Purcell and Elmslie, Architects

Firm active :: 1907-1921

Minneapolis, Minnesota :: Chicago, Illinois
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania :: Portland, Oregon

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4/22/2003


P&E advertising brochure
Preliminary sketch
Elk's Club, project
Winona, Minnesota


Mercury is about to go retrograde again, something that usually happens three times a year.  Of course, the position of the planet Mercury relative to the Good Earth has the same weight in reality as the position of the big and little hands on those wristwatches still possessing a dial face.  If you say it is two o'clock, what makes it so?   The arbitrary numbering system of some long dead Sumerian astronomers, or the pulse of a cesium atom in Colorado?  People who dismiss ancient wisdom systems deprive themselves of a lot of fun--and a few good explanations.  With Mercury, wing-footed messenger of the gods, about to take a slide in the "wrong" direction, mythic insight holds expectation of miscommunication, including breakdowns of mechanical systems supporting communications, etc.  And there is also a traditional "umbrella" of about two weeks to three weeks prior to the actual retrograde where foreshadowing events occur.  Regular readers of this site will have noted that MY umbrella experience this time around was a fried power supply and burnt out fan in my server, all of which kept my little service offering here off-line for about a week.

There is, however, an upside.  Mercury retrograde periods are useful for cleaning up old messes.  In my case that means digging through the boxes left over from as early as the 1980s and sorting through masses of materials I haven't looked through in decades.  I am finding some surprises, such as a copy of a P&E advertising brochure, whose existence I did not recall, for the Community House for the First Congregational Church in Eau Claire.  [Of course when your brain has been as fried as much as mine from sex, drugs, and rock and roll--not necessarily in that order--you forget a lot.  Officially, it's a combination of ADHD and post-traumatic shock syndrome, but that's just the fancy way of saying you forget what you don't remember.]  So life becomes full of surprises all over again.

Here's another one.  The University of Minnesota Libraries Images system has one sketch up for the Winona Elk's Club, project of 1910.  I have photocopies of two different ones.  Those sketches are seemingly the same size, and should be in the same shelf file.  The telling thing here is the way the first sketch marks out the details for the second one.  An insight into the production of a P&E presentation rendering.  And my houseguest arrives from Scottsdale, so that's tonight.

4/21/2003

Dorothy O'Brien, Purcell's sister-in-law (left, with Cocker Bother, ca. late 1940s; right, with the "Westwinds" raccoons, 1958).  A great and generous friend she was to me.

A Pet Musing.  One topic that deserves at least a small essay is the presence of pets in the lives of people who commissioned--as well as those who presently live in--P&E buildings.  I mention this because rarely have I seen indication of P&E clients having pets.  Almost all had an overt enjoyment of plants.  That seems to be a common denominator, given the abundance of fern stands, flower boxes and planters. (The best and most elaborate such architectural provision was the 4' x 18' indoor planter conceived for the E. C. Warner residence project, which is described in the Parabiographies entry).  But as for knowledge about personal fauna, we are left with only a few family photographs showing the presence of a dog or cat, sometimes the occasional parakeet.  Granted, modern veterinary practices have made indoor animals more compatible than in an older era where putting the cat out at night didn't guarantee a good sleep.  In more than twenty years of knowing owners of P&E properties, however, I note a preponderance of cats over dogs.  Given that the nature of these houses DOES tend, at least in my experience, to attract people similar to those for whom they were built, maybe such reflexion is an indirect clue about the presence of companion animals in the beginning.  How's that for pseudo-retro-deconstructionist analysis?

As for William Gray Purcell, he was a lover of animals always.  From the dogs at Island Lake Camp in the 1890s to the very end of his days in Pasadena in the 1960s, he kept pet animals.  (Can you imagine the Minneapolis Institute of Art allowing a cat in Lake Place now?)  His sister-in-law Dorothy O'Brien told me--and provided photographs--about how the Purcell household made friends with multiple generations of the raccoons that lived in the foothills above his "Westwinds" estate.  The mothers would bring their newborn young down each season to introduce them to the lunch counter.  After her sister Cecily, Purcell's second wife, died, and Purcell's physical health became so fragile that he was allowed only one hour daily of letter writing as an activity, there was Horace the budgie sitting, wings clipped, on a little wooden perch.  Not too long after Horace took flight the only way he could, so did Purcell.  Ah, life the poem.

As for today's advance, I corrected some coding errors (cut-and-paste can become blind man's bluff, if you don't stay awake) and added the working drawings for Lake Place.

4/19/2003

A recent request brings up the start of a long desired list of earth addresses for surviving P&E buildings.  Perforce, this will be an accumulative effort.  Completed adding the working drawings for the J. W. S. Gallagher residence in Winona, Minnesota; a floor plan for the W. J. Landon duplex residence project; and a sketch for the Winona Elk's Club, project.  I notice that I have concentrated on images over texts for some time, especially given the nearly 1800 images that are now linked from this site to the Images server at the University of Minnesota Libraries, plus the 2100 others served from here.  While there are probably another 2000 more to be scanned, some balance is needed with the texts.  While I am still hacking away at the last of the Parabiographies entries for 1914, I got up the way-too-long-delayed "The Statics and Dynamics of Architecture" from The Western Architect.  Also, in the Fun Department, the following little ditty from George Elmslie dates from the construction of Lake Place:

His home is called the Little Joker
with fireplace snug and kindly poker
while by the door there stands a column
most truly round and surely solemn.

And so it goes.

4/17/2003

Put up some of the remaining Parabiographies entries, commission list 239-242; all the volumes except 1914 are complete.  Looking over these pages, now numbering nearly 1,500, after a break gives some fresh perspective.  There's some cleanup of the very early pages to conform to the format that has evolved over the past two years, plus there are always enlarged images to get up.  A call last night from Bill Hueg prompts me to get on to the Owatonna bank web shrine, which will require a different page structure than this site uses, so I will launch that as part of The Prairie School Exchange when I get the requisite time. 

4/9/2003

Life is SO strange--and as a friend also recently noted, can be wonderful.  While I have not yet resolved the employment (and therefore longer term) issue, I have received incredible moral and some out-of-the-blue financial support from regular readers of this site who noticed the declaration below.  Unsolicited gifts of cash--small amounts add up--have been presented to keep these pages going, at least enough to pay for the DSL for a while.  While I would prefer to thank these individuals by name, they choose to be anonymous in their presence.  In any event, assuming that I can press ahead with promising job leads (two Organica readers gave me helpful contacts!), these generous souls have assisted me tremendously by showing that the work I have done out of love has tangible value in the real world--and was noticed.  THANK YOU!

3/24/2003

Regrettably, there will be no updates to this site for the foreseeable future.  I have to hunker down in hopes of finding a path for personal survival.  If I can get some kind of regular employment, perhaps I will be able to regain my foothold here.  The two years of effort given so far will have to suffice until the surrounding situation changes for the better or the DSL service is disconnected, whichever comes first.  Good journey to all, and to all the best possible of outcomes.  bientt.

 

research courtesy mark hammons