Issue Ten

    A wise philosopher once observed that children live in the “house of tomorrow,” a place which their parents can never enter but only dream of.  Yet, if Eliel Saarinen, and his son Eero, did not inhabit the house of the future at least they designed and constructed one together.  It is a remarkable structure, known as Kleinhans Music Hall, located in Buffalo, New York.  The building inspired the only occasion that the United States Department of the Interior actually made a formal application, to itself, to enter a structure on the National Registry of Historic Places, the premier designation for architecture in America. 
    In addition to its near perfection as a performance space and its formative influence upon virtually every music hall built after it, Kleinhans is an acknowledged architectural masterpiece–reason enough to be listed on the National Registry.  Yet, it is the building’s status as the first and foremost collaboration of this pre-eminent father and son architectural team that caught the eye of the Department of the Interior.  Eliel Saarinen (1873-1950) was one of a handful of internationally known architects (the forerunners of today’s celebrity “starchitects”) and the only serious rival of Frank Lloyd Wright in his generation.  Eero Saarinen (1911-1961) eclipsed his father’s reputation and played a major role in the evolution of design at mid-century, before his untimely death.  A friend described their successful teamwork this way, “The father’s advice was always respected by the son; on the other hand, Eero was always encouraged to advance his ideas by a very tolerant father.” The sports equivalent of this combination would be a Hall of Fame father and son playing on the same team in a world championship their team won.  We are unlikely to see such a distinguished artistic partnership between the generations in a single family again.
    Before more is said about the Saarinens, the name of Esther Link, however, deserves mention.  Miss Link, a public high school teacher and sometime import business office manager, was responsible for bringing the Saarinens to Buffalo for the music hall project.  Had she not given her unvarnished opinion to her attorney, Edward Letchworth, then chairman of the committee charged with executing the instructions of the estate of Edward and Mary Kleinhans to erect a music hall for the citizens of Buffalo, the masterpiece that was erected would have been supplanted by an undistinguished and tired neo-classical design, already rendered, and about to be commissioned. 
    Remarkably, it was only her chance noticing of the inferior design, in a rendering hanging on Letchworth’s wall, and her attorney knowing his client to be a person of educated taste and firm opinion, that his inquiry and her response led to an eleventh hour rejection of the first design.  Shrewdly, Letchworth recruited Miss Link to confront the powers then behind the artistic decision-making for the music hall.  Her meeting with the foundation committee persuaded them to reconsider their original choice–the personal architect of a powerful member of the committee–and led, ultimately, to the selection of the Saarinens.  This is a fascinating and important tale, in and of itself, and underscores the difference one person can make in the delicate and easily manipulated process by which communities spend precious resources on public commissions.  Commissions that, for good or ill, have the power to shape the image and identity of communities and contribute, or not, to the quality of life in them. 
    One needs only to consider the present saga surrounding the memorial to the World Trade Center.  The originally proposed use of the sixteen acres at Ground Zero by David Libeskind, including a 1776 foot “Freedom Tower” and park beneath was determined by a competition and embraced by well-intentioned public officials.  Yet, the movers and shakers of big projects in New York appear to be guided by the notion that economic and architectural success are mutually exclusive.  Sadly, the original endorsement of Libeskind’s vision has been compromised and re-negotiated.  The track record elsewhere is not impressive: a long list of forgettable projects in many cities, including the disappearance of much of America’s historic urban landscape during the so-called “urban renewal” programs of the 1970s.  Buffalo can claim several such disappointing episodes: the sprawling and complicated north campus of the State University of New York at Buffalo, the location of the Buffalo Bills football stadium in a suburb far south of the city, and the building of a major highway through the heart of one of its most treasured parks. 

    It takes courage, vision and resolve, on the part of those entrusted with important artistic and philanthropic decisions, to marshal the good judgment and political will necessary to bring about satisfying and aesthetically enduring projects for their communities.  Esther Link, for one, was unwilling to succumb to power politics and the status quo.  Her unhampered opinion and strong stand encouraged those responsible for the new music hall to reach for what was needed and new, if not innovative and revolutionary.  Given Miss Link’s central role in the search for a worthy music hall design, it is an unfortunate oversight that her name does not appear anywhere in or on the building she helped bring into being.  Her contribution and memory deserve to be honored.
    Paul Gauguin’s observation that “art is either a plagiarist or a revolutionary” cuts to the core of Eleil Saarinen’s search for form as an architect.  The elder Saarinen knew himself to be living in a transitional period, an exhilarating time when poets, painters and architects were no longer relying upon old and dead forms of the past.  Saarinen’s occasion for coming to the United States, sixteen years before the construction of Kleinhans Music Hall, was his submission to an architectural competition for the Chicago Tribune’s new headquarters.  The 1922 Tribune competition is remembered not for the winning design of Raymond Hood and John Mead Howells that was constructed, but for the remarkable losing entries from a cadre of early leading modernist architects such as Walter Gropius, Bruno Taut and Saarinen.  Saarinen’s second place entry received high praise, especially from Louis Sullivan–father of the ‘tall office building’ or modern skyscraper.  Like the younger Whitman, receiving the older Emerson’s blessing as a bright new star on the literary horizon, Sullivan’s accolades gave instant luster to Saarinen’s name in North America.
    It was art as plagiarism that Saarinen could not abide.  In The Search for Form in Art and Architecture, his philosophical and artistic treatise written shortly before his death, Saarinen refers to imitation in art and architecture as “gnawing worms” or “fungus.” Nor did he like decoration or ornamentation because, this too, unrelated to function, was shallow if not dishonest.  Every movement of aesthetics and form in history from the early Egyptians and Greeks to the Romanesque, Gothic and Renaissance periods to the Baroque, Roccoco and more modern schools, has an intrinsic logic, order and integrity.  Someone has an excellent idea, Saarinen says, and then many others begin to lay hold to this excellent idea and it becomes a style-form.  In painting, once a legion of followers emerge an ‘ism’ appears.  Hence, the original logic, order and integrity are lost.

    Rather, Saarinen celebrated originality but originality in consort with functionality.  He was a student of the folk art tradition which inspired his early award winning designs as a young architect, in Finland.  Form for Saarinen was organic and contextual.  He was fond of using analogies from nature to make his point–beginning, for example, with the description of a birch tree, then describing it among a stand of trees in a woods, near a meadow, with a stream flowing through the scene and hills against the horizon.  Saarinen saw both the tree and the forest.  His claim that “art is life” and his mission to reclaim architecture as the “Mother of the Arts,” rather than as an imitative exercise in building design, revealed his belief that creativity and vitality can shape all human activity. 
    Consequently, many of Saarinen’s designs included not only the plans for his buildings but often, plans for the contents of the buildings as well–furniture, textiles, and utensils.  In addition, Saarinen envisioned plans for whole cities or sections of cities such as his famous vision for the Detroit riverfront.  With the meticulous care of a folk artist he oversaw the selection of interior colors and lighting, building materials and furniture design.  Indeed, Eero’s lobby sofas and his Mary Seaton chamber hall armchairs at Kleinhans were highly acclaimed.  The later were even exhibited in the then ten-year-old Museum of Modern Art which had just moved into its new building on East 53rd St., in 1939.
    Saarinen’s work was infused with a spirituality he called variously, the “vibration” or “energy” or “rhythm” of life.  This spiritual power manifests itself in the forms that are nascent within the human and natural world–just as the oak tree lies within the acorn.  Architecture is a direct reflection or expression, of this energy of life, in each generation.  To imitate forms from past epochs, Saarinen thought, was plainly deceitful and dishonest.  These issues came to a head during a City Council hearing, conducted with Saarinen, after his design had been submitted for the new music hall.  The council was required to give its blessing to the project because a portion of the funding came from federal sources.  What resulted was a teaching moment for Saarinen and the council.  At this early date the public response to the plan for the new hall, as both Saarinens expected, was mixed.  One skeptical council member, mistaking the name of the brilliant architect before him, with that of the well-known professional golfer of the time, Gene Sarazen, asked, “Why doesn’t your building look more like the Parthenon?” Saarinen: “Because we are not Greeks.” Councilman: “But I was taught that the Parthenon was the perfect architectural form.” Saarinen: “Architectural forms are like the leaves of a tree.  Which one is more perfect?”
    In fact, Saarinen likened his plan for the new music hall to a violin, with one difference–unlike the violin, designed to emit musical vibrations into the open space surrounding it, the music hall, as musical instrument, is designed to contain the musical vibrations within it.  Nevertheless, the shapes of both are determined by the purposes of their use.  Indeed, an aerial view of the music hall reveals the main hall and its smaller chamber music hall twin, opposite to one another, like the two halves of a stringed instrument.  The exterior walls of the entire structure correspond faithfully to the contours of the interior spaces.  Saarinen’s use of Wyandotte and Sandusky brick and Mankato limestone create a simple, tasteful exterior.  The entire building is diagonally situated at the center and rear of its three acre, park-like parcel of land.  This allows pedestrian and automobile traffic at Symphony Circle to enjoy a three-sided view of the structure and beautifully anchors and enhances the southwest quadrant of the circle. 

    Yet, the hall had to be designed in such a way as to maximize the total musical experience between the performer and audience.  As a music lover and friend of Jean Sibelius and Serge Koussivitsky, Saarinen understood there is a rapport between artist and listener–a communication back and forth that is physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual.  Part of the genius of the new hall was that for a large seat auditorium, it retained the performance intimacy of a small chamber concert space.  
    No detail was missed.  Materials were carefully selected and integrated into the design of the whole.  The list of parts to the puzzle was long and complex: appropriate and identical cubic feet, per person, for the main hall and the Mary Seaton Room; the exact positioning of seats for hearing and sight lines; the use of interior surface materials such as hard plaster, plywood and perforated flexwood that allowed radical contours and eliminated tone distortion; innovative solutions such as recessed “down lights” for way-finding, so not to disturb the general atmosphere; and cool and warm upholstery colors.  Saarinen assembled the many parts of the entire hall like a fine violin. 
    The praise, from critics, at the completion of the music hall was instantaneous.  Joseph Hudnut, Dean of the School of Architecture at Harvard, mused, “If I had my way, every city in America should have a Kleinhans Music Hall, fitted like a garment to the idea of music as a popular solace and enlightenment.”
    The day after Kleinhans was dedicated, in 1941, the Memorial Auditorium in downtown Buffalo, a Public Works Administration project, was also dedicated.  On hand, was the Secretary of the Interior, Harold Ickes, who gave a national radio address on the project as an example of what local and federal governments could achieve together.  Also present were sixty mayors from across the country.  It was a photo-op for the movers and shakers who came to be seen and bask in a temporary glory.  Today, sixty five years later, however, the Memorial Auditorium sits empty, dark and boarded up, hopeful that a national sports store chain will rescue it from demolition and oblivion while Kleinhans Music Hall continues to fill every weekend for its original purpose–the enjoyment of fine music.
    Not long ago Yo-Yo Ma performed the much loved Cello Concerto in B minor by Antonin Dvorak at Kleinhans.  So moving was his performance and so appreciative the audience that he offered the gift of three encores.  One encore, in the classical music world, is a rare thing.  Three is unheard of.  In a way, it was the result of two Stradivarius instruments combining for an unforgettable evening of music, Mr. Ma’s rare cello and Buffalo’s rare music hall.  Maybe fathers and sons can’t inhabit the ‘house of tomorrow’ together but when Eliel and Eero Saarinen decided to collaborate on Buffalo’s house of music, the result was timeless.