“Letters between R. M. Schindler and Richard Neutra, 1914-1924”

AboutAn edited selection of correspondence between R. M. Schindler and Richard Neutra spanning March 1914 to February 1924, drawn from Schindler's carbon copies and introduced and annotated by Esther McCoy. The letters trace the two architects' friendship from their student years in Vienna through Schindler's emigration to Chicago (where he worked for Ottenheimer, Stern and Reichert and later for Frank Lloyd Wright) and Neutra's wartime military service, postwar privation in Switzerland and Austria, and prolonged effort to immigrate to the United States with Schindler's sponsorship. Recurring subjects include Adolf Loos's health and domestic life in Vienna, Neutra's admiration for Frank Lloyd Wright's work (formed initially through publications rather than firsthand experience), and an extended subplot concerning the manuscript of Louis Sullivan's Kindergarten Chats, which passed from Loos to Neutra in Berlin and which Schindler and Neutra tried unsuccessfully to get published in Europe before returning it to Sullivan. Later letters document Schindler's work supervising construction for Wright (including the Barnsdall House) and the two men's plans, ultimately unrealized, for Neutra to join Wright's Tokyo office for the Imperial Hotel. The correspondence closes as Neutra prepares to join Schindler in Los Angeles in the mid-1920s.

PURL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0037-9808%28197410%2933%3A3%3C219%3ALBRMSA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-D