ARCHITECTURE

The economic crisis in the 1930s upstaged but did not alleviate the upheaval within the architectural profession. A new austere, ahistoric architectural language, imported from Europe, won fiery adherents who proclaimed that tradition had no place in the production of contemporary architecture. The term modernism is used to denote this new style. Despite the zeal of the converts, others, with equal passion, rejected the new vocabulary. The debate over modernism polarized the architectural community as a new generation of architects not only rebelled against historic styles but also challenged the privileged place held by prominent and established practitioners. Patronage patterns also shifted as the federal government, responding to the economic distress, commissioned an unprecedented body of work. While the production of architecture for the private sector did not entirely cease, the federal government gave new prominence to specific building types and activities. Federal and civic buildings, as well as regional planning and its attendant architecture, constituted important arenas for New Deal design. The 1930s reshaped American architecture and the national landscape. By the end of World War II, modernism had triumphed, a new elite occupied the pinnacle of the architectural profession, and the federal government had blanketed the country with emblems of the federal presence.

STYLES AND THE ARCHITECTURAL PROFESSION

Formally, the most striking characteristic of the architecture of the period was the diversity of expressions competing for the label modern. Three styles dominated. Classicism remained a viable architectural language throughout the decade. John Russell Pope's National Gallery of Art (1935–1941), on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., reaffirmed the time-honored notion that American public architecture should be classical. Pope's classicism, however, was restrained and sober rather than lavish and opulent. He simplified and reduced the classical apparatus. Orders were suggested by slightly projecting planes, and the whole was bound together by sleek horizontals and delicately scaled moldings. Despite the austerity of Pope's classicism, proponents of modernism labeled his continued commitment to the past as reactionary. The style most often associated with the period was an even more restrained, spartan interpretation described as modernized classicism. Paul Cret's Folger Shakespeare Library (1928–1932), also in the national capital, was a seminal work. The library was a simple rectangular mass of taut, thin planes. The orders, reduced to a series of fluted piers, were detailed in a stripped, simplified manner. Twin entry pavilions flank the screen of piers, which distill to a minimal essence the image of a classical colonnade. Cret's modernized classicism served as the model for many federal buildings in the New Deal period.

In the commercial realm, the comparatively reserved streamlined moderne tempered and replaced the flamboyant Art Deco of the 1920s. Exuberant flourishes, such as the telescoping spire of semicircular aluminum panels articulated with radiating lines and punched triangular openings of William Van Alen's Chrysler Building (1926–1930) in New York City, seemed out of place in the bleak economic climate. Streamlined moderne originated in the work of industrial designers such as Norman Bel Geddes and Walter Dorwin Teague. For designers of the period, the characteristic flat planar wall surfaces, rounded corners, banded windows, thin decorative horizontal stripes, and flat roofs gave built form to the idea of speed. Streamlined moderne appeared on buildings ranging from vernacular roadside diners to Frank Lloyd Wright's high-style Johnson Wax Building (1936–1939) in Racine, Wisconsin. Like Art Deco, streamlined moderne represented an attempt to create a language appropriate for the machine age.

Unlike the promoters of revival architecture or Art Deco, proponents of modernism insisted that all connections to the past be broken. As a style, modernism burst onto the architectural scene in the United States through Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson's exhibition on "Modern Architecture" at New York's Museum of Modern Art in 1932. Photographs, models, and drawings of recent buildings, primarily by European architects, supported Hitchcock and Johnson's claim that a new language, which they named the International Style, had emerged. The new vocabulary, characterized by exposed structural framing, non-load-bearing walls, and absence of applied ornament, constituted a self-conscious rejection of tradition. In addition to the architecture of the Europeans, the two curators identified George Howe and William Lescaze's Philadelphia Savings Fund Society Building (1929–1932) in Philadelphia as a seminal work. The first American skyscraper inspired by European modernism pointedly turned its back on the aesthetics that had guided the design of the relatively new building type. The architects gave the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society Building's functional components distinct expressions on the exterior. The base, containing shops and the banking hall, the shaft for the offices, and the service tower were each distinguished by different materials and window treatments. The building was defiantly asymmetrical. The presence of the structural frame was clearly expressed on the exterior. There was no traditional ornament or detailing at door and window openings. The building and others included in the exhibition redirected American architecture in the subsequent decades. The influence of modernism was broad as well as deep.

Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater (1936–1937) at Bear Run, Pennsylvania, was an idiosyncratic blend of romantic rusticity and influences from the International Style. Eliel and Eero Saarinen and Robert F. Swanson's 1939 competition-winning but ultimately unrealized design for the Smithsonian Gallery would have defiantly placed a fully modern building directly opposite Pope's National Gallery on the Mall in the federal capital. Supplanting the stylistic diversity of the 1930s, modernism triumphed as the appropriate language for high-style buildings following World War II.

Within the architectural profession, the ascendance of modernism represented more than the triumph of a novel architectural language. Aesthetic allegiances polarized the profession along generational lines. The economic distress of the 1930s exacerbated the breach, as architects, like much of the country's workforce, faced the bleak lack of employment opportunities. Older, established architects, who were also most likely to receive commissions for prominent buildings, clung to traditional modes of expression. Aspiring architects, eager to make a mark in the field, championed modernism as they also challenged the privileged place that their established colleagues held. At the convention of the American Institute of Architects held in Washington, D.C., in 1939, the Smithsonian Gallery design served as the rallying point for the younger architects eager to overturn professional as well as aesthetic hierarchies. At stake was the design of buildings not only in the private sector but also for the architecturally activist federal government.

PATRONAGE AND BUILDING TYPES

To stimulate the depressed economy, the federal government emerged as the primary architectural patron of the period. Government agencies commissioned and produced a staggering body of work during the Depression decade. The most well-known fruit of government patronage was the federal building program that placed thousands of post offices and courthouses in cities and towns across the country. The Office of the Supervising Architect of the Treasury Department oversaw the vast building program. The style most often associated with the Supervising Architect in the 1930s was modernized classicism. Shreve, Lamb, and Harmon's post office (1931–1932) for Chattanooga, Tennessee, was one of many reinterpretations of Cret's facade composition for the Folger. However, the Office of the Supervising Architect produced federal buildings in a range of revival styles. Reginald Johnson's post office (1936–1937) for Santa Barbara, California, was a moderne Spanish colonial revival. Donald G. Anderson's Petersburg, Virginia, post office (1934–1936) was a federal reinterpretation of a fanciful, contemporary reconstruction. The facade drew heavily from the rebuilding of the colonial capitol (1928–1934) at nearby Williamsburg, Virginia. Federal architects and their collaborators made revival architecture the language of New Deal federal buildings.

Where Hitchcock and Johnson's International Style was a purely aesthetic language divorced from ideology and social purpose, a utopian tradition that extended from the English garden city movement to twentieth-century Radburn, New Jersey, inspired the New Deal's suburban town program. The project brought together a talented group of landscape architects, planners, and architects, including Henry Wright, Clarence Stein, and Catherine Bauer. The goal was to use architecture as a tool of both economic and social reform. While the work did provide models for city design, ultimately, the numbers diminished the influence of the idealistic experiment. Of the several satellite cities planned, only Greenbelt, Maryland; Greendale, Wisconsin; and Greenhills, Ohio, were built.

The boldest act of New Deal planning was the creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) in 1933. Treating the entire 900-mile river valley that cuts through seven states as a single unit, the government corporation planned and erected a string of dams to control flooding, create inexpensive electricity, repair adjacent damaged forest and agricultural lands, and stimulate industry. The goals of the ambitious and visionary project were to bring the backward and blighted region into the twentieth century and to demonstrate the power and benefits of coordinated regional planning. At Norris Dam, Roland Wank, the authority's first chief architect, played off architecture treated as severe rectangular masses against the dynamism of water in the massive spillway beyond. Wank's grave, simple buildings of textured concrete ornamented only with crisply cut rectangular openings containing bands of windows or integral sans-serif lettering created an architectural image that vividly expressed strength, efficiency, and faith in the power of technology to produce change.

The period of the Great Depression witnessed the transformation of the architectural profession. On the other side of the decade, modernism emerged as the style of choice for high-style American buildings. A new group of talented designers, promoters of modernism, replaced the masters of academic architecture as the new leaders of the profession. The Depression-driven Roosevelt administration had commissioned an extensive body of architecture that also attested to the expanded presence of the federal government in the daily lives of its citizens.

See Also: ART; PUBLIC WORKS ADMINISTRATION (PWA); TENNESSEE VALLEY AUTHORITY (TVA).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Cutler, Phoebe. The Public Landscape of the New Deal. 1985.

Grossman, Elizabeth Greenwell. The Civic Architecture of Paul Cret. 1996.

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SARA A. BUTLER