R. M. Schindler, Richard Neutra and Louis Sullivan's "Kindergarten Chats"

Portrait of Louis H. Sullivan, from Kindergarten Chats on Architecture, Education and Democracy by Sullivan and edited by Claude F. Bragdon, Scarab Fraternity Press, 1934, frontispiece. From my collection.

Louis Henry Sullivan is the taproot of the genealogical tree of modern architects in Southern California. His apprentices Irving Gill and Frank Lloyd Wright had a profound influence on the evolution of modern architecture in the Southland which in turn attracted Frank's son Lloyd, Viennese emigres R. M. Schindler and Richard Neutra and their eventual apostles Harwell Hamilton Harris, Gregory Ain and Raphael Soriano (see below). (Author's note: Chicago History Museum link provides an excellent summary of Sullivan's life and career). 

Genealogy of Los Angeles Modern Architecture from American Architects and the Mechanics of Fame by Roxanne Kuter Williamson, p. 32.

R. M. Schindler and Richard Neutra became aware of Louis Sullivan and his work through the teachings and work of Otto Wagner and  Adolf Loos and their fascination with Sullivan apprentice Frank Lloyd Wright's Wasmuth Portfolio first published in Berlin, Germany in 1910 by Ernst Wasmuth. Schindler discovered Wasmuth in 1911 and Neutra first saw it in 1914, the year Schindler left Vienna for the U.S. They both studied under Loos, with Neutra beginning in 1912, the year he met Schindler. 

Announcement for an Adolf Loos Lecture, "Ornament and Crime" on February 21, 1913 which was likely attended by both Schindler and Neutra. From Adolf Loos by Alessandra Coppa, 24 Ore Cultura, 2013, p. 114.

Loos had visited the U.S. between 1893-96 and became enthralled with Chicago and it's Adler & Sullivan-designed skyscrapers and later regaled his students with tales of Chicago and Sullivan's work. Thus the previous genealogical diagram should be amended to include a dashed line connecting Sullivan to Loos and extending to Schindler and Neutra. The table below also places Wagner, Sullivan, Loos, Wright, Schindler, and Neutra in historical context with their published doctrines. (See also the Pauline Schindler discussion on architectural lineages near the end of this article.)

Schindler-Neutra Genealogy in a Trans-Atlantic Context from "The Wagnerschule and Adolf Loos," by August J. Sarnitz in RM Schindler: Composition and Construction edited by Lionel March and Judith Sheine, Academy Editions, 1993, p. 32.

Louis Sullivan, Transportation Building, World's Columbian Exposotion, Chicago, 1893. 

Ironically, Gill and Wright were still working side-by-side in Sullivan's office about the time Loos arrived to view the 1893 Chicago World's Columbian Exposition which included Sullivan's massive Transportation Building, the most modernist-leaning building in the exposition (see above). Sullivan wrote of the deleterious impact of the Exposition's architecture on his hard-fought battle for the acceptance of a more modern architectural language,

"Meanwhile the virus of the World's Fair, after a period of incubation ... began to show unmistakable signs of the nature of the contagion. There came a violent outbreak of the Classic and the Renaissance in the East, which slowly spread Westward, contaminating all that it touched, both at its source and outward.... By the time the market had been saturated, all sense of reality was gone. In its place, had come deep seated illusions, hallucinations, absence of pupillary reaction to light, absence of knee-reaction-symptoms all of progressive cerebral meningitis; the blanketing of the brain. Thus Architecture died in the land of the free and the home of the brave.... The damage wrought by the World's Fair will last for half a century from its date, if not longer." (The Autobiography of an Idea by Louis Sullivan).

I do not wish to delve into the text of Sullivan's Kindergarten Chats with this article but only to give the reader a sense of the impact the nature-loving Sullivan had on both Schindler and Neutra through their relationships with him. A close reading of the Chats however, will provide numerous hints that Sullivan's writings profoundly influenced Schindler's philosophical articles on "Space Architecture" and Neutra's development of his theories on "Biorealism" which he expounded upon in his Survival Through Design, Nature Near and other published work. (See for example below and Nuetra's 1935 review of the Chats further below. Also see my Pauline Gibling Schindler: Vagabond Agent for Modernism, 1927-1936 for more on the publication of Schindler's "Space Architecture" in the February 1934 issue of Dune Forum edited by Pauline Schindler.). 

Realismo biologico: Un neuvo Renacimiento humanistico en arquitectura by Richard Neutra, Editorial Nueva Vision, Buenos Aires, 1973. Serulnic House living room, Julius Shulman Job No. 2092, November 2, 1955, courtesy Getty Research Institute. (From my collection).

Schindler moved to Chicago in 1914 with the ultimate goal of working with Wright. His first Chicago employment was with the firm of Ottenheimer, Stern & Reichert between 1914 and 1918. Schindler met Wright in December, 1914 and finally began working for him on February 5, 1918. In December, 1918 Schindler, then living at Wright's Oak Park studio while Wright was in Japan working on the Imperial Hotel, invited Sullivan for a visit where they met for the only time. See Sullivan's acceptance letter below.

Louis Sullivan to R. M. Schindler letter, 12-12-1918. Courtesy UC-Santa Barbara Art Museum, Architecture and Design Collections, R. M. Schindler Papers.

From The Architectural Annual, Second Edition, 1901, p. 284.

A by then destitute Sullivan was unsuccessfully trying to find a publisher for his Kindergarten Chats which he had recently spent five months revising and editing into book format. The "Chats" were originally conceived as fifty-two separate articles that appeared weekly in the Interstate Architect and Builder from February 16, 1901 to February 8, 1902. (See review above). It was an extended dialogue between a student and the master who leads him through a kind of spiritual and psychological confrontation with nature before introducing him to social and building analysis - Sullivan's preferred method of architectural instruction. In a 1901 letter to the editor in response to criticism of one of his "Chats" Sullivan responded with the below excerpt describing his plan for a gradual and organically developed thesis comprised by the sum of its 52 parts.

The Interstate Architect and Builder, May 11, 1901, p. 6.

Learning of Sullivan's plight during his visit to Wright's studio in Oak Park, Schindler offered to ask his mentor and Sullivan admirer Loos for help in finding an Austrian or German publisher. Schindler informed Wright in Japan of his scheme to help Sullivan find a publisher to which he replied,

"Your book scheme looks good to me. I hope something can be realized on those volumes, although being printed in German "queers" them just now I suppose in many places." (Frank Lloyd Wright to R. M. Schindler, March 15, 1919. Getty Research Institute, Frank Lloyd Wright Letters).

Sullivan, desperately short on funds, entrusted Schindler with his only copy of the manuscript. After two attempts to get in contact with Loos, the manuscript was finally sent off to Vienna on March 11, 1920. (Vienna to Los Angeles: Two Journeys by Esther McCoy, Arts + Architecture Press, Santa Monica, CA, 1979, p. 44-5).

Adolf Loos, photographer and date unknown. (From Wikipedia).

Schindler did not hear from Loos for a period of months and wrote Neutra, then working at the American Friends' (Quakers) Relief Mission in Vienna, to go see him and find out about the status of the manuscript. Neutra's July 15, 1920 reply was without any news of the manuscript but instead mentioned that Loos was thinking about moving his school to Paris and had asked if he could find out if Sullivan might be interested in heading it up. Schindler relayed the inquiry to Sullivan in a fascinating August 26, 1920 letter (see below) in which he described Loos's love of America and publications on same, him being the only serious opponent against the architectural atrocities of the "Secession," and his controversial, ornament free work. He closed with, "Although not having any direct news about the manuscript, I hear that Loos said that he would try to publish one of your books, and the above offer convinces me that he is in possession of the manuscript and has read it." (RMS letter to Louis Sullivan, August 26, 1920). (See below).

RMS letter to Louis Sullivan, August 26, 1920. Courtesy UC-Santa Barbara Art Museum, Architecture and Design Collections, R. M. Schindler Papers.

Sullivan replied in an August 31st letter that he might be interested in lecturing in Paris but, at his age, he had no interest in becoming the head of a school. He was much more interested in the status of his manuscript. About this same time Neutra wrote to the American Red Cross attempting to find a way to enter the United States to join Schindler. Neutra opened his plea with, "I am an architect and am hoping to go to America to study the Middle Western Architecture, the work of Richardson, Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright who in our opinion is the worlds first architect today." (Richard Neutra to Miss Elsa von Elst, Foreign Language Bureau, American Red Cross, August 14, 1920, Courtesy UC-Santa Barbara Art Museum, Architecture and Design Collections, R. M. Schindler Papers.).

Taos Pueblo, October 1915. Photograph by R. M. Schindler. Courtesy UC Santa Barbara Art Museum, Architecture and Design Collections, Schindler Collection.

Late in the year Wright asked Schindler to move to Los Angeles to help his son Lloyd oversee construction of Aline Barnsdall's Hollyhock House in Hollywood. Lloyd's inattention to detail on Olive Hill, likely exacerbated by his moonlighting on the Bollman and Weber houses and various landscape design projects, raised Barnsdall's ire and resulted in Wright's summons to Schindler. (For more on this see my "Tina Modotti, Lloyd Wright and Otto Bollman Connections,1920").

The Schindler's likely stopped in New Mexico en route to the Grand Canyon and Los Angeles so that Schindler could show Pauline the Taos Pueblo (see above) he had first seen in 1915 while visiting Chicago painter friends Victor Higgins and Walter Ufer after viewing the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco and the Panama-California Exposition in San Diego. (For more on this see my "Edward Weston and Mabel Dodge Luhan Remember D. H. Lawrence"). 

The  possibility of this stopover is evidenced by a letter from Schindler to Richard Neutra shortly after moving to Los Angeles extolling the virtues of the indigenous native architecture of the Southwest. The letter also indicates that Schindler had absorbed Sullivan's lessons on "Function and Form" from the "Chats" and that Sullivan was having trouble getting his books published implying that he was unaware that Neutra had any knowledge of Sullivan's manuscript. 

"The only buildings that testify to any true feeling for the earth from which they spring are the ancient adobe buildings of the first settlers and their successors-Spaniards and Mexicans-in the Southwest. ...
Louis Sullivan is the founder of the "Western School." He was the first proclaim here that "Form follows function," and he sets out to give the skyscraper the form that is natural to it. He writes books on architecture, which have yet to find a publisher in America, and his buildings represent the ultimate that is attainable - attainable, that is, by an architect who has not yet fully grasped the third dimension of space, and whose gift for wonderful pencil sketches of ornamentation still accommodates no truly secure feeling for materials." (R. M. Schindler letter to Richard Neutra, December 1920 or January 1921, Translation from R. M. Schindler, Architect, 1887-1953 by August Sarnitz, Rizzoli, New York, 1988, p. 205).

R. M. and Pauline Gibling Schindler, Sophie and Edmund Gibling, Dorothy Gibling and Mark Schindler at Kings Road, summer 1923. (Sweeney, p. 93). Schindler Family Collection, Courtesy Friends of the Schindler House.

Schindler and wife Pauline arrived in Los Angeles in early December 1920 to work on Wright's Olive Hill Aline Barnsdall compound. Unbeknownst to Schindler, Sullivan's manuscript was now in Neutra's hands. He was trying to interest the Quakers in publishing it without success. Finally, in July 1921, a year before completing work and moving into his new house on Kings Road in West Hollywood (see above), Schindler received confirmation from Neutra that he indeed was in possession of the manuscript and was trying to find a publisher himself. Esther McCoy, in her Vienna to Los Angeles: Two Journeys, illuminates through the correspondence of Schindler and Neutra and letters from Sullivan to Schindler, the efforts Sullivan and Schindler made over the next two years to get the manuscript back from Neutra. The letters from Sullivan to Schindler also portray his dire financial straits and that Wright had authorized Schindler to disburse to him a much-needed $200. (Sullivan to Schindler letter, Chicago, September 8, 1921, McCoy, p. 147).

Neutra apparently was still trying to find a publisher, an exercise that would serve him well when looking for a German publisher for his own first book, Wie Baut Amerika? in 1926-7. He also likely practiced his English by poring over the "Chats" while absorbing Sullivan's teachings and fantasizing about returning the manuscript to him in person, a dream that was not to be realized until 1924.   

In the fall of 1922 Loos submitted an unsuccessful but well-publicized Chicago Tribune Tower competition entry shortly after the Schindlers had moved into their new house in Los Angeles and before Neutra arrived in Chicago in 1924 (see above). Loos's entry, a seemingly serious attempt to win the $50,000 first prize, also appears to indicate that he and/or Neutra possibly translated Sullivan's Chats before handing the manuscript back to Neutra the previous year. His design makes an obvious wink at Sullivan's chapter, "A Doric Column," which derided in great detail its winning selection in a design competition for a memorial for the 200th anniversary of the discovery and founding of the City of Detroit. Sullivan ended his hyperbolic Doric Column chapter chastising the unnamed architect and the selection process with,

"So much for decay, so much for cynicism, for pessimism, for the downfall of the sturdy American pioneer, the hunter, the trapper, the woodsman, the riverman, the greatest in the world, the hardiest, the truest and the best - and their memory to consummate in what? A "Doric" Column! In any other land, in any other time, this would seem a fairy tale, so faithless sounds the story - so inhuman a response." (Kindergarten Chats by Louis Sullivan, Scarab Press, p. 62). (Note: Sullivan disparaged the Doric Column throughout the Chats). 

Without benefit of knowing that Loos had likely read Sullivan's Kindergarten Chats, Katherine Solomonson wrote of the Loos entry in her exhaustively researched book on the competition,

"Adolf Loos, like Bruno Taut, was particularly concerned with the Tribune building's representational qualities. His column of gleaming granite - one of several immense columns submitted to the Tribune became one of the competition's best-known but most ambiguous entries. Seen variously as a joke, a caustic critique, and a sophisticated essay rich in metaphorical allusions, Loos's column has triggered wide-ranging interpretations: it expresses the Tribune's growth and power, as it did that of the Roman Empire; it playfully alludes to a newspaper's printed columns; it suggests that the Tribune is a pillar of society; it refers to the columnar metaphor describing the skyscraper's tripartite elevation; it takes a critical stand against the American city; it is Dada; it is ironic; it is utterly empty of meaning." (The Chicago Tribune Tower Competition: Skyscraper Design and Cultural Change in the 1920s" by Katerine Solomonson, p. 118). 

Loos must have been quite pleased with the multiple entendre his entry presented and must have had great fun with it's design, obviously knowing that his hero Sullivan would likely see it and realize his inside joke. 

"The Chicago Tribune Building," Adolf Loos on Architecture edited by Adolf and Daniel Opel, Ariadne Press, Riverside, CA, 1995, p. 169.

Despite possibly knowing of his Chicago idol Sullivan's utter disdain for the Doric column Loos's entry was seemingly a serious attempt to win the competition evidenced by his post competition article describing his project design inspiration published in early 1923. Loos's intimate knowledge of American skyscrapers from his three years spent in the U.S. is apparent in his piece.

            "In producing this design the author constantly bore in mind the demand in the prospectus "to erect the most beautiful and distinctive office building in the world," to erect a building that once seen, either in a photograph or in reality, can never be forgotten, to raise a monument that will forever be associated with the image of the city of Chicago, just as the dome of St. Peter's is with Rome and the leaning tower with Pisa, to design a building that for the intelligentsia will immediately connect the newspaper, The Chicago Tribune, with a particular character.            

How to achieve this? By erecting the highest building in the world, higher than the Woolworth Building? The restriction on height to 400 feet made this impossible. By repeating the trick of the New York Herald or the Morgan Building and making it lower than the surrounding buildings? Such imitation would run counter to the competition requirements. Or by choosing new architectural forms without tradition, such as German, Austrian and French architects use, forms from the Berlin of Cubism or the Belgium of the 1848 revolution? Alas, all these untraditional forms are all too quickly replaced by new ones and the owner soon realizes his building is old-fashioned because these forms change as fast as ladies' hats. 

There seemed to be nothing for it, then, but to design the typical American skyscraper. When this movement started it was easy to distinguish between them, but already the non-specialist finds it difficult to say whether the building whose photograph he is looking at is in San Francisco or Detroit.

            For his design, therefore, the author chose the column. There are precedents in the tradition for the concept of a huge, freestanding column: the Column of Trajan was the model for Napoleon's column on PlaceVendome. I was immediately assailed by architectural and aesthetic reservations. Is it permissible to build an inhabited column? To that one must answer that precisely the most beautiful designs for skyscrapers have been taken from monuments that were not intended for habitation and no one has yet objected to them for that reason. For example the classical model of the tomb of King Mausolus for the Metropolitan Building and the model of the Gothic spire for the Woolworth Building.
          

From Postcards and Poster Stamps of the Bugra.

(Author's note: Loos is also likely to have recalled the Doric Column that was part of the 1913 International Building Trade Fair in Leipzig (see above) as he was preparing his Tribune Tower entry.)

(From Christie's).

"You can rest assured that despite this I found it difficult to bring myself to publish my idea. There are people who, given the Catonian severity for which I have made a name for myself, would claim I was betraying my principles in doing something they would quite happily accept from any other architect. I will state here and now that I have not betrayed my principles and stand by my design unconditionally. With my close connections with the newspaper business, being not only an architect but also a writer and contributor to all modern art journals, and having worked in my younger days as art critic in New York, I am well aware how far one can go, in terms of architecture, with a newspaper building. This design is worthy of a Chicago Tribune, for a small newspaper it would be presumptuous.           

Most objections, I fear, will be directed at the lack of decoration in my project. This building is intended as a gigantic demonstration of my doctrine that we replace the ornamentation of antiquity with the quality of our materials. It is to be made of one material alone: black, polished granite (see below)."

  Chicago Tribune Tower Competition entry, Adolf Loos, 1922. From Adolf Loos by Alessandra Coppa, 24 Ore Cultura, 2013, p. 103.

"No illustration is capable of revealing the effect of this column. The smooth, polished surfaces of the cubic base and the fluting of the column would make an overwhelming impression on the observer. It would be a surprise, a sensation even in these modern and blase times.             

The building is no higher than the regulations allow, but the perspective created by the abacus makes it appear higher.            

I have been lavish in the use of space. Monumentality is always achieved at the cost of space: high entrance halls, broad staircases etc. The owner must remember that true grandeur is not characterized by petty utility but that the most impressive effects are obtained by the opposite, as is proved by the New York Herald Building and the Morgan Building.             

The return between the base of the column and the plant building is to be of brick and terracotta, with the exception of the cornice and the columns, which are to be of the same material as the main building. This will be the best way of showing that the new building and the existing plant belong together.              

The colossi over the entrance columns have their antecedent in tradition in the Temple of Jupiter at Acragas and in the crouching figure of  the Theater of Dionysos in Athens.
If the height restriction of four hundred feet should be removed the statue of a seated Roman tribune could be placed on top of the column.             

Until now huge columns have only been erected in the Roman style, never the Greek. Until now this idea was slumbering in our imagination, now it has taken on form.          

This huge, Greek Doric column will be built. If not in Chicago, then in another City. If not for the Chicago Tribune, then for someone else. If not by me, then by another architect." ("Loos, Adolf, "The Chicago Tribune Column,"  Zeitschrift der Oster. Ingenieur-und Architektenvereins, January 26, 1923).

How Loos's entry would look today had it been built, presaging the Post-Modern era by a full 60 years. (From archiV).

Loos's ending quote was precious indeed as it foresaw by 60 years the dawning of the Postmodernism Movement in architecture. Loos's "Column" would have made a timeless statement on Michigan Avenue as seen above. As Loos predicted, his idea would come to fruition in another city for another client by another architect. Michael Graves' 1995 Denver Public Library clearly captures elements of Loos's now iconic 1922 design in a quite imaginative manner.  

Denver Public Library, Michael Graves, architect. From Denver Library.

Left, second prize, Eliel Saarinen, Helsingfors, Finland. Right, first prize, John Mead Howells and Raymond Hood, New York. (Sullivan, Louis H., "The Chicago Tribune Competition," Architectural Record, February, 1923, pp. 154-155).

Sullivan's review of the competition in the February 1923 issue of the Architectural Record was also silent on Loos's "Column" entry but instead focused upon a comparison between the first prize entry of John Mead Howells and Raymond Hood and that of second place winner Eliel Saarinen. (See above). Sullivan's scathing critique of the Tribune's selection jury choice bemoaned of a lost opportunity in the advancement of modern architecture,

"It's act has deprived the world of a shining mark, denied it a monument to beauty, to faith, to courage and to hope. Deprived an expectant world of that Romance for which it hungers, and had hoped to receive." Sullivan ended by repeating the stated goal of the Tribune, "It cannot be reitterated too emphatically that the primary objective of The Chicago Tribune in instituting this Competition is to secure the design for a structure distinctive and imposing - the most beautiful office building in the world." (Sullivan, Louis H., "The Chicago Tribune Competition," Architectural Record, February, 1923, pp. 151-157).