“Provenance” in art is the unbroken sequence of ownership from the artist’s studio or gallery to the auction house floor. It is usually taken as proof of authenticity, not unlike the chain of evidence in prosecuting a crime. Works of art attributed to renowned artists — Picasso, for example, or Whistler — can command significantly higher prices when they come with an unblemished provenance.

An architectural idea can leave a similar record; its trajectory, so to speak, from a supposed point of origin, a “smoking gun”, to a second iteration and to the next and the next, often exhibiting evolutionary change along the way — like the passing on of a rumor. In the case of Chester Motte’s modest home imagined on West Avenue — an exceptionally skillful exercise in platonic geometry, if you ask me — its antecedents are reasonably easy to trace. The most likely candidate for “smoking gun” (or “patient zero” in the realm of epidemiology) might be the 1886 William Kent cottage at Tuxedo Park, New York, by architect Bruce Price.

While Price is hardly a household name, one of its earliest offspring was the first suburban home of the recently-married Frank Lloyd Wright, whose notoriety is sufficient for him to become a question on “Jeopardy”. The Kent cottage was widely published but not the sole Shingle Style example, surely, to have crossed Wight’s line of sight. The young Wright was, if nothing else, a stylistic sponge, absorbing and making over in his own evolving idiom a phenomenal amount of current architectural work.

For the twenty-two year old Wright, someone inculcated with the educational methods of 19th century German educator Friedrich Fröbel, the Shingle Style was a cake walk; Wright’s personal touch was the stylized Palladian window motif in the front gable. So when the C. T. Mott’s “Country Cottage” came along, I knew its family tree at least two generations back. In fact the sequence here isn’t 1, 2, 3, that is, Price-Wright-Mott, because the dates put Mott between the other two. The provenance of an idea is an ever broadening tree, not a single knotted rope.

This simple (simplistic?) case is even less predictable, because the Mott and Price designs are so close in date that an even earlier expression of that platonic composition may yet to be found lurking in the shadows.

Three substantial components of the project’s physical form have eluded me: #1) the pair of public spaces at Agincourt’s core—The Commons and The Square—and their respective character, the estrogen and testosterone of civic life; #2) the cemeteries at the east edge of the Original Townsite—The Shades (non-denominational), St Ahab’s (Roman Catholic consecrated space), and the Hebrew Burial Ground; and #3) the Fennimore County Fairgrounds. Of these, the most enticing is the third, because I can at least identify with midway carnival rides, cotton candy, and images of Pope Francis crafted from peas, beans, and pasta.

Two students have approached me about imagining this space at the west edge of town on the far side of the Mighty Muskrat. Understanding this site is not the most user-friendly on the web, I’ve gathered some of the miscellaneous references to the fairgrounds for them—and for you as well.

• The Fennimore County Agricultural Association may have been my first serious consideration of the topic. And Improving the Gene Pool dealt with the fundamental purpose of such cultural institutions in the 19th century.
• The Fennimore County Fair [2017.12.12] was an early observation of the topic. As was Brigg Fair, a romantic reference to a folk song orchestrated by Frederick Delius. See also: American Passtime (which has one too many “s”s but I prefer it that way) and Chautauqua (part 1) and Chautauqua (part 2) about another 19th century cultural institution often linked with fairgrounds but operating independently.
• “Meet me at the Fair” [2018.01.03] was one of several attempts at linking the problem with parallels in my own experience. Here I wrote about William A. Wells, an early Oklahoma architect of my acquaintance who had designed several features at an amusement grounds in suburban Oklahoma City at the time of statehood.
• The Northwest Iowa Traction Co. served the fairgrounds after about 1911 with seasonal service, which required a trestle over the Muskrat for access. And Infrastructure is yet a further inquiry into the fairgrounds’ connectivity with other parts of the community.
• Romantic allusions to the fair brought me to write about Lover’s Leap, while “Sumer is icumen in…” attempted to integrate the fairgrounds with the river that borders its east edge.

Never having considered what all these musings may mean when taken together, I leave it to the two intrepid student volunteers who’ve elected to take this issue head on.

“Real Photo Postcards” (RPPCs) are simply what they claim to be: actual photographs, rather than printed by offset lithography or some other process. For that reason alone, it is difficult to gauge how many of them there may be; perhaps as few as one. Which is why they are so expensive. This beauty is priced at $75, a very good reason why it won’t be added to the Agincourt Project collection. And yet…

Gifts like this don’t come along as often as I might like. Agincourt’s principle bank, the F+M+M or Farmers, Mechanics & Merchants Bank, came about through the merging of two earlier institutions on shaky financial grounds. I’m only slight bothered that the sign behind these gentlemen reads “Farmers and Merchants”, rather than “Farmers and Mechanics”, which would mesh more readily with the story line. It will take little time, however, to adjust that story to fit the evidence we see before us. The bonus, of course, is the group standing in front of the bank, four of them named, who could easily be connected with the bank in some way. Sure, I could photoshop their names, but why look a gift horse in the mouth. How are you at reading old handwriting? I see “Nelson” and “Grandfather Haugh” and “Carl” on the far right, but having trouble with Mr T.

BTW, “Haugh” is an English surname and is pronounced haw. And wouldn’t you like to know who was giving a lecture. That sort of detail doesn’t show up in a printed card.

Messrs Motte & Bailey, purveyors of lumber and coal, established themselves along the Milwaukee Road tracks soon after the line reached Agincourt. Bailey, the silent partner, never lived here, but Chester T. Motte managed the business locally from the late 1870s until it was sold to the Sawyer family about 1910. Motte’s delightful home at #418 West Agincourt Avenue was built in 1886 or 1887, shortly after he married, and remains largely intact, as fine an example of the “Shingle Style” as the Tennant home seven blocks east, by Chicago architect J. Lyman Silsbee.

Though he wasn’t trained in the field of architecture, Chester Motte designed several buildings (at least he’s credited with them) throughout Fennimore county and slightly beyond. Lumberyards often served that purpose in the years following the Civil War, as the profession of architecture began to distinguish itself from the building trades; using plan books or catalogues as sources.

Illinois became the first state to acknowledge the architectural profession in 1899, though Iowa did not follow suit until 1926. There was little guarantee, however, that the use of the title “architect” was linked to the quality of the work. In Motte’s case, his designs generally exceeded expectation. Someone ought to undertake a study of his design output.

[This entry, by the way, belongs in the general category of (TW)² — “the way things work” — which makes sense in the context of an earlier entry.]

These last few days I’ve been absorbed in various late 19th century architectural journals — many have come on-line recently in OCR searchable format — looking for nothing in particular and enjoying nearly everything I find (i.e., stumble across). Among the incidental discoveries were a few of the late buildings by British architect J. D. Sedding, a familiar name who produced some unfamiliar work. Time to correct that situation. And then there is this charming pen-and-ink perspective of “A Country Cottage” by New York architect C. T. Mott.

Charles T. Mott [1855-1935] was an architect of no great significance; I doubt that any history of architecture in New York State even mentions his name. History has a way of being written by the victors. Which often has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of the work. Witness this small, utterly charming house, whose plan I’ve been trying to imagine all afternoon. Sure, the Shingle Style is a favorite of mine, but this is textbook S.S. and as such deserves a place in Agincourt.

Yesterday I reflected on 19th century given names, some of them staging a comeback. I doubt that “Orson” is among them, however. Beside Orson Welles, the only other “Orson” I know is Orson Squire Fowler, a mid-19th century character with a foot at each end of the genius–crackpot spectrum.

Mr Fowler popularized the octagonal house during the middle of his century, precisely when the Agincourt townsite was laid out and incorporated. Any of the city’s earliest settlers could have been familiar with his idea, which appeared in numerous popular journals and ultimately the 1853 book The Octagon House: A Home for All, the notion being that centrally-planned buildings—circles and octagons, primarily—held more useful interior volume with less surface area. They were easier to heat and ventilate and potentially enjoyed less space wasted for corridors. [The plan shown above left isn’t necessarily the finest example.]

Agincourt’s doodads, gewgaws, gimcracks, and thing-a-mabobs — all those eccentric artifacts that have made the town interesting to me — have had a tendency to survive. I wonder if the published inventory of Octagon houses nationwide might have overlooked an example in northwestern Iowa; the state had thirty-eight of them at one time. Why not one more.

Oh, and at the opposite end of the spectrum (the crackpot end), you’ll find Fowler’s name prominently connected with phrenology, the 19th century pseudo-science of reading the bumps on your head as analytical tools for understanding human behavior.

PS: Someone has just reminded me of Orson Bean, with a comparably looney theory about Orgone, “a pseudo-scientific spiritual concept variously described as an esoteric energy or hypothetical universal life force.”

Still alone together

Was at the neighborhood coffee emporium this morning, alone at the big table. Eventually five 20-somethings gathered at the other end. I was busy writing in my journal [some thoughts on the William Halsey Wood project manuscript] and glanced at my table mates: four of them were staring silently at their laptop computer screens (one playing air drums along with whatever was piped into his head through a set of earphones Princess Leia would envy); one was busy on his smart phone. They were aggressively “alone together”, not speaking, except to rotate a computer and point something out to one of the others, who would nod approvingly. I don’t think twenty words were uttered in twenty minutes. Then I had a stray actuarial thought.

Assuming eighteen years to a generation, I’d become intrigued by five people who were the age of my great-grandchild at the point he/she would have birthed my now one-year-old great-great-grandbaby. No wonder I haven’t the remotest notion of the current generation. I was pondering the state of late 19th century Anglo-Catholicism and its impact on church design. What do you suppose they were up to?

Five years ago I wrote something here on this new age of shared aloneness. Apparently things haven’t changed. Incidentally, I’m having coffee tomorrow morning with a few of them. I’m anxious to meet them—and learn something.

“Architecture is actually a great deal better than it looks.” —Cecil D. Elliott

As a teacher of architecture and its history, I must stay keenly aware of that truth as I drag students through a chronologue of power points, from the stone age to the present — or as close as I can comfortably get. It’s one thing to teach them how to look without telling them what to see; to reacquaint them with the childhood skills numbed by our educational system; revealing the multi-sensory nature of being conscious in the World. I’ve written about this before but it seems as good a time as any to flesh out the story of my pilgrimage to LeCorbusier’s chapel at Ronchamp in Eastern France and make the case of architecture’s multi-sensory nature: It’s actually a lot better than it looks

Notre Dame du Haute is an icon of Modernism, easily recognized by all students of architecture. Its battered stucco walls and swooping brutalist concrete roof are characteristic of LeCorbusier’s post-war work and a contradiction to the cool rationality of his interwar practice. Our department once interviewed  a prospective faculty member who shared with us her recent architectural travel, which included a breezy glimpse of Ronchamp with her companions which had reduced the experience to ticking a box during a scavenger hunt. Wham! Bam! And on to lunch. I was reminded of my own encounter many years earlier but wondered if she and I had been at the same place.

The most obvious difference between our two encounters was access: she and her cohorts had arrived by rental car, while my colleague Joe and I were captives of public transport — at the time there was a single-car train into the village at about 7:00 a.m. and one onward train at 7:00 p.m. We were trapped in a hamlet in rural France for twelve hours.

Leaving the unstaffed depot we found a sign directing us to La Chapelle, through a triumphal arch worthy of Septimus Severus, carved into the viaduct our train had just crossed. It was the equivalent to an architectural fanfare. What followed was a three-hour initial encounter which put demands on all my senses, not just sight.

In architectural history, the concept of enfilade is important—a French word meaning spatial sequence or progression; the psychological effect of entering a new and unfamiliar space from a previous one and carrying with you its memory. I suppose mine had actually started at birth, but technically it began at that arched definition of “entry”; marking the boundary between village and countryside. I’ll leave aside the sounds of crowing roosters and diesel tractor engines, rustling leaves and songbirds. Entering one of the ugliest parking lots and homeliest visitor centers of my experience, Joe and I found a comfortable patch of shade and spoke at length of nothing in particular, waiting for the gates to open.

What followed was a multi-sensory experience which engaged everything except my taste buds. I smelled beeswax. Thanks to an unannounced bend in the floor, gravity pulled me to the communion rail, which turned out to be painted steel, rather than wood, and cool to the touch of a sweaty forearm. I understood the chancel floor sloped in the opposite direction and distorted perception of its distance from the pews. The pilgrim’s path to communion was thereby made to seem intimate; reciprocally, the return to my seat became both difficult and distant thanks to the reverse visual effect. Meanwhile, with just the two of us present, the acoustic qualities of all those hard, unforgiving materials amplified every sound I made and in doing so made me be quiet; I was even aware of my own breathing.

After a while, other tourists began to arrive and complicate our observations, so we retired to the village for a two-hour lunch, and a return to the chapel in completely different lighting. Then down the hill again to write postcards and find the post office. then a final hike to the top for one last experience in the late afternoon just before our train. Though this happened more than thirty years ago, it is still vivid, an indelible memory I’ve shared with students and friends. It probably also goes without saying that LeCorbusier moved up several notches in my esteem. But the fringe benefit—one of several—was an appreciation for all my senses and a confirmation of Cecil Elliott’s observation: Architecture is far more than what we see.

Mental Maps

Mental maps, the cartography of the imagination, have played a subtle but essential role in the evolution of Agincourt. The first article Howard Tabor wrote for the year-long series of his Saturday columns leading up to the Sesquicentennial was a conscious look at the city he, like most of us, had taken for granted. Tabor challenged himself to walk to work—by whatever path presented itself; not necessarily the shortest route—and see something new or see something familiar but in a new way. The object he settled upon was the obelisk on the east side of the courthouse square (which isn’t square, by the way). Until that moment, I (as the person channeling him) didn’t have the foggiest idea there was an obelisk there or anywhere else in the city. But once he saw it, I had to explain its presence, even if Howard could not. So, in the space of probably less that an hour, I conjured a backstory that I believed was a plausible explanation for it.

Each time I imagine a place in Agincourt or its hinterlands, something similar happens: not only must I “see” that place, but I must also connect the dots and understand the path that had brought me there—in architecture, we call it enfilade or spatial progression. So, what began as a series of points, disconnected, floating in Jeffersonian space, became linked, and with those connections the terra incognita that had surrounded them itself became shrinking pools of as-yet-unimagined space. My mental map of Agincourt will never be complete; there will always be gaps, which is what makes this compelling for me. Now and then, I find others willing to suspend belief for just a little while and play.

My observations earlier about architecture—buildings, groups of buildings, and the space that surrounds them—plays a significant part in this creative process. Because our the memory maps we create are often shaped by senses other than sight. Recall Sherlock Holmes, Robert Downey’s 2009 film, where in he is abducted and taken by a circuitous route to a group of men intent on buying his service. At the unknown destination, Holmes relives the journey that brought him there, and uses characteristic London sounds, smells, the physical bumps from potholes in the pavement, and divines not only where he is but who is peaking with him. All because his habitual observation has become a richly textured and nuances mental map of the place he calls home.

So, let me challenge you to revisit your childhood. Make a mental map of your path from home to school: what did you hear, small, feel, and perhaps even taste along the way. Each experience becomes an event on that path, punctuation in both space and time, part of our personal sense of enfilade. And collectively they are the beginning of a mental map of childhood. If I did’t believe this was a meaningful aspect of our development as humans, I wouldn’t have brought it up.