Parabiographies entry, Volume for 1910
Text by William Gray Purcell

Job Date (in Parabiography): January 26, 1915

MRS. HENRY SIMONS RESIDENCE, Glencoe, Minnesota

This beautiful dwelling was not built. The reason it was not built holds a significant lesson in form and function for any modern architect who desires to penetrate the very substance from which architectural forms arise. There lay the design and working drawings for a building which was a rational solution of contemporary living. It took account of the practical matters of local building and construction. It had sympathetic concern for the human and spiritual values and expressed them in plan arrangement, form, color, and ornamental pattern. Using a word which may mean nothing at all, but which can mean a great deal, it was truly beautiful. But one function it missed entirely and this function is Humility, a quality whose true character and goodness lies deep in human life. It has been travestied by the insincere and expressed in moving terms by the great of all times. It has perhaps been best said in that living metaphor from the Masonic ages, "the stone which was rejected by the builders has become the chief stone of the cornice."

Let me describe Mr. and Mrs. Symons [sic]. He was a short little man with a very rosy smiling face and bright blue eyes; his gray hair had once been blond. Years at his banking desk had made his figure round as an apple. He radiated good humor and felt the responsibility in his position as first citizen of the little town of Glencoe, where being a banker could carry a man of his type into folk relations far outside the world of trade. He had been there all his life and felt that he truly had built the town, was proud of his community and all the people who made it a satisfying place to live and work. Mrs. Symons [sic] was a somewhat similar type of person and like most women in these little American towns she had an earnest and sincere desire for good books, to know about pictures, to know and experience architecture, and to surround herself with beauty. They had just passed middle life and were well able to buy for themselves whatever would accomplish the good life and it seemed that a beautiful home was just the fulfillment of their dreaming. We knew that they would not want a grand or palatial house, that their interests were in the qualities of things, and they encouraged us in our development of the project to emphasize this factor. They were much interested in my analysis of the relation between the shape of things in the world and the thoughts and desires of the people.

When the plans were finished and Mr. Hegg had given us his contract price for the finished work, I went out to Glencoe for a conference. There was nothing but praise for what we had done and they were quite willing to spend the money which it was going to take. But in a kindly way Mr. Symons said with considerable feeling and deep disappointment on our part, "We have decided that we can't build this house and this is the reason."

"We have lived for many years in this little town. We are a very part of the people who live here. We are just simple American Folks like all the rest of the families and the trades people. They drop in for a game of cards or come by in the summer evenings and stop and smoke their pipe; put their feet up on our porch rail to discuss local politics and gossip. That is our life. Our furniture is old, our present house is as common as an old shoe and that is what makes people feel comfortable and at home. If we build your design with all its new patterns, - well . . . those unusual building materials would be very strange for them. All dressed up with that gay ornament, fancy equipment and electrical fixtures, we would lose what is most precious to us. Our friends would become self-conscious, and would be sort of an audience instead of sharers. They would be outside looking inl they could not help but criticize and just naturally cease to be a part of our lives. We can not take that risk.

I believe he was justified.

Including this point of view in a series of houses, extending through my entire career as an architect, leads me to believe that the most trenchant criticism that can be made of the c[h]romium finished, window walled, streamlined, bounce chaired, curved corner, trick lighted, so called modern houses of today can be directed to just this failure to account for the humanity of people living together in families and communities and wanting to feel themselves a part of each other and of their community under the sky, close to nature. The streamlined house is the expression in architecture of the deterioration of the sense of family. It is not surprising that the Hill Foundation of St. Paul has placed $200,000 at the disposal of a competent research staff on this break in basic community foundations (1953). The next step for architecture is "pre-fabricated" concern for human beings and profitable living rather than mass production to reduce unit costs. We need to scatter the sources of production for dwelling places, so as to make work for more village carpenters and craftsmen at higher wages. Perhaps we do not want to reduce the costs of the houses. It is quite likely that we want to increase their costs and see that their sales returns are well distributed into the pockets of life members of a community rather than see bigger and bigger factories working faster and faster - to what end?
 

research courtesy mark hammons