The Art Institute of Chicago

An Architect's Mind: The Harry Mohr Weese NotebooksAuthor(s): Dana M. LamparelloSource: Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies, Vol. 34, No. 2, Art through the Pages:Library Collections at the Art Institute of Chicago (2008), pp. 87-89, 96Published by: The Art Institute of ChicagoStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20205641 .

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Side Community Art Center.1 At the end of World War II, he served as the field director for the American Red Cross

in Egypt and Iran before returning to Chicago to assume his

post at the Art Institute, where he stayed until 1957. He later

moved to New York, embarking on a freelance journalism career, writing articles, books, and essays on photography

and primitive art. His major works were The Picture

History of Photography (1958) and Understanding Primitive

Art-Sula's Zoo (1969). Pollack was appointed director of the

American Federation of Arts in 1962. Pollack had intended to publish a book on his snapshots

of Van Gogh's worksites; entitled What Van Gogh Saw, the

project was never realized. However, Pollack's extensive

cache of exclusive photographic material served him well for

many years, when he went on the lecture circuit, addressing

large crowds on the life and work of Vincent van Gogh and the fabulous art collection in his

family's possession.

AN ARCHITECT'S MIND: THE HARRY MOHR WEESE NOTEBOOKS

DANAM. LAMPARELLO

Providing an intimate glimpse into the creative

mind of Harry Mohr Weese?the Chicago architect most famous for designing the

Washington, D.C. Metro system?are the one

hundred notebooks included in his personal and

professional records. Donated to the Ryerson and Burnham Archives in 2006, the Harry Weese

Papers span the architect's college years at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Yale

in the mid-1930s to the end of his career in the

1980s. From 1937 to 1988, Weese kept pocket sized notebooks readily available, jotting notes

and sketches on subjects such as art, design, travel, urban planning, and a number of his own

firm's architectural projects. "Oh, yes. Always," was Weese's response when asked whether he

carried a notebook.1 For Weese, a notebook

was a hybrid of sketchbook, daybook, diary, and memo pad: while one page may depict a

figure drawing or his Christmas list, the next

presents detailed design sketches or charts his

ideas about architectural symbolism (see fig. i). In effect, the notebooks served as a catchall way for the architect to

document his own thought processes, and turning to them

seems to have been his natural first step in tackling the many notions that circled through his mind. Undoubtedly the most substantial portion of Weese's papers, the notebooks

are available to architects, scholars, and students alike, along

with an extensive online subject index.2

Shortly after graduating from MIT in 1938, Weese was awarded a fellowship in city planning at Cranbrook

Academy in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. The school's

comprehensive approach allowed him to study all aspects of art and design, inspiring him to try his hand at furniture.

Nearly a decade later, with his wife, Kitty Baldwin, and

their friend Jody Kingrey, Weese founded Baldwin Kingrey,

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Figure i. Harry Mohr Weese (American, 1915-1998). Neo-Symbols?Motifs?Clich?s, notes

and drawings, 1965-66. Harry Weese Papers, series 3, Ryerson and Burnham Archives.

?7

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Figure 2. Harry Mohr Weese.

Notes and sketches for Unit Case,

1947. Harry Weese Papers, series 3,

Ryerson and Burnham Archives.

Figure 3. Harry Mohr Weese.

Notes and sketches for Time-Life

Building elevator, 1966. Harry Weese Papers, series 3, Ryerson and

Burnham Archives.

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a modern furniture store in Chicago for which he acted as

design consultant. In the late 1940s, after Baldwin Kingrey became the first to franchise Alvar Aalto's Artek furniture in the Midwest, Weese designed a few pieces manufactured

by his friend and mentor. In a 1947 notebook, he compiled research and casually sketched a knocked-down shelving unit

that could be used as both a room divider and as open storage for books, magazines, and records (see fig. 2). What appears to be a rather crude sketch served as the basis for Unit Case

in, which was sold in the Artek catalog around 1948.3 In 1947, Weese launched his own architectural firm,

Harry Weese and Associates, which was responsible for the

design of many notable structures in Chicago and around

the world. In his December 1966 notebook, the architect

detailed early sketches of Chicago's Time-Life Building (1970), focusing on its two-story elevator system (see fig. 3). Weese ultimately became a proponent of the system,

which handles high-volume traffic efficiently through the use of a two-level cab, the bottom of which operates for

odd-numbered floors, the top for even-numbered ones.

Because Time, Incorporated supported one of the largest mail operations in the country, it was vital that Weese's

designs include an effective means for staff members to

reach their respective floors on time during the morning and

evening rush hours. This system was the first of its kind to

be implemented in the United States, and Weese went on to

employ it in a number of his subsequent high-rise projects, even

developing plans for a three-story version.4

In the same notebook, Weese made a number of vault

sketches for his Washington, D.C. Metro designs (see fig. 4). In 1966, the National Capitol Transportation Agency awarded Harry Weese and Associates the contract to design the region's first rapid rail network. After embarking on a

research survey and a tour of the world's most extensive rail

systems, the architect turned to his travel notes and sketches,

developing a unified look for each station through the use of

bronze, exposed structural concrete, glass, red quarry tile,

and white granite. As his original proposal stressed open, attractive spaces without any dark corners, Weese ultimately

settled on column-free train rooms with indirect lighting and coffered ceilings. This vision, like so many others, was

one that he clearly formulated in his notebooks.5

Figure 4. Harry Mohr Weese.

Notes and sketches for Washington, D.C. Metro train rooms, 1966.

Harry Weese Papers, series 3,

Ryerson and Burnham Archives.

89

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The Book of the Fair (Bancroft Company, 1893) p. 545. What looked like gold leaf was actually "aluminum treated with yellow lacquer"; see Lauren S. Weingarden, "The Colors of Nature: Louis Sullivan's Architectural Polychromy and

Nineteenth-Century Color Theory," Winterthur Portfolio 20, 4 (Winter 1985),

p. 254 n. 22.

4. This image is reproduced from a digital image that was created by scanning a

color lantern slide, which was itself produced through copy photography of a

color photolithograph. 5. This essay benefited greatly from the information in Natasha Derrickson, "Historic Architecture and Landscape Image Collection, Ryerson and Burnham

Archives" (lecture, "Showing Off Chicago: Digital Resources on Chicago in

Chicago Libraries," Chicago, 111., Aug. 19, 2004). 6. For more on these publicity efforts, see Carl S. Smith, The Plan of Chicago:

Daniel Burnham and the Remaking of the American City (University of Chicago Press, 2006), p. 119.

7. The image is a digital reproduction from a hand-colored lantern slide that was part of a series produced by A. G. McGregor Company of Chicago and the

Chicago Transparency Company; many were hand colored by Rose Kingwill. For more on lantern slides, see Annemarie van Roessel, "Through a Glass, Brightly:

Re-viewing a Lost Architectural and Pedagogical Landscape through Historic

Lantern Slides," Art Documentation 22, 1 (2003), p. 8.

8. Ibid.

Hanson and Woolever, "'Greater, Better, More Glorious': Documenting the

Century of Progress Exposition," pp. 81-83. 1. For more on the Century of Progress Exposition, see Lenox R. Lohr, Fair

Management: The Story of A Century of Progress Exposition; A Guide for Future

Fairs (Cuneo Press, 1952); Robert W. Rydell, World of Fairs: The Century-of

Progress Expositions (University of Chicago Press, 1993); and Lisa Diane Schrenk,

Building a Century of Progress: The Architecture of Chicago's 1933-34 World's

Fair (University of Minnesota Press, 2007). 2. The dome of the Travel and Transport Building was suspended 125 feet above

the ground by cables attached to twelve external steel pylons; see C. D. Innes,

Designing Modern America: Broadway to Main Street (Yale University Press,

2005), p. 104.

3. For more on the use of color at the fair, see A Century of Progress Colors (Textile Color Card Association of the United States, 1933); and S. J. Duncan-Clark, "1934 World's Fair Bigger and Better," New York Times, May 20, 1934, p. E7. 4. Lohr (note 1), p. 172.

5. For more on Urban's scheme, see Official Guide: Book of the Fair, 1933

(Century of Progress, 1933), p. 20.

6. Almus Pratt Evans, "Exposition Architecture: 1893 versus 1933," Parnassus 5, 4 (May 1933), pp. 17-22.

7. Magazine of Light 3, 2 (1933), p. 15; and Electricity at Work: Portraying the

Generation, Transmission, Distribution, and Utilization of Electricity (Electric

Light and Power Industry Commission, 1933). 8. Carter Manny, "World's Fair," vol. 1 (1934), n.pag. Carter H. Manny, Jr.,

Papers, Ryerson and Burnham Archives.

Ryckbosch, "The Engineer and the Photographer: Vincent Willem van Gogh and Peter Pollack," pp. 86-87. 1. Pollack worked at the Illinois Art Project from 1938 to 1941, and at the South Side Community Art Center from 1939 to 1942.

Lamparello, "An Architect's Mind: The Harry Mohr Weese Notebooks," pp. 87-89. 1. Harry Mohr Weese, interview by Betty J. Blum, Mar. 4-24, 1988, oral history transcript, Ryerson and Burnham Archives, p. 25. A downloadable version of this

transcript is available at www.artic.edu/aic/libraries/caohp/weeseh.html. 2. This finding aid can be accessed at http://digital-libraries.saic.edu/cdm4/index_

findingaids.php?CISOROOT=/findingaids. 3. See photographs of Unit Case HI, Sept. 1, 1948, Baldwin Kingrey Collection,

series i, box FF 1.13; and the Artek Furniture catalog, c. 1948, Baldwin Kingrey Collection, series 3, box FF 2.8; both pieces are in the Ryerson and Burnham Archives.

4. The New Chicago Time & Life Building, brochure, c. 1969, Ryerson and

Burnham Archives, Harry Weese Papers, series 1, box FF 1.25; and Weese and

Blum (note 1), p. 181.

5. Stanley Nance Allen, "At the beginning," typescript, Mar. 2001, Ryerson and

Burnham Archives, Harry Weese Papers, series 1, box FF 1.27.

96

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