Purcell and Elmslie, Architects Firm active: 1907-1921 Minneapolis, Minnesota :: Chicago, Illinois Philadelphia, Pennsylvania :: Portland, Oregon

This essay was the first monograph published on the work of Purcell and Elmslie.  A version appeared in "Art and Life on the Upper Mississippi, 1890-1915: Minnesota 1900," edited by Michael Conforti and published by University of Delaware Press in 1994.    For the moment, here the text is in one stretch, albeit with dysfunctional footnote links.  You can find the footnotes properly numbered at the bottom of the page.  The Microsoft Word conversion into HTML is much like that old Scottish proverb: "The more you overtink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain."

Purcell & Elmslie, Architects: The Design of Destiny
by Mark Hammons
Web Version © Mark Hammons 2003

     George Grant Elmslie (1869-1952) and William Gray Purcell (1880-1965) were two men born to a challenge.  Both became architects committed to the quest begun one hundred years ago to establish an indigenous American architecture. One came to America an immigrant from the heaths of Scotland, the other was a son from the third generation of a pioneering American family in the Midwestern prairie.[1]  Brought together in partnership, their common goal was the application of a spiritual truth to the making of buildings and all the other objects of life.  To Purcell and Elmslie, this was the noblest of causes.

Their undertaking was inspired by pride and insight into the vitality of the time and place where they lived.  Unprecedented cultural achievements were emerging from a political democracy nourished by the ideal of individual freedom.  The economic wealth and technological power produced in this new world surpassed all historical antecedents.  The social authorities controlling these forces, however, preferred to render architectural forms in images of the past.  Regardless of modern purpose, buildings were draped with revisions or outright copies of ancient Greek and Roman, medieval Romanesque and Gothic, English Tudor, Italian and French Renaissance, Oriental, and even Egyptian designs. To architects like Purcell and Elmslie, such revivalism was a dishonorable betrayal of American accomplishments.

     Architects who wanted their designs to express the unique depth and strength of American life in their designs charged there was a basic perceptual error in the revivalist perspective.  People were romantically attracted to historical architectural forms, they said, because in the original buildings there was an intangible lasting presence that spoke of the survival of human values. The awareness existed that the survival of antique architecture was emblematic of human identity and, hence, endurance.  Reproduction of the historical images in modern structures was an attempt to claim those qualities in the present.  In actuality, however, only the external shape was exhumed from the past.  The connection between the appearance of an ancient building and the construction techniques that had been used to make the structure was disregarded.  For those who despised revivalism, this break in functional continuity was literally the difference between life and death.  The definition of beauty was the pivot of their argument.

     To revivalists, beauty was a discretely identifiable element whose presence in architecture could be calculated and installed readymade. The justification of this view was rooted in the tenets of scientific reductionism, the dominant philosophical orientation of the day.  Adherents of this approach declared that architectural beauty had already been invented and brought to perfection in ages past.  They projected their own sense of rationalism into the minds of earlier architects whose designs were then dismembered to sort out a palette of isolated decorative elements which could be attached piecemeal to new buildings.  All the modern practitioner had to do was apply a scale ruler and total the various segments, like an arithmetical sum, then size the historical appearance accordingly. Indeed, the thought of doing more could be considered presumptuous in the face of historic architectural attainments.  This method claimed kinship with those of the flourishing physical sciences, which assumed the eventual elimination of all impediments to the triumph of man over nature.  Beautiful architecture, revivalist architects declared, depended on how well the given recipe was followed.

     Other architects, distinctly a minority in the profession, held an antithetical perspective.  They believed that the beauty perceived in the visible forms of historical architecture was not a cause but an effect.  To them the true beauty of a structure was the result of clearly understanding and directly expressing the present moment in human life.  Buildings were to be seen as an outward growth of cultural abilities and aspirations. The man who heralded the argument was a Chicago architect named Louis Henri Sullivan (1856-1924).  Fierce and soulful in his message, Sullivan asserted in both his work and his words that architectural forms were purely reflections of the inner nature of the builders.  The truth of architecture was not in the image, but in the event.  Spiritual honesty, he emphasized, required architectural honesty.  The ghostly recreations of historical revivalism were blasphemy.

     The creed advanced by Louis Sullivan conceived of architectural design in the biological metaphor of the natural world.  In that sphere, of which humans were inextricably part, all experiences came into being through the actions, or functions, that were transmitted by the structural shapes, or forms, of material objects.  All physical things conducted directly a momentum of activity, like copper wire carried electricity.  One event arose from another in a cascade of interrelationship.  This holistic mode of enfoldment was the fundamental order of existence, the way everything worked.  Sullivan epitomized his view in the phrase form follows function.

     The organic architectural philosophy initiated by Louis Sullivan descended from his own practice principally through two lines.  One of these paths encompassed the much-examined work of Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959), whose lengthy and metamorphic career has continued to attract a large public following.  The other direct lineage from Sullivan was formed by the partnership of George Grant Elmslie and William Gray Purcell.  Because their work is rarer and not as publicly identified, the labors of Purcell and Elmslie for the cause of organic architecture have been less celebrated than those of Wright.  Nonetheless, their understanding and articulation of organic design was fully developed on the most profound and encompassing levels:

These organic procedures exemplified the living relation which was practiced in exposition of democracy within our living world.  Architecture as we saw it was called upon to express, in peace and mutual respect, that cooperation between the inanimate ‑ the material world, which we now know is never inanimate or "material" ‑ and the world of Man, together with his companions, the animals and the plants.... If these relations within a living democracy cannot be shown as the home and fountain of our mutual life in common with all living creations, then any further attempt to study and explain them becomes futile.[2]

      For Purcell and Elmslie, organic architecture was a matter of faith.  Any assessment of their work must take into account the metaphysical motivations implicit in the work of these architects.  Their spirituality, however, needs to be severed from the dogmatic connotations of religion.  The key to the spiritual concept realized by the organic architects was a kind of gnostic perception, through which the continuities of past and future human life were identified contextually with the immediate circumstance.  Inner recognition of need and response came first, and the external formulation of shape derived from those informing ideas.  If done with spiritual conscience, organization of the mundane elements would intuitively endow the structure with the intangible yearnings out of which the design had first commenced.  By the organic standard, this task was the vocation of the architect.  Those devoted to this cause envisioned the result to be an important means of social progress, and thus came to be known in general parlance as progressive architects (a usage of the term distinct from, though obviously in character with, the contemporary political drive of the same name).  Because this movement was born and centralized in the prairies of the American Midwestern states, these men and women have also come to be called Prairie architects.[3] 

     One of the prime influences shaping the American architectural environment at the turn of the century, especially visible in the designs of Purcell and Elmslie, was the increasing integration of machinery into ordinary life.  The twentieth century arrived in a rush of acceleration.  The unprecedented liberty of personal movement provided earlier by trains and steamships was being augmented by automobiles and airplanes.  Audio recordings, motion pictures, telephones and other innovations quickened individual intellect and desire.  Fascination with the rising tide of machinery was a powerful, even overwhelming social force that is now very difficult to appreciate completely.  In architectural terms, mechanical household conveniences did not need the living spaces required for human servants.  Therefore, architects could contract domestic architectural forms, omitting entire floors of live-in staff quarters while at the same time the new devices were absorbed into the very fabric of the house.  These kinds of changes were seen widely as a liberating conquest.  There was an optimism, a nearly unshakeable shared belief in the ability of machines to improve almost infinitely the human lot. 

     A social pressure existed for an aesthetic as well as structural response that organized and clarified the extraordinary pace of change.  A variety of approaches emerged in response.  Revivalist architects did incorporate modern improvements such as fireproofing and bathrooms into their designs, though these functions were by and large still hidden within historicist wrappings.  Others wanted a more visible mechanical expression, but disagreed aesthetically over the rendition.  Designs by Purcell and Elmslie, for example, are often mistakenly grouped with those of the American Arts and Crafts movement.  Although the American cousin of the original English Arts and Crafts movement partook more liberally of a working relationship with machines, the fundamental orientation of the Arts and Crafts followers was usually toward the handicraft production values of the past.  Mechanical expediency was secondary to the achievement of an aesthetic value of hand process.  While some of these craft-oriented elements were used successfully by Purcell and Elmslie in their designs, often at the behest of clients, the fundamental philosophical motivation of the firm was outside the objectives declared by the framers of the Arts and Crafts movement.  By their own estimation, the revelation of the machine element in the work of Purcell and Elmslie went beyond what they regarded as a retrograde, if publicly popular, limitation.[4]

     Some insight into how deeply consciousness of the machine penetrated the work of Purcell and Elmslie and the strong interrelationship with Sullivan's thesis of natural poetic expression can be seen in a short volume by Gerald Stanley Lee titled The Voice of the Machines.[5]  George Elmslie recommended the book enthusiastically to Purcell, who found an epiphany.  The the author argued that the modern relationship between man and machines, and by extension machines to architecture, was poetry in a threefold way.  First, there was the human motivation to honest labor, like the organic architects to their profession.  "Every man who loves his work, who gets his work and his ideal connected, who makes his work speak out of the heart of him, is a poet."[6]  Second, machines themselves were the poetry of the age, a pattern of modern needs and wants upon the weave of time that could not have been understood by people of a century--perhaps half a century--earlier.  Third and most encompassing, the absorption of machinery into life was not an eclectic collection of mechanical fragments.  Instead, life had been cast organically in the mold of iron, coal, and electricity.  Just as surely as humankind lived within the body of flesh and blood provided by nature, so did the race now exist as fully and completely through an entelechy of machines.[7]

     These underlying historical conditions laid the foundations for a dramatic philosophical response from Purcell and Elmslie.  Among the most sensitive and articulate of the progressives, every significant example of their work was at heart the expression of their concept of a higher truth.  They understood the rendering of design as the defining act of personal and communal self-identification, a palpable metaphysical creation that first entered into physical existence on the surface of the drafting board.  Purcell recorded how this was clear when watching Sullivan in his office:

Sullivan in action built a sort of fourth dimensional motion trace, for Sullivan's architectural concept was never a 'plan and elevation' sequence.  His organizing and articulating development moved from origin to fulfillment in three dimensions.  The germinal thought expanded concurrently in all dimensions, acknowledging relativity as it moved to its destiny...Life itself was flowing through his mind...as if his hands...were recording a general philosophical structure in space, of which the plane of the paper cut through a completely realized geometric concept.[8]

      The discovery of this profundity, of course, did not take place in an intellectual vacuum.  The kind of conceptualization Purcell witnessed with Sullivan was part of a broad change in human consciousness still today incomplete: the practical understanding of time as a fourth dimension of being inherent in all things.  In the early 1900s, mathematicians Albert Einstein (1879-1955) and Hermann Minkowski (1864-1909) rejected the absolute individual existences of space and time.  Instead, they replaced those two separate abstractions with one scheme of a four-dimensional continuum.  The basic premise of these new theories bonded all objects that humans could sense as three-dimensional--including themselves--within a higher reality whose essential characteristic was defined by relative movement.  As Sullivan suggested in his own way, a thing became what it was only by relationship to a universal field of change. 

     Learning to perceive the world in terms of four dimensions was the most challenging mental puzzle of the time.  Magazines like Scientific American sponsored contests to find explanations easily understood by the popular audience.  The problem was that fourth dimensional consciousness could not be experienced through the physical senses.  Only the mind was capable of opening a frame of reference into this new realm of comprehension.  Among those bringing logic and projective geometry to bear on the task was a New York architect named Claude Bragdon (1866-1946).  In an essay titled "Space and Hyperspace," he taught readers how to draw their own portals into the fourth dimension called tesseracts.[9] The resulting graphic device was the fourth dimensional analog of a cube.  Seen in the two dimensional perspective of a line drawing, there were four squares set equidistantly to one another.  This implied a fifth yet invisible square, whose interior was implied by a cross of open space between the original four visible squares.   The image represented a shift from external to internal perceptions of reality.  Bragdon called this a "higher level," explaining that the relationship of a higher space to a lower one is always an inner state of recognition.[10]

     To Purcell and Elmslie, the conceptual mechanics involved in this symbol described perfectly the process of unfolding organic design.  Whether drawn outright or indicated typographically by a pair of joined colons, the device appeared on their presentation drawings, correspondence, advertising brochures, and in the issues of an architectural journal, The Western Architect, which they designed to illustrate their work.  The tesseract was the summa for all the geometric forms that played within their decorative designs, signifying the substrate of divine creative process from which material objects crystallized into being.  This illustration declared that the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual elements of human consciousness interpenetrated simultaneously in one and the same moment of creation. 

     To make these interrelationships even clearer, Bragdon worked to develop a theory of projective geometry to serve as the basis for architectural design.  He realized, however, that these treatises were almost as inaccessible to the vast majority of people as were as the elaborate formal proofs of Einstein.  If there was going to be a wider breakthrough in public consciousness, written language would have to be the vehicle.   His task took an unexpected but perfected suited turn when he joined in the translation of a book and many essays by the Russian author P. D. Ouspensky, whose principal ouevre was titled Tertium Organum.  The text examined the rationalization of empirical experience from the observational deductions of the early Greeks through the experimental scientific methods of the industrial age, then asserted that fourth dimensional awareness was the third organon, the next step in the evolution of human understanding.  Ouspensky concluded his book with logical and philosophical arguments that all natural events took place within a single vast universal organism.  The mystery of this "cosmic consciousness" became comprehensible only when the perspective of isolated objects was abandoned.[11]  In the writings of Bragdon and Ouspensky, Purcell and Elmslie recognized a description of the same metaphysical unity posited by Louis Sullivan.[12] 

     Psychologists such as William James (1842-1910) and Carl Jung (1875-1961) sought to identify the workings of this truth in the shadow play of human consciousness.  They discovered, not coincidentally, this consciousness newly recognized in the West was an ancient realization in the religious and philosophical systems of the Far East.  The majority of progressive architects were highly educated people who read widely in literature, followed developments in theoretical science, and were open to a variety of spiritual perspectives.  They were aware of the studies of Emerson and Thoreau, for example, in Vedic scripture and the mythology of the Indian subcontinent.[13]  Their affinity for the transcendentalists has long been a matter of record.  Elmslie and Purcell, for example, often cited Walt Whitman and Edward Carpenter as philosopher poets of the organic movement.  The Theosophical enterprise started by H. P. Blavatsky (1831-1891) and the descendant Anthroposophy of Rudolph Steiner (1861-1925) attracted some of them, notably Walter Burley Griffin (1876-1936) and his wife Marion Mahoney (1871-1962). A few of the progressives also found a kinship with some of the mind control philosophies of the time, as Purcell and Walter Burley Griffin did through Christian Science.[14]

     The practices in which these spiritual investigations were finally expressed varied with the individuals, but there was a surprising and ironic source that served in common as a kind of aesthetic catalyst.  If there is a single external awareness useful in penetrating the gnostic depth of understanding in organic design, that crucial element can be found in the presence of Oriental, especially Japanese, art forms.  The popularity of Japanese prints in Europe and the United States during the period, for instance, is a widely documented fact.  Credit for the importance of their aesthetic values to the outcome of progressive architecture was indicated by no less a figure than Frank Lloyd Wright, who said he was uncertain what would have become of his designs had he not encountered the graphic forms called ukiyo-e, specifically those by Hiroshige (1797-1858).  Indeed, Wright was not above noting himself in virtual collaboration with his favorite nineteenth-century artist. [15]

     While the Prairie architects did have a strong appreciation for Asian artistic accomplishment, they obviously wanted to copy that work no more than they did a European precedent.  What attracted them so strongly was much deeper.  In terms of their own experience, the culture in which they worked was being forced by geographical limitation, aesthetic quandary, and industrialization to shift into an introspective character.  There was a duality to this predicament anchored in the same philosophical conflict that rose so close to the surface

in organic arguments against architectural revivalism.  In the fluid dynamic between contemplation and event at the heart of Japanese ukiyo-e and other forms of Oriental artwork, many organic architects, artists, designers, writers and others concerned intuitively perceived the true nature of their adversary at home.[16] 

          The basic assumption behind the reductionist mentality was that human perception and experience functioned independently from the framework of the natural world.  Louis Sullivan proclaimed with utmost conviction the message that all true art and architecture was a poetic expression of human passages through a wholly enfolding, inescapable spiritual continuum.  Unfortunately, his lyric was often abstruse.  Part of the problem was that the linear structure of a Western language like English did not well suit the kinds of manifold meaning needed to reveal the profounder implications of progressive observations.  Rather, the organic purport would have been more clearly transmissible in an ideographic system like Chinese or Japanese.  In effect, this is the role that fell to art forms like Japanese prints, which graphically delineated the same kind of holistic sensibility that burned inside of the organic architects.  Even though the Oriental and American visions were separate in time and place, the function of human existence within, instead of outside, the processes of nature was transcendentally perceptible in both.  The message of inescapable interrelationship that lay at the heart of the most powerful modern scientific insights, from Einstein's theory of relativity to the psychological writings of William James, directly contradicted the view of the scientific reductionist approach.  Whether or not this realization rose to full consciousness in the work of any given progressive architect--clearly some made the intellectual connection--the work of the Prairie architects benefited.  William Gray Purcell and George Grant Elmslie were among those who figured the puzzle out and rendered their answer in architectural design.

      The architectural firm that is most widely known as Purcell & Elmslie (P&E) represents three different partnerships that evolved from 1907 to 1921.  Purcell joined with a college classmate named George Feick, Jr. (1880-1947) to open an office known as Purcell & Feick from 1907 to 1909.  The arrival of George Grant Elmslie in 1910 changed the name to Purcell, Feick, & Elmslie, an arrangement that lasted approximately two and a half years.  In 1913, Feick left the practice and the title of the partnership became simply Purcell & Elmslie, by which name the practice was known until dissolution of the firm in 1921.  The partnership started with a series of offices in Minneapolis, and eventually developed service locations in Chicago (1912), Philadelphia (1916), and Portland, Oregon (1919).  In addition to the principals, this continuity of working relationships included contributions by a large number of support staff and job contractors.  The character of the firm, however, was very much determined by the long-term friendship, background, and goals in common between Purcell and Elmslie.[17]

     Born on a farm called Foot O' Hill in northeast Scotland, George Grant Elmslie passed his childhood in the countryside of the Aberdeenshire Highlands.  Deeply impressed by the effects of seasonal change upon the landscape, the youthful Elmslie was instilled with a sense of natural rhythm in the living world of light, color, and texture.  Hand in hand with a strict  Presbyterian upbringing went an awareness of the ancient Celtic mysticism that permeated the Scottish national consciousness.  His formal education began in the Riggins School in Gartly and continued in the famous Duke of Gordon School in Huntley.  At the Gordon School he studied in a highly-disciplined scholastic environment in which the demand for obedience was balanced by the encouragement to participate in outdoor activities that were structured to emphasize a democratic spirit of teamwork.[18]  Elmslie remained in the school until 1884 when, when at the age of sixteen, he immigrated to America with his mother and sisters.  There they joined his father, John Elmslie, who had left a year earlier and settled in Chicago.  After a brief period in a business school, George Elmslie followed the suggestion of his parents and began the study of architecture.

     By 1887 Elmslie was working in the office of Joseph L. Silsbee, a prominent Chicago architect, where he joined a staff that included Cecil Corwin, George H. Maher, and Frank Lloyd Wright.  When Wright left for employment in the office of Adler & Sullivan in 1889, he asked Elmslie to come with him.  The move to the Sullivan office atop the newly completed Auditorium Building tower was one of destiny.  Elmslie found in Sullivan an exacting taskmaster, sometimes caustic but essentially fair in his criticisms and liberal in spending time with an earnest pupil.  Although Elmslie did not consider himself a facile student, he persevered in his efforts to understand and express the Sullivan concept of organic design.  He learned to follow the practice of thinking a problem through mentally and then turning to the drafting table only after a solution had taken root in the mind.  His repeated demonstrations of exceptional aptitude for the work did not go unrewarded.  In the mid-1890s, when Wright was dismissed from the office and after the Adler and Sullivan partnership had been dissolved, Elmslie became Sullivan's chief drafter and kept that position for more than fifteen years.

     In time, the professional and personal relationship between Elmslie and Sullivan became intensely important to both men.  Elmslie was increasingly responsible for the development and articulation of compositions from ideas only generally outlined by Sullivan.  Moreover, he mastered thoroughly the principles and techniques from which derived the forms of architectural ornamentation that were the most visible hallmark of Sullivan-inspired design.  Elmslie, for example, detailed nearly all of the exterior ornament for the Wainwright Building in St. Louis (1890), designed the ironwork entrance and interior finish for the Schlesinger & Mayer [now Carson, Pirie, Scott] department store in Chicago (1900/1903), and has been shown to be almost entirely the author of the renowned National Farmers Bank in Owatonna, Minnesota (1905).[19]  Although Elmslie later remarked that to his detriment he perhaps stayed too long with Sullivan, he did so by direct request from his master and friend with the indication that Elmslie was to be the heir of the Auditorium Tower practice.  The decline of fortune that afflicted Sullivan after the turn of the century, however, resulted in deteriorated financial circumstances that prevented Elmslie from remaining any longer.  Since Elmslie had no capital of his own, he was faced with finding a position where his income would be secure.

     Since August 1903, Elmslie had been on friendly terms with William Gray Purcell, a young architect whom he met at a dinner party of mutual friends in Oak Park, Illinois.  Subsequently, Elmslie arranged for Purcell to work in the Sullivan office.  Among the designs being completed by Elmslie when Purcell arrived for work were the delicate modular screen panels for the Schlesinger & Mayer store.  Purcell recorded his thrill in watching these dazzling forms come from Elmslie's hand:

All the Schlesinger and Mayer ornament of the second unit of their building built in 1902-1903, at the corner of State and Madison, was from the hand of George Grant Elmslie.  There was no one in the office at that time [except Elmslie] capable of doing such work.  I sat beside him as he did much of the interior sawed detail.  I recall the excitement when he produced so easily that five-ply miracle sonatina in wood--the unit panel of the great screens for the dining room, rest rooms, and so on...[20]

 

The experience formed the beginning of a solid and fruitful friendship, both professional and personal, that was anchored in their shared commitment toward progressive architecture.  Ten years older than Purcell, Elmslie had not only his extraordinary gift for architectural composition, but also had in common with his younger friend a Presbyterian-Scottish heritage.  The two men were even distantly related.  Purcell, for his part, was well situated financially and possessed a talent and enthusiasm for design that had already enabled him to win a significant architectural competition.[21]   George Elmslie was greatly charmed by the warmhearted eagerness of his newfound friend for the progressive cause.

     If Louis Sullivan regarded Elmslie as the inheritor of his architectural mantle, he surely must have found in William Gray Purcell the kind of young architect for whom he had written the treatise on organic design called Kindergarten Chats.  In background and lineage, Purcell came from a hardy stock of pioneering Scots-Irish families who settled in Pennsylvania prior to the Revolutionary War.  In 1806, the family moved across the Allegheny mountains to homestead a farm called Pleasant Run on the Ohio wilderness.  Purcell was named after his maternal grandfather, William Cunningham Gray (1830-1901), who had been among the first generation of the family born on the newly settled frontier.  Educated as a lawyer, Gray became an editor and publisher whose naturalist musings were read worldwide in The Interior, the Presbyterian weekly newsmagazine he owned in partnership with Cyrus Hall McCormick.  Establishing his household in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park in the early 1870s, W. C. Gray became an influential voice both for social reform and preservation of the environment.  In 1879, his daughter Anna married Charles A. Purcell, a prosperous grain trader who had years earlier come to Oak Park from West Bend, Nebraska, to be educated in the renowned village schools and stayed on to join with his brother in a malt dealership.  Their son William was born a year later.

     William Gray Purcell was raised largely by his grandparents.  His grandmother, Catherine Garns Gray, was responsible for his early exposure to the arts, especially poetry and drawing.  In the succession of homes built by the Grays in Oak Park, they hosted many prominent authors, clergymen, and social reformers in a vibrant literary atmosphere.  From the time he was allowed to be present in this distinguished company, Purcell began to acquire progressive cultural attitudes and a spirit of social activism.  His formal education came through the nationally respected Oak Park schools, as well as a progressive private academy. More significant to his philosophical evolution were the experiences he enjoyed during annual summer living at a retreat established by his grandfather in northern Wisconsin.  There, amid the clear waters of a glacial lake, stood an island crowned with towering pine trees on which the family lived in a camp they called, naturally enough, Island Lake.

     At this isolated settlement, W. C. Gray evoked the life he had experienced in his youth at the Pleasant Run homestead in Ohio.  A series of log cabins was built on the same pattern he had known as a child, and life was lived by harvesting as much as possible from the surrounding forest.  Members of this community ranged from the Cyrus Hall McCormick family to Ojibway Indians, all sharing conversation and song around a common campfire.  Their communion  would be symbolized in every fireplace designed by Purcell.  The Island Lake experience was the frame within which he articulated his character and found his place as a human being.  The vibrant rhythmic interplay of wind, water, light, and human life in the forest served as a well of inspiration for the rest of his long life.  Purcell was delivered to his architectural vocation with a rich appreciation of heritage as a living continuity, a keenness for meeting practical necessities, and a strong faith in the fundamental wholesomeness of life.

     The vision of organic architecture was familiar to Purcell when he left Chicago in 1899 to attend the College of Architecture at Cornell University, then considered to be the most modern architectural education available in the United States.  He already knew the designs of Sullivan from his frequent attendance at the Columbian Exposition, where the Golden Door of the Transportation Building had opened for him a world of great and marvelous machines.  Throughout his youth he had attended operas and musicals in the golden vastness of the Chicago Auditorium, which he sometimes viewed from the stage as a supernumerary.  In later years he declared that the spirit of architecture first spoke to him in 1890, at age ten, beneath the sweeping electric arcs of this great theater.  The voice he heard calling was that of Louis Sullivan.  Also, Purcell was fifteen when Frank Lloyd Wright built his Oak Park studio on the same block of Forest Avenue where his father lived.  Purcell had been introduced to Wright's designs when he was shown a pen and ink perspective for the new building by family friends, the Loziers.  During his high school years he spent many after-school hours wandering throughout the vicinity to see all the Wright-designed houses as they were built.  He eventually made personal acquaintance with the architect.[22] 

     Four years of revivalist architectural college education proved to be a largely unpleasant task for Purcell.  Fired with enthusiasm for organic design, he found his inevitable clash with the classically-oriented curriculum at Cornell to be a foretaste of the greater contest yet to come.  He spent many hours mastering the rote drafting techniques required of him, turning out rendering after rendering of imitated Greek and Roman facades.  At every opportunity, Purcell challenged his teachers to discussions that contrasted the eclectic mix of class assignments to designs by Sullivan and Wright.  His efforts were of little avail.  Meeting Elmslie two months after graduation and thereafter getting five months employment in the Sullivan office seemed the best possible redemption. Yet, all too soon, he had to leave for the balance of his apprenticeship years on the West Coast in Berkeley, California, and Seattle, Washington.  Then, at the behest of his father in 1906, Purcell departed for a year-long tour of Europe.  Accompanied by Cornell classmate George Feick, Jr., he studied the classical sites of Greece and Italy, Byzantine remains in Constantinople, and medieval cathedral cities in France and England.  Stretching their money, the two men made an extra effort to meet progressive European architects, among them Henrik P. Berlage, Ferdinand Boberg, and Martin Nyrop, who welcomed the young Americans with showings of their latest work.  These contacts excited Purcell and spurred the desire to get started with his own architectural practice.  Although Purcell had intended on his return to go to California and wanted to try for work with Myron Hunt in Los Angeles, George Feick convinced him through the course of their journey together that there might be a better opportunity in establishing a partnership firm in Minnesota. [23]

       In February, 1907, Purcell and Feick rented an office in Minneapolis and bravely sent out engraved cards announcing that they were open for business.  For the next two years they worked to establish their credentials as earnest practitioners of the Sullivan-derived "form and function" architecture.  The dedication of Purcell and Feick to a new and largely unknown architectural philosophy made securing work even more difficult than the usual obstacles facing any fledgling practice in an environment filled with long-established competitors.  The principles underlying proposed designs often had to be explained to potential clients. With his gift for friendly conversation, Purcell undertook those relations.  His presentations involved a time-consuming educational process that depended on an open-mindedness not always present in his listeners.  The lack of completed buildings as examples to demonstrate the effectiveness of the Purcell & Feick approach was another handicap to getting work.  During their first year, the architects recorded only twelve entries on their accounting system, of which seven were for unrealized projects, minor alterations to existing structures, or insignificant consultations.  When they did get a commission the circumstances were not always in tune with their preferred methods, but they could not afford to turn down work that might bring in money and lead to future opportunities. 

     One of their early projects was the Cargill Science Hall, designed in 1907 for the Albert Lea College for Women in Albert Lea, Minnesota.  The severe economic constraints of  the job required that the classroom building be as inexpensive as possible.  The result was a strictly rectangular, standardized box form with trimly set fenestration.  For their first large (and to them important) building, the plan was presented in a lush watercolor rendering that showed both existing and optimistically planned future structures on the grounds of the institution.  Purcell and Feick also worked out a novel series of time and motion studies to prove the efficiency of the design.  Their effort was successful, but Purcell was not prepared for the unyielding difficulties with the building committee that prevented the architects from approving materials and supervising construction.  To their disappointment, all they were allowed to do was provide a set of working drawings.  Purcell later remarked that the insistent fiscal conservatism of the client, rather than any agreement with organic architectural views, may ultimately have been the only reason they could sell such a plain and unornamented building.[24]

     The opposite circumstance in another early job seemed to work against their progressive intentions as well.  The vestry building committee in 1908 for the Anglican Christ Church of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, was made up of prosperous lumbermen.  From the first, Purcell recognized that these people would not be led toward any modern form.  For organic architects in the first eighteen months of business, this situation presented a thorny dilemma.  They could walk away on principle and do nothing, or compromise in order to serve what were otherwise friendly and responsive clients.  In a result that could be superficially called the firm's only fallback into revivalism, Purcell and Feick resigned themselves to a building plan for what was basically an ancient and unchanged religious liturgy:

We decided to search among historical ecclesiastical forms for the very simplest, most primitive way of putting masonry around Christian worship, and of forming its simplest need for window openings and doors.  An important consideration was the saving in cost which this promised, and at the very least, [we intended] to have nothing but genuine materials and methods, none of the tin and lumber gothic of the time...[25]

      Having made the decision to work within the tradition, the firm resolved that all construction should be done with as honest an engineering approach as possible.  Lancet windows pierced thick stone walls in the familiar pattern because the form was correctly suited to the masonry techniques used in the construction.  The architects made sure that set buttresses actively carried the structural load.  George Feick provided roller slide ways hidden behind the interior coping of the meeting hall to accommodate internal roof truss movement.  He integrated modern sealing techniques within the building sheathe to counter weather stresses.  Purcell and Feick detailed moldings, column elements, brackets, and similar features as plainly as possible.  Interior wooden roof supports in the sanctuary hall were left unconcealed.  Purcell noted decades later that the effect was "too much influenced by the Gustav Stickely 'craftsman-fumed-oak' period" and seemed heavy.  If the architects undertook the project in hopes of later opportunities to do genuinely progressive work in the same area of Wisconsin, however, they were rewarded over the next five years with a series of projects for residences, furniture, and another church building.  A decorative memorial window design was also commissioned for the Christ Church building in 1915.[26]

     A reputation for the sincerity and the quality of their work spread mostly by word of mouth, although Purcell sent letters as far away as the southwestern United States to inquire of Presbyterian church building committees about building programs under consideration.   Many early business relations sprang from contacts with old friends of W. C. Gray or Charles A. Purcell, such as H. C. Garvin of Winona, Minnesota.  Like several other supporters of Purcell & Feick in small towns of the agricultural countryside, Garvin believed in the same philosophy that motivated the firm.  He provided his own commissions, and worked to deliver other customers. This growing network of rural businessmen, especially bankers, broadened chances for commissions in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, and the Dakotas.  From contacts in his home town of Sandusky, Ohio, Feick brought staple if mundane business to the firm, including a series of speculative houses and a somewhat innovative multi-story office building for his father, a construction contractor.  He also handled sundry small buildings for local friends and acquaintances.

     One of the earliest commissions to give the architects an opportunity to flex their progressive intentions was the "Motor Inn," an automobile garage erected for Henry Goosman in 1908.  Goosman, a jovial Dutchman who maintained a prominent livery service in Minneapolis for many years, understood the importance of the new "automatics".  His commission represented the first time a building had been erected in the city specifically to service these machines.  The project was under discussion for more than a year before construction went ahead, providing ample time to develop the design.  With the site located on a busy downtown street corner, Purcell & Feick could have asked for no better project to illustrate the accommodation for modern life that was at the core of their work. 

     The round shape of the main service entrance was a humorous recognition of the wheels that brought the automotive machine inside.  A bright green garage door panel lifted hydraulically--a pioneering application that received trade publicity--and contained an arrowhead window set within equilateral triangular framing to sign the access way.  Foot traffic entered at an office doorway on the right.  A rank of three windows separated by thin brick piers balanced the left side of the front elevation, giving a view of arriving customers and bringing natural illumination into the garage space.  Doors and windows were framed by red and tan coursework accents against a background of cream-colored brick.  Specially-designed gilded lettering completed the polychrome exterior treatment.  The geometric symbol of the inset door triangle was further developed into electric light fixtures and used as an advertising mark on business stationery.  Inside the office, horizontal board-and-batten paneling emphasized a sense of linear motion.  Within the garage proper, a thirty-inch deep, six-inch high curb along the perimeter wall formed a sidewalk that served as a handy ledge for tools while providing a stop for the bumper-less cars of the day.  For a young architectural office still in the throes of establishing a clientele, the "Motor Inn" design presented a complex and creditable response to practical work functions, business presentation needs, and possibilities for aesthetic enhancement.

     Purcell and Feick believed that their architectural philosophy was applicable to every kind of structures, but they were particularly keen to get a bank commission.  This type of building was at the heart of modern Midwestern independence and democratic community.  Bankers like Sullivan client Carl K. Bennett, however, were scarce exceptions to the conservative breed of men (rarely, if ever, women) who kept the financial lockboxes of small countryside towns.  They were serious about the obligations of their positions and wanted no hint of irresponsibility in their buildings.  New, better, and beautiful were fine qualities, so long as no imprudence, frivolity, or extravagance clouded the picture.  This situation placed the burden of proof squarely at the feet of the organic architects. 

     Of all unbuilt Purcell & Feick commercial designs, the one to fail because they did their work too convincingly was the First National Bank project of 1907 for Winona, Minnesota.  H. C. Garvin, who had been an associate in the grain business with Charles A. Purcell, arranged for a presentation by the firm to the building committee.  The design was a cubic form based on a pier and girder construction that lifted dramatically above a brick and stone envelope.  The dynamic interleaving of the wall planes drew the attention of the arriving customer inward, focusing on entrances beneath deep eaves extending from the flat roof.  The overhanging roof panels defined a cruciform, filled out at each corner by separately rising curtain walls.  Large terra-cotta cartouches punctuated the interplay of the wall planes.  The interior would have been largely open to sunlight from a wide skylight and street side walls glazed over half their surface.

     Ironically, efforts to make clear one of the most creative aspects of the proposed bank building contributed greatly to rejection of the design.  As they had done with the Goosman garage, Purcell and Feick wanted the structure to be very colorful.  In addition to carefully detailed renderings to show the use of polychrome features, the architects asked the committee members to visit the Farmers National Bank finished recently about a hundred miles away in Owatonna, Minnesota, by Louis Sullivan and George Grant Elmslie.  Rather than taking the brilliant finish of that building as a recommendation, the richness and variety of color disturbed the bankers.  Adding more injury to the prospects of the firm, Purcell recorded, was another special effort undertaken to make their case:

We made a plaster model which showed a carefully worked out color scheme.  The gorgeous color of the Owatonna project, so welcome after returning to bleak America from my Italian journey [of 1906]... made me enthusiastic to get the joy of color into our buildings.  This model didn't seem to help our cause at all, and we first realized what few architects realize today, how much imagination it takes to visualize a model into a full size building....Standing around the model, the bank committee was visibly embarrassed.  They felt taken in, like men who had paid admission to a boxing match and then were asked to enjoy aesthetic dancing...[27]

     Generally, other projects of this period were attempts by Purcell & Feick to bring their message to a wider public audience.  Most of these designs did not proceed beyond sketches and were undertaken without the kind of inside assistance supplied by men like Garvin.  The form and function argument had to appeal not only to propriety and pocketbook, but also do so in a form that the entire community found distinctly attractive.  The bank model failed as a medium of communication, leaving presentation renderings as the principal means of convincing people to step inside the living idea of architecture.  A typical example is the project for an Elk's Club in Mankato, Minnesota (1908).  The drawings show a conservative form, the solidly dignified brick body of the structure set on a stone plinth with regularly placed entrances and windows.  An inviting arbor envisioned for a third floor terrace was protected on one side by a high pitched roof rising over an interior meeting hall. Benevolent fraternal respectability set the overall tone of the composition, but the design was not built.  Closer to home and on a much smaller scale, the firm did execute a meeting house on Lake Minnetonka for the Reel and Rudder Club that same year.  The plain pencil rendering that was circulated among the membership for approval showed a two-story wooden structure with straight clean lines for a sturdy yet pleasant appearance.  Purcell found the little-altered building still in use when he inquired fifty years later.

     With the successful completion of utilitarian work like a warehouse and ordinary residential alterations, the firm began making acquaintance with prosperous and influential Minneapolitans such as A. W. Armitage, George Draper Dayton, and Sears E. Brace.  Through these social contacts the architects were presented with more substantial opportunities to compete for work.  In 1908 they prepared sketches for a large memorial arch to have been sited in a Minneapolis park by C. M. Loring, who was then busy establishing the character of the extensive city park system.  For wealthy E. C. Warner, large monochrome presentation sketches were drawn for a large house to be placed on a hill overlooking suburban Lake Calhoun.  To research the requirements in designing a dwelling of that size, Purcell wrote to Louis Sullivan asking for plans of the Henry B. Babson house, whose forty thousand dollar cost was the same amount Warner said he wanted to spend.  Despite these efforts to provide what the client asked for, the plain horizontal Purcell & Feick composition was unsuccessful.  The commission went instead to competitors Tyrie and Chapman, who correctly assessed Warner's desire to buy a grand image and built for him a much more expensive baronial Tudor house.[28]

     The largest commission completed by Purcell & Feick was the Stewart Memorial Church, designed for a Presbyterian congregation in south Minneapolis during 1909.  The general conception of the form descended from the unsuccessful First National Bank project at Winona, particularly in the area given over to large window openings.  In the church, however, the pier treatment prominent in the bank design disappeared and the enclosing corner walls assumed definite support functions.  Roof slabs reached beyond the basic cubic form of the auditorium on all sides, while an auditorium wing facing the pulpit contained a balcony and secondary seating areas.  Entrances passed into both flanks of this extension in symmetrically organized stairwells.  Exterior and interior detailing for doors, coping, and window lights, as well as ornamental ceiling and wall moldings, took on a variety of cruciform motifs to echo the basic symbol of the worship practice.  One sanctuary wall was filled by a large sliding wood and glass door meant to open into the court of a Sunday School wing added at a later date.[29]

     Purcell believed that the design addressed for the first time some basic needs of the Presbyterian service, the religion in which he had been raised.  Despite high ceilings, the interior possessed a friendly intimacy.  The square plan brought the members of the congregation closer toward the altar and choir, and each other, strengthening the sense of participation.  Rows of seating divided into three groups by surrounding aisles faced the pulpit platform directly, with a section of benches at a tangent on the side.  The placement of traffic ways and seating logically determined the disposition of windows and entryways throughout the building.  Since no bell was required for this neighborhood mission, no tower or similar features appeared on the exterior.  Instead, the flat roof was mounted with four small chimneys (forming a tesseract symbol) to service ventilation arrangements.  Wall sconces and rectangular plateaus of electric bulbs suspended from the high ceiling provided artificial light for the interior.  Shortly after completion, revision of the choir to contain a large pipe organ thrust the lectern further forward into the auditorium, further increasing the effectiveness of the design.  Purcell reported the honest benefits of the church in an article for the successor of his grandfather's old newsmagazine that explained  the practical aesthetic of the building as a matter of direct honest expression in church design. [30]   

     The type of project undertaken in these early years that would make the most substantial contribution to the later achievements of the firm was residential design.  One of the first tasks that faced Purcell & Feick when their office first opened in February 1907, was to complete some visible architectural scheme that could visibly demonstrate their abilities and intentions.  As do many architects seeking to create such an example, Purcell decided that building a dwelling for himself seemed the most natural possibility.  Fortunately, millionaire Charles A. Purcell had provided a large sum of money to get his son started in life.  With these resources, Purcell bought a prominent lot on Lake of the Isles in what was then a country suburb of Minneapolis. Originally titled the W. G. Purcell residence, the dwelling was later referred to as the Catherine Gray house, honoring his grandmother who came to live there.  This starting venture for his architectural career was undertaken very soberly by Purcell, and the work turned out to be more demanding than he anticipated.

     For the first time, Purcell was faced with initiating and sustaining responsibility for the building process from beginning idea through construction, something that until then had been only theory for him.  A group of four sketches that are the earliest known drawings for this project provide insight into his difficulties.  He approached the problem from a variety of fronts, experimenting with the possible compositional effects of a high-pitched or low-hipped roof treatment.  The floor plans of the house evolved more stubbornly.  In the first effort Purcell revealed his lifelong attraction to the aspiration of a high-pitched roof.  The plan, however, would have none of it.  The pitch of the roof subsides quickly across the sequence of sketches, with two intermediate dormer ideas finally disappearing entirely in the fourth version.[31]

     More significantly, Purcell found himself grappling with a fundamental conflict in his approach to the composition.  Several considerations were obvious.  The length of the lot faced the shore of the lake, commanding a lovely view, but also establishing the most logical unfoldment of the plan across the width of the land.  Purcell understood that setback of the structure deeper into the site was a natural response to balance the relationship of the house to  the lake.  In turn, this influenced the placement of door openings and fenestration.  Purcell was intent on adding a pergola and summer pavilion, an element that in the first sketch had a dunce cap roof, flirted with being an attached porch in the second and third, then finally in the fourth sketch settled at a comfortable distance from the house.  A telling change in the layout occurs between the first two drawings and the last half of the series.  In the earlier pair, Purcell situated the principal entrance in the middle of the front elevation, creating awkward internal divisions that he attempted to resolve by introducing walkways.  In the later set of drawings, he has harkened to Frank Lloyd Wright's recently published Ladies Home Journal plan for  a "Fireproof House for $5,000" and aligned the front and service entrances at the side of the house.  Each variation contained a mixture of experimental theory and bits of known practicality.  None of these approaches seemed workable.  Purcell admitted to himself that he was caught in a welter of disconnected relationships. 

     In examining his trial by fire with the Catherine Gray house some thirty-five years later, Purcell saw more clearly the beginning of his insight into organic design.  There were forces and influences at work in a house that would take time to understand.  This journey required him to practice the same kind of internal meditation that Sullivan had taught Elmslie.  "Plainly," he wrote, "there was much pure analytical thinking to be done before any broad concept for a true building could be crystallized."  He also admitted freely that "to gradually integrate this factual material until it was related to a particular building and at the same time create a living architecture, rather than a thesis on building construction, took more than Purcell and Feick had in them at that time..."[32]  Frustrated, Purcell set his sketches aside entirely and realized there was a better way to learn.

     Throughout the years since his apprenticeship employment in the Sullivan office Purcell had continued to develop his relationship with George Grant Elmslie.  When in Chicago, he would always visit in the Auditorium Building tower to see his friend and look over the work on the drafting tables.  Over the years Elmslie consulted gladly with Purcell on some competition projects and encouraged him to read books by authors such as Edward Carpenter and P. D. Ouspensky.  After spending more than a month of uneasy struggle with his ideas for the Catherine Gray house, Purcell decided he knew the best thing to do:

 After a series of studies for this project which were wholly unsatisfactory, and with the confusion and dead end [of the first try] in mind, we turned to George G. Elmslie, with data on lot, lake view, winter flowers room, and wish for a detached pavilion porch, out of sight in winter, similar to a Fair Oaks, Oak Park house of F. L. Wright's.  G.G.E. replied with a pencil plan that seemed just right.  W.G.P. articulated the mechanics of the plan and developed the elevations for this house...[33]   

Elmslie had the necessary understanding to lay out an integrated pattern for the elements of the program Purcell wanted to realize.  His suggestions showed Purcell that he had been closer to a good outcome than he thought.  The final design was made to work by deleting a number of traffic ways to leave a crisp open floor plan.  The rest of the design work was up to Purcell, who found himself carefully questioning every aspect of the material fabric.  The relationship of wooden frame construction to brick walls came to be understood  as the natural distinction between skeleton and skin: 

Having satisfied my conscience I began with confidence...to create both of the enveloping areas and the solid masses of the various parts and utilities in such a way that they would counteract in movement, bulk, and shape, against the other elements of the building and thus establish a sequence, subordination and movement of part with part, and part with the whole.[34]

   Interior elements were subject to the same exacting scrutiny.  Many design components to make their first appearances in this structure became regularly used features in the repertoire of the firm.  These included a raised hearth, tented ceilings, and corner-set casement windows.  Most importantly, Purcell and Feick began to articulate their own version of a wood trim system for interior finish that placed definition of the surface plane of the wall over the traditionally emphasized presence of doors and windows.  One of the flaws in this design represented a problem that often would be encountered in the future.  The need to incorporate pre-existing furniture in the new building negatively affected the values of the architecture.  In an effort to accommodate some large bookcases owned by Catherine Gray, the house reached the stage of working drawings with a windowless south living room wall.  Elmslie criticized these plans, as did Frank Lloyd Wright when Purcell stopped by the Oak Park studio to show him the design.  Long afterwards, when writing the history of his firm, Purcell lamented, "I wish now he [Elmslie] had insisted upon opening up the south wall--a defect sufficiently glaring that I can hardly imagine myself so blind as not have seen it."[35]

     The experiment with the open floor plan at the heart of the Catherine Gray house set Purcell & Feick, and later Purcell & Elmslie, on the road to a series of successful variations on the theme.  The plan had to yield a sense of inner movement, as Purcell noted.  Most often, the living room and dining space were set at a tangent to each other, and the turning of the plan pivoted around a chimney stack.  Entrance, staircase, and kitchen filled the remaining area on the first floor to complete a square or rectangular enclosure.  Most of these houses were two-storied, and upstairs there were usually two or three bedrooms and a bath.  The first public presentation by the firm of this form was in a house scheme entered into a competition for designs using the product line of the F. W. Bird Company, a manufacturer of building and roofing materials.  The resourceful P&E design was ignored in favor  of a Colonial cottage plan.  Still hopeful getting some favorable publicity, Purcell & Feick made a subsequent study for a similar house that they wanted to appear in the Ladies Home Journal.  Their approach accomplished the feat of including five well-proportioned bedrooms in a two-story plus attic house measuring only twenty-two by thirty feet.  Whether the design was actually submitted is unknown, but such experiments came to produce practical results.  Although the plan for the Journal was never actually executed, a cottage based in part on the design was erected for J. D. R. Steven in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, during the spring of 1909.  The harmonious arrangement of the Stevens cottage so pleased the owner that when a second, much bigger and more formal house was required, Purcell & Feick got the commission.

     One house designed by Purcell in 1909 stands apart from the others of the Purcell & Feick era as an interesting benchmark.  He was beginning to realize his growing working relationship with Elmslie might deprive him of some basic educational experiences.  However easily he might be able to rely on the skills of someone else, Purcell wanted to make sure that he remained competent on his own merits.  Deliberately, he sequestered from Elmslie the development of a commission for his father, Charles A. Purcell.  In this residential design the demons he had battled two years before in the Catherine Gray house are fully vanquished.  The first floor plan sweeps neatly through the necessary areas of entry, staircase, living room, dining room, and kitchen.  Using his familiarity with the living patterns of the client, Purcell specialized the plan with a glass-enclosed room labeled "the Smoker" just off the side of the living room so his father could enjoy a cigar without having to disturb others.

     The massing of the house rests trimly within a large square suburban lot.  In the backyard Purcell specified landscape plantings and installed a round fountain with a sculpture by Richard Bock.  On the back of the house a small balcony opens off the master bedroom on the second floor.  This was the prototypical beginning of the sleeping porches that would later appear in many Purcell and Elmslie dwellings.  The deep extension of the eaves to more than three feet was exactly the kind of technical challenge that Purcell wanted to resolve himself:

...making a plastic transition with exterior stucco from gable soffit to a flat under eave.  A part of the problem was to insure solid support for the widely projecting corners without resorting to brackets.  It was also necessary to give support to projecting gable rafter ends, which in this instance had a 3'-6" projection--too much for a 2 x 4 cantilever, and 2 [foot by] 6 [foot boards] would make too thick a fascia edge.  The resultants effected many factors in the total design of the building: a lower area for the plaster wall end; an easier 120 degree bend between the vertical wall and upward sloping soffit; an angle brace system under the entire length of gable.  Thus we were able to get a better plastic feeling in the marginal frame of wood bands...[36]

      One of the most sensitive features of this dwelling has long since vanished.  For the exterior, Purcell devised a color scheme of red-brown brick, sandy green plaster, blue slate roof, neutral olive plaster framing strips, and a small accent line of patinated brass.  He later attempted to recall this effect by hand painting a photograph of the house.  The result, though somewhat garish as rendered in the different medium, delivers a feeling of liveliness.  This characteristic of bright, almost effervescent coloration was an essential part of P&E designs. Sadly, most of this color has since disappeared under numerous coats of paint.[37]  For his father's house Purcell also executed one of his rare ventures into designing art glass, providing decorative panels for the front entrance, the built-in dining room buffet, and especially a triangular-shaped tympanum above the central windows of the smoking room. 

     Purcell experienced trouble finding a solution for the house within the imposed economic limits and came to regard his unaided completion of the design as a point of honor.  Relying solely on his own ideas, he finished the residence and a slightly self-conscious garage for a total of fifteen thousand five hundred dollars, with one thousand dollars of that amount going for the driveway and the car shelter.  The garage still stands almost completely intact, with glass-paneled doors, deep soffits, and detailed moldings to match those on the main house.  Purcell was satisfied with the result of his diligent effort toward self-development, but in 1915 the house would be further decorated with Elmslie-designed leaded glass, sawed wood, and a fireplace mural by Albert Fleury.[38]

      From 1907 to 1909, the firm of Purcell & Feick made a successful beginning of their share in the progressive struggle.  Their work was characterized by a sense of straightforward accommodation to basic functional needs, as might be expected, yet beyond the openly utilitarian there was evidence of a growing sensitivity to deeper organic consciousness.  Works such as the First National Bank project at Winona and the Stewart Church in Minneapolis gave a glimpse into the potential of the firm.  There were also some indications of trouble.  George Feick, for example, had difficulty handling the structural requirements of the roof trusses for the Goosman "Motor Inn."  Luckily, he was rescued by a another friend of the progressive cause, E. Fitch Pabody of the American Bridge Company in St. Paul.  The uneasiness of Feick in handling the innovative engineering required for the new, often experimental forms was a weakness that became a continuing source of friction in the progress of the partnership. 

     The early years saw the beginning of important personal relationships that would play into the story of the firm.  Catherine Gray moved to Minneapolis to be near her grandson.  Just before Christmas, 1908, Purcell married Edna Summy, a graduate of Wellesley and the daughter of a music company owner in Chicago.   From the beginning, the two women had a discordant relationship.  As a result of the disharmony, Purcell and his wife left the house on Lake of the Isles to rent an apartment several blocks away.  More happily, Purcell became involved with a circle of people who shared his interests in art and architecture.  He participated in activities at the Minneapolis Handicraft Guild and joined several social organizations.  He also lectured from time to time on the goals of organic architecture.  At one of these talks in 1908 he met John Jager (1871‑1959), a Slovenian-born architect who studied with Otto Wagner in Vienna.  Since Jager had been involved with the Secessionist movement in Austria and was well informed about progressive European and American architecture in general, these common interests formed the basis for an intense intellectual friendship between him and Purcell that lasted the rest of their lives.

     John Jager had left Europe in 1901 when he was appointed architect to the Austrian mission to Peking.  In China he designed and rebuilt the Austro‑Hungarian legation building, which had been destroyed a year earlier during the Boxer Rebellion.  Jager was greatly impressed with Chinese culture and began a lifelong study of the Chinese language and arts.  Shortly afterward he also visited Japan where he collected examples of vanishing handicrafts, particularly metalwork, textiles, and wood‑block printing.  By 1902 Jager relocated to the American Midwest where he was reunited with his brothers who had earlier immigrated to Minnesota.  Soon he had opened his own architectural office in Minneapolis.  His commissions during the first year included several Catholic churches for ethnic parishes, notably St. Bernard's, located in a German neighborhood in the north end of St. Paul, and St. Stephen's in Brockway Township, Minnesota.  In 1903, Jager published a booklet titled Fundamental Ideas in Church Architecture that argued against the rote use of historic forms in modern buildings.  He also discovered that he was among the few architects in the state who advocated the use of reinforced concrete construction, which many contractors at the time considered merely a passing trend that was ill‑suited to the extreme variations of the northern climate. 

     Jager continued to develop a presence in public affairs that gained him a strong local reputation.   He eventually became actively involved with the Minneapolis City Planning Commission and was an author of the city plan of 1905.[39]   After becoming a friend of Purcell, he contributed an essay to one of the Western Architect issues illustrating the work of P&E.  Titled "What the Engineer Thinks," the text asserted the organic view that there was the beautiful and naturally perfect relationship technological function and engineering form.[40]  In an example of his carefully reserved personal character, Jager published the piece under the pseudonym E. Van Regay, a reversed spelling that played on the pronunciation of his name.  Purcell and Jager often spent evenings walking alongside Minnehaha Creek, near Jager's country home, discussing Sullivan, the organic thesis, and the history of languages, a subject in which Jager was doing extensive research.  These conversations energized Purcell and supported his unfolding education in organic design.  Although Jager did not ever actually work in the P&E office, his constant moral support earned him the sobriquet of "silent partner" in the Purcell firm.[41] 

     As the office became more established and business warranted a supporting staff, Purcell & Feick began to hire associates to do drafting and other work.  Over the next ten years, a changing community of drafters, artists, designers, contractors, and others came to be part of the enterprise that Purcell referred to as "the Team."  Many members of the Team regarded their office as the most challenging and interesting place in town to be employed.  In contrast to common practice in most architectural offices at the time, active participation in the design process by all employees was both recognized and encouraged.  Drafters were to sign their work and could suggest changes.  The idea of the Team meant each individual who was part of the production process shared in the credit for each project.  Gertrude Phillips, for example, the office secretary who made the first alphabetic index of the office commissions, was as fully appreciated in the work of her position as Purcell and Elmslie were in performing their own functions as principals.  Most of these men and women came to share a special commitment to the progressive ideals.  The camaraderie of the Team as a fellowship was rooted not in time cards, salaries, or commission fees, but in a common belief in the organic procedures through which they joined together in the building art.  Purcell described the situation:

 There were no important differentials of class or station, no priorities of talent.  The good idea--the resolution of a tough problem could come from anyone in the office or on the job, and usually without controversy.  One who hit the right answer, no matter whom, had the good word from all and everyone was happy about it.  Such an approach automatically expanded our team to everyone who had anything  whatever to do with the project.  We all continually developed our contacts with the shovel men, bench craftsman, trowelers, carriers, plumbers, painters, weavers, wood carvers, glass makers, modelers, bankers, realtors in such a way as to make them feel that their experience and their wise know-how was going to make the building the best.  Without Necessity, and the old barn-raising spirit of the pioneers, we knew a building would have no life.  One could not invent a building; one could only grow it [emphasis original].[42]

      In 1908, the firm hired the first full-time permanent drafter, a woman named Marion Alice Parker (1875?-1935).  She had moved to Minneapolis from New Hampshire, where she went to drafting school and gained her first practical experience at a planing mill owned by her uncle.  Having worked in a series of other Minneapolis offices before coming to Purcell & Feick, Parker proved herself to be competent and dependable.  Over the decade she spent with the firm her previous eclectic attitude toward architectural design gave way to a full commitment to organic principles.  She was the only member of the Team who came close to mastering the poetic forms of ornamental treatment produced by George Elmslie.  Eventually Parker became a successful independent architect in Minneapolis, though some of her earliest commissions were carried through the Purcell & Elmslie accounting system.[43] 

     A succession of other drafters came and went in the office.  The same year that Parker arrived she was joined at the drafting tables by Lawrence B. Clapp, who remained through the change of the partnership to Purcell, Feick, & Elmslie until 1912. [44]    In March 1912 a drafter named Paul Haugen, then leaving the Purcell, Feick & Elmslie office, was asked to find someone to fill his place before departing.  Haugen knew that a friend, Lawrence A.  Fournier (1878-1944), was unhappy with his position at the Minneapolis Ornamental Iron Works.  Haugen arranged for Fournier to interview with Purcell, who offered him a job.  Although Fournier had previous experience in the offices of Kees & Colburn and William Kenyon in Minneapolis, he was at first self‑conscious about his carpenter‑drafting background and intimidated by the idea of working for a highly creative firm without the benefit of a formal education.  Only a brief time back at his drafting board in the ironworks persuaded him to make the change, however, and the next day he telephoned Purcell to accept.  Over the following decade Fournier worked intensively on most of the major commissions built by the firm.  In addition, he regularly entered competitions for small houses sponsored by the Minnesota State Arts Commission.  He took first place in a 1914 Model Village House contest, and the plan was published in folio along with the second prize entry of Marion Alice Parker.  His two‑story design for a brick house with an estimated cost of $2,500 won third mention in 1916 and appeared a year later in The Minnesotan, a publication of the art commission.  When the P&E operation in Minneapolis was reduced to a smaller staff in 1917, Fournier transferred to the Chicago office and remained with George Elmslie after the firm was disbanded in 1921.[45] 

      The most longstanding figure in the history of the Team, however, came to the firm in 1912.  A native‑born Minnesotan, Frederick A. Strauel (1887‑1974) first worked on the Thomas Snelling residence built in Waukegan, Illinois (1913), and ultimately came to be regarded as the chief drafter of Purcell & Elmslie.  The meticulous reliability of Strauel was an article of faith in the office, and Purcell recorded that over the years he had not known Strauel to have ever let a mistake slip by in his work.[46]  Other drafters passed through the firm at different periods, some on the way to establishing their own successful architectural practices.  The most prominent of these was John A. Walquist, who became a highly successful architect in New York City.  Leroy A. Gaarder exemplified the colorful, sometimes eccentric character of the office personnel.  He came to Purcell, Feick & Elmslie in 1912 from earlier experience with a church architect, stayed for five years, and later opened his own office in Albert Lea, Minnesota.  While working for P&E, Gaarder attended night classes in architecture at the University of Minnesota, leading Purcell to remember him by his notable habit of carrying a derringer pistol for protection.  Other drafters who worked for the firm at various times and about whom little is known beyond their signature on drawings include Oscar H. Banville, L. F. Collins, Kenneth Harrison, Clyde W. Smith, and A. H. Wider.

     The concept of the Team extended to encompass the many service professionals who contributed to design details, mechanical systems, construction, landscaping, ornamentation, and the myriad other aspects of bringing a building into existence.  General contractor Fred M. Hegg handled masonry, carpentry, roofing, plastering, and painting for many Purcell & Elmslie buildings. His first job for the firm was the Harold Hineline residence in Minneapolis (1910).  Hegg was nearly always the lowest bidder on projects to be built, and his highly regarded crews and subcontractors undertook construction for P&E throughout Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Montana, and the Dakotas.  The Hegg foreman was Fritz Carlson, who supervised banks built by the firm in Madison and Hector, Minnesota, as well as the Clayton F. Summy residence (the parents of Edna S. Purcell) designed in 1924 by George Elmslie in Hinsdale, Illinois.  Both Carlson and Edward Goetzenberger, a tinsmith, were so pleased to be working with P&E that they had their own homes designed by the firm, an unusual indication of respect for the practice.     

     Numerous Purcell & Elmslie residences and other structures often required specially built furniture or other interior decoration.  These craft jobs were sometimes taken by the office staff.  Drawings for some of the more finely finished furniture done by the firm were detailed by Emil Frank, a drafter whose father was the foreman of the woodworking shop of John S. Bradstreet and Company.  Frank also collaborated with Harry Rubins, the president of the Bradstreet company, to produce the furniture, paneling, and interior trim of the house for Louis Heitman in Helena, Montana (1916).   Ralph B. Pelton, a craftsman, cabinetmaker, and superintendent of construction for the Gallaher residence built in 1909, produced a structurally complex floor lamp designed by Elmslie for the Edna S. Purcell residence in Minneapolis (1913), as well as other handcrafted objects.  His demeanor was characteristic of those working for the firm, whose involvement often went far beyond making a living.  Purcell was impressed by the man for many years afterwards:

He was a well educated man of most charming manner; seemed a gentleman born, without pretense; and since he was a very capable craftsman in wood, a jeweler in fact, he perhaps represented a good example of William Morris' builder of the Democratic Future of Man....  His work was carried out with precision and a perfection far beyond the call of any contract.  His charges bore no relation to the time spent - as I recall $60 for the lamp and $6 for the cases.  Hand dovetailed, they were the last of this art I have met with.  I should say he could not have made fifty cents an hour on these jobs - just worked for the love of it.[47]

     Two individuals deserve special note in the successful ornamentation achieved by

Purcell & Elmslie.  The first was a modeler, Kristian Schneider, who worked for many years either at or as a consultant with the American Terracotta and Ceramic Company in Illinois.  The Norwegian-born Schneider had been personally tutored by Louis Sullivan over the years, and had worked in many cases with Elmslie in the production of various models for clay, cast-iron, and plaster designs.  Purcell paid due respect to what the modeler could and could not do:

Schneider had first come under Sullivan's spell in the Schiller Theater building, 1893, and from then on developed his art in close cooperation with Sullivan and Elmslie.  He learned to work from the very simplest of small scale drawings with no need for details.  Every pencil trace of Mr. Elmslie's delicate draftership carried full meaning and instruction--mutually understood.  Schneider with all his virtuosity of hand and experienced tast in manipulating the plastic clay, could not originate designs and his attempts to produce ornament for others are stale and uninteresting.  What George Elmslie did was really poetry and it took Elmslie to conceive and Schneider to call it out of the clay.[48]

      Another important craftsman belonging to the roll call of the Team was Edward L. Sharretts, who first happened to work with the firm through an order placed with the Minneapolis office of his then employer, the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company.  P&E had some difficulty finding people who could work with the fine lines and color requirements of their leaded glass designs.  Sharretts was the man they found to execute some particularly delicate window panels for alterations to the house of George W. Stricker in Minneapolis during 1910.  Recognizing an opportunity, he left the glass company where he he worked to open his own studio called the Mosaic Art Shops.   Sharretts maintained a large stock of the best available glass and reserved the finest pieces for his work with Purcell & Elmslie.  Purcell considered the color sense and imagination possessed by Sharretts to be a major contribution in the beauty of the final rendering of the designs.  Between 1910 and 1920, the Mosaic Arts Shops provided leaded glass panels, mosaics, and lamp fixtures out of a small Minneapolis workshop for nearly every commission built by P&E. 

     Lastly, there were occasions when a commission could afford the very highest quality of available craftsmanship.  Metalwork designs were often executed for Purcell & Elmslie by the studio of Chicago silversmith Robert Jarvie.  In addition to the living room light fixtures in the Edna S. Purcell house of 1913, for example, Jarvie completed specially detailed furniture (since missing), a silver flatware service, and personal items for the dwelling.  He also executed a silver memorial loving cup commemorating the retirement of James B. Angell from the University of Michigan in 1909.  In addition, Jarvie turned to the P&E for designs when he was asked to create trophy cups for an aviation meet in 1911.  When a large amount of fine furniture was needed quickly, Purcell & Elmslie sent their business to George Niedecken & Company in Milwaukee.  The Niedecken company produced a cascade of chairs, sofas, rugs, and other commercial and household furnishings for the firm over a ten year period.   

     In November, 1909, longstanding events of critical importance to the future of the practice came to a head.  George Elmslie had for several years grown increasingly distressed by the deteriorating situation he witnessed in the office of Louis Sullivan.  A major financial crisis forced him to take reluctant but unavoidable action.  When Sullivan could no longer pay him even a small salary, Elmslie was compelled to find a more reliable situation.  Purcell and Elmslie had long talked of working together.  Now was the time.  In 1910 Elmslie left the Sullivan office and moved to Minneapolis as a full partner in Purcell, Feick, & Elmslie.

With his arrival, the firm reached for a new creative balance that resulted in a cascade of advanced organic designs unequalled by any other progressive firm. 

     The degree to which the outstanding potential of Purcell & Elmslie was recognized by other organic architects is suggested by an incident involving Frank Lloyd Wright.  In November 1909, Purcell received a telephone call from Wright, who was at the Union Depot station in Minneapolis.  Saying that he had business to discuss, Wright requested cryptically that Purcell come to the train station and declined an offer to meet at the Purcell & Feick office only a five minute walk away.  When Purcell arrived, Wright said he was leaving for an extended stay in Europe and indicated that he wanted the Purcell firm to take over his own architectural practice.[49]    Purcell listened to Wright, then returned to his office to relate the business proposition to Elmslie.  Although the offer appeared attractive and could have meant considerable business prospects and prestige, Elmslie expressed his view of the deal by saying, "Well, you know Wright."  Shortly afterward, Purcell and Elmslie telegraphed their regrets and declined the opportunity.  Only four years later, Walter Burley Griffin would also ask Purcell & Elmslie to represent his American commissions when he left the United States for Australia.[50]

     With the arrival of Elmslie in 1910, Purcell was exposed to a creative talent that had been seasoned for more than fifteen years by close association with the founding master, Louis Sullivan.  The slow, careful pace at which Purcell had been developing his architectural understanding was suddenly interrupted by the presence of Elmslie, a man capable of a voluminous flow of sophisticated expressions.  At times, Purcell was unable wholly to digest the new forms at once.  The two men spent many hours in deep discussion of the means and ends of organic design.  This frank and intimate communication resulted in a synergistic working relationship that balanced their respective strengths and weaknesses, and the division of labor in the office was restructured along those lines.  With his natural, poetic facility for composition, Elmslie assumed much of the creative work of formulating designs.  Given his bent for structural details, George Feick was in charge of writing specifications and, when he could meet the need, engineering.  Between the two specializations of his partners, Purcell was responsible for managing the flow of the work between client, office, and contractors, as well as remain abreast of the work done by his partners.  Part of his management role meant guiding Elmslie toward solutions that were in line with client needs.  As George Feick grew more uncomfortable with the experimental forms produced by the firm, Purcell often had to articulate the technical elements of the structures himself.  When Elmslie was otherwise occupied, Purcell also handled basic design.

     Against the background of democratic give-and-take that was the office rule, designs went from one production phase to another with each person bringing forward some measure of contribution to the project.  Generally speaking, Purcell would supply Elmslie with notes and drawings to convey the essential elements of the situation.  Elmslie would then render a delicate pencil study to transform the ideas into graphic form.  In many instances, drawings show that the preliminary ideas Purcell sketched during client interviews appeared unchanged in the final design.  On other jobs, Elmslie provided a wholly different direction for the composition.  In subsequent conferences the partners synthesized their understanding into one commonly held view of the design.  Often, Purcell prepared a presentation rendering to more easily introduced the concept to the client.  If the work was approved, office drafters undertook working drawings, while Feick prepared specifications for construction bids.  Once the decision to build was made, full-scale diagrams for built-in furniture or other significant details were drawn by the office staff from a scaled study supplied by Elmslie.  Finally Elmslie or Marion Parker produced drawings for terra-cotta, leaded glass panels, stencils, and other decorative elements that were passed along to craftspeople and technicians.

     To gain a better insight into the continuity of the P&E creative process, the designs of the firm can be examined in three interrelated contexts.  First, by organic definition, any specific project required unique analysis in terms of site and other conditions.  Second, conception of one project inevitably happened when other designs were also taking shape.  In the P&E office there might be several banks, larger and smaller houses, churches, graphic schemes, or diverse other works-in-progress at the same time.  The challenges of one project could and usually did bring some immediate inspiration to another.  The design values of a single job can also be followed in relationship to other commissions that represent a sequence of type, as with the small open floor plan houses or the commercial interiors of the Edison Shops.  Third, the strong interaction between Team members provoked an interleaving of thought in the designs themselves.  The varying involvement of office personnel, contractors, and others effected the result, for example, when work was handled separately by the staff of P&E offices that opened in different cities over the years.  These three qualifying circumstances vary in impact, and there are some distinct designs that stand out more individually than in terms of groupings with other work.  Generally speaking, however, the organic creative process evolved along these lines.

     Relations with clients were naturally one of the most important aspects of the design process.  Beyond the obvious fact that without the client there would be no work, Purcell & Elmslie regarded themselves as facilitators, rather than dictators, of the architecture.  This attitude encouraged clients to participate in the process  that the final design would be a clearer expression of their personalities, living routines, special requirements, and aesthetic inclinations.  The P&E approach stood in contrast to the common  practice by many competitors of selling historical images from architectural magazines and then squeezing the clients in, with as little reshuffling as possible of the floor plans.  The process of self-discovery suggested by Purcell & Elmslie worked best with residences, where clients controlled directly the decision to build and were often already aware of the kind of house they could expect from the firm.  Satisfied P&E clients returned periodically to the firm for further development of their properties such as enlarging alterations, further interior decoration, furniture, garages, landscape fencing, and so on.[51]

     Other situations were less predictable.   Much of the commercial and institutional design work had to be presented to building committees.  The nature of a group decision forced P&E to educate their clients about the progressive ideals at the level of the lowest common denominator.  This was a balancing act without a net.  When the situation was receptive, there might be the danger of succeeding too well.  The firm lost an important commission for the St. Paul Methodist Church in Cedar Rapids, Iowa (1912), because Purcell was overly enthusiastic about Louis Sullivan who, still practicing, was a competitor to whom the builder subsequently turned.[52]  On other occasions not even the best of preparations could prevent dissension in conferences with people whose astonishment turned to outrage when confronted with the unconventional new architectural forms, as was one stockholder of the First National Bank at Rhinelander, Wisconsin (1910).[53]  Internal politics might also interfere with getting a job.  Henry B. Babson needed no convincing about organic designs, but his brother Fred Babson did not believe them sufficiently mainstream to appeal to the Eastern sense of taste in the commercial marketplace.  When Henry Babson was traveling in Europe. his brother made the decision to build a new Edison Shop in New York City without Purcell & Elmslie.  This deprived the firm of building on a prominent Fifth Avenue site.  They were greatly disappointed to lose such a prestigious opportunity to present their message.

     Ultimately, P&E could only do so much.  The decision to build, of course, was finally up to the client.  While Purcell and Elmslie could understand the failure of their own efforts to meet the needs of a situation, sometimes the design was not the source of rejection.  They learned that all their hard work was useless against the inhibitions of some people.  To feel safer in their decisionmaking, building committees might simply want to buy from the same places as their peers.  A prime example of this occurred with events surrounding the proposed First National Bank at Mankato, Minnesota  (1911).  Magnificent presentation drawings were left for further study with the bank building committee, which was apparently enthusiastic about the organic cause.  Only a few weeks later, however, a competitor not known for progressive work landed the job by underbidding with a design that Purcell regarded as an outright transcription of his firm's presentation.[54]  The flattery of the imitation was no consolation.

     The sting of such disappointments came with the territory.  Other events also seemed to have mixed results.  Before coming to Minneapolis to live, Elmslie had met and fallen in love with a young Scots woman named Bonnie Hunter.  The deep passion that he felt for his work now had a personal focus.  She agreed to marry him and came to Minnesota, where the Elmslies took a flat in the same apartment building where the Purcells lived.  For two years, George Elmslie was extremely happy in both of his new partnerships.  The brooding moodiness to which he was sometimes victim vanished and the character of his work brightened into lighter, more playful expressions.  In 1912, however, just two years after they were married, Bonnie died in a failed surgical operation.  In spite of efforts by Purcell to get him to stay, Elmslie left Minneapolis and returned to Chicago to live with his sisters.  He opened a P&E office in Illinois, arguing that the business of the firm would improve and the location would be more convenient for important clients like Henry Babson.  Although he threw himself more deeply than ever into his work, the tragic shock of losing his wife never left him.  Periodically over the course of the next decade, Elmslie experienced periods of manic productivity followed by repeated hospitalizations for what was termed exhaustion but was likely depression.

     Meanwhile, George Feick continued to become more and more peripheral to the work of the firm.  Often, engineering that he should have handled was subcontracted  During his two years in the partnership after Elmslie joined the firm, Feick participated less and less in the flow of projects outside of those he brought to the office himself.  Relations with colleagues in the firm were also strained by his gruff personality.  After a fractious dispute over personnel, Feick left in the spring of 1912 for a site supervision assignment at the Crane estate in Woods Hole and he never returned to the office.  While in later years Purcell wanted to credit his former partner with some participation as a matter of friendly historical record, he also admitted that at heart Feick was not greatly motivated by the progressive cause.  The significant designs through which the firm would find acclaim were therefore largely unaffected by the presence or departure of George Feick, Jr.     

     Some time would pass before the new working arrangements in the office with Elmslie were optimally realized, but from the beginning there were signs of a powerful achievement in the making for the firm.  After 1910 the amount of work in the office more than doubled.  George Elmslie brought important business contacts that resulted in a growing number of commissions from former Sullivan clients, such as Henry B. Babson, Charles R. Crane and Crane's daughter and son-in-law, the Harold C. Bradleys.  Though few in number, these wealthy people were solid patrons of the firm who readily accepted the design forms presented to them.  From Babson, for example, P&E inherited the development of his country estate in Riverside, Illinois, that had begun with the original house designed by Sullivan and Elmslie in 1908.  Over the next decade Elmslie produced for this dwelling a stream of furniture and embellishments, including a tall clock, leaded glass windows and doors, a variety of fireplace andirons, and numerous electric light fixtures.  Sometimes the architects regretted the continual desire of the client to make changes to the house but did their best to accomodate his wishes, as with the enclosure of the sleeping porch in 1912.  These unhappy alterations were few, however, and in the context of the larger estate P&E had magnificent opportunities of their own in the development of a master landscaping plan (1914) and the Babson service buildings (1915). 

     Although a man of greater sensitive feeling than personal wealth, Carl K. Bennett, for whom Sullivan and Elmslie had produced the great National Farmers Bank in Owatonna, Minnesota, also came to Purcell & Elmslie with a variety of commissions.  Any changes or additions to the bank building were naturally referred to the firm.  Bennett wanted a speculative project developed for small houses (1912), and had graphic materials designed for his various businesses in 1910 and 1914.  Over the ten year period after Elmslie joined the fi