Photograph of the longhouse at the Huronia Museum & Ouendat Village, Midland, Ontario (photographed by MDR president Amanda Roth Clark, 2018).

23 August 2020

Hello SAH MDR membership,

Summer has slipped by and we enter again another autumn. This newsletter includes a suite of material and will be followed in short order by a call for an electronic vote, so keep your eyes open for that!

The SAH MDR will hold its annual voting virtually via email in the coming weeks.

• We are seeking to fill the positions of SAH MDR Treasurer and SAH MDR Vice President; these are both two year terms starting in June 2021.

Wishing you all my very warmest,
Amanda Clark, SAH MDR President
amandaclark@whitworth.edu

SAH MDR Launches a YouTube Channel

As part of our mission to promote the love of architecture, SAH MDR has launched a YouTube channel; this channel contains two short interviews with Professor Leland M. Roth and seven two-part lectures by Professor Marion Dean Ross. Ross's popular course on the history of Oregon architecture was filmed in its entirety in 1990 and was just digitized in 2019. The course lectures were filmed while Professor Leland M. Roth was the chair of the department of art history at the University of Oregon and are now available in their entirety at:
 
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOigu4WShKQ2PdmDQDhenUg/featured
 
More videos are forthcoming, and we are open to suggestions and requests for future postings.

Report from the Grants Committee – 16 August 2020
by Diana Painter

Every year the Marion Dean Ross chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians gives out a research grant named after our long-time member and chapter historian/advisor, Elisabeth Walton Potter (EWP). This year we made the unusual decision to give out two grants, to two individuals writing books about the same architect, Paul Hayden Kirk!

Magnolia Library, Seattle, designed by Paul Hayden Kirk, image courtesy of Grant Hildebrand.

Kirk (1914-1995), a Seattle area architect, was prolific in the mid-twentieth century and became known for his residences, medical clinics, religious facilities, and public buildings. One of his most widely recognized buildings is the post-and-beam Magnolia Branch Library (1962-64), which is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Although his work was published in about sixty articles in national architectural journals between 1945 and 1970, no one has written a monograph on him. Two individuals are about to change that! Some background on our two authors follows.

Grant Hildebrand
Grant Hildebrand actually needs no introduction to our chapter! He and his wife Miriam Sutermeister are long-time chapter supporters and champions. Grant is the author of seven books on regionally significant architects from the Pacific Northwest, the most recent being A Poetic Architecture, on the work of Gordon Walker (Gordon was our keynote speaker at our annual meeting in Sandpoint, Idaho in 2019). Other monographs have been on the work of Phillip Jacobson, Gene Zema, Wendell Lovett and Arne Bystrom, and George Suyama. Additional works by Hildebrand include studies of the work of the industrial architect Albert Kahn, for whom he worked as a young designer, and Frank Lloyd Wright. Hildebrand also worked early in his career for Detroit-based Minoru Yamasaki, who was born in Seattle and studied at the University of Washington but made a name for himself nationally with his design of the World Trade Center (on which Grant worked), among other Modern masterpieces (Yamasaki is likely best known in Seattle for his design of the Pacific Science Center on the grounds of the Seattle Center).

Grant retired from his long teaching career at the University of Washington—which he began in 1964—in 2000 but continues to write, his latest work being the monograph on Paul Hayden Kirk, which will be published by the University of Washington Press. Other topics have captured his interest over the years as well, such as aesthetic theory, explored in his book entitled, Origins of Architectural Pleasure, which received the Washington Governor’s Writers’ Award for “work of literary merit and lasting value.” He also received a Distinguished Faculty Award for Lifetime Achievement from the University of Washington’s College of Built Environments, one of only ten conferred on past college faculty.

Grant has been twice recognized for his service to the Marion Dean Ross chapter. In 2003 Grant received a Distinguished Service Award and in 2009 he and his wife Miriam received the Marion Dean Ross award, which is given "for longstanding commitment to the Chapter's mission, outstanding support of recurring and singular activities, and exemplary dedication to the continued growth and improvement of the Chapter." Grant and Miriam signed the copyright of their book, A Greek Temple in French Prairie, the story of the pre-Civil War William Case house in the Willamette Valley, over to the chapter in 2007 to assist with fundraising. Chapter historian Elisabeth Walton Potter credits Grant and Miriam with “saving” the chapter in the mid-1990s, at a chapter low point. She also credits Grant with raising and maintaining the scholarly quality of papers presented at our chapter meetings and with attracting regionally renowned professionals to make keynote presentations at our annual conferences. Grant himself has also been a featured keynote speaker. In 2004, he presented on Rem Koolhaas’s design for the Seattle Public Library, which had been recently completed.

These are only a sampling of Grant Hildebrand’s accomplishments and his and Miriam’s contributions to our chapter. In his forthcoming book Grant will be able to place Paul Hayden Kirk’s work in a regional perspective, which he wrote about in his 2014 book, Little Wooden Buildings, The Puget Sound School. Here is the link to Grant’s video on the Paul Hayden Kirk monograph: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoReBCdJ3Gw

Dale Kutzera
Dale Kutzera is our second author to receive an EWP award this year. Dale is a screen writer and novelist, and fan of Regional Modernism. His compendium on the work of Paul Hayden Kirk, entitled Paul Hayden Kirk and the Rise of Northwest Modern, will feature photos and drawings of Kirk houses and buildings that are not widely available. While the University of Washington Special Collections houses Kirk’s papers and many photographs and drawings of his work, not all of it is digitized. This award will assist Kutzera in getting more of Kirk’s work digitized and published.

Kutzera attended the University of Washington, graduating with a degree in communications. He worked as a screenwriter for many years, and now writes for the technology and entertainment industries. The video Kutzera created for his Kickstarter campaign to raise money for the book gives a glimpse into the high production values we can expect from his publication. It can be viewed here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kutzera/paul-hayden-kirk-book.

Grant Hildebrand appeals for donations to enable publication of Paul Hayden Kirk and the Puget Sound School. Kirk and a group of his colleagues produced, from 1951 through the mid-1970s, an architecture of a quality unsurpassed in America, perhaps in the world. It was an architecture of smaller buildings that could be made of wood and, with one exception, were. Almost all of those buildings lie within a few dozen miles of Puget Sound. They have been folded into what is called the Northwest Style or Northwest Modernism, but they exhibit characteristics that distinguish them, and unite them. It seems reasonable to call their architects the Puget Sound School. The story of Kirk and that School is a significant chapter in the history of American architecture, yet this is the first book to tell this story. Hildebrand discusses forty key buildings in depth, describing and diagramming their distinctive features, with over a hundred color photographs, most of them taken specifically for this book.

The book must be of a quality commensurate with its subject; therefore, its design must be to the highest standard. Approximately half of the funds necessary to publish the book have been procured. Hildebrand seeks donors who would find pleasure in supporting this important chronicle. Pledges should be made to Grant at granth34@gmail.com or Scot Carr at casacarr@me.com.

In the News

As noted in the previous newsletter, longtime MDR member Professor Leland M. Roth, was named a 2020 SAH Fellow. I was honored to write the citation for this honor, which can be read here—https://www.sah.org/conferences-and-programs/award-programs/sah-fellows—it is a rare joy to be able to recount this life of one’s father for such an occasion.

2020 SAH Fellow, Leland M. Roth, seen here in the late 1960s. Photograph courtesy of Amanda Roth Clark.

Minor Amendment to our Bylaws

At our 2019 conference, the Board present discussed the need to make some minor changes to our bylaws in order that they align better with our fiscal year. According to our bylaws, to make an amendment we need to notify members 30 days prior to voting; it will be amended by an affirmative vote of two-thirds of those members at the meeting. The proposed amendment to our bylaws is available at https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cC3rgNcO0u1SKuqk1j7pnhcm1KgFQvQx/view?usp=sharing.

SAH MDR Board of Directors

 Amanda C. Roth Clark (Spokane, President)
 Chris Bell (Salem, Vice President)
 Kathryn Burk-Hise (Worley, Secretary)
 Mimi Sheridan (Monterey, Treasurer)
 Diana Painter (Spokane, Past President)
 Phil Gruen (Pullman, Washington Regional Delegate)
 Phillip Mead (Moscow, Idaho Regional Delegate)
 Jim Buckley (Portland, Oregon Regional Delegate)
 Jenni Pace (Vancouver, British Columbia Regional Delegate)
 Ahsha Miranda (Portland, Membership Coordinator)

Copyright © 2020 SAHMDR all rights reserved.
August 25, 2020

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