Hi list
Here's an interesting selection from a book on Graham, Anderson, Probst
and White, the architects of Field Museum, Shedd Aquarium and many other
buildings in Chicago and elsewhere.

*       If you don't want anything further on architecture, delete this
*       Shedd was built from 1926-1930, so some of this is reverence for
surviving architecture (which we are carefully modifying in our master
plan).
*       I have my own "hit list" of architects who shouldn't do museums
(and museum folks who shouldn't help plan buildings)!

"As successors to Daniel Burnham, the principals of one of the largest
American firms of the turn of the century, Ernest R. Graham, Peirce
Anderson, Edward Probst and Howard White, were architects of the
mainstream.  At the center of the movement that produced big offices
through the building boom of the 1920s, they were neither conservative
nor avant-garde.  They embraced tradition without questions.  Yet within
the canons of good architecture handed down to them, they modified forms
and made creative adaptations to solve some of the largest architectural
problems of their times in railroad stations, in civic monuments, and in
hundreds of banks, offices, department stores, and other building types.
Some of their works were beautiful; a few were masterpieces "....

..."But the success of these architects in the prevailing current of
their era also provides insights into broader aspects of history...  As
inheritor of the architectural practice of Daniel H. Burnham, the firm
was involved with the design of large urban schemes, notably in
Cleveland, Philadelphia and Chicago.  In these cities, where the
architects built several buildings, their work altered the urban
hierarchy and reflected the changing values of the society around them.
... By examining the work of this firm we gain an insight into the
changing cultural values of a crucial twenty-five year period in
American life"....

"A case study of the uniquely American approach to museum building
through public-private collaboration is unveiled in the accounts of the
Field Museum of Natural History and the John G. Shedd Aquarium in
Chicago.  Three pother works reflect the basis of social welfare in the
1920s - the British Old Peoples Home in Riverside and the Baby Village
in Moosehart, both in Illinois; and the Hoover Suction Sweeper community
Building in North Canton, Ohio.  The specially created feminine world of
the department store mirrored many facets of the position of women in
the society of the 1920s, while Filene's department store in Boston
reflected contemporary visions of a utopian city life"...

...Since the firm's work has been of consistently high quality
throughout its history, its buildings have had continued and long use.
They have also been adaptable to change, enlargement or modification,
another factor in their longevity and one that provides occasional
glimpses into the preservation movement that began in the 1970s"...

..."When we ask, "What endures and why?" we enter a different dimension
than when we ask "What's new and why?"  there is perhaps more to be
learned from what people cherish and refuse to part with than there is
to be gleaned from what they are willing to sacrifice or change
radically.  What they conserve has a far more pervasive influence and is
at least as telling an aspect of their underlying values as wheat they
discard in favor of the novel, the fashionable or the avant-garde.
Shifting our focus from what is timely to what is timeless in our lives
allows us at once a more intimate and a more substantial view of
ourselves."

Linda Wilson
Visitor Studies and Evaluation
Shedd Aquarium, Chicago, IL 60605
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