Acknowledgments

Friedman, Alice T.

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Acknowledgments

Alice T. Friedman

Women and the Making of the Modern House: A Social and Architectural History

Many people and institutions have helped make this book possible. As I was embarking on the project I was awarded a fellowship at the Bunting Institute, Radcliffe College, and I am very grateful to the former director, Florence Ladd, and to my “sister fellows” at the institute for helping me clarify the ideas and focus the questions from which my research developed. Special thanks are due to Eve Blau, Wini Breines, Karen Hansen, and Salem Mekuria for their advice and encouragement. At every …

Author

Alice T. Friedman

PublisherYale University Press

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00177.010

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-15109

Acknowledgments

Many people and institutions have helped make this book possible. As I was embarking on the project I was awarded a fellowship at the Bunting Institute, Radcliffe College, and I am very grateful to the former director, Florence Ladd, and to my “sister fellows” at the institute for helping me clarify the ideas and focus the questions from which my research developed. Special thanks are due to Eve Blau, Wini Breines, Karen Hansen, and Salem Mekuria for their advice and encouragement. At every stage my work has been supported by grants from Wellesley College, for which I am deeply grateful. The final phase of research and writing was completed with the aid of generous grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. I want to thank these institutions for their support, which enabled me to take time off from teaching at a critical point in the project.

Throughout this endeavor I have relied on the expertise and generosity of specialists whose knowledge of the architects and houses discussed in the book helped me find my way. In my work on Frank Lloyd Wright and Hollyhock House, I benefitted enormously from the guidance and good counsel of Kathryn Smith, whose research forms the foundation for any study of the subject. I am also grateful to Neil Levine, Jack Quinan, and Virginia Kazor for their assistance and advice on numerous occasions. In the Department of Special Collections, Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, I consulted microfiche copies of materials from the Frank Lloyd Wright Archive at Taliesin West; the Getty library staff was very helpful. A one-month grant from the Huntington Library and Art Gallery enabled me to carry out research on the arts in Southern California; during this period, as at other times, I made use of the Huntington’s rich collections, and I want to acknowledge the assistance of the librarians and curators there. I also wish to thank my friend Jill Finsten of the J. Paul Getty Museum for her hospitality and for making my many visits to Los Angeles so pleasant.

My work on Truus Schröder and my research in Holland would have been impossible without the collaboration of Maristella Casciato. An expert in Dutch architecture, she was the ideal guide and teacher; her patience, generosity, and good humor sustained us both during our campaigns of research in Utrecht and Amsterdam. A faculty grant from Wellesley College enabled us to travel and work together. I also wish to thank Jaap Oosterhoff, curator of the Rietveld-Schröder Archive at the Centraal Museum, Utrecht, for his advice and encouragement. Many others, including Lenneke Büller, Corrie Nagtegaal, Frank den Oudsten, Pieter Singelenberg, Nancy Stieber, Susana Torre, and Nancy Troy, contributed in various ways. The staffs of the International Information Center and the Archives for the Women’s Movement in Amsterdam, and of the Netherlands Architecture Institute in Rotterdam, were also very generous with their time.

In my study of the Villa Stein–de Monzie I have relied on numerous people for guidance and advice. Mardges Bacon helped direct my research at the Fondation Le Corbusier in Paris and offered many invaluable suggestions. I am also grateful to Albert Bennett, Daniel and Betty Stein, and Brenda Wineapple, all of whom kindly shared their knowledge of the Stein–de Monzie household with me; special thanks are due to Mr. Bennett for allowing me to study the letters and photographs in his collection. With the help of a one-month fellowship at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, I consulted materials in the Gertrude and Leo Stein Collections, and I am very grateful for the assistance and hospitality of members of the staff. I conducted additional research on the Steins and their circle at the Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley.

My research on Edith Farnsworth began with a telephone call to her nephew Fairbank Carpenter, who graciously donated the manuscripts and photographs in his possession to the Newberry Library in Chicago. I am grateful to the Newberry for a fellowship that made it possible for me to consult these materials. I would also like to thank Pierre Adler, curator of the Mies van der Rohe Archive at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, for making the documents and drawings in his care available to me. A Travel to Collections Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities supported my work in New York and at the Library of Congress, which holds the Mies van der Rohe Papers. Conversations with Kevin Harrington, Mary McLeod, and Christopher Reed helped me in various ways, and I thank them for their support. I would also like to thank Stanford Anderson and Mark Jarzombek for inviting me to present the material on Philip Johnson at M.I.T., and for their comments at a critical stage in my work. Gigi Fernandez of the office of Philip Johnson, Ritchie, and Fiore, New York, worked tirelessly to obtain photographs on my behalf.

I was introduced to Constance Perkins by Susan Danly, former curator of American art at the Huntington Library and Art Gallery, and I greatly appreciate her encouragement and interest. Conversations with Robert Winter after Perkins’s death helped enormously; I am also grateful to Dion Neutra for discussing his father’s work with me. My research in Pasadena was supported by a Robert Wark Fellowship at the Huntington, which now owns and maintains the Perkins House; I was very fortunate to have had the opportunity to stay at the house during this time, and I would like to thank the Huntington for extending that privilege to me. Perkins’s papers are now held by the Archives of American Art, and I want to express my particular appreciation to the staffs of both the San Marino and the Washington offices for assisting me with my research. I extend my thanks as well to the Department of Special Collections, University of California at Los Angeles, which holds the Richard Neutra Collection, and to the Architectural Drawings Collection, University of California at Santa Barbara.

Special acknowledgment is due to Robert Venturi for taking the time to talk with me about his mother’s house; my work on that chapter could not have gone forward without his support. Denise Scott Brown, Deborah Fausch, Liselotte Freed, John Izenour, and Susan Scanlon also offered advice, information, and guidance.

I am especially grateful to Ann Bergren and Sharon Drager for their willingness to be interviewed and for allowing me to visit their homes. Their expertise and insight contributed to the project in many ways. While I was working on the Drager House I learned a great deal from my conversations with Frank Israel and Annie Chu; Janet Sager of Morphosis was also extremely generous with her time and knowledge.

Many other people helped make this book possible. Donald Hallmark and Richard S. Taylor shared their expertise on the Dana-Thomas House; Nancy Gruskin, Lisa Reitzes, and Mary Daniels, librarian in the Department of Special Collections, Loeb Library, Harvard Graduate School of Design, assisted me with my research on Eleanor Raymond. At Wellesley College the staff of the Art Department, Art Library, and Visual Resources Collection, especially Marie Companion, Avalee Jenkins, and Jeanne Hablanian, patiently endured my many requests for help in locating photographs, books, and articles over the years; I am deeply grateful to all of them for their support and friendship. My research assistant, Lori Pavese, was always helpful and thorough, and she offered useful advice and encouragement along the way. Denise Decastro also assisted with the research.

Many colleagues in the Art Department at Wellesley took the time to discuss the project or offered their support in other ways. I gratefully acknowledge the contributions of Rebecca Bedell, Judith Black, Margaret Carroll, Anne Higonnet, and especially James O’Gorman, whose friendship and support have been important to me throughout my career and this project. I am indebted to Martin Brody, Zeynep Çelik, Ginna Donovan, Kathleen Harleman, Katharine Park, Geeta Patel, John Rhodes, Paul Robertson, and David Stang for their encouragement and advice throughout the process of research, writing, and revision. Patricia Berman read and commented on every chapter, sometimes more than once; I have relied heavily on her enormous talents as a scholar and specialist in twentieth-century art, and I thank her for her sound judgment, generosity, and good humor over the years.

Diana Murphy, my editor at Abrams, has stood behind the project from the very beginning. I have depended on her for many things, and she has been a constant friend and skillful collaborator. It is a pleasure to acknowledge her contribution here. I also wish to thank Elizabeth Robbins and Judy Hudson at Abrams for their efforts in making the book possible.

My greatest debt is to Lena Sorensen. She has contributed to every part of this undertaking, visiting each of the houses, discussing every chapter, helping with the research, and enduring the many challenges of living with this project and with me. No one could ask for a better collaborator and companion, and it is with the deepest gratitude and love that I dedicate this book to her.

Cambridge, Massachusetts
December 1997

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