“This Too, Might Be History”

AboutA first-person reminiscence by William Gray Purcell on the culture of Chicago-area "journeyman draftsmen" active in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, arguing that architectural history has neglected this class of skilled, largely self-taught practitioners whose uncredited work shaped countless buildings attributed to the architects of record who employed them. Recalls his own boyhood introduction to Sullivan and Wright's work at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition's Transportation Building and, two years later, at the sketch of Wright's first Oak Park studio, and describes his 1902 employment in the office of E. E. Roberts alongside draftsman Roy Hotchkiss, who adapted Wright's forms independently rather than merely copying them. Profiles two journeyman designers in particular: F. W. Fitzpatrick, an itinerant, professionally uncredited competition specialist who ghost-designed public buildings including the Chicago Post Office for Henry Ives Cobb, and Harvey Ellis, whom Purcell calls the most distinguished of this group, discussing Ellis's pen-and-ink renderings, his design work for inventor-architect Leroy Buffington of Minneapolis (whose 1887 tall-building patent anticipated Sullivan's Wainwright Building), and an 1888 bank design praised for its integrated color scheme and ornament. Also recalls the technological rationale behind eliminating street-level windows in commercial buildings, crediting Adler and Sullivan's Chicago Auditorium with pioneering mechanical ventilation and Sullivan's engineering partner with early use of incandescent lighting at the McVicker's Theater.

PURL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=1544-9890%28194310%293%3A4%3C16%3ATTMBH%3E2.0.CO%3B2-X