In the geographic center of the state of Illinois, there is a town called Normal. Do you suppose that everyone living there is? Friends may pool their resources for a one-way bus ticket, hoping that Normal would work its magic and make me normal, too, though I think there’s little chance of normalization at this point in my life. So save your money.

Normal takes its name from a state institution there, a teacher-training school that not only gives its name to the city, but also to an entire species of higher education. I was surprised to learn that it derives from French higher education, the École Normale, that fulfilled a similar function in their culture. Like Minnesota State University Moorhead (a.k.a. Moorhead State) which was founded as the Moorhead Normal School, North Dakota created several in response to our settlement patterns—east to west—establishing Mayville and Valley City as “normal” schools, and then Minot and Dickinson as the center of state population shifted westward at the time of the First World War.

Given Agincourt’s date of settlement and incorporation (1853 and 1857) and its growth through the late 19th and into the early 20th centuries, it seemed natural — normal, even — to imagine that it, too, enjoyed the presence of a teacher-training school, Northwest Iowa Normal School (a.k.a. NIN). Somewhere, here in this blog or elsewhere in the Agincourt project files, there’s a piece that our friend Howard Tabor wrote about the origins of the school: that a closed 19th century county-run orphanage (these were quite common across the Midwest) found a second life as a teacher-training institute created by the legislature in Des Moines in response to a delegation of community leaders. What better argument than a recently disused building which might be put to better purpose! So far, so good, until last week’s issue of the High Plains Reader, Fargo-Moorhead’s alternate press.

Educational Fads

I wrote a few entries ago about a rumor afoot in architectural education: that graduation from an accredited program in architecture will be the equivalent of professional licensure. Who is promoting this notion and what their motivation might be aren’t clear. But the implication is obvious: education will inevitably teach to the test. Whether administered by the school itself or the state licensing agency, what reason could there possibly be to do reach beyond what is traditionally covered by the A.R.E. (Architectural Registration Examination)? There’s the remote possibility, I suppose, that the exam itself could become more speculative, more expansive. Let’s hope.

M. Wayne Alexander, an HPR contributor and faculty member at MSUM, wrote a column recently about educational fads, many of which we’ve seen at NDSU in the last forty years. I recall our own department’s response to the initiative several years ago called “the extended day,” the notion being that an adult out-of-school population might be lured back to classrooms by extending university class offerings to nine or ten o’clock. The Business College still does—probably always did—but why not the rest of the campus?

Our spin on the “extended day” wasn’t well received.

If the rationale was better use of the physical plant (classrooms, laboratories, libraries, etc.), why not the extended year? At that point we were on the quarter system—fall, winter, and spring—but there was still that pesky Summer Session. Get it? Semester—semester—semester—session. Why not treat the summer as a full-blown, legitimate semester, ten weeks in length like the “other” three? The implications for an architecture curriculum were frightening. Students could choose which of the four semesters would be their “vacation”. In theory, they could continue non-stop throughout the year and finish the five-year program in four years. Faculty would also achieve some flexibility in “time off”. Of course, the “regularity” of course offerings would be sketchy, at best, but it seemed worth the exploration. Well, you can imagine how quickly that was shot down.

Now comes a proposal that sounds too much like “No architecture student left behind” and, frankly, I don’t want anything to do with it. But it did cause me to wonder about the future of higher education. Are we, indeed, bifurcating schools into two tracks, let’s call them Training and Education? One oriented toward pragmatism; the other engaged in loftier thoughts.Might they ultimately produce Eloi and Morlocks? I’ve been in Higher Ed long enough to have seen some writing on the wall. But all this time I thought it was a dirty limerick. “There was a young man from Bucyrus….”

Northwest Iowa Normal

So today’s bottom line is a question about the history of Northwest Iowa Normal. The place should be getting ready for its centennial. How has it fared, do you suppose? What educational fads have come and gone and come round again in slightly altered form?

Tell me I’m wrong.

As American culture devolves into downright tribal behavior, human tragedy tends to be seen in one of two ways: a) dropping everything in order to help or b) shrugging it off with the observation that “they brought it on themselves.” Or when a plane crash and the deaths of more than two hundred and fifty people is seized as an opportunity to criticize a president unconnected with the event. I was reminded of a story told by my old friend Bonnie Lou Naifeh, who once worked as a public librarian.

Bonnie was then married to a fellow architecture student at the University of Oklahoma, Skip Hill. Bonnie worked at the Bethany Public Library in the western suburbs of Oklahoma City, a forty-five minute drive from the O.U. campus in Norman. She came home one day distraught from an encounter with one of the library patrons.

Bethany, you should know, is also the home of multiple conservative Christian colleges and is itself an exceptionally conservative community. This was the 1960s, though, so we should not have been surprised when Bonnie was chastened by library staff for the length of her skirts or her use of makeup. But the job was in a public library.

On the day in question, Bonnie had staffed the check-out desk and was stamping books and sound recordings of one patron. Since one item was a recording of American opera singer Beverly Sills, Bonnie offered some conversation to the patron. Coincidentally, Miss Sills had been a guest on the late-night variety show of Johnny Carson, the “Tonight Show” in its third incarnation. Among other things Carson had discussed with Sills the difficult topic of her daughter, who was born profoundly deaf and could therefore not appreciate her mother’s art form. “Isn’t that a tragedy about Beverly Sills’ daughter?” Bonnie offered the library patron standing above her. Without a moment’s hesitation, the patron responded “Oh, well, she’s Jewish, you know.” Stunned and silent, my friend Bonnie understood the possibilities of the patron’s perspective: To some Christians, Miss Sills would be seen as a “Christ killer” and justly punished with a child unable to hear.

Bonnie said that she’d cried during the entire forty-five minute drive home to Norman, devastated by the encounter with a perspective that was hard to believe had survived into the mid-20th century. This happened about 1969.

Well, its now the early 21st and I’m not certain things have improved all that much.

This postcard reminded me that parts of the Agincourt story—large parts—remain to be told. The back of this card (which was never mailed) reads simply: “1907. Family of 7 burned at Ponca.” Several questions come to mind, like Who would take such a picture and why? and What’s the story behind the fire? 

Ponca, Nebraska is a few miles northwest of Sioux City, near the bluffs of the Missouri River. That may, indeed, be the “Big Muddy” in the left distance. From the clothing shown, the weather seems chilly, but it certainly isn’t winter—at least like we know it here in North Dakota. Yet the family of seven might still have been victims of a poorly tended stove or fireplace. The ruins suggest a modest house, so how could the family not have escaped?

Given the human condition and the fact that we can often be well below our personal best, what number of stories might grow from this deceptively simple artifact?

At the 2007 opening of the exhibit, Mike Weiner (an M.D. at what was then St. Luke’s hospital) asked me if there was a temple in Agincourt, the presence of a measurable Jewish community. My enthusiastic “yes!” put me on the path to understanding cultural and ethnic minorities in the Midwest. Technically, as a Scotsman I’m part of one myself. You know: clans (the good kind), kilts, bagpipes and all that are part of tribal behavior. Paradoxically, both Presbyterianism and whiskey set the Scots apart from the rest of y’all.

The Tribe in Iowa

I began simply enough with the U.S. census for 1900. Census information differs considerably from one decade to the next; but religion has not been one of its questions. [Not until recent political rhetoric has religion mattered to anyone—but don’t hold your breath; the Supreme Court hasn’t spoken.] But there are other ways into the subject, like country of origin for emigrants, or language; speaking Hebrew would be a good sign of Jewishness.

Of course, google also helps quite a bit, providing short narratives of the Jewish community in Des Moines and Sioux City. The distribution suggested by these two sources told me a temple in Agincourt was justified.

For a Modernist temple circa 1953, I limited my palette to three or four architects, designers who produced some of the finest religious buildings of the inter-war years: Pietro Belluschi and Erich Mendelssohn came immediately to mind, but I also added Paul Schweikher and Burnham Hoyt, two mid-century modern favorites. Coincidentally, both Schweikher and Hoyt practiced in Denver and ought to be on the radar of any MCM aficionados out there. Though I’m associating Temple Emanu-El primarily with Mendelssohn, these others have surely had a hand in shaping my thought.

I must admit to be more facile in design frames of reference between the Civil and First World wars. So expanding my comfort zone to the inter-war years is no bad thing. Since the project was situated in 1953, Erich Mendelssohn was the obvious choice, considering the creation of Israel just five years previous in 1948.

Temples for Jewish worship present their own particular issues, exaggerations of problems also present in Christian churches. Chief among them is the matter of High Holy Days: For Christians, Christmas and Easter will have higher than average attendance and might require additional services. But the fluctuation in attendance between a normal sabbath and a day like Yom Kippur can be daunting. The question becomes one of 1) allowing those present on a normal service to feel comfortable, not swimming in an overly large fish tank, and 2) allowing those on a High Holy Day to feel that they’re not sitting in the lobby or vestibule. Oddly, some of my research on the Protestant Christian “Akron-Auditorium Plan” has been helpful in this non-Christian situation.

The importance of liturgical orientation (or what Islam calls qibla) varies with the species of Judaism: Orthodox, Conservative and Reform. Agincourt’s community was likely to be somewhat liberal and open to non-liturgical placement of the sanctuary. The site itself was obvious: it would be adjacent to Church Block A-5, near Asbury United Methodist, sharing their parking and also connecting the temple—to be called Emmanu-El, from the Hebrew name עִמָּנוּאֵל (‘Immanu’el) meaning “God is with us”—with the religious denominations that had formed the core of Agincourt’s civic origins.

The demographics of Iowa are working against the idea that Agincourt had a sufficiently large Jewish population to warrant a center for their community, let alone a resident rabbi. So the program would necessarily be simple and the budget limited: 1) a sanctuary; 2) a social hall; 3) space for religious and cultural education in the language and traditions of Judaism; 4) administrative and other support spaces. All of this had to be accommodated on two 50 by 140 foot residential lots. It was unlikely that the congregation could afford the luxury of a full-time resident rabbi.

I’m anxious (in several meanings of the word) to show you what has evolved, particularly from my study of Mendelssohn’s three major American synagogues: St Louis (1946-1950), Cleveland (1947-1951) and Saint Paul (1950-1954). St Louis and St Paul are tantalizingly close to Agincourt, which gave me a wonderful opportunity to imagine him “in the neighborhood”. He died, by the way, in San Francisco, California in 1953.

Anniversaries come and go, often without note. My own—birthdays, that is—have little meaning unless they end with a zero, and there can’t be many of those left.

Two major events will celebrate large anniversaries in 2015, though it’s likely that only very, very special interest groups will take note. One is the centennial of the sinking by German submarine of the RMS Lusitania, which went down with nearly two thousand aboard on May 8th, 1915, off the coast of Ireland on its way from Liverpool to New York. It will be celebrated in Agincourt, Iowa, four thousand miles away, because native son Anson Tennant was thought to have been among those casualties. In Agincourt’s Commons, there is a memorial to the Lusitania sinking, though it probably mystifies any who bother to notice it.

Britain and Germany were at war then, so the Bosch commemorated the event with a medal that, curiously, got the date wrong. I wonder how my friends in Iowa will acknowledge the moment next May.

The other, even larger and more heroic event to be noted is the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt, which gave the community 1) its name, 2) the date of its incorporation in 1857, and 3) a butt-load of the associations and symbols that have shaped the community since that October 25th when it became a city. I’ve never found much worthwhile in Civil War reënactments; they just seem silly and politically incorrect these days. But a staging of the Battle of Agincourt may be a different kettle of fish altogether.

Whaduya think of some geeks in medieval tupperware thrashing it out with nerf and paint balls fifteen months from now? I’d watch from the comfort of a folding chair, if light refreshments were served. Where’s Hyacinth Bucket when you need her.

Seems to be anything but “happy hour” here. No wonder, it’s so dark no one can find their way in.

The reality of alcohol in America requires a lot of sleuthing: except for Prohibition, I have little idea what Iowa’s drinking laws may have been since the middle of the 19th century. But I do know that, one way or another, thirst has been satisfied in Agincourt.

The way things work:

“It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards,” says the Queen of Hearts in Through the Looking Glass. As a designer, I am required to remember the future. It is my definition of design.

So when images like this appear on the radar, I simply can’t ignore them.

This vignette of a Roman Catholic priest on the steps of (presumably) his parish church is sufficiently generic to be almost anywhere. The writing on the back (in French, but not very readable) says it is in St. Johnsbury, Vermont; there is a church of Notre Dame des Victoires that is a likely candidate (the French name would seem to go with the French inscription, except there are more steps), but that’s beside my purpose. It’s enough to have a priest standing in the doorway of a 19th century Roman Catholic church.

I’ve written about this process before—moving from the specific to the general—but it’s not an exact parallel with the Deductive-Inductive pairing. Remember the Kohler faucet commercial, where the snooty upscale house-spouse whips a faucet from her purse and challenges the architect: “Design a home around this!” Generally, in architectural practice and the academic laboratory-studio, the specific design emerges from a decision tree that begins with large issues and progresses gradually to smaller and more intimate questions. But the Kohler challenge is a worthy one.

Suppose in ARCH 371 this fall I were to arrive with several sealed cartons, one for each student (and, perhaps, one for me, too) and issue the challenge: “Design a house or school or church or clinic or mortuary around whatever you find in the box. The hinge, floor lamp, door knob, paint chip, or sound recording of Marlene Dietrich singing “Falling in Love again” must be the seed of your design solution.” Tell me I should throw this idea away.

So, for my part, the priest in photo above has become Fr Emile Farber (he was either “Emile” or “Emil”, depending on the moment) and the door leads to the sanctuary of Saint Ahab’s, the Roman Catholic parish of Agincourt, Iowa. Neither exist, which is reason enough that they should.

Curiously, the present Catholic church in Agincourt—Christ the King, constructed in 1951—is the third church to serve the parish. I have an idea what the first church looked like; indeed I described it more than five years ago, though never put pencil to paper. But the second church, the one glimpsed in this picture, has never been clear to me until now.

This second installment of “Dining Out” may be both difficult to write and pointless. While it relates to the general theme of foodways in the Midwest and their evolution in the last 150 years, it’s also highly personal and obviously so. I told Peter parts of this story the other day and he thought it worth posting.

The Road House

The historical type called a “roadhouse” probably differs in meaning across the U.S., Canada and the rest of the English-speaking world. Likewise, it must also have varied from each generation to the next. I think of it as a steakhouse and bar on a major highway, sometimes offering accommodations and probably near a service station. At the edge of major cities they were convenient watering holes for travelers and also served as destinations for weekend automobile jaunts, as meeting points for business and social gatherings, and as venues for birthdays, anniversaries, wedding receptions (i.e., groomsmen’s dinners, bachelor’s parties, etc.). In some contexts, they also assumed a slightly disreputable connotation, but more about that in a minute.

I’ve always imagined a roadhouse in Agincourt or just outside the city where Highway 7 skims the northern edge of the original townsite. It may have had an earlier incarnation, but I see it thriving in the ’20s (dependent, of course, on Iowa’s liquor laws and prohibition), a resource answering many of those community needs noted above. The Greyhound bus would have stopped there on the regular run from Des Moines to Sioux City. A smokey steakhouse with martinis and slabs of meat, where the staff were disinclined to have very good memories about who said what to whom. Families were certainly welcome there—just perhaps not your family. Rent “Easy Rider” on netflix and call me.

Somewhat related to the roadhouse was the taxi dance, a uniquely American institution with a more sordid reputation. Anthropologically better defined, I’ve somehow managed to meld these two types in shards of childhood memory. Each day my past tessellates a little more; some day it will be a mosaic worthy of Mondrian. Now, an even more personal digression.

In the ’50s, the Tri-State Tollway offered the prospect of an important bypass around Chicago. A few miles from my dad’s gas station in Bedford Park, the massive interchange with Route 66 and Manheim Road (Routes 12, 20 and 45) gave Roy the chance to supplement our income. Among the stuff we sold was #1 Range Oil, an oily smelly petroleum product that burned like whale oil in lamps called “smudge pots”. Roy got the contract to line the temporary paths through the construction site with a hundred or so of these smudge pots every night, and he took me along on the nightly job. One thing you should know: my parents had divorced a year or so before but I never saw Marge again; odd for a father to have custody in the 1950s.

So most every night we’d load the truck with the pots that I’d just filled (yeah, I was about nine years old) and we’d head south on Archer (a.k.a. Illinois Route 4A) toward the construction site just this side of Willow Springs. The job then consisted of picking up yesterday’s pots and replacing them with these fresh ones. The task accomplished—it took no more than thirty or forty-five minutes I’d guess—we’d head home. It was usually about 11 o’clock. But then…

But then, about half way home on Archer, we’d pass what I only recall as The Taxi Dance, a tavern–dance hall in what I learned had been the old car barn for the Chicago & Joliet Electric Railway interurban line. The C&JE shut down in ’33, and the building had become this “entertainment venue” which I now understand played a colorful social role.

My recollections of the place center on ladies with big boobs in tight sequined dresses. I sat on their laps; they fed me 7-UP and popcorn; Roy had a beer and then, it’s just possible, disappeared for a while, leaving me in the buxom care of the taxi dancers. Any one of them could easily have been Tina Turner singing “Private Dancer” but it was enough that the ladies liked me and often bought me a burger. I look back on it sixty years ago and wonder why Child Protective Services didn’t knock on our door and take me away. If this was abuse, I’ll take it any day over the shit I see on cable TV or have fed to me on social media.

I’ve never spoken of this with Dr Bob but know him well enough to believe that he’d approve. And I learned a little about foodways in the Midwest.