Merry Travels/Holidays!

In 1939, Laura Mae Gumb of Hope, North Dakota took a long rail journey with her best friend Alice Curtis. They wanted to visit the New York World's Fair and see Washington, D.C. In the process, they celebrated the retirement of a 70-year-old Great Northern railroad engineer (above), ventured to Chinatown, and remarked on the wonders they saw. They drank cocktails at the Diamond Horseshoe and the Savoy.  They also seemingly stole a lot of restaurant menus, napkins and ashtrays. They met travelers from all over the world.

May your travels and festivities this season be equally remarkable!

Portable Structures

We recently came across an invention by Mexican-American New Orleanian Dolores Morgadanes (c. 1894-1975). Patented as Automobile Tent in June 1940, the object was to improve conditions for automobile tourists visiting beach resort areas. She referred to the fact that many vacationers utilized their vehicles as changing stations, and that this practice had a deleterious effect on upholstery and beaches. Evidently a common practice was to protect car interiors with newspapers and other salvaged paper while one changed into or out of a swimsuit, and then to discard the paper on the beach. Her invention provided a pop-up dressing room that attached to one's automobile.

One Midwestern town's versatile solution to its lack of bathhouses attracted our attention this election week. In August 1922, Popular Mechanics reported that Newark, Ohio used its portable voting booths as comfort stations for swimmers on the Licking River.


Images above: Dolores Morgadanes. Automobile Tent. June 1940. Patent No. 2,204,432.
As viewed 7 November 2014 via google  patents.

"Election Booths on Wheels Used as Bathhouses." Popular Mechanics August 1922, p. 226. As viewed 7 November 2014 via google books.

NEW! Louis Goldstein Finding Aid

The Southeastern Architectural Archive recently finalized the processing of the Louis Goldstein Office Records and Papers. For researchers interested in Louisiana’s contributions to World War II, the history of Dillard University and the Goldstein family, this collection will prove noteworthy. As a non-commissioned officer in the United States Army, Goldstein participated in the liberation of the Philippines, and his papers include photographs of structural damage to buildings, local residents and soldiers engaged in everyday activities and posed group portaits.  Architectural drawings reflect Goldstein’s contributions to Goldstein, Parham and Labouisse firm projects at Dillard University, including the Lawless Memorial Chapel and the Art Center.  Biographical information extends beyond his architectural training, for correspondence files consist of personal letters and cards, essays and notes taken while attending public lectures, as well as legal documents pertaining to Goldstein’s relationship with his architect-father.

Read more here.

Special thanks to Tulane University Libraries' Candace Maurice for all her assistance helping the SEAA launch its new finding aids!

Image above:  Louis Goldstein (center) in the Philippines. 1946.  Louis Goldstein Office Records and Papers, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

NEW! Shell Oil Company Finding Aid

The Southeastern Architectural Archive (SEAA) recently finalized the processing of the Shell Oil Company Collection of Louisiana Plantation Photographs.

The collection consists of professional photographs commissioned by the Shell Oil Company in the late 1960s. They correlate to plantation structures located along the Mississippi River in southeastern Louisiana, which are identified on corresponding maps (earliest map reproduced above).

Read more here.

Image above: Shell Oil Company. Louisiana Plantations Map. Circa 1969. Shell Oil Company/Louisiana Plantation Photographs, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Please Return to Mr. Goldstein

New Orleans architect Moise H. Goldstein (1882-1972), like many of his contemporaries, traveled to Europe in his early adulthood. Along the way, he acquired an extensive collection of studio photographs of architecture, sculpture and furnishings. The black and white photographs were typically captioned and mounted to canvas by such studios as Alinari, Neue Photographische Gesellschaft (NPG) and Brogi.

Goldstein wrote instructions along the margins of Romualdo Moscioni's (1849-1925) image of one of the classical tripods in the Vatican Museums (top). Sometimes his drawings bear the same instructions, "Please return to M.H. Goldstein."

The bottom image proves enigmatic -- some of the caricatures are clearly architects. Did Goldstein pen them or someone else?

Images above: Moise Goldstein Office Records, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Following Wright

As the Southeastern Architectural Archive prepares to install its new exhibit that focuses on Frank Lloyd Wright's influence in the southeastern Gulf Region, we have pulled out some travel slides.

During the 1950s, New Orleans architect Philip Roach, Jr. visited many of Wright's then-newly constructed buildings, taking photographs along the way. Roach's admiration for Wright took him to Arizona, Mississippi, South Carolina, Florida, California, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Virginia and Wisconsin.

Slides above, from top to bottom:

Welbie L. Fuller Residence, Pass Christian, MS (1951; destroyed by Hurricane Camille, 1969)

Auldbrass Plantation [C. Leigh Stevens Residence], Yemassee, SC (1940-51)

Anderton Court Shops, Beverly Hills, CA (1952)

All images taken by Philip Roach, Jr. Courtesy of Philip Roach, Jr. Office Records, Southeastern Architetural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

1930's Germany

New Orleans architect and preservationist Samuel Wilson, Jr. (1911-1993) visited Europe in the late 1930s, venturing through France, Austria, Germany and Finland. As he traveled, he documented historic and contemporary architecture, public monuments, and countryside.

Judging by his photographs, he had a heightened interest in what he saw in Bayreuth, Dresden, and Nuremberg. He recorded Otto Ernst Schweizer's (1890-1965) modernist Nuremberg Municipal Stadium and Swimming Baths (1926-28); Albert Speer's newly constructed Zeppelin Grandstand (1935-37); and National Socialist banners along Richard-Wagner Straße in Bayreuth.

Architects' travels have been discussed in a number of previous posts, which can be accessed by following the Label Link "Travel and Tourism" (at right).

Images above from the Samuel Wilson, Jr. Office Records, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries:

Samuel Wilson, Jr., photographer. Albert Speer, architect. Zeppelin Field Grandstand, Nuremberg. c. 1937.

Samuel Wilson, Jr., photographer. Otto Ernst Schweizer, architect. Stadium Swimming Baths, Nuremberg. c. 1937.

Samuel Wilson, Jr., photographer. Richard-Wagner Straße, Bayreuth. c. 1937.

Venice Sojourn 1927

In 1927, Shreveport architects Samuel G. Wiener (1896-1977) and William B. Wiener (1907-1981) traveled to Venice, Italy and recorded their journey in photographs and drawings. Guido Pellizarri, then Superintendent of Fine Arts of Venetia, introduced the brothers to buildings throughout the city, many located in what Samuel described as "obscure places." Drawing on the tradition of architectural pattern books, the elder Wiener designed his resultant book's baroque title page (image above) and included his delicate sketches of ornamental ironwork, stone cartouches and balusters. Affirming his modernity, he wrote in the Foreward:

"The illustrations contained in this book give some idea of what may have been the Venetians' attitude toward their building. The value of their architecture to the modern designer is not the offering of a wealth of curiously beautiful details to be copied that they may grace our modern buildings. Venetian architecture can teach us that buildings can be beautiful without being grave, and they can delight us with their delicate charm and flaunting disregard of established principles without becoming trivial."

Samuel Wiener returned to Europe in 1931, focusing his energies in Germany and the Netherlands, and visiting Walter Gropius' Dessau Bauhaus and Erich Mendelsohn's Einstein Tower.¹

Image above: Samuel G. Wiener. Venetian Houses and Details. New York: Architectural Book Publishing Company, 1929. Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

¹ Karen Kingsley. Modernism in Louisiana: A Decade of Progress 1930-1940. New Orleans: Tulane School of Architecture, 1984.

Architects' Travels

Architects' travels have been the subjects of earlier posts. Many of the collections in the Southeastern Architectural Archive include not only photographs of individual and firm projects, but also images of architects' tourist destinations.

Studio photographers such as the Alinari Brothers (Italy), Bonfils (Greece/Near East), Francis Frith (Egypt/Great Britain) and Sebah and Joaillier (Turkey) capitalized on travelers' desires to return home with visual mementoes. Often such images were produced as collodion wet plate or albumen prints on paper. They were inexpensive and portable, and could be purchased invididually or in sets. The latter could include wet collodion positives produced as lantern slides for public presentations.

The Toledano, Wogan and Bernard Office Records housed in the Southeastern Architectural Archive include studio photographs by Alinari, F. Frith & Co., the French photographer "N.D.", Ernesto Richter, Edizioni Brogi, and Anderson's Photos. Here, an unidentified photographer has captured a picturesque scene of nineteenth-century Troyes with its shoemaker's shop on the right.

Image above: Unknown photographer. Troyes, France. Undated print from collodion wet plate negative. Box 54. Toledano, Wogan and Bernard Office Records, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Recent Gift to the SEAA

The Southeastern Architectural Archive recently received a generous gift from Tulane School of Architecture Adjunct Faculty member Milton Scheuermann, the travel sketchbook of New Orleans architect Samuel Stanhope Labouisse, dated 1903-1904. Labouisse (1879-1918) was the founder and first president of the Louisiana Institute of Architects. His sketchbook documents his travels to western Europe from December 1903 to June 1904. Labouisse visited Amiens, Athens, Laon, Reims, Rome, Versailles, and Viterbo and sketched the architectural features of such sites as Reims Cathedral, the Villa Borghese, and the Athenian Acropolis. The canvas-lined sketchbook endpaper bears an inventory recording Labouisse's daily expenditures on lodging, entrance fees, meals, stamps and even champagne. One night's stay in Laon, France in 1904? $1.00!

Every year, the Tulane School of Architecture awards the Samuel Stanhope Labouisse Memorial Award for excellence in the documentation of historically significant Louisiana architecture. For more information, click here.

Samuel Stanhope Labouisse, Rose Window at Laon Cathedral, 24 June 1904. Graphite on paper. Recent gift of Milton Scheuermann to the Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

The Grammar of Ornament

The Welsh architect Owen Jones (1809-1874) went on the Grand Tour through Spain, Turkey, Egypt and Sicily as a twenty-two-year-old. He became fascinated with architectural ornamentation, and recorded the patterns and colors he saw during his travels. When he returned to England, Jones sought a printer who could accurately reproduce his sketches; finding none, he established his own printing shop and became one of the most revered chromolithographers of his day. His books, The Grammar of Ornament (1856) and Details and Ornaments from the Alhambra (1835-1845), frequently formed part of a late nineteenth-century architect's working library. The American architect Harvey Ellis (1852-1904) relied heavily on Jones-ian ornamentation for his decoration of the Mabel Tainter Memorial (1889), a Richardsonian Romanesque building located in Menomonie, Wisconsin.

For those interested in knowing more about Owen Jones, see Kathryn Ferry's article, "Printing the Alhambra: Owen Jones and Chromolithography," Architectural History 46 (2003): 175-188. Architectural History is available through JSTOR and in the TSA Library Periodicals Section (NA190.A72).

Tulane University's Special Collections Division, located in 200 Jones Hall, retains a first edition copy of The Grammar of Ornament.

[Pictured above: Owen Jones, ""Persian Ornament" page from The Grammar of Ornament. London: Bernard Quartich, 1910. Donated to the Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries, by John Geiser III].