaniel Burnham (1846-1912), this popular identity hadgrown closer and closer to the "professional" personathat architects spoke of in the privacy of their clubs oroffices. While visionaries like Louis Sullivan(1856-1924)and Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) were thought to beRand'smodels for Roark, it was Daniel Burnham whosecareer and attitude toward the profession completed a

FIGURE. Gary Cooperas architectHowardRoark n the 1949movie "TheFountainhead,"rom the book by AynRand. The character f Roarkepitomizesthe "myth"of the heroic architect-theentrepreneurialisionary. Photo: courtesyof the author)

century-long process of myth-making that put the archi-tect at the center of critical and social attention. Theuneasy mix of petulance and solid entrepreneurial savvyin Howard Roark's character was an acknowledgment ofBurnham's role in creating an enduring professionalidentity. Burnham combined the brilliance of a visionarywith a businessman's will to get things done; Burnhamappropriated the visionary heroic mode-as first ex-pressed by Thomas Jefferson (and later by Sullivan)-and grafted it onto the dominant business ethic of theday. In doing so, he revised the stance of heroic architec-ture without abandoning its seductive power to persuadeclients and provide a positive image.Burnham ended a long-standing confusion over whatarchitects should be that began a century earlier withJefferson's and Benjamin Latrobe'sdebate over architec-ture'sproper role.2 At that time, the question was asked:Were American architects artists, tradesmen, or busi-nessmen? Anyone, it seemed, including builders, carpen-ters, and bricklayers, could claim the title "architect."The architect continued to excite the interest of writ-ers and critics. To the Concord intellectuals, he repre-sented a particularly American breed of artist.3Praisedfor his technical skills-primarily the ability to build-and motivated by an interest in beauty, the American

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An architect needs clients, but he doesnot subordinate his work to theirwishes. They need him, but they do notorder a house just to give him a com-mission .... An architect requires agreat many men to erect his building.But he does not ask them to vote on hisdesign. What he does with them is hisindividual product and his individualproperty. This is the only pattern forproper cooperation among men. Thefirst right on earth is the right of theego.Howard Roark inThe Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand

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architect seemed to be ideally suited to meet the materialneeds of a developing country. Lacking the frequent phi-listinism of those who actually settled the nation, yetalso residing outside the airy precincts of the Europeancourt or the revolutionary bohemianism of the garret,the architect was the nation's "hands-on" artist, creatingbeautiful objects-like clipper ships and balloon-framehouses-out of necessity and not out of some high-blown theory. He was an artist in the rough, as in WaltWhitman's "Song of Myself."4The American architect'smodern phase began with this essentially romantic defi-nition by outsiders of who and what he was.Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay "The AmericanScholar" provided the theoretical basis that allowed ar-chitects to be viewed as more than a servant class. Origi-nally delivered as an address to Harvard'sPhi Beta Kap-pa Society in the summer of 1837, the essay suggests thatthe audience of "men thinking" should reject booklearning and the pomposities of the lectern and pulpit.This process, said Emerson, begins by first turning awayfrom received wisdom and foreign influences; the Amer-ican scholar must learn through experience to combinethought and action in the making of art.Henry David Thoreau later argued in Walden for theauthentic over the "stylish." "Much it concerns a man,forsooth, how a few sticks are slanted over him or underhim, and what colors are daubed upon his box. It wouldsignify somewhat, if, in any earnest sense, he slantedthem and daubed it; but the spirit having departedout ofthe tenant, it is of a piece with constructing his owncoffin-the architecture of the grave. . . ."5While Emer-son exhorted architects as "American scholars" to re-make the land, Thoreau savaged them by remindingthem of their vapidity. Between the ideal and the repri-mand lay something important to an inchoate profes-sion: architects in America were for the first time takenseriously.The artist Horatio Greenough (1805-1852) adaptedEmerson's ideas in the form of a sharp critique of currentarchitecturalpractices and developed a useful doctrine ofhis own. To distinguish between an indigenous nationalarchitecture and one imported wholesale from Europe,he argued-in the same language Sullivan would use atthe century's end-that in America form should followfunction. He maintained that America's design, as withall great design, would follow inductively from actualconditions and not from yellowed manuals of style. Thenineteenth-century art critic James Jackson Jarves wasnot so hopeful. He declared, "Strictly speaking we have88

no architecture. . . . The one intense, barrenfact whichstares us fixedly in the face is, that, were we annihilatedtomorrow, nothing could be learned of us, as a dis-tinctive race, from our architecture."'6The engineerCalvertVaux(1824-1895) put the criticismin the form ofa question: "There are the buildings, but where is thearchitecture?"7The answer would not come from criticsviewing the situation from the outside but from archi-tects attempting to answer the question for themselves.Their answers were wedded to the definition and organi-zation of their profession. From the beginning, this pro-fessional development created a conflict between whatarchitects were and how they ideally wished to be seen.By mid-century, the economics of development hadchanged sufficiently for architects to begin to charge ona percentage-of-commission basis. They first began toplay a prominent public role during the final stages ofBoston's nineteenth-century rebuilding, in work on theBack Bay after 1857. A similarphenomenon occurred inNew York during the same period and in Chicago afterthe Fire in 1871. On institutional and professional levels,changes were made to solidify architecture'snewly dis-covered prominence. The American Institute of Archi-tects (AIA) was founded in 1857 on the East Coast. Ableto boast only a single chapter for its entire firstdecade, itwas still a success. It stood in marked contrast to earlierattempts to organize, such as Ithiel Town's Academy ofFine Arts in New York, which could barely sustain twomeetings between 1836 and 1837.8But it was more than the improved economic climatethat made the country accept architects. Led by RichardMorris Hunt (1827-1895), a new breed of practitioneremerged that was as concerned with image as it was withdesign. Hunt, who was AIA president at its inauguralmeeting, was the first American to study successfully atthe Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. From a wealthy fam-ily, he enjoyed sufficient distance from the gritty makingof money in America to be at ease in the Parisian role ofartist-professional. Money in the French atelier systemwas considered a natural result of the production ofNeoclassical architecture and not an end in itself. Huntcould personally afford this high-minded view of artwhich separatedhim so completely from the clamoringmob of developers he had left behind in the UnitedStates. When he returned to New York,he imported thismock-aristocratic stance without any of the pecuniarydisadvantagesof such noblesse oblige. He quickly estab-lished a highly profitable atelier that combined rigorousarchitecturalapprenticeshipwith professional education.




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The Myth of the Heroic Architect

FIGURE. View of the intersection fStateandMadisonstreets ollowingthedevastatingChicagoFire of 1871.Archi-tectsquicklyfound themselves n greatdemand n rebuildinghe city. (Photo:courtesyof the ChicagoHistoricalSociety)

Henry Hobson Richardson (1838-1886), the secondprominent American architect to have studied in Paris,settled in Boston, where he also combined office andstudio to stress the virtues of collaboration in modernpractice.These innovations proved immediately successful, andfirms like that of William Ware (1832-1915) and HenryVan Brunt (1832-1903) were founded on similar princi-ples. They prospered on the East Coast and were soonthe established professional model for firms throughoutthe country. In the same period, the nation's first archi-tectural schools were founded-at the MassachusettsIn-stitute of Technology (1865), Cornell University (1871),and the University of Illinois (1873)-each based in theFrench system of architectural education. American stu-dents were thus drawn to Europe. While their experi-ences bore no relationship to the idea of indigenous ar-chitecture endorsed by Emerson and others (onlyRichardson of this first professional generation brokesignificantly with Beaux-Arts conventions to accomplishhis own architecturalstyle), the permanent professionalreordering that accompanied the development of thisEuropeanized establishment was more significant thanany ephemeral debate over style. This stage in the pro-fessional development of American architects culmi-nated with Charles E McKim's (1847-1909) organizationof the American Academy in Rome in 1897.American architects received immediate professionalrespect by choosing established European stylistic iden-tities and tailoring them to their needs. But while theymay have solved their identity crisis, there was stillsomething absurd about it all. The next stages in thedevelopment of the profession reflected responses to aspecific disaster and a growing sensitivity to the pecu-liarities of the American urban condition in the lastquarter of the nineteenth century. Both Burnham's andSullivan'sdistinct versions of the role-or myth-of theAmerican architect grew out of their experiences in theaftermath of the Chicago Fire.The Chicago Fire had a direct effect upon the wayarchitects came to view themselves. Even though their

FIGURE . View of the northeast cornerof LaSalle nd Lake streets n 1872. Chi-cago'srapidpost-Fireresurrectionwasaidedby the influxfrom the East ofarchitectswho transformed isaster ntoopportunity. Photo:courtesyof the Chi-cagoHistoricalSociety)

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professional identities were secure when the Fire oc-curred in early October 1871, it was the city's rebuildingthat consolidated professional gains fought for over dec-ades. Firms became larger and more specialized, andtheir power was solidified as a system of general con-tracts began to replace the policy of negotiating sepa-rately with individual trades. Outside capital and theaccelerated demand for building instantly put the Chi-cago architect at the profession's vanguard.There was no small irony in this. Heretofore, Amer-ica's important architects looked to Europe for inspira-tion, and all the rest looked east to New York, Boston,and Philadelphia. Chicago had a remarkablehistory ofdevelopment from its Fort Dearborn days through twomajor spurts of growth during the 1830s and 1850s. Atthe time of the Fire, Chicago was still profiting from itsdisplacement of St. Louis as a railroad hub during theCivil War.But nothing had yet preparedthe city for thematerial and artistic opportunities deliveredby the catas-trophe of the Fire.There had been other fires that equaled Chicago's interms of devastation, but even the city's own experience

FIGURE. Advertisement y WilliamW.Boyington,architect,announcinghisachievementsn 1872 n the rebuilding fChicagoafter the Fire. (Photo:RebuiltChicago Chicago,1874])with destructive fires-five major incidents in the pre-vious twenty years, including a relativelyconfined blazethe day before the Fire-offered inadequatepreparationfor the impact of the event (see fig. 2). Statistics alonecarry a good deal of drama. Industrial Chicago re-ported, "There were 61,000 buildings in the old city atthe time of the fire. Of that number, 20,000 were de-stroyed."9Architects soon found themselves at the cen-ter of attention: they were suddenly in the best positionto repairthe city's damage and plan the future. Chicagoat the time offered a heightened sense of action; there,architects not only encountered a vast physical waste-land awaiting reconstruction, but also a city eager totransform their efforts into the stuff of popular legend.As far as architects were concerned, the timing of theFire was perfect. The profession needed the publicitythat contact with an already-mythic event could bring.A transformationoccurred in the month following theFire. The tales of human suffering that filled letters, di-aries, and newspapers reporting the immediate disasterwere replaced by descriptions of individual enterprise.Purposeful action was given the highest value. Broodingover the past was replacedby a celebration of the newestland deal or biggest building under construction. Thejournalist E B. Wilkie reflected this change of emphasisin his report "Among the Ruins." He subordinatedcon-cern for individuals to the city's appetite to rebuild, fuel-ing this optimism by focusing intently on the future,finding everywhere signs of recovery: "Brickwalls haverisen like an exhalation from among their disorder, andwhence the smoke struggled up sullenly and where themoon flung a pitying veil, there now thronged the tem-porary structures which are the overture to Chicago'sarchitectural resurrection."10Architects would later claim a large measure of creditfor this remarkable "resurrection"from desolation (seefig. 3). They and their army of workers had finished thejob of insuring order by restoring the urban grid. In thewords of Alfred L. Sewell, another eyewitness to theFire, Chicago immediately following the conflagration"was a dreadfulwilderness of wasted and crumbled mag-nificence." A month later, Sewell reported considerableprogress. He was "astonished to witness the change that

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had already been wrought. . . . This greatcity, so latelya mass of smoldering and ghastly ruins, is destined to bea great city still. It will be rebuilt, more solidly andfirmly than at first. Purified and instructed, as well asafflicted and humbled, this wonderful metropolis of theWest is apparentlydestined to outshine in the nearfutureits glory of the near past.""Provincial architects, sometimes no more thanbuilders in Benjamin Latrobe'sterms, were now given aprominence never before imagined. For at least the firstyear afterthe Fire, veterandesigners like John VanOsdel(1811-1891), Otto Matz (1830-1919), and William W.Boyington (1818-1898) carriedon most of the rebuildingfor which architects were required (see fig. 4). This in-cluded Potter Palmer'simproved State Street and muchof the relocated business district in the Loop. However,the reconstruction would not remain a predominantlylocal affair. The concentration of philanthropic and in-vestment capital from the East, especially the Bostonbanks that remained the city's prime financial supportuntil late in the century, guaranteed that Chicago's rela-tive social insularity would not continue. The early in-flux of talented outsiders (such as VanOsdel), suddenlymade what went on in Chicago of critical importance tothe architectural profession at large. Burnham joinedJohn Root (1850-1891) in Peter Wight's (1838-1925)firm; Sullivan found work in the office of William LeBaron Jenney (1832-1907). They were joined by hun-dreds of others who gave the atmosphere of frantic re-building a national flavor. Architects were visible in adramaticnational event, and they were the most promi-nent personalities in a rapid series of occurrences thathad transformed disaster into immediate opportunity.Work at this scale could not be met by individualprac-titioners. The Fire'saftermathsupplied evidence that thepractice of architecture must be highly organized. En-couraged to retain at least a veneer of the romanticism ofthe atelier, Chicago's architects still had to be busi-nessmen, like the fabled Eastern firm of McKim, Mead,and White. That firm first formulated the tripartiteplanof partnership: an outside man to meet with clients, aproduction supervisor to see that work was completed,and a principal designer in whom all of architecture'sart

FIGURE. Daniel H. Burnham ndJohnWellbornRoot, c. 1890,in their officeinthe Rookery,209 South LaSalleStreet,Chicago.Burnhamand Root werethearchitects f this well-knownbuilding.

and excess was tolerantly left to reside. Sometimes thetripartite division became two, as in the cases of Adlerand Sullivan, Burnham and Root, and Holabird andRoche; but the principles of consolidation and spe-cialization were fixed, having been tested by years ofconcentrated rebuilding in Chicago.More than any other architect who experienced andprofited from the aftermathof the Chicago Fire, DanielBurnham understood the full implications this disasterhad for American architecture. The office of Burnhamand Root came to epitomize modern architecturalprac-tice (see fig. 5; see also Hines, pp. 96-105). A contempo-rary observed, "Here for the first time we saw a large,thoroughly equipped office. It impressed like a largemanufacturing plant."'2 This observation was madearound the time the Rookery (1885-87), Monadnock(1890-91), and Reliance (1895) buildings were con-structed, and as Burnham began the preliminary plansfor the World's Columbian Exposition. Burnham andRoot, later D. H. Burnham and Company, did for themodern office building what the dominant East Coastfirms did for public and domestic architecture.Burnham

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managed a great firm and orchestratedhis partner'scon-siderable design skills to create a positive image for hisprimary client: the American businessman. In turn, thisclose identification with business and businessmenshaped the image of architects. Sullivannoted the fact inhis polemical Autobiography of an Idea: "During thisperiod [late 1880s and 1890s] there was well underwaythe formation of mergers, combinations, and trusts inthe industrial world. The only architect in Chicago torecognize the significance of this movement was DanielBurnham, for in its tendency towards bigness, organiza-tion, delegation, and intense commercialism, he sensedthe reciprocal workings of his own mind."'3With thesuccess of his firm, Burnham had completed a processbegun by Hunt upon his return from Paris.With the commercial buildings of the Loop and theproposed White City on the lake, Burnhamhad createda way to express the architect's will. He was able tocombine the appealing single-mindedness of Sullivanwith the mock-aristocratic stance of East Coast archi-tects like Stanford White (1853-1906), who built stylishestablishment architecture. White, in the words of acontemporary, "was full of whims and flashes, and ex-pected his client to accept them as a sign of genius."'14Like White's, Burnham's version of the architecturalhero existed outside a particular ideology and becamesimply an effective way to present oneself professionally.But there was something empty in all this self-satisfac-tion. Sullivan suggested that Burnham's posturing asChicago's high priest of business was as ludicrous asHunt posing in front of an easel like Cimabue. Archi-tects desired to distinguish themselves completely from

FIGURE. FrankLloydWright,June 8,1957.(Photo:CarmieThompson)

other successful bourgeois. This was accomplishedthrough graftingthe legends of the few legitimateheroesproduced by the profession onto the vocation's natural,sturdy conservatism. The myth of the architecturalherowas a hybrid, developing as a counter-myth to the real-ity of the profession's own subservience to the market-place. It would have remained a privatefantasy if not forthe Chicago Fire, which conveniently provided the nar-rativerequiredto sustain at least one generation'sexaltedimage of itself.The emotional entry of architects into Chicago afterthe Fire was not lost on Sullivan. He remembered thecity's "intoxicatingrawness"at a time when "many ashesremained," and felt "a sense of big things to be done."'5Observing the rebuilding, he understood that he waswitnessing something extraordinarythatwas beyond theexperience of architects who were not there; it was as ifhe were at the Fall of Rome and then asked to play a rolein its reconstruction.Burnham'sconception of the heroic architectwas chal-lenged by what Sullivanbelieved to be buried in the ruinsof Chicago. Physical rebuildingcould only restore a partof the community's health. Chicago had also to re-member the nameless masses that made history alongwith the celebrated families like the Kinzies, Fields, andPalmers. Sullivan's idea of a "democratic architecture"was an ambitious attemptto include the anonymous Chi-cagoans along with the city's more famous citizens. Thisinitiative linked his own fortunes to the fate of the city.

Sullivan attempted nothing less than to redefine thenature of the profession-first in a series of articles,some of which appearedin Inland Architect, and later inthe Auditorium Building and Carson Pirie Scott &Company Store. For Sullivan, architecturewas not con-cerned with acceptance by businessmen but with lead-ership. While other American architects looked to theRenaissance for acceptable models, Sullivan looked nofurther than H. H. Richardson. He saw in Richardson'sMarshallField Warehousea building type thatwas directand pragmatic, an architectonic distillation of an historictype. So, too, in the work of Jenney and Root, Sullivanfound a contemporary model. The importance of thiswas not only architectural.Psychologically, it freed Sul-livan from the tyranny of the past. He could now con-vincingly argue that he was living among giants: the he-

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roic generation was no longer in the past. Sullivan wasfree to be his own authority.Sullivan's actual success in building democratic "ema-nations of a people" must be judged dispassionately out-side his own rhetoric and intentions. Frank LloydWright (fig. 6), first as Sullivan'sapprentice and later as aself-appointed keeper of the myth, made it clear that hisliebermeister's success or failure was not to be evaluatedusing accepted professional criteria. There is somethingperverseabout this. Architectural languageis necessarilyprecise, particularly in the working drawings needed tomake a complex building. Habituated to precision,Wright here chose a vague way to to express what Sul-livan did. Wright saw his former employer trying a newprofessional identity that, to him, seemed infinitelymore poetic and rich than the accustomed talk of histrade. The modern version of the architecturalhero, as-sociated at the time with Burnham, had him professionaland responsible. This attitude was directly contradictedby the idea-held by Wright and, apparently, by Sul-livan-that architects could never be fully known andthat their work would remain larger than life and re-moved. Wright argued that Sullivan's contribution wasgreatest because it was ineffable. In Genius and theMobocracy, Wright concluded, "In the heart of him he[Sullivan] was of infinite value to the countrymen whowasted him not because they would: but because theycould not know him."'16Here was the paradox: the visionary hero, claiming tohave the people in mind, possessed such an advancedtalent that he could not be appreciatedin his own time.The very disenfranchised individuals for whom Sullivanthought he built flocked instead to Burnham's Neo-classical White City to seek their architectural "emana-tion." Wright'sGenius and the Mobocracy is both a eu-logy to Sullivan as conquered hero and a settling ofblame, not only on the architectural establishment thatSullivannamed in his Autobiography of an Idea, but onthe people of Chicago. Wright'spersonal assessment ofarchitectural professionalism was just as direct: "I ambranded as an 'Artist' architect, and so under suspicionby my countrymen-and especially as I have been an'insurgent' in private life as well as in my work; and myhair is not short nor my clothes so utterly conventionalas to inspire confidence in the breast of the good Amer-ican Business Man that I am a good 'business proposi-tion.' "17

The people had made their choice and so had the pro-fession. Any heroic myth was fine as long as it did not

interfere with business. In the winter of 1885, at the firstmeeting of the Illinois State Association of Architects(ISAA), Dankmar Adler (1844-1900) sounded morepractical than his impetuous partner Sullivan. Adler agi-tated for state licensing and reform of the federal con-tract system for hiring architects. At this same inauguralsession, Burnham urged code changes and alterations inthe rules governing competitions. Both he and Adler hadtheir eyes fixed on maintaining a proper commercialper-sona and nothing more dramatic than being taken se-riously as businessmen. Adler proclaimed, "I believe in abusiness community like this, it is a body that appearstohave money that is respected."18There is no echo here ofSullivan's spiritual invocation of a people and a cultureseeking architectural expression. Adler's concerns weremore fundamental. He knew that architects would notshare the fruits of American prosperity until they dem-onstrated an "ability to earn money."19Once indepen-dent and radical, the ISAA joined the federated AIA in1887, a year after Chicago's Haymarket riots. This turntoward conservatism, championed by Burnham and en-thusiastically endorsed by Adler and the other delegates,defined architecture more accuratelythan any of Sullivanand Wright'smore poetic discourses.This struggle for professional identity would seem tohave come to a naturalconclusion at the end of the nine-teenth century. Burnham's architecturalorganization ofthe World'sColumbian Exposition insured that it was agrand cultural and commercial success (see Hines, pp.96-105; fig. 10). For architects it was aplayful time whenthey could show off their technical prowess free of anyof the nastier constraints of architecture. The Fair was agrand stage set along the lake, like Burnham'sambitiousChicago Plan of 1909 (see p. 122, pl. 5). People wouldnever live in either city. They were dreamscapes, like thetheater, where visitors could associate architecture withrelease and momentary freedom.This building activity had less happy memories tohold for architects who remembered an earlier time offrantic construction. Sullivanput it in a characteristicallyimpassioned way: "We are at that dramatic moment inour national life wherein we tremble evenly between de-cay and evolution, and our architecture, with strangefidelity, reflects this equipoise."20Architects might, forpurpose of social prestige and money, pass themselvesoff as simply another group of successful professionals,but it was hard to lose the sense, reinforced by vividmemories, that (not too long before) architecture wassomething much more.

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FIGURE . The publication in1910 of the WasmuthPortfolio inGermanyntroducedEuropeanarchitectso the designsof FrankLloyd Wright.Wright'snfluenceis clearlyvisible in the work atnear eft by LudwigMies vanderRohe. Far eft: Page80 of theWasmuthPortfolio (Berlin, 1910;reprint1919) howingthe Heathhouse in Buffalo,New York,byWright.Near left: Mies van derRohe. Leibknecht-LuxemburgMonument,1926,Berlin.(Photo:Franz Schulze, Mies van derRohe[Chicago,1985],p.126)

In conclusion, it is useful to follow the myth to thepresent time. So complete was Burnham'scorporate re-vision of the profession that Sullivan's and Wright'svi-sionary language would have remained only a memoryof a more dramatic time had it not been for the immigra-tion of European architects in the 1930s-most notablyWalter Gropius (1883-1969) and Ludwig Mies van derRohe (1886-1969). Like the British pop groups duringthe 1960sreturning black music to America in a sanitizedform, Gropius and Mies delivered the American archi-tect's own heroic pose home. They, like many Europeanartists of their generation, were influenced by Amer-icans, especially by Wright'sWasmuthPortfolio of 1910(see fig. 7).21 By the late 1930s, Harvard University andthe Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) boasted Euro-pean leadership. Bringing forms of modern romanticismcultivated in the Bauhaus, these Europeans were in aunique position to reintroduce American architects tothe myth of the hero. Once again architectural heroismwas associated with failure, but this time at the hands ofthe Nazis. The heroic stance, which had fueled the re-building of Chicago and now was employed in the searchfor a humanistic design in Germany, was emptied ofsubstance. It became pure affect and, especially in thecase of Mies, defied criticism. Where Burnham, Sul-livan, and the other American modernists were verbose,Mies was sullen and taciturn (see fig. 8). He can berememberedseated silently in Crown Hall at IIT, smok-ing a cigar, poised for an audience.

Architects continued to profess an interest in societyand the largerrole of their art, but the postwar buildingboom allowed them to build without constraint or com-mitment to such goals. There were notable exceptions tothe dominant style. In Chicago, Harry Weese, WalterNetsch, and Bertrand Goldberg were the first architectsto question a dominant Miesian ideology. Stanley Tiger-man (see p. 128, pl. 15), with an initially rag-tag opposi-tion in the 1970s, followed later and made similarpointsin their polemics and built work. Curiously, both pro-and anti-Miesians held on to the heroic myth, with onlydifferences in style to distinguish them.Regardless of ideology, architects after World War IItook themselves seriously as thinkers. Gropius andRichard Neutra (1892-1970) wrote long, impenetrablevolumes about the responsibility of architects, while theMies clones, following the lead of the master,maintainedcool silence or made an occasional cosmic comment.Louis Kahn's (1901-1974) architecture bore no re-semblance to Mies's, but his presentation of self was thesame; he simply used a more romantic "less is more"credo on those rare occasions when he chose to speakpublicly about his work (using interpreterslike VincentScully to explain his ideas to an audience22).At the present moment, talk about architecture bearslittle or no relationshipto the state of the urban environ-ment. The myth of the architect as hero is there foranyone to claim, from student architects in editorials inPerspecta, to an interior designer showing a loft renova-

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tion in any of a dozen "shelter"magazines. But the mostimprobable, yet creative, transformation of the myth hasbeen in Chicago, where huge corporate firms, beyondthe imaginings of the Hunts and McKims, have meta-morphosed into a single identity. Skidmore Owings &Merrill-a clever transformation of the many into one,e pluribus unum-allows the firm to employ an heroicrhetoric to the press and the more reassuring drone ofcorporate language to its clients.We are at a critical time when we have enough distancefrom the original heroic event of the Fire and its strangedouble in public policy generated by the building boomafter World WarII to evaluatethe myth of heroic archi-tect. Fundamentally rooted in history, the myth hasbeen dug up, stripped of its commitment to a sociallyresponsible architecture, and used to defend any excessor whim.

Like all myths, this one rests precariously betweentruth and imagination, an attempt to create through lan-guage what one is not reckless enough to do in fact.Studying the heroic myth in architecture reveals a per-manent compulsion to reach beyond respectability andtoward something more problematic and at least poten-tially ennobling. For it is in myth that the future is testedand the present transformed. Only when a myth is em-bracedunconsciously or substituted belligerently for thetruth does it become dangerous, as demonstrated byHoward Roark's statement at his trial (see p. 86 above)after purposefully destroying the collectivist CortlandtHomes. In Ayn Rand's world, the architect-god re-shapes materialsfrom their raw state into something ex-pressive of the self. Roark'sspeech works in The Foun-tainhead, but not in life. He is acquitted and at thenovel's end is designing the world's tallest building. Insuch manic flights between professional obligation andvisionary schemes does the heroic myth continue to befueled.Unable to pass the entrance exams for Harvard orYale, Daniel Burnham came to Chicago without the es-tablishment architectural education expected of his gen-eration. Burnham's school was the city after the Fire,where he learned to combine the wildness inherent in hisnature with a certain social wisdom. In Chicago, Burn-ham maintained an adventurous edge that proved essen-tial for the fast pace of rebuilding. His first biographer,CharlesMoore, said of him, "He was never so much of abusinessman that he was not also an artist. He felt as an

artist, thought as an artist, and when he came up against

FIGURE. LudwigMies vanderRohe, c. 1965.(Photo:courtesyofthe ChicagoHistoricalSociety)his limitations in knowledge or as a creator, he neverfailed to recognize those qualities in others."23n the twodecades between the Fire and the Fair,Burnhamdemon-strated the qualities that were thought to define theworking artist. He reassured those with money inter-ested in investing in Chicago that architectswere not, bytheir nature, necessarily hostile to the successful busi-nessman. Burnham himself combined the qualities ofdull "good sense" for business-which got great archi-tecture like the Rookery, Monadnock, Reliance, Mills,and Flatiron buildings built across the country-with anartist's intuition of what needs to be done and how.Burnham's version of the architecturalhero now findsitself in less academic favor than that of visionaries likeWright and Sullivan, who have been incorporated andconfused with the same men they violently opposed intheir own day. But there is something original in bothkinds of American artists. Chicago immediately after theFire supported and inspired both to practice side byside. Only later,in our century, has rhetoric so displacedthe heroic action it pretends to describe, that any gesturebeyond the predictable becomes a source of automaticrevulsion or exaggerated praise. Howard Roark was AynRand's creation, but in the actual careers of the majorChicago architects she could find realprecedents. DanielBurnham and the other architects who rebuilt Chicagomade architecture visible to an entire society that waspreviously ignorant of what architects did. Burnham'sspecial contribution was to offer a safe model for theAmerican architect who was interested in staying a stepahead of the new patron class of businessmen and entre-preneurs who saw their future fame and reputation sus-tained in the buildings they commissioned.

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Miller - Heroic Architect