Alden B. Dow: midwestern modern

Abstract

Alden B. Dow: Midwestern Modern, Diane Maddex, Midland, MI, Alden B. Dow Home and Studio, 2007, 240 pp. illus. In their bicentennial publication, American Architecture 1607-1976 (MIT Press, 1981), Marcus Whiffen and Frederick Koeper comment that, 'few of Wright's students were able to summon up the self-confidence necessary for independent, creative work. Among those who did were Alden Dow and John Lautner' (p. 372). Lautner's reputation is now well-established but Dow's, meanwhile, has faded. Sydney K. Robinson's monograph, The Architecture of Alden B. Dow (Wayne State University Press, 1983), appears to be the last work published on Dow so now, a quarter of a century later, Maddex's study is welcome, but it also raises the question of why Dow is not better known. Born in 1904, the son of Herbert Dow, the founder of the Dow Chemical Company, Alden Dow studied architecture at Columbia University, New York, before joining Frank Lloyd Wright's newly formed Taliesin Fellowship in 1933. Although his stay was brief, he developed a bond with Wright, so much so that years later, Olgivanna Wright would describe Dow as 'my late husband's spiritual son'. The confidence was reciprocated when, in 1970, Dow wrote that he considered Wright to be the greatest architect who ever lived. Maddex suggests, by quoting Tobias S. Guggenheimer's study of Frank Lloyd Wright's Apprentices (Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1995), that Dow sought from Wright a confirmation of his own beliefs rather than leadership or direction. And here, perhaps, is the crux of the problem, for Maddex never manages to satisfactorily separate the two. As a memorial to Dow, this is a handsome book, lavishly illustrated but quite simply over-designed. For no apparent reason, the pages change colour, now beige, now pink, now blue and the presence throughout these pages of quotes and aphorisms, which appear rather like wallpaper, is distracting. The text is confused by overprinting, which often makes it difficult to read, and chapter headings and sub-headings are hard to distinguish one from the other, with the result that each section appears like an individual pull-out from a glossy magazine. The plans, of which there are few, fare no better. Page 110 has the architect's drawing of the Home and Studio in blue on blue (why not black on white?) while opposite, on page 111, the same plan is repeated as a coloured space diagram, devoid of furniture or of any useful content, presumably for those who cannot read architectural drawings. How I longed for some clean, white space! Thus the nature of this book becomes apparent: a self-promotional coffee-table edition to be looked at more than read, published by the Alden B. …