Today in ARCH 321 we’ve been talking about the architectural traditions of China and Japan. As is my wont, its far easier to set new and unfamiliar material against and related to the stuff I know somewhat better. So, our discussion of Japanese design quite naturally (for me) was linked with the Columbian Exposition of 1893 and the Japanese exhibit there, the Ho-o-den or “Phoenix Pavilion”. And that was a natural lead into Frank Lloyd Wright’s fascination with Japan, his subsequent first trip there in 1899 (with friends who were also clients), his likely visit to the Katsura Detached Villa near Nara, and its immediate influence on work following his return. Here’s where Kevin Bacon enters the picture.
The Ho-o-den was designed Masamichi Kuru, a pupil of J. Conder, an English architect invited by the Emperor to establish the first modern school of architecture in Japan. The Ho-o-den was one of the first traditional structures designed by an architect who studied Western design. It doesn’t surprise me that Conder’s name is unfamiliar; he invested the remainder of his professional life in Japan, married a native woman and had one child, a daughter, who married the military attaché connected with the Swedish embassy staff; I’ve corresponded with his grandchildren, scattered across the globe from British Columbia to the Canary Islands.
Conder’s name had come to my attention in connection with John Scott Bradstreet, an interior designer in Minneapolis who had travelled to Japan on a two-year cycle where he was introduced to both architecture and landscape design there by Conder. Bradstreet’s showroom and design studio stood in downtown Minneapolis amid Japanese-style gardens and the building itself was decked with various motifs drawn from his Oriental experiences. Bradstreet was among the first Americans to import Japanese art objects to the Midwest and went so far as to employ native Japanese craftsmen at his Twin City workshops.
Josiah Conder’s name came up again in connection with my interest in the early architects of Dakota Territory, in particular British emigrant architect George Hancock, who had come to Fargo, DT in the spring of 1882 and remained a part of our community until his death in 1924. Hancock was born in Gloucestershire but worked as a stone mason in London where he also claims to have studied architecture at the South Kensington Institute (now morphed into the V&A). The 1881 UK Census list him (just before his emigration to the US) in a North London neighborhood, living with a much younger brother Walter and an unmarried sister Caroline as housekeeper. Who should be his next-door neighbor in London but an architect named Roger Conder, coincidentally the older brother of Josiah and an architect in his own rite, designer of Retiro railroad station in Buenos Aires. It seems unlikely that Hancock did not know Roger Conder and that he may have learned of the Conder sibling educating young Japanese in the skills of Western architecture.
So, it works something like this:
- Architect Louis Sullivan designed the Transportation Building at the Columbian Expo and his young protege Frank Wright supervises construction at the fairgrounds.
- Wright witnesses the Ho-o-den under construction and very likely visits the completed building designed by one of Josiah Conder’s earliest students, Masamichi Kuru, architect of the Ho-o-den. Did Masamichi come to Chicago to supervise construction?
- Wright is impressed sufficiently to plan a trip to Japan six years after the fair had closed.
- Meanwhile, Conder’s younger brother Roger was practicing architecture in London and living on Wyndham Crescent in the Tufnell Park neighborhood of North London.
- Roger Conder, living at #2, Wyndham Crescent, lives next door to the Hancocks (George, Walter and Caroline) at #1. They were neighbors.
Hancock’s home at #1 Wyndham Crescent is the building behind the scaffolding.
- George Hancock and subsequently younger brother Walter emigrate to Fargo, Dakota Territory (George in 1882 and Walter by about 1890).
- Hancock designs many building in the Red River Valley and the eastern part of the Territory, including several on the NDAC campus, where I’ve taught for the past fifty-two years.
- John Scott Bradstreet became a force in Twin City culture, spreading the Japanese aesthetic of shibui and designing gardens for homes at Lake Wayzata.
- Joined by his brother Walter, Hancock Brothers branched into Montana, opening an office in Bozeman—until the collapse of silver in 1893 and a return to rebuild Fargo after the fire at about the same time.
The world is, indeed, exceptionally small.