| Statement of Significance Summary Paragraph
The David Campbell Memorial is locally significant under National Register Criterion C as a representative example of the work of Paul Cret, a master architect, and as a distinct example of the Beaux-Arts style of architecture that was favored in the U.S. from 1900 through the 1920s. The Campbell Memorial is important as the design of Cret, a nationally-recognized architect who had a significant influence on American architecture culture of the twentieth century. As a major proponent of the Beaux-Arts style, Cret created in the Campbell Memorial a solid demonstration of Beaux-Arts ideals and forms. The period of significance is the year 1928, when the nominated property was constructed. The Campbell Memorial, dedicated to the memory of the Chief of the Portland Fire Department killed in the line of duty, meets the requirements of Criteria Consideration F because its significance lies in its architectural merit and not in its association with namesake David Campbell.
Narrative Statement of Significance (Provide at least one paragraph for each area of significance.)
Paul Philippe Cret was an influential architect and instructor who, through his built work and his teaching, left an indelible mark on American architecture culture of the twentieth century. Although there is little published scholarship on Cret, he is generally acknowledged as one of the most prominent architects of his era—the first three decades of the twentieth century. He gained recognition as the designer of many renowned buildings, memorials, and bridges, a number of which are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. As a professor at the University of Pennsylvania for 34 years, he educated generations of American architects in the principles of Beaux-Arts architecture. In addition, his prominence was reflected in the numerous architectural competitions, over the course of thirty years, to which he either submitted winning designs or for which he served as a juror. Another aspect of Cret’s career was his service as consulting architect to the American Battle Monuments Commission from 1923 until his death in 1945. This appointment not only gained him commissions to design monuments himself, but it also allowed him a major influence on the visual impact of the U.S. war memorials in Europe. Through these facets of his architectural career, Paul Cret established himself as a significant figure in the development of American architecture.
Cret’s mature architectural style is generally known as “Modern Classical,” an aesthetic that reached its peak in the 1930s in which the basic forms of traditional Classicism were utilized but stripped of their extraneous ornament. A formal study of Cret’s designs throughout his career shows a trajectory from the Beaux-Arts principles of design and ornament that he learned at the École des Beaux-Arts to increasingly stark and Modern forms influenced by the International Style. Cret’s particular approach to Classical architecture was not an archaeological one; the fact that he chose freely from Greek, Roman, and Renaissance motifs to ornament his designs perhaps enabled him to adapt stylistically to the changing tastes of the times and relinquish most ornament altogether. In addition, even Cret’s early Beaux-Arts designs evoked a certain austerity in their relative lack of ornament: His unadorned walls and stark façades seem a reaction against the baroque profusion of ornament in the architecture of the preceding generation of French architects such as Charles Garnier, or the decorative and picturesque qualities of late nineteenth-century American revival styles. Cret’s preference toward the severe in Classical architecture was a particularity that lent itself well to adaptation toward the new Modern style.
The Pan-American Union building (completed in 1910; now the Organization of American States) was the first major commission that Cret was given (with co-architect Albert Kelsey). It is prominently sited on the corner of 17th Street NW and Constitution Avenue in Washington D.C., steps from the Washington Monument and the White House. A symmetrical building in the Beaux-Arts tradition and clad in marble, it has a triple-arched central entrance with secondary, identical wings on either side. Although there is an array of Classical ornament on the exterior including carved capitals, keystones, entablatures, balustrades, and cartouches, there also is a measured restraint reflected in blank sections of the façade exhibiting nothing but precision masonry. Inside, the dominant Classical theme incorporates some imagery from native Central and South American cultures (such as Aztec) that were celebrated as progenitors of the modern-day American republics. Although at first glance the Pan-American Union building seems a monolithic manifestation of the Beaux-Arts tradition in its use of symmetry, spatial hierarchy, and Classical iconography, upon closer inspection it allows for a certain freedom in its deliberate austerity and its inclusion of visual motifs from cultures outside of the traditional Western canon.
The Indianapolis Public Library (1917) and the Detroit Institute of Arts (1927), both designed by Cret with associated architects Zantzinger, Borie & Medary, are further examples of Cret’s signature Beaux-Arts style before it was significantly influenced by the general shift in tastes away from the Classical and toward the Modern. The Indianapolis Public Library is a monumental structure consisting of an octastyle Greek temple front flanked by massive projecting wings on either side. A grand staircase leads up to the symmetrical façade, and rather subdued Classical ornaments, including anthemia, bucrania, and meanders taken from Greek precedents, are carved into the limestone. The most striking aspect of the library is the severity of its façade: the monochromatic limestone temple front is flanked by the sheer unfenestrated faces of the two-story projecting bays. The library’s façade, with its stark surfaces and subdued decoration, foreshadows the “Modern Classical” designs that Cret would create later in his career in which he would suppress ornament and sculptural articulation altogether. Similarly, the Detroit Institute of Arts suggests a basic adherence to Beaux-Arts principles of symmetry and Classical imagery. Its tripartite entry, recalling that of the Pan-American Union building, protrudes forward while two identical wings project outward on either side. As in the library, the façade here has Classical decoration that is restrained and orderly, reflecting neither an over-reliance on ornament nor a rejection of it altogether.
Cret’s designs for the Folger Shakespeare Library (1932) and the Federal Reserve Building (1937), both in Washington, D.C., show a departure from the Beaux-Arts formula that he had employed for Indianapolis and Detroit. The Folger Library is essentially a white box of unmodulated planes, decorated in the Art Deco style popular in the early 1930s. Although there is no obvious Classical ornament, the vestiges of Classicism are still apparent in the marble masonry, the symmetrical plan and elevation, and the fluted pilasters separating the windows on the façade. The Modernistic exterior belies the Tudor interior, designed to be in keeping with the era of the library’s holdings. The Federal Reserve building retains more of the Beaux-Arts tradition in its columned façade and the tripartite massing of the projecting temple front and two symmetrical wings. The basic elements of a Classical exterior are present; however, all surface articulation has been stripped in favor of flat unmodulated surfaces, resulting in a building demonstrating both the cultural authority of traditional forms and the austerity of the Modern aesthetic.
One of Cret’s last commissions, the Chemistry Building (1940) at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, shows the culmination of his aesthetic progression from Classical to Modern. The building is a complete rejection of the Beaux-Arts principles that had previously defined the body of his architectural work. Horizontal ribbons of casement windows topped with a flat roof define the building’s horizontal orientation, and ornament is limited to the contrasting colors and textures of brick, concrete, glass and steel. Brick walls and concrete banding curve around the ground-floor corner in a streamlined manner, while the upper stories jut in to create a terrace out of the negative space above the curved corner. By the 1940s, the Modern movement had fully taken hold and it was no longer possible for a viable architect actively seeking commissions to ignore its influence on design culture. Cret’s adaptation to the changing tastes of his times is evidenced by the trajectory of his design aesthetic toward Modernism.
Cret is as well known for his war memorials as for the buildings he designed. His war memorials use Beaux-Arts principles of symmetry and spatial hierarchy to provide a legible centerpiece to a site where nothing remains of the chaos and destruction being commemorated. An early example is the National Memorial Arch Revolutionary War Monument at Valley Forge, PA (1912), which is modeled on the triumphal Arch of Titus and employs the same form as the Roman arch in the projecting central bay supported by engaged columns carrying an attic with an inscribed central tablet. This monument demonstrates the traditional Beaux-Arts design principles to which Cret would continue to adhere until Art Deco forms would begin to influence his work in the 1920s.
After the Memorial Arch project, Cret’s service in the French Army during World War I, in addition to his service on the American Battle Monuments Commission gave him the experience and authority to design fitting tributes to the war dead in Europe. General Pershing recommended Cret, then a Lieutenant Liaison Officer acting with the American Army, to Theodore Roosevelt to design a memorial to Roosevelt’s son, Quentin, who had been shot down over France. The result was a monument built in 1919 in Charnery, France consisting of a central fountain flanked by stone benches, not unlike the David Campbell Memorial. After the war, Cret designed memorials for the Pennsylvania Battle Monuments Commission, which led to his appointment in 1923 as consulting architect to the American Battle Monuments Commission, a position he held until his death in 1945. It was the goal of the Commission to hire the most prominent American architects to design monuments and chapels in Europe after World War I, and Cret and his contemporaries John Russell Pope, Egerton Swartwout, and George Howe were among those selected. Cret’s monument at Chateau-Thierry (1930) was one of the first designs in which he incorporated some elements of the Modern style into an essentially Classical design. In his first proposal for the monument in 1926, Cret drew a long colonnade, surmounted by a full entablature and attic, situated on a plinth at the crest of a hill. His revisions of the following year show a general reduction in size and the elimination of the column capitals—the first instance of Cret’s complete modernization of the Classical orders. The result is a strikingly severe repetition of vertical forms that conveys the gravity of that which the monument is commemorating. The Classical forms that Cret utilized for his war memorials, even if they were highly stylized like the Chateau-Thierry monument, appealed to the Monuments Commission for their visual harmony and association with the traditions of the past.
Another important aspect of Cret’s architectural career was his association with numerous competitions, whether as a competitor or as a juror. Because the pedagogical method at the École des Beaux-Arts was based upon series of competitions held for student work—many of which he won as a pupil there—Cret was accustomed to this method and naturally excelled at competitions as a professional. His design for the Pan-American Union (with co-architect Albert Kelsey) won an open competition entered by 78 competitors and decided by a jury presided over by Charles Follen McKim of McKim, Mead & White, arguably the most prominent American architectural firm at the time. Likewise, his designs for the Indianapolis Public Library (with Zantzinger, Borie & Medary), the Federal Reserve Building, and the Hartford County (Connecticut) Courthouse (1929, with Smith & Bassette) were winning competition entries. Cret was also invited to compete in design contests for certain buildings, such as for the new building for the Chicago Art Institute in 1934 (Holabird & Root of Chicago won the competition). As Cret rose to prominence in his field, he was sought as a judge for competitions. As early as 1904, he served as a juror for a competition for the plan of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. In 1913 alone, Cret judged competitions for new buildings for the Detroit Public Library, the New York City Inferior Courts, and the municipalities of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Wilmington, Delaware. Throughout the 1920s and 30s, Cret continued to compete in and judge many more competitions; however, World War II put an end to all architecture not related to the defense effort. In addition, the rising popularity of Bauhaus teaching methods displaced the Beaux-Arts pedagogical style that had been based on the use of competitions.
As a professor of architecture at the University of Pennsylvania for 34 years, Cret had a far-ranging influence on American architecture, educating generations of architects in the principles of Beaux-Arts design. His teaching methods reflected those that he learned at the École des Beaux-Arts, and under his authority the University of Pennsylvania architecture program became one of the preeminent programs in the country. He was beloved and respected by his students, as is evidenced by certain of his students who published articles or books about him. The three men he hired as partners in his architectural firm were all former students of his, and indeed it was Ernest F. Tucker, Jr., another former student, who recommended Cret to design the David Campbell Memorial in Portland. The American Institute of Architects Gold Medal that Cret won in 1938 was not only to honor his career as an eminent architect, but also to acknowledge his contribution to American architectural education. His influence reached even into the Modernist reaction against Classicism, through the pupils he taught. For example, one can see the Beaux-Arts principles that Cret instilled in perhaps his most famous student, Louis I. Kahn, whose buildings have a sense of formality and monumentality despite their starkly Modern architectural forms.
The importance of Paul Cret as a significant figure in the architectural history of the twentieth century is evidenced by the renowned buildings and monuments he designed, the respect he commanded in his field as a frequent competitor in and juror of architectural competitions, and his role as an influential teacher. His prolific career brought him much recognition in his lifetime, and he was generally considered one of the most prominent architects of his era. He was profoundly concerned with the expression of beauty, which he saw in terms of Classical architectural forms.
Cret’s design for the David Campbell Memorial is situated firmly in the Beaux-Arts tradition. The memorial embodies Cret’s signature understated Classicism, in which a simple but bold statement is made within the parameters of Beaux-Arts traditionalism. In the memorial, he created an embodiment of the Beaux-Arts ideal that a design be easily legible and clearly expressive of its purpose. The triangular plan serves as a sort of funnel with a clear spatial hierarchy that directs visitors up the steps and to the apex, at which the sculpture, fountain, and plaques clearly define the structure’s commemorative function. Furthermore, the Beaux-Arts ideal of beauty through good proportions is achieved at the Campbell Memorial, where the size is neither overwhelming nor diminutive, but suitable for honoring the dead and providing an ordered counterpoint to the visual chaos of the urban setting. The general plan of the memorial—a focal point raised on a plinth and flanked by symmetrical arms terminating in lantern pedestals—is identical to that of Cret’s other Beaux-Arts buildings such as the Pan-American Union, the Indianapolis library, and the Detroit museum. Although the buildings are at a far greater scale, the same principle is used to impose a sense of Classical order and beauty for the Campbell Memorial. This continuity shown in Cret’s architectural aesthetic is evidence of the strong link the Campbell Memorial design has not only to Cret’s earlier career and training, but to the ideals of Classical architecture in general and its dissemination through the École des Beaux-Arts.
The Campbell Memorial is significant as one of Cret’s last designs that relies wholly on Classical forms before the influence of Modernism would cause him to flatten, stylize, or eliminate altogether the ornamental elements. Neither the structure nor the working drawings—the originals of which are held at the Athenaeum of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania—show any signs of the impending Modern movement that would revolutionize architecture. The World War I Memorial at Chateau-Thierry, which Cret was designing simultaneously, showed a strong Art Deco influence in its final form. The Campbell Memorial, however, is pure Beaux-Arts, and as such signifies the end of an era in Cret’s career and American architecture in general, in which Classicism was eclipsed by the new forms of the Modern movement.
As an eighty-two year old commemorative property built in the Beaux-Arts style, the Campbell Memorial meets the registration requirements of Criteria Consideration F. The Memorial is notable as Portland’s largest and last commemorative fountain to be designed in a Classical style before the advent of the aesthetic revolution of Modernism. It is also unique for its site-specific design, intended to fill a defined traffic island that still holds its historic integrity. The Skidmore Fountain (1888) designed by Olin Levi Warner is the oldest of Portland’s fountains, while the Elk Fountain (1900), sculpted by Roland Hinton Perry, commemorates the antlered quadrupeds that once grazed there. Most similar to the Campbell Memorial is the Shemanski Fountain (1926), donated by a Polish-Jewish immigrant to the city that showed him kindness and allowed him to prosper as a clothing retailer. The Shemanski Fountain, located on the South Park Blocks, is a Classically ornate cast stone structure designed by Carl Linde that houses a bronze sculpture of Rebecca at the Well, by Oliver Laurence Barrett. Of Portland’s commemorative fountains of the pre-Modern era, the Campbell Memorial is unique not only as the site-specific work of a master architect, but as the largest and last to be designed before the influence of the Modern aesthetic.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE MEMORIAL
A proposal to erect a memorial to Campbell was brought about only days after he was killed, and a fund was initiated then. The David Campbell Memorial Association was founded two years later, in 1913. However, it wasn’t until 1917 that the association acquired the plot of land donated by Katherine A. Daly, a Portland widow who was involved in real estate. A 1917 city ordinance granted the Trustees of the David Campbell Memorial and Medal Fund
the privilege of erecting and maintaining a monument… to be built of some durable material and of artistic design in commemoration of the heroism of the late David Campbell, and as a visible evidence of the City’s appreciation of exalted service and self sacrifice; and Whereas, the construction of such monument will be of lasting benefit to the City in creating high ideals in the minds of the youth of our city.
The ordinance also proposed that the monument be made of bronze on a granite base, an idea that apparently lasted for ten years, until Paul Cret was chosen as the architect at the recommendation of Ernest F. Tucker, Jr.
Tucker (1901–1976), who acted as the local supervising architect to the monument’s construction, had been a student of Cret’s at the University of Pennsylvania School of Fine Arts. He played no role in the design of the monument; his position seems only to have been to recommend his former professor to the Campbell Association, and then to act as the construction supervisor, assuring that the commission was completed on schedule and within budget. Tucker would go on to become a well-regarded architect in Portland, recognized for his residence designs in the Arts and Crafts tradition following the precedent of English architects such as Edwin Lutyens and C.F.A. Voysey.
A minor disagreement occurred when in 1926, Henry Waldo Coe sent a check to the memorial fund for $100, promising another $100 if sculptor A. Phimister Proctor was selected for the monument. Coe was a Portland physician who donated the Theodore Roosevelt statue on the south Park Blocks (by Proctor) and the Joan of Arc statue at East Glisan Street and 39th Avenue. However, Proctor was not selected and by 1927 the commission had been given to Cret and University of Oregon sculpture professor Avard Fairbanks for the design of the monument and sculpture. The creation of the Memorial demonstrates the considerable cultural ambition of the city fathers of Portland, a provincial city until it experienced immense growth following the Lewis & Clark Centennial Exposition in 1905. However, it also illustrates their comparatively conservative tastes in the selection of both an architect and an artist who were educated at the École des Beaux-Arts and known to work in a Classical visual language.
On June 28, 1928, seventeen years after Chief Campbell’s death, the monument was unveiled and dedicated in a ceremony attended by the governor, the mayor, city commissioners, and officials from the Fire Department. The unveiling was carried out under the auspices of the Benevolent and Protective Order of the Elks, of which Campbell had been a member. Mayor George Baker gave an address in which he declared the monument to be dedicated to the memory of all Portland firemen killed in the line of duty, pledging that their names will not be forgotten. The Campbell Memorial had cost $35,000, a sum that was given largely by a donor who remains anonymous.
LATER DEVELOPMENTS
Originally the Campbell Memorial was bordered on all three sides by the sidewalks edging Chapman Street (now 18th Avenue), 19th Avenue, and Alder Street. In 1963, the Portland Junior Chamber of Commerce, with the assistance of the Oregon chapter of the American Institute of Architects and local businesses and labor unions, lobbied the city to create a strip of park along the east side of the monument. The work of narrowing 18th Avenue was completed the next year and succeeded in providing a small amount of open space adjacent to the monument as it became choked by ever-increasing traffic. This green space is now called Portland Firefighters Park. Until the 1990s, the memorial was under the jurisdiction of the David Campbell Memorial Association, the same body that commissioned its construction. In the 1990s, the Association turned it over to the City of Portland, which now has jurisdiction over it as part of Portland Firefighters Park.
DAVID CAMPBELL
David Campbell, Chief Engineer of the Portland Fire Department from 1893 until his death in 1911, was a beloved citizen and much admired by the people of Portland, who hailed him as a martyr when he was killed fighting a fire. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, he moved to Portland in 1881 and joined the Fire Department soon after. He enjoyed a successful amateur career as a pugilist, even touring the East Coast giving sparring exhibitions with Jack Dempsey—not the later “Manassas Mauler,” but the “Nonpareil”— the middleweight champion of the time. His athletic prowess carried over to his professional life, as he gained admiration for winning hose-running contests in the days when the city’s rival volunteer hose companies held competitions. Known popularly as “Our Dave,” Campbell also taught boxing at the Multnomah Athletic Club, when he was Battalion Chief in the Fire Department. When Campbell joined the department, it was still run on volunteer manpower—no horses and no paid firemen. In 1883, the city established a paid fire department and brought into use the first horses in acknowledgement of the increasing weight and complexity of up-to-date firefighting apparatus. Campbell was appointed 1st Assistant to the Chief in 1892, and Chief Engineer a year later. He was recognized as an effective professional in the training of his force, the maintenance of the department’s equipment, and the upkeep of the city alarm system. The Pacific Coast Fire Chiefs’ Association unanimously elected him its president in 1906.
As Chief Engineer of the Fire Department, Campbell brought noteworthy advances to the firefighting force. He introduced the first fireboat to Portland, a river city with a considerable fire hazard: miles of wooden wharves swept by a near-constant wind blowing down from the Columbia Gorge. In 1904, the department acquired the steam-powered fireboat George H. Williams, manufactured locally by the Willamette Iron and Steel Works. (The city’s second fireboat was rechristened the David Campbell in the first act of memorializing him shortly after his death.) Campbell also bought the PFD’s first automobile, a 1909 Pierce Arrow with coal-oil headlamps that he would speed to the scene of a fire long before the horse-drawn equipment could get there. Once there, he would assess the situation and devise a plan of action for his force to follow upon their arrival.
It was this car that he drove to the fire at East Salmon and Water Streets on June 26, 1911. The Union Oil Company of California had a distribution plant there housing three large oil tanks that began to burn when a spark from a pump ignited accumulating gas. The tanks were half buried underground with insufficient ventilation, and huge explosions began taking out sections of the building. Every fire company in the city descended upon the inferno in an attempt to subdue it; the Oregonian reported that there were 10,000 onlookers there as well. Almost an hour after the first alarm sounded, Campbell entered the burning building to determine if there remained any firefighters inside, despite pleas not to enter the conflagration for his own safety. A massive explosion blew out the north wall, leaving the unsupported roof to crash down and trap Campbell in the fire.
The tremendous public outpouring of grief was a testament to the sterling character of David Campbell. The Chief of the Astoria (Oregon) Fire Department called for the fire departments of every city and town in Oregon to toll its bells at the hour of Campbell’s funeral. Thomas W. Lawson, the writer and controversial Boston financier, was visiting Portland at the time of Campbell’s death and wrote a saccharine tribute called “The Dead Chief” with these concluding lines, “Chieftain and hero, manly and brave/Pardon our weakness, we weep at your grave.” A ten-year-old schoolboy wrote another tribute that was also published in the Oregonian:
I loved Chief Campbell and I want everyone to know how good he was. He always had a smile and a kind word for all the school children. Whenever we were late he used to take us up to school in his auto just a-whizzing, and at noon we used to hurry back from lunch and he would let us ride with him. I think he was the best chief that ever lived….”
Campbell’s funeral, one of the largest ever held in Portland, began with a procession through downtown with 150 firemen, police, city officials, and thousands of citizens. The procession was led by a platoon of police, followed by Campbell’s car draped in mourning and driven by his chauffeur with Campbell’s turnout coat and helmet in the empty seat. The hearse was drawn by Baldy, Bob, and Bid, a team of Campbell’s favorite fire horses, and the bell at Engine Company Number 1 at Southwest Fourth and Yamhill tolled at fifteen-second intervals while the cortège passed through the streets. City Hall was closed, and messages of condolence poured in from all over the United States, including from the New York City Fire Chief and Commissioners. Campbell was buried at River View Cemetery in Southwest Portland.
The death of Chief Campbell led to an increased awareness of fire prevention in Portland. Public outcry at the fatal outcome of the Union Oil Company fire in a close-in neighborhood led to zoning changes that banned new construction of fuel plants within residential areas. New building codes went into effect in an attempt to make fuel warehouse and storage buildings safer, and insurance incentives were given to increase compliance with new fire codes. The organization of the city’s first Fire Prevention Division in 1915 was a result of, among other fires, the disastrous inferno that had killed Campbell four years before.
PAUL P. CRET
Paul Philippe Cret was born in Lyon, France in 1876. Winning the Paris Prize in 1897 as an architecture student at the École des Beaux-Arts de Lyon enabled him to enter the École des Beaux-Arts de Paris, where he studied in the atelier of architect Jean-Louis Pascal. Instruction at the École des Beaux-Arts was the pinnacle of architectural pedagogy at the time, in an institution that had been superlative for at least one hundred years and would continue to be unsurpassed until the mid-twentieth century. Students at the École studied Greek and Roman antiquities and were taught to refer to Classicism as the language of all architectural design. Cret was a top student, winning several awards during his six years there. Upon his graduation from the École in 1903, he was recruited by Dean Warren P. Laird to teach at the University of Pennsylvania School of Fine Arts. His acceptance of the position of Professor of Design that year came at a time when certain American universities, among them Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cornell, and Harvard, were seeking to increase their cultural prestige by importing French graduates of the École des Beaux-Arts.
Cret perpetuated the École’s particular method of teaching design at the University of Pennsylvania, establishing the school as a leader in American architectural education. The Beaux-Arts design method consisted of first determining the parti, or the conceptual framework to give the best solution to the problem. Then the point, the dominant element of the design, was conceived, followed by the marche, or the processional route toward the point. Finally, the entire composition was drawn up, the complete scheme that was the end product of the design process. This same method was applied to every design problem, and was considered the only way to successfully work up the programmatic requirements into a design solution. It was this methodology, sustained by frequent school-wide competitions among the students, that Cret brought with him and established at Penn, where it held sway until Cret’s retirement, an event that also coincided with the beginning of the great shift away from Classical modes of education in this country.
Cret and his contemporaries, men such as James Gamble Rogers, John Russell Pope, Bertram Goodhue, Cass Gilbert, and of course Frank Lloyd Wright, were all working during a highly contentious period in the history of American architecture. A heated debate between the Modernists and Traditionalists had been broiling since at least the turn of the centu |
