Love Letters to Dead Architects: The Men, The Myths, The Mavericks

Dear Antonin Raymond,

I know that you do not love me; I know your heart belongs to Noemi, but she is no enemy of mine. I want, no need, you to know how much I truly admire you.

You belong to no one (that is, aside from Noemi) and your style, while referencing many others, does not seek or need the approval of one doctrine. The craft is undeniable, the style indefinable and the space inconceivable. You stole your sword from Cass Gilbert, the materials and the sharpness became your greatest weapon. But it was never enough you was it? You could not be defined, broken or subdued.

That is why you and Frank Lloyd Wright split up isn’t it? He could never stand any one who did not revere him as a God, and you know it is never wise to bow to the arrogant. You learned his low, lean, western style and then you made more of it, you are the Masterless Samurai. The Ronan of the Czech Republic.

Think of me, if only for a moment, when the winds blow westerly.

With Love,

Retly Corm

My dearest, Aldo Rossi,

When I first heard of you, it was a friend said “He is a poet, who also happens to be an Architect” I ignorantly replied “Well, I am a logger, who also happens to be an arsonist. Surely between the two of us we can find something to do.” It was flippant. It was callous. It was true. But walking Rome with you, seeing the monuments and how the city both formed, and was formed by them over time. It gave me order, it gave me peace. Now you are off to the frozen North to study Stalinist Architecture, that emptiness, those pompous, grandiose gestures, I know they will seize your brain with possibilities. Don’t let it take your heart also, that belongs to me.

With Love,

Retly Corm

My Dear Carlo Maderno,

Congratulations on your cameo on “Pimp my Mannerist Façade”. Oh? Is that not what this movement is called? My mistake. Sometimes I feel bad for you Carlo, I mean here you are, making revolutionary strides for Baroque architecture, and no-one seems to notice. You design the façade for St. Peter’s that has papal approval, and what do people talk about? “Oh, the dome doesn’t match”. You create a symphony of columns and openings, positive and negative space at its best, and then some pretty-boy sculptor has to take all your glory with The Ecstasy of St. Theresa. Just stick it out, my love, would you rather have millions of followers who love you just because you’re popular, or have a small group of dedicated fans? Don’t answer that. I know you want to choose both.

With Love,

Retly Corm

William Lescaze,

So that’s it huh? You and Howe get to America and after only a few weeks of knowing each other decide that you are going to rival all aesthetics, challenge pre-conceived notions on taste and permanently change the sky-line of a major metropolitan area? Well, I am disgusted. Disgusted at how quickly you could adapt. Good Job Kiddo, the U.S. was built for you.

And don’t think I don’t know what PSFS really stands for. Philadelphia Savings Fund Society? Ha! Prenez-moi Sous, Feras Succes.

With Love,

Retly Corm

Dear Richard Morris Hunt,

Say what you want about me, I am rubber and you are glue. You get stuck here and I hit the road. So Ralph Waldo Emerson likes you, big whoop. Ralph Waldo Emerson likes everyone, he’s the town’s intellectual bicycle. I’m not saying you are not brilliant. You are. No one is questioning that. Any man who can play ball with the robber barons of the “gilded age” can certainly handle his own. You started the first Architecture school in the United States, regaling Louis Sullivan with stories of the Ecole, and organizing these people. But do there have to be some many rules? Just let go baby, have some fun.

Love,

Retly Corm

Ni Hao Yu Hao,

Yu wrap me up in love.

There you are, binding together my affection for construction and men who notice details. Your strengths become my weakness; your knowledge of wood construction impresses all, your simple solutions, genius. Like the golden pins that hold together my hair, so the nailed struts in the great Pagoda serve both a functional and beautiful role that never escape your grasp.

Wood and paper may crumble over time, but my affection never will.

Ever yours,

Retly Corm

Alexander Wadsworth Longfellow, Jr.,

Give me your lunch-money dweeb. Just because your uncle wrote a seminal piece of Americana doesn’t mean you can just nerd it up all over the place.

Granted, you’ve invented a kind of New England based regionalism even before it was ever identified as such. And OK, you carried on the next generation of the Richardson Romanesque in an aesthetically accessible way. AND Fine, you designed intellectual harbors with a grace and civility that is required of them by all viewers.

But for the love of God, never wear socks with sandals in public again.

Sincerely,

Retly Corm

P.S. Seriously though, give me your lunch money. I’m gonna buy booze with it.

Dear Cass Gilbert,

I like you. You like to be a hero. You are always dangling modernism over historicism, designing Gothic skyscrapers, a monument to the church of capitalism, gilding the slants of an insurance building, making it seem like a lighthouse. Then you create a judicial structure whose lineage and inheritance comes from the Greeks and Romans (you know the glory and the grandeur bit, not so much the orgies and decline).

You’re optimistic, strong, if just a little cocky and yet still human and charming. So go, live the dream. Fight. Win. You’re an American, you design the ideal. Just don’t get too confident. Change is coming. You’re part of it, sure, but it may one day it may just swallow you up, bones and all.

With love,

Retly Corm

Dear C. P. H. Gilbert,

Can you get off Cass Gilbert’s coat-tails for 5 seconds and talk to me?

Listen, I know you’re afraid that you’re going to get branded as the “goofus” out of the two of you and want people to stay confused. But you two are not “goofus” and “gallant”. If anything, you’re “Monet” and “Manet” and it’s all money now baby.

Of course, you know that. You build homes for the wealthy. If nothing else, the country will thank you for popularizing the Richardson Romanesque in a domestic setting. You know, just as well as I - where the wealthy go, so go the bourgeoisie, and so goes popular opinion.

You make another hit for the home team.

Yours, truly,

Retly Corm

Ma Cher, Philibert de L’Orme,

As you know, I have three weaknesses. The first one, obviously is Architecture. The second is conceptual ideals made real in the form of elaborate aesthetics. The third is people who think for themselves. When I met you, I knew I did not stand a chance. Like so many others you went to Rome to study, to process and to copy. However, though you tried, you could not and would not be anything but French. You did bring back some souvenir though – what’s that thing? Oh right. The Renaissance.

Let’s get real here. You’re too good for me. It’s 1540 and most people are illiterate. You’ve been living in your uptown world, designing palaces for the Medicis. I’m a fishmonger, a street-rat, a cockney orphan. Unless you want a rampant case of head lice and a barrel full of regret, just tell me to stay away.

Please, try to let me down easy. You are supposed to be a humanist thinker, are you not? Then surely compassion is within your reach.

Yours truly,

Retly Corm

Dear James Stirling,

Of course you understand the axonometric drawing so well.

When you smile at me, my heart gets a bird’s eye view of everything there is. When you ignore me, every part of me looks at you from the worm’s eye. I hate feeling needy but every time I see your buildings, hours are not enough. I only eat to stay alive, but all sustenance is the subtle curve of bright green steel.

Some people say that your Staatsgalerei Stuttgart is a joke. That the playful colors and ironic forms are meant only to mock the refined art the museum holds. They say it’s Postmodern, I know you hate this.

I get it though. You’re showing them your lack of pretension, proving that great art is accessible to all. Your design decisions show all the sophistication that they lack, and more importantly, you show them you’re not afraid of them. There is something so dangerous, so independent, so Baroque about you.

All this and a reluctant knighthood.

Never leave. Life would be so much harder without you.

With Love,
Retly Corm