 |
firm active: 1907-1921 minneapolis, minnesota :: chicago, illinois |
Navigation :: Home :: Commission List :: Graphical Designs
Purcell and Elmslie advertising brochures
Purcell and Elmslie
1918
Brochure showing Edward W. Decker residence (Lake Minnetonka, Minnesota)
The text reads:
"American architecture is slowly and inevitably
arising about us as a natural result of what we, as Americans, desire to do and
to have. Like all great arts, our American architecture expresses and exhibits
best those things which most interest American people. But just so long as the
particular interest we have in our public buildings and our dwellings causes us
to look condescendingly and without understanding at our great work shops, our
bridges, and our railroad trains--just so long will our public buildings and
houses remain untouched by the wonderful thrill and the urge of American life,
or become factors in our development as a people.
There now appears to be dawning, the world over, the day of the nations, whole
and complete, democratic and reliant, working together, wherein the dwelling
places of the leaders and the trained men will cease to conform to arbitrary
types utterly at variance with our democratic desires and unresponsive to our
deepest needs.
Already the homes of many American are expressing the American aristocracy of
being useful. The Old World aristocracy of usefulness by proxy is passing away
before our eyes and with the feudalism is passing the architecture that waited
upon it."
Collection: William Gray Purcell Papers, Northwest Architectural Archives, University of Minnesota [AR:P&E 348].
research courtesy mark hammons