Chicago businessman Ferdinand Peck incorporated the Chicago Auditorium Association in 1886. With fellow board members Marshall Field (merchant prince), George Pullman (rail car manufacturer and Capitalist prick) and Martin Ryerson (steel producer and frequent Sullivan client), Peck set out to build America’s finest performance space and enlisted Adler & Sullivan to design it. Hard-nosed capitalists all, Peck & Co. appear to have driven the program toward self-sustenance: the 3,000 seat auditorium would be surrounded by a profit-making hotel and office space. Historian Joseph Siry has written more extensively about the project than I can here.

Suffice to say, a large windowless volume for performance requires few if any openings and would normally present a bald and unattractive public face without the human scale that office and hotel windows might afford. In the intervening century and a quarter we’ve become used to such large free-standing cultural statements, whose masses can be tempered, even sublimated, in other ways. For some contemporary practitioners, this has been their step to starchitect status.

What’s remarkable about all these buildings is that the program for performance halls has remained relatively unchanged in proportion since Charles Garnier designed the Paris Opera: 1/3 audience arrival and service; 1/3 auditorium; 1/3 back-of-the-house. In Chicago’s case, the profit-generating shell was quite literally frosting on the cake.

So in the spirit of pragmatic hard-nosed capitalists of the Robber Baron era, Agincourt’s auditorium would also have its hall wrapped in offices and, ten years after its construction, be linked by a pedestrian bridge to the community’s finest hostelry, The Blenheim, across the street. One imagines the whoosh of silk and taffeta amid whiffs of cigar.

This design intention of mine dates from late April 2006, just over eight years ago if my sketchbook can be believed. And as confirmation of its spirit, look at the postcard below showing the Gedney Hotel (yes, of pickle fame) wrapped around the opera house of Independence, Iowa. Whatever madness this may be, at least there is method to it.

Product that I am of the 1960s—I was fifteen when that tumultuous decade began—working in its design idiom is more difficult than I had imagined. So I subscribed to Atomic Ranch magazine and to the “Mid-Century Modern” feed on Facebook®; I have begun my (re)education.

At a time when was focused on late FLlW, recalling that he had died in 1959 and that his legacy had an ongoing voice in the pages of House Beautiful, I was aware of Midwestern Modernists like Paul Schweikher and Y.C. Wong in Chicago (if this is actually recollection on my part and not wishful thinking), not to mention the orthodoxy of Mies van der Rohe, SOM, and others in my own neighborhood and a handful of others elsewhere: Craig Ellwood, Richard Neutra, Philip Johnson, John Johansen, among them.

The foundations of Brasilia had been laid in 1958, so Oscar Niemeyer was on my radar. It’s hard to say when LeCorbusier registered with me: while I was still in high school or at the University of Oklahoma post-1963? I’m just not sure. Suffice to say I am aware of a broad range of Modernist vocabularies. But long after those formative years, I also became aware of Louis I. Kahn, whose mid-century single-family houses are astounding. It may well be that respect and admiration for Kahn (and my faulty understanding of him) will trump all the others.

Let me recommend The Houses of Louis Kahn (2013) by Marcus and Whitaker for an impressive body of work that went largely unappreciated while Kahn was alive—at least by journalists and critics. Somewhere I still have the issue of House Beautiful with Kahn’s Esherick house on the cover; that was some time in the 60s. I recall discovering the underlying order of its geometry, and then actually meeting Kahn at the University of Oklahoma in 1964 or ’65: he was a short man in a cheap suit who filled an auditorium with ideas as old and as large as Plato’s; indeed they were Plato’s ideas.

All suggestions are greatly appreciated.

A national map highlights something both interesting and curious about the state I have called home for since August 1971: North Dakota is currently the only state without  a suit contesting the matter of same-gender marriage. That is likely to change very soon. Most people outside the state will merely find it interesting; those of us within its borders and with a minimum knowledge of state history will also be aware of the irony.

At statehood in 1889, North Dakota was admitted as a dry—alcohol free—state, whereupon its breweries either closed or relocated to border communities across state lines. Along the Red River of the North, the wiggly eastern edge of an otherwise rectangular state, North Dakota cities like Wahpeton, Fargo, and Grand Forks sacrificed their breweries and saloons. In return, however, they became havens for the libertine and licentious: houses of prostitution abounded, and in Fargo, at least, the city government regulated both their location and operation.

Irony #1: A two-block section of the central city near the river was designated for houses of ill repute. And once a month the police visited each, took a few of the inmates into custody for an appearance before a municipal judge, and fined the girls before sending them back to work. Urban legend has it that the fines imposed each month were applied to the school system. So with liquor relegated to Moorhead, Minnesota across the river and prostitution in Fargo, the twin cities became the symbiosis of liquor and lust. At one level, the irony was realized in 1977 when charitable gaming became legal: non-profit agencies and organization could operate bingo and blackjack parlors to support their social service programs— scouts, art museums, etc. That a tax had effectively been placed on a vice, and that its proceeds would be applied to something virtuous was eerily similar to Fargo’s “tax” on prostitution for the support of public education.

Irony #2: After 1900, a rising wave Scandinavian immigration transplanted European Socialism to the upper Midwest, especially in Minnesota and North Dakota. In 1915 many of those immigrants formed the Non-Partisan League to resist the control of their agricultural economy by a handful of power brokers such as milling interests in Minneapolis and railways in St. Paul. These socialists essentially took control of North Dakota government and formed a state-owned grain mill and elevator and a state-owned bank, the only such institution in the United States and still a thriving financial entity. When asked today to define socialism and told that the North Dakota Mill & Elevator in Grand Forks and the Bank of North Dakota in Bismarck are, indeed, thriving examples of socialism, they will deny it. In fact, any attempts made to close either and convert it to a private capitalist business enterprise would quickly be stopped

North Dakota likes its socialism. It just doesn’t to be told that’s what it is.

Irony #3: The sea change in North Dakota politics takes visible form every legislative season. While tax exemptions are granted to private energy producers, the state routinely denies simple inexpensive programs like milk for school children, because our legislature and the majority of elective offices are safely in Republican control. I have long maintained that North Dakota is divided in half by Interstate 29, with relative liberalism in the east and conservative values dominant in the west. Look at a map some time to fully appreciate this irony as well.

North Dakota Constitutional Measure #1 of 2004, passed with 73% approval, amended the Century Code to eliminate any possibility of same-sex marriage or civil union. And as similar legislation or constitutional amendments have fallen state by state in the intervening ten years, I am confident that my fellow North Dakotans will hold ever more resolutely to the intention of that 2004 election; that political ideology will triumph over enlightened self-interest.

As libertarian and socialist as the state may have been, we have become something quite different in the last one hundred years. I have no illusions that Iowa politics have experienced a similar shift in these hundred years, but I do wonder if there may have been a different strain of Republican sentiment or even Progressive idealism at the beginning of the 20th century.

Comments will be gratefully received and reviewed.

The Fennimore county courthouse is surrounded with civic and cultural institutions: city hall, the county jail, two churches (Methodist and Baptist), and the U.S. Post Office. Today at the southwest corner of Agincourt Avenue and First Street SW you’ll find The Auditorium, a focus of cultural life since its construction in 1894/5; it’s the pink/orange square in the lower right of this plan. Three aspects of the Auditorium fascinate me: #1) it’s a building type I haven’t often engaged; #2) the chronology is right—after all, I’m in control of that—for an 1890-ish context (i.e., Richardsonian Romanesque); and #3) the pre-income tax era of the Robber Barons allows an exploration of “The 1%” of that time. How would a community of Agincourt’s size and relative wealth have afforded a three or four-hundred seat auditorium suitable for touring theatrical and opera companies? For lectures and recitals? For political rallies and electioneering? For funerals and graduations and award ceremonies?

This is a story that has to be written.

Sumer is icumen in, / Lhude sing, cuccu;….

Flood control is a frequent topic of conversation in Fargo-Moorhead these days. Controversial, too.

The Red River of the North is a troublesome line on anyone’s map, separating as it does two cities, two counties, two states and two federal regions (Fargo is in the Denver Region; Moorhead, in Chicago). So any attempt to straddle that line may indeed be doomed from the get-go. And the question on the west side of the river is compounded by the proposition of a new city hall. [Ugh! It may well be time to remind ourselves of the (in)famous “Fargo-Moorhead Cultural Bridge” project of the 1970s.] In the meantime, however, I’ve been thinking of water features in Agincourt and vicinity and the community’s conflicted relationship with them.

The Mighty Muskrat nearly and neatly forms the western edge of the original townsite. Running from north to south, it impeded westward expansion of the city in the 19th century and, with Crispin Creek along the southern edge, certainly encouraged development northward along North Broad Street in the 20th. Bridges are expensive. So, in the spirit of Red River flood control, the Muskrat calls for attention, too.

“…my moisture is turned into the drought of summer”

The Psalms make for interesting reading; there is genuine poetry here—and some pretty nasty stuff, too, but let’s stick with the poetic. We’ll get farther.

The Red River of the North has had at least five “hundred year” floods in the forty-plus years that I’ve lived in this community. I can’t speak for you, but it seems to me that it’s time for two things to happen: 1) a redefinition of “hundred-year flood” (there should be only one in any hundred-year period), and 2) it’s time for some flood control. Do you think the Muskrat behaves much better? I’m guessing not. It’s unruly and unpredictable; its “moisture is turned into the drought of summer.” It has been ignored and embraced; cursed and praised; enjoyed and endured. It has been painted by artists and polluted by industrialists. Like our Red River, it is the source of drinking water and the means to carry away human waste. I’m no civil or hydraulic engineer; nor do I know one. So I’ll have to fumble along with the human factor of the Muskrat’s story.

River in the City: an abbreviated chronology

Pre-1850s: For the indigenous people, the Muskrat was a resource. There were fish in its waters; beaver, muskrat, and turtles along its banks. Deer and other wildlife sought shelter and drank there and raised their young. One upstream stretch—the “dancing waters”—cleansed the human spirit. Could the river of those days be reclaimed? he wondered silently.

1860s-1870s: White settlers saw the river in similar life-enhancing terms: water, game, recreation and refreshment, but they also thought to put the river to work. As migrants from places in America affected by the canal-building and water-powered industry, the Muskrat could be harnessed. A dam and millpond encouraged the location of industry—a flour mill and The Syndicate Blocks.

1870s: Arrival of the Des Moines & Northwestern forced the issue of bridges, serious bridging, not just ferries, pontoons and other seasonal crossings. A vehicular bridge soon followed.

1870s-1880s: The pleasanter banks of Crispin Creek, particularly the stretch known as Gnostic Grove, was a place for recreation (picnics, etc.) and religious revival—its clearer spring-fed waters more conducive to the workings of the Holy Spirit.

1880s-1890s: Parallel with development of a resort community at Sturm & Drang, the Muskrat’s west bank attracted a cluster of fishing shacks that matured to become evening and weekend retreats for quicker respite from the city than the lake district could offer. See the Blue River postcard above for one possible consequence.

1880s-1910s: Lower elevations in the city’s southwest quadrant encouraged two phenomena: 1) industry situated there to be near both the water and the railroad, and 2) workers housing developed nearby. Frequent flooding meant that residents were more likely to rent than to own their own home.

1910s: Creation of Northwest Iowa Normal College in the city’s far northwest corner established an affinity with the Fennimore County Fairgrounds. Students (and the general public) used the NITC bridge for access to the grounds. NIN negotiated with the Fair Board for its athletic facilities to be on the west bank.

1900s-1930s: Constrained by river, creek and rail lines, industrial development leapt to the west. The NITC trolly line instituted in 1909 established a stop called “Industry” along its lop-sided figure-eight route. Five cent fares made it affordable transport in the era before the automobile. A seasonal branch line crossed the river to the Fennimore County Fairgrounds along the extended line of Ralph Avenue.

1930s-1940s: The Great Depression and Second World War exploited the north bank of Crispin Creek as free garden plots. “Victory Gardens” supplemented diets during the war years. The abandoned fairgrounds interurban bridge served pedestrians visiting the grounds as well as affording NIN students access to their recreation grounds.

1950s: The Orchard and Riverside Addition become the city’s first Post-War suburban expansion. Generous eight-five-foot lots extend from 250 to 450 feet to the river.

1990s: The abandoned NITC right-of-way outside the city became a bike trail, including the former interurban bridge over the Muskrat.

Hey, it’s a start.