PREFACE

 

Avon Old Farms, a school for boys in Connecticut, sits on a bluff which presides over a magnificent tract of land forested by groves of tall trees and crossed by streams (Fig.1). The quadrangle and outlying buildings are built mostly of sandstone, whose reddish color reflects that of the soil. The earlier buildings, those first to be seen, are of red brick and like the entrance to the quad are English in their inspiration (Figs.2,3). The initial surprise coming upon structures that look as if they were miraculously transported from some quaint English village gives way to an admiration for a combination of shapes which is sculptural - the tall, cylindrical water tower looming above the original forge and carpentry shop whose bent plan creates cubist volumes. The surfaces of brick and roughened sandstone catch the light unevenly, like the light flickering on the leaves of the great oaks that shade the vast front lawn. The scale of the buildings is related to the trees, and it is this total harmony with nature that repeatedly fills one with awe.

Avon Old Farms, whose plan took form in 1918 but which was never entirely finished, was a manifestation of one of the dreams of Theodate Pope Riddle (1867-1946), who as an architect was known as Theodate Pope. To be sure, other American schools paid homage to Oxford and Cambridge - Collegiate Gothic, as seen in Princeton and Yale, being a popular stylistic choice. But for Theodate Pope an English vernacular idiom was a personal preference reflecting her admiration for England and its customs and architecture. What she wanted to do in her school, for she was its founder as well as its architect, was to combine an American rugged individualism with an English tutorial system and dress code. Her goal was to create an architectural environment which would foster community spirit in boys she hoped would become society's leaders. She devised a progressive program based on learning through activities, as opposed to the traditional approach of learning by rote. In this she was inspired by both American and English educational reformers.

The long refectory at Avon, with its heavy oak beams arching overhead, was chosen as a place to stamp her lineage. Here in Theodate's time the boys, dressed for dinner, sat at tables lit by candlelight. Never mind the fact, which she probably knew, that they flipped butter patties to the rafters.¹ Along one wall rested the portraits of her grandparents as if this were some ancestral hall, while the portrait of President Charles Eliot of Harvard, who had approved her progressive educational program, was consigned to the minstrel gallery. Her choice of decoration reminds one that she felt her achievements were a product of the personalities and accomplishments of her ancestors, who, as a consequence, should not be left unaccounted-for in a discussion of her architecture.

Theodate Pope had had no formal training as an architect. The daughter of a self-made industrialist, she struggled to make her own life. She rejected Cleveland, where her parents busily established themselves in the forefront of society, choosing instead to make her life her own in the old New England town of Farmington, Connecticut. There she learned to care for herself and for others by creating good works projects. She flouted her father's capitalism with socialist ideas; the collection of Impressionist paintings he so prized she thought should be made available to the public. Nevertheless, the two had a very close relationship, their natures being similar. Her father helped her to develop an appreciation for art and nurtured in her not only a sense of individual initiative but also of social responsibility. She triumphed in her filial relationship by bringing her parents to Farmington where she created a house for them around 1900.

The house, called Hill-Stead, was her first architectural endeavor to emerge from the plans she had drawn since childhood (Fig.4). It is not surprising that this house was created in a Colonial Revival style in keeping with the older white frame houses in Farmington. But again, this was a personal choice. She saw style as a moral prerogative, reflecting in this case the sturdy virtues of her Quaker grandparents and other New Englanders like them. Although Hill-Stead was her creation, she was aided by the firm of McKim, Mead & White, a firm much admired not only by her father but also by his business partner. She could have succumbed to their Beaux-Arts approach in her later designs for institutional buildings; instead, as her love for England grew, she increasingly followed an Arts and Crafts aesthetic, drawing inspiration from old English villages and the arts and crafts architecture of her English contemporaries. One of her major accomplishments is the sensitive relationship of her buildings to their environments.

Her buildings are few in number: three schools, the reconstruction and additions to the Theodore Roosevelt House in New York, three country houses, and a parcel of cottages built for servants. Why was her output so small compared to that of other architects, such as her West Coast contemporary Julia Morgan? Julia Morgan, having defined her goal early in her career, chugged down a single track. She attended the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, remained celibate, and devoted her total energy to her profession. Theodate belonged to an upwardly mobile family who had left behind an austere Quaker environment to join the newly prosperous of Cleveland. As an only child, she was expected to bask in her parents' achievements and to marry the son of her father's partner. To reject the role of society matron expected of her was wrenchingly difficult; to enter the male dominated architectural profession was even harder. After the death of her father in 1913, she took on an active role in the management of his large country estate, became the guardian of several young boys, and in mid-life married a diplomat, almost as an aside, making it clear to him that her architecture came first.

However, as much as she valued her profession, she also pursued with equal tenacity another objective. She was actively involved in the investigation of mediums as sponsored by the Society for Psychical Research, a group of scholars on both sides of the Atlantic who attempted to determine the existence of the soul after death. Did this have anything to do with her architecture? In a way, yes. An inquiry into the realm of the spiritual was central to her life. The creative act in producing work that was meaningful, was, to her, a manifestation of the soul. One must look at her architecture in relationship to her life. As she forged her life, so followed her art.

The major sources for her life and work include her diaries, which she started at nineteen and continued intermittently until 1906; letters to her friends and family, especially to her mother who died in 1920; and her library, which, besides her own, includes books belonging to her parents and husband. These are at Hill-Stead (now a museum), in Farmington, Connecticut. There is also a collection of letters from Theodate and her husband, John Wallace Riddle, to his sister, Grace Flandrau, at the Historical Society Library in Tucson, Arizona. Theodate's memoirs in addition to plans and renderings for Avon Old Farms remain at the school in Avon, Connecticut. Plans for Hill-Stead are located at the New-York Historical Society; plans for Westover are at Westover School in Middlebury, Connecticut; and plans for the renovation of Theodore Roosevelt's birthplace are at the National Park Service headquarters in New York City.