Michael Graves

by Ian Volner

  4 Alastair Gordon, “Of D-Con and Doorways,” East Hampton Star, November 10, 1988. Jencks’s original line was “Modern Architecture died in St. Louis, Missouri on July 15, 1972 at 3:32 PM (or thereabouts) when the infamous Pruitt-Igoe scheme, or rather several of its slab blocks, were given the final coup de grace by dynamite.” Jencks did not, it should be said, hang all of the Modernist project’s failures on its formal limitations alone, but saw them as betokening an overly conformist social ideology. Charles Jencks, The Language of Post-Modern Architecture (New York: Rizzoli, 1984), 9.

  5 Jean-Louis Cohen, email correspondence.

  6 Jimmy Stamp, “Reconsidering Postmodernism,” Journal of Architectural Education 66 (2012): 30.

  7 Reyner Banham, “1960–4: History under Revision,” Architectural Review, May 1960, 327.

  8 “Although employment grew by nearly 19 million jobs, its strength was uneven: three-fourths of the increase was in services and retail trade.” Lois M. Plunkert, “The 1980’s: A Decade of Job Growth and Industry Shifts,” Monthly Labor Review 113 (September 1990): 3.

  I · THE SEA

  1 Hospital admission records being confidential, the exact date of Michael’s initial health crisis has been triangulated based on the date of that year’s Ambiente fair (which he attended) as well as the recollections of his associates. MGMD; KN notes; DS notes.

  2 MG 4/29/13.

  3 PE 2/25/16.

  4 See Franz Schulze, Philip Johnson: Life and Work (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994), 397. The show was co-curated by Mark Wigley.

  5 PG 1/18/17.

  6 Herbert Muschamp, “Who’s That Peering out of the Grid?,” New York Times, March 18, 2001.

  7 MG 8/22/13.

  8 For instance, Minnesota Public Radio, “Michael Graves: A Household Name,” January 19, 2007; Kristin Hohenadel, “From Teakettles to Libraries, the Wide-Ranging Career of Michael Graves,” Slate.com, March 13, 2015; etc., ad nauseam. The phrase even appears in Michael’s Encyclopaedia Britannica entry, as well as in his New York Times obituary.

  9 KN notes.

  10 MG 8/22/13; PE 2/25/16; SS 1/21/16; MGMD; Julie Iovine, “An Architect’s World Turned Upside Down,” New York Times, June 12, 2003.

  11 MG 8/22/13.

  12 MGMD.

  13 PE 2/25/16; RM 2/29/16.

  14 SS 1/21/16.

  15 FL 3/4/16.

  16 Iovine, “An Architect’s World Turned Upside Down.”

  17 KH 6/25/16.

  18 MG 8/22/13.

  19 Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk interview 11/9/16.

  20 Interviewed on CBS Sunday Morning, “Sunday Profile: Michael Graves,” aired April 2, 2006.

  21 Joan Chiross, “Spinal Surgery at Miami Project Stopped Michael Graves’ Paralysis from Advancing,” Miami Herald, March 16, 2015.

  22 FL 3/4/16.

  23 MG 8/22/13.

  24 Iovine, “An Architect’s World Turned Upside Down.”

  25 CC 5/16/16.

  26 MG 5/16/13.

  27 MF 5/4/16.

  II · THE RIVER AND THE COMPASS

  1 To his daughter and first wife, Gail, Michael never spoke of any other home in his early adolescence save for the one on Indianola. Yet the 1940 census clearly states that the Bud Graves family was not then living in Broad Ripple. No date certain for the family’s move can be ascertained via city directories or other contemporary sources, but since Michael either did not remember living in Forest Hills or did not think it worth mentioning, it is presumed that they moved shortly after the census year.

  2 “New Residence Completed,” Indianapolis Star, February 17, 1924.

  3 SS 3/8/16.

  4 Robert Bodenhamer and Robert G. Barrows, The Encyclopedia of Indiana (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 1202.

  5 Paul Donald Brown, Indianapolis Men of Affairs (Indianapolis: American Bibliographical Society, 1923), 240.

  6 As attested by family genealogist Mike Graves of Austin, a distant cousin of the architect.

  7 “Review of Securities for the Week,” Indianapolis Star, March 16, 1913, 52.

  8 “Burned by Gasoline,” Indianapolis News, March 13, 1894; “Mrs. Emma Sells Graves Dead,” Indianapolis News, March 14, 1894.

  9 “Society,” Indianapolis Star, December 25, 1904.

  10 “E. M. Graves Services Will Be Held Here,” Indianapolis Star, September 25, 1932.

  11 “Charges Livestock Exchange Is Trust,” Indianapolis Star, September 26, 1922.

  12 Imminent federal action (see note 14) evidences how easily the industry had thus far evaded the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act; consider, for example, Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle (1906).

  13 “Want Exchange Dissolved: Livestock Dealers Ask Department of Justice to Investigate,” New Philadelphia Daily Times, November 16, 1910.

  14 The two main federal initiatives were the Packers and Stockyards Act of 1921 and Capper-Volstead Act of 1922.

  15 “Weddings and Engagements,” Indianapolis Star, December 3, 1922.

  16 A long and insidiously complex paper trail—including marriage records, property listings, and census documents—tells the tale of Max and Bessie’s divorce and improbable remarriages. This, as with much else in the Graves family backstory, was unearthed with the help of the genealogist Mike Graves. The land transfer is reported in “Real Estate Transfers,” Indianapolis News, February 15, 1922, 23; Margaret’s marriage to William I. Coons Jr. appears in the Marion County Index to Marriage Records for January of the same year; and Bessie’s marriage to William I. Coons Sr. is documented in census records and city directories as early as 1929. In all likelihood Bessie was remarried to her in-law by the early 1920s, shortly after Max’s land transfer, which was settled for her—via her future husband—while she was still using the name Graves.

  17 Regarding the pony, see Ted Newmarket, “Along Hoosier Saddle Trails,” Indianapolis Star, April 27, 1941.

  18 MG 5/6/13.

  19 MG 8/22/13.

  20 Ibid.

  21 “Marriage Licenses,” Greenfield Hancock Democrat, August 11, 1927; Lois Leeds, “August Bride,” Indianapolis Star, August 16, 1927. Given Michael’s relative candor concerning Bud’s abusive behavior, his failure to mention anything about his father’s earlier marriage—either to his daughter, his first wife, his firm partners, or his biographer—has led to the general consensus that he did not know anything about it. It was only by happenstance, following Michael’s death, that the author and the Graves family historian discovered the issuance of the older marriage license. It is not known what became of Bud’s first wife, Ethel Duncan.

  22 “Mrs. Thomas B. Graves,” Indianapolis News, March 2, 1931.

  23 MGMD.

  24 Michael claimed at various times to have studied the piano and the violin as child. He was never known to play either as an adult.

  25 MG 8/22/13. The doctor was also a family friend, making litigation still less appealing. SS notes.

  26 MG 8/22/13.

  27 MG 5/6/13.

  28 MGMD.

  29 MG 4/29/13.

  30 Ada Louis Huxtable, “Architecture View,” New York Times, May 27, 1979.

  31 MGMD.

  32 MG 8/22/13.

  33 Michael suggested to some (Karen Nichols and his daughter, Sarah) that his condition may in fact have been brought on by a previous eye surgery—intended to remedy the fact that he was born cross-eyed—which had overcorrected for the condition and caused his lazy eye. No baby photos show him to be visibly cross-eyed. KN 9/2/16; SS emails.

  34 Margaret Livingstone interview 12/8/16. Dr. Livingstone of Harvard Medical School has written extensively on the complex links between strabismus and artistic ability; see, for example, Margaret Livingstone, Vision and Art: The Biology of Seeing (New York: Abrams, 2008).

  35 MGMD.

  36 Karen Nichols would recall that even as an adult, Michael preferred photographs that didn’t catch both eyes head-on—and even edited at least one portrait to make it appear as though his eyes were b
oth straight. KN notes.

  37 See Brian G. Mohney, Jeff A. McKenzie, et al., “Mental Illness in Young Adults Who Had Strabismus as Children,” Pediatrics 122, no. 5 (November 2008): 1033–38.

  38 MGMD.

  39 Witold Rybcyznski, “The Late, Great Paul Cret,” New York Times, October 21, 2014.

  40 MG 4/29/13.

  41 MG 8/22/13.

  42 Ibid.

  43 PW 11/16/16.

  44 MGMD.

  45 MG 8/22/13.

  46 Mike Graves (genealogist) email correspondence.

  47 “A Society Ripple,” Indianapolis News, June 19, 1900. Edward caused a minor scandal when his engagement to a local girl in Ithaca, New York, was abruptly called off after he and T. S. were detained by a local officer of the law for an unpaid bill.

  48 MGMD.

  49 MG 8/22/13.

  50 LR 3/22/16.

  51 Ibid.

  52 MG 8/22/13.

  53 Ibid.

  54 Ibid.

  55 Ibid.

  56 MGMD.

  57 J. K. Birksted, Le Corbusier and the Occult (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009), 10.

  58 Charles and Berdeana Aguar, Wrightscapes: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Landscape Designs (New York: McGraw Hill Professional, 2002), 1.

  59 Vincent Scully, Modern Architecture and Other Essays (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), 184.

  60 PE 2/25/16.

  III · THE BOOK AND THE DOORWAY

  1 M. H. Trytten, Student Deferment in Selective Service: A Vital Factor in National Security (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1952). A useful summing up with tables is available online at the Korean War Educator, http://www.thekwe.org/topics/homefront/p_selective_service.htm.

  2 MGMD; GG email.

  3 MG 4/29/13.

  4 GG email.

  5 Mike Pulfer, “Strauss Built a Name for Himself,” Cincinnati Enquirer, November 13, 1999.

  6 MG 4/29/13. In Michael’s application for the Rome fellowship several years later, he stated that he in fact spent the first year of his UC co-op in a different office, that of Garber, Tweddell & Wheeler Architects. The experience was apparently not a memorable one, and Michael never spoke of it.

  7 Quoted in Vincent Canizaro, Architectural Regionalism: Collected Writings on Place, Identity, and Modernity (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2008), 304.

  8 Rebecca Billman, “Obituary: Raymond Roush,” Cincinnati Enquirer, July 20, 2002.

  9 MG 4/29/13.

  10 The house was lately available for sale, and enterprising local design enthusiasts posted a series of interior photographs, available online at http://www.visualtour.com/show.asp?t=1159509&prt=10003.

  11 JM 7/8/16.

  12 Decades later, Reed would be a key patron for a project by the Graves firm in Cincinnati, the Riverbend Music Center (1983). JM 7/18/16.

  13 JM 7/8/16.

  14 MG 4/29/13.

  15 Ibid.

  16 GG email.

  17 MG 4/29/13.

  18 GG email.

  19 MGMD.

  20 MG 4/29/13.

  21 Peter and Alison Smithson, “The Heroic Period of Modern Architecture,” Architectural Design 12 (December 1965).

  22 Moisés Puente, ed., Conversations with Mies van der Rohe (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2008), 16.

  23 David Watkin, Morality and Architecture Revisited (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 146.

  24 MG 4/29/13.

  25 Kathryn E. Pickett, “Weddings, Engagements Crowd Spring, Summer Social Docket,” Indianapolis Star, March 27, 1955.

  26 Gregory Korte, “Complex Was Troubled from the Beginning,” Cincinnati Enquirer, September 1, 2002.

  27 MG 5/6/13.

  28 MG 8/22/13.

  29 Jayne Merkel, Michael Graves and the Riverbend Music Center (Cincinnati: Contemporary Arts Center, 1987), 22–23.

  30 Dr. Donald Jacobs (son) interview 12/23/16.

  31 GG email and other sources. One need only look at the scale of Michael’s library and the well-worn, sticky-noted pages of books on Pablo Picasso, Juan Gris, etc.

  32 GG email. Besides the trulli, Michael’s housing scheme bears an eerie resemblance to the Trenton Bath House, completed in 1955, by the Philadelphia architect Louis Kahn. While it seems highly unlikely that Michael knew of either the architect or the design at this early date, Kahn’s project cannot be ruled out as an unacknowledged source.

  33 Archival documents found on Warehouse property.

  34 MG 8/22/13.

  35 MG 4/29/13.

  36 GG email.

  37 MG 4/29/13.

  38 GSD’s formation was accompanied by not a little discord, Gropius being the larger “name” but Hudnut the dean. The two did not get along. Robert A. M. Stern, The Philip Johnson Tapes (New York: Monacelli, 2008), 87–88.

  39 MGGTL, Indianapolis Museum of Art 4/14/13 and Harvard GSD 8/14/13.

  40 MG 4/29/13.

  41 Le Corbusier, Towards an Architecture, trans. John Goodman (Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2007), 102.

  42 Le Corbusier, “Five Points on Architecture,” in Programs and Manifestoes on Twentieth Century Architecture, ed. Ulrich Conrads (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1971), 99.

  43 Le Corbusier, The Radiant City (New York: Orion, 1967).

  44 Le Corbusier, Towards an Architecture, 291.

  45 Quoted in Caroline Zalseki, Long Island Modernism: 1930–1980 (New York: W. W. Norton, 2012), 104–5.

  46 To say nothing of Corb’s own wartime transgressions; his brief flirtation with Vichy is well documented. See Jean-Louis Cohen, “The Man with a Hundred Faces,” in Le Corbusier Le Grand, ed. Tim Benton (New York: Phaidon, 2008), 16.

  47 MG 4/29/13.

  48 MGMD.

  49 Lo-Yi Chan interview 11/8/16. Because Harvard University does not release student records until eighty years after enrollment has ceased, Michael’s exact course list cannot be ascertained. Chan does not recall seeing Michael in Giedion’s class, nor in the class of Eduard F. Sekler, a longtime Harvard fixture then at the beginning of his career. Since history had been reinstated as a requirement, however, it seems likely that Michael took at least one such course. See Eduard F. Sekler, “Sigfried Giedion at Harvard University,” Studies in the History of Art 35 (1990): 265–73.

  50 MG 4/29/13.

  51 Le Corbusier, Towards an Architecture, 86.

  52 Ibid., 151.

  53 Christopher Klemeck, The Transatlantic Collapse of Urban Renewal (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 100.

  54 PW 11/16/16. Soltan would become a more “official” member in 1962, when he was included in the group’s publication Team Ten Primer. See Stephen Sennot, Encyclopedia of Twentieth Century Architecture (New York: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2004), 1311.

  55 MG 4/29/13.

  56 Michael’s brief employment at Carl Koch’s office, though not remembered by Gail Graves, is attested in his application for the American Academy in Rome fellowship the following year.

  57 PE 2/25/16.

  58 Ibid.

  59 MG 4/29/13.

  60 Lo-Yi Chan interview 11/8/16.

  61 MG 8/22/13.

  62 MG 4/29/13.

  63 Regarding the rainstorm anecdote, see Robert A. M. Stern and Jimmy Stamp, Pedagogy and Place (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016), 43.

  64 George Nelson, Problems of Design (New York: Whitney Library of Design, 1965), 13.

  65 MG 4/29/13.

  66 MG 8/29/13.

  67 MGMD.

  68 MG 8/29/13.

  69 RM 2/29/16.

  70 Ibid.

  71 Jane Allison, “Big Future Awaits Two Indiana-Born Artists,” Indianapolis Star, August 14, 1960.

  72 RM 2/2/16.

  73 MG 4/29/13.

  74 MGMD. Meier has no recollection of saying this, though this may be attributable to the passage of years and his condition on the evening in question.

  75 GG email.

  76 Stern and Stamp, Pedagogy and Place, 46.

&nbs
p; 77 Michael Graves American Academy in Rome fellowship application, December 28, 1959, courtesy of American Academy in Rome archives, New York.

  78 List of jurors courtesy of ibid.

  79 Paul Goldberger, “House Proud,” New Yorker, July 2, 2001.

  80 MG 4/29/13. The girl, he later discovered, was Astra Zarina, who went on to become a successful architect.

  81 Letter from Michael Graves to Dean Sert, April 11, 1960, courtesy Sarah Stelfox.

  IV · THE LIGHT

  1 The date September 30, 1960, is an educated guess, Gail Graves not having recorded their arrival in her diary. Their departure date, however, is attested in a letter from the Academy (courtesy of Sarah Stelfox), and an itinerary for the Colombo from 1965 lists an eight-day travel time: http://www.timetableimages.com/maritime/images/colombo.htm.

  2 MG 4/29/13.

  3 See Paolo Scrivano, “Signs of Americanization in Italian Domestic Life: Italy’s Postwar Conversion to Consumerism,” Journal of Contemporary History 40 (2005): 317–40.

  4 Their route through the city is conjectural, based on Michael and Gail’s recollections. MG 4/29/13; GG email.

  5 MG 4/29/13.

  6 Alfred Hoyt Granger, Charles Follen McKim: A Study of His Life and Work (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1913), 90.

  7 GG email.

  8 MGGTL.

  9 A full list of departmental theses is available at http://artandarchaeology.princeton.edu/research/dissertations/completed.

  10 MGGTL.

  11 Ibid.

  12 GG email.

  13 Michael had already seen, at least once, how much Piranesian verve was possible in ink alone, thanks to a postcard Ted Musho had sent him from Rome the previous March, congratulating Michael on winning the fellowship. Musho’s rendering of the roof of Saint Peter’s clearly presages the mode that Michael would deploy when he too reached Italy. GG email.

  14 MGGTL.

  15 Thomas Coryat, Coryat’s Crudities (Glasgow: Robert MacLehose and Company, 1905), 1–2.

  16 See Geoffrey Trease, The Grand Tour: A History of the Golden Age of Travel (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967).

  17 MGGTL.

  18 GG email.

  19 Ibid.

  20 Ibid.

  21 Ibid.

  22 Ibid.

  23 SS notes.