Modern Architecture and Religious Communities, 1850-1970: Building the Kingdom 2017061080, 9781138487116, 9781351043724

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Modern Architecture and Religious Communities, 1850–1970

Social groups formed around shared religious beliefs encountered significant change and challenges between the 1850s and the 1970s. This book is the first collection of its kind to take a broad, thematically driven case study approach to this genre of architecture and its associated visual culture and communal experience. Examples range from Nuns’s holy spaces celebrating the life of St Theresa of Lisieux to utopian American desert communities and their reliance on the philosophy of Teilhard de Chardin. Modern religious architecture converses with a broad spectrum of social, anthropological, cultural and theological discourses and the authors engage with them rigorously and innovatively. As such, new readings of sacred spaces offer new angles and perspectives on some of the dominant narratives of the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries: empire, urban expansion, pluralism and modernity. In a post-traditional landscape, religious architecture suggests expansive ways of exploring themes, including nostalgia and revivalism, engineering and technological innovation, prayer and spiritual experimentation and the beauty of holiness for a brave new world. Shaped by the tensions and anxieties of the modern era and powerfully expressed in the space and material culture of faith, the architecture presented here creates a set of new turning points in the history of the built environment. Kate Jordan is Lecturer in History and Theory in the Faculty of Architecture, University of Westminster. She regularly lectures at the V&A and previously taught architectural history at Queen Mary University of London. She wrote her doctoral thesis (UCL) on the role of nuns in the design and construction of nineteenth and twentieth-century convents – a subject upon which she has published and given numerous conference papers. Her current field of research is Benedictine architecture of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. She is a former member of the Education Sub-committee of the Society of Architectural Historians Great Britain and currently serves on the Twentieth Century Society’s Casework Committee. Ayla Lepine is Visiting Fellow in Art History at the University of Essex. Her research focuses on the Gothic Revival and modern medievalism. She is Arts Editor of the Marginalia Review of Books and a trustee of Art and Christianity Enquiry. She has published on Anglican monasticism, sacred visual culture and the meanings of modern Gothic imagery in Architectural History, Visual Resources, Music and Modernism, The New Elizabethan Age, the Oxford History of Anglicanism and the Church Times. She has co-edited Gothic Legacies: 400 Years of Tradition and Innovation in Art and Architecture (with Laura Cleaver, 2012) and Revival: Identities, Memories, Utopias (with Matt Lodder and Rosalind McKever, 2015).

Modern Architecture and Religious Communities, 1850–1970 Building the Kingdom Edited by Kate Jordan and Ayla Lepine

First published 2018 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 selection and editorial matter, Kate Jordan and Ayla Lepine; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Kate Jordan and Ayla Lepine to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Jordan, Kate, 1970– editor. | Lepine, Ayla, editor. Title: Modern architecture and religious communities, 1850–1970 : building the kingdom / edited by Kate Jordan and Ayla Lepine. Description: New York : Routledge, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017061080 | ISBN 9781138487116 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781351043724 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Architecture and religion—History—19th century. | Architecture and religion—History—20th century. | Sacred space—History—19th century. | Sacred space—History—20th century. | Group identity—Religious aspects—History—19th century. | Group identity—Religious aspects—History—20th century. | Religious communities—History—19th century. | Religious communities—History—20th century. Classification: LCC NA4600.M63 2018 | DDC 203/.7—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017061080 ISBN: 978-1-138-48711-6 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-351-04372-4 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

List of figuresvii Notes on contributorsxiii

Introduction: building the kingdom: architecture, worship and the sacred

1

KATE JORDAN AND AYLA LEPINE

PART I

Pilgrimage and modern journeys13   1 Sisterly love in Lisieux: building the Basilica of Sainte-Thérèse

15

JESSICA BASCIANO

  2 Modernity consecrated: architectural discourse and the Catholic imagination in Franquista Spain

30

MARÍA GONZÁLEZ PENDÁS

  3 The construction of modern Montserrat: architecture, politics and ideology

49

JOSEP-MARIA GARCIA FUENTES

  4 Paolo Soleri’s Teilhard De Chardin Cloister at Arcosanti

70

ALICIA IMPERIALE

PART II

Monasticism and religious houses89   5 Prairie progressivism: George P. Stauduhar and St Benedict’s convent BARBARA BURLISON MOONEY

91

vi  Contents   6 Modern, Gothic, Anglican: the society of St John the Evangelist, Oxford

107

AYLA LEPINE

  7 The ‘building sisters’ of Presteigne: Gender, innovation and tradition in modern-era Roman Catholic architecture

123

KATE JORDAN

  8 Revolution and revelation: Luis Barragán’s monastery at Tlalpan

139

JOSE BERNARDI

PART III

Urban cultures and holy cities157   9 Situating Jerusalem: poiesis and techne in the American urbanism of Jemima Wilkinson and Thomas Jefferson

159

ANNE SCHAPER ENGLOT

10 Origins, meaning and memory in Louis I. Kahn’s Hurva Synagogue proposal

177

TAMARA MORGENSTERN

11 Chicago’s Woodlawn neighbourhood: the case of St Gelasius

198

ANATOLE UPART

12 Nuns in the suburb: the Berlaymont institute in Waterloo by Groupe Structures (1962)

213

SVEN STERKEN

Index231

Figures

1.1 Louis-Marie Cordonnier, exterior view, Basilica of SainteThérèse, Lisieux, 1929–54 1.2 Sœur Geneviève de la Sainte-Face, photograph, Thérèse, her sisters and her cousin, November 1896 1.3 Julien Barbier, façade elevation, project for the Basilica of Sainte-Thérèse, Lisieux, signed and dated March 1925, Archives du Carmel de Lisieux 1.4 (Charles Jouvenot), perspective drawing, project for the Basilica of Sainte-Thérèse, Lisieux, dated August 24, 1926, Archives du Carmel de Lisieux 1.5 Louis-Marie Cordonnier and Louis-Stanislas Cordonnier, façade elevation, Basilica of Sainte-Thérèse, Lisieux, (late summer) 1927, Archives de la Basilique, Direction du Pèlerinage Sainte-Thérèse, Lisieux 2.1 Collage. Javier Sánz de Oiza, José Luis Romany and Jorge Oteiza, Chapel in the Camino de Santiago, 1954 2.2 Exterior View, Diego Mendez and Pedro Muguruza, Valle de los Caídos, Madrid, 1940–59 2.3 Cover of Arquitectura 2:7, May 1960, a special issue dedicated to new religious architecture showing the interior of a Paris church in Vitoria, by Miguel Fisac designed in 1957 2.4 Cover of the catalogue for the International Exhibition of Sacred Art, Vitoria, 1939 2.5 Axonometric. Alberto Sartoris, Notre-Dame du Phare, progetto per Friburgo, 1931. India ink on tracing paper 2.6 Exterior view. Miguel Fisac, Chapel of the Holy Spirit for the National Research Council, Madrid, 1943. A drawing of the buildings on Montserrat around 1844 and images from paintings and engravings of the old buildings as they were before their destruction by the Napoleonic troops in early nineteenth century 3.1 A drawing of the buildings on Montserrat around 1844 and images from paintings and engravings of the old

16 17 19 21

23 31 32 33 35 37

42

viii  Figures

3.2

3.3 3.4

3.5

3.6 4.1 4.2

4.3

4.4

4.5

buildings as they were before their destruction by the Napoleonic troops in early nineteenth century Left: Víctor Balaguer in front of the ruins of Montserrat’s Gothic cloister with other poets and writers from Catalonia and Provence in 1868. Centre: The project for the new camarín chapel. Right: The Vic Group in front of the new ‘Romanesque’ apses of Montserrat. Postcard from late nineteenth century showing the miniature replica of Montserrat built in Barcelona’s Ciutadella Park One of the most popular books on the history of Catalonia, published in 1898, with an idealized composition showing all the contemporary architectures designed to shape the modern Catalonia and its new nationalist movement, culminating with the mountain of Montserrat Pamphlet from 1928 conceived to spread the news of Puig i Cadafalch’s project in order to raise funds for its construction. It shows a general view of his project and states that no major reconstruction had yet been undertaken since the monastery’s destruction in the Peninsular War Two postcards showing the new Romanesque cloister just after its completion and its refurbishment with authentic medieval stonework Arcosanti, late 1970s model of the project in Arcosanti, Arizona Arcosanti – original design of Arcosanti. Arcology for a population of 1,500, comparative isometric view of Cosanti Foundation and Arcosanti at the same scale; designed by Paolo Soleri, from Arcology – City in the Image of Man, published by MIT 1969 Teilhard De Chardin Cloister, plan of upper terrace. Designed as part of the Arcosanti project in Arcosanti, Arizona, 1972, colored china ink stencil work and transfer lettering on clear print vellum, drawing size 75 inches by 36 inches Arcosanti 5000. The model of Arcosanti 5000 structures shows a concentrated environment of living, working, schools, medical support, social spaces, parks and entertainment. There is no need for the automobile and its support structure within the city environment Teilhard De Chardin Cloister, South elevation. Designed as part of the Arcosanti project in Arcosanti, Arizona, 1972, colored china ink stencil work and transfer lettering on clear print vellum, drawing size 137 inches by 36 inches

51

56 60

62

65 66 71

72

74

76

79

Figures ix 4.6 Arcosanti. The foundry apse with west housing and the vaults viewed from south 81 4.7 Teilhard De Chardin Cloister, section through apse looking east. Designed as part of the Arcosanti project in Arcosanti, Arizona, 1972, colored china ink stencil work and transfer lettering on clear print vellum, drawing size 61.25 inches by 35.5 inches 86 4.8 Critical mass is the first ‘major phase’ of development of Arcosanti. It is planned to be a town of 500 to 600 people who will live and work, study and/or visit. This will be the staging ground for the subsequent larger development of Paolo Soleri’s most recent design for Arcosanti, Arcosanti 500087 5.1 Exterior of the Chapel of the Sacred Heart, St Benedict’s Convent and College, St Joseph, Minnesota 93 5.2 Cloister walk connecting St Teresa Hall to the Chapel of the Sacred Heart, St Benedict’s Convent and College 95 5.3 Interior of the Chapel of the Sacred Heart on a postcard used by Egid Hackner 96 5.4 Private room and gymnasium in St Teresa Hall, St Benedict’s Convent and College 101 5.5 Construction workers with manufactured terracotta ornament from Chicago in the Chapel of the Sacred Heart, St Benedict’s Convent and College 103 6.1 George Frederick Bodley, west façade and tower, St John the Evangelist, Oxford, 1894–96; 1904–6 108 6.2 George Frederick Bodley, aisle, All Saints, Cambridge, 1862–71110 6.3 George Frederick Bodley, nave, St John the Evangelist, Oxford, 1894–96 113 6.4 George Frederick Bodley, detail of nave ceiling, St John the Evangelist, Oxford, 1894–96 117 6.5 George Frederick Bodley, chasuble, c.1882 (Hoare Gallery, Liverpool Cathedral) 120 7.1 Carmelite nuns working on the nun’s choir of the Church of Our Lady of Assumption and St Thérèse, 1954 124 7.2 Nun’s choir 126 7.3 Francis Pollen’s designs for the Church of Our Lady of the Assumption, 1954 128 7.4 Carmelite nuns on the building site of the Church of Our Lady of the Assumption, 1954 129 7.5 Carmelite nuns on the building site of the Church of Our Lady of the Assumption, 1954 130 7.6 The Church of Our Lady of the Assumption 131 7.7 Altar 131 7.8 Interior (looking east) 132

x  Figures 8.1 Exterior patio, convent and chapel of the Capuchinas Sacramentarias del Purísimo Corazón de María, Tlalpan, Mexico City 148 8.2 Chapel interior, convent and chapel of the Capuchinas Sacramentarias del Purísimo Corazón de María, Tlalpan, Mexico City 149 8.3 Chapel interior with stained glass, convent and chapel of the Capuchinas Sacramentarias del Purísimo Corazón de María, Tlalpan, Mexico City 150 9.1 Map of New York State showing location of the Phelps and Gorham purchase 161 9.2 Map showing the Phelps and Gorham purchase, originally drawn in 1790. Jerusalem, the seventh township located in the second range, is outlined. Members of the community also lived in the seventh township in the first range where the map incorrectly identifies Wilkinson’s settlement as a ‘Quaker settlement’ 162 9.3 Jeffersonville, 1802 showing the original checkerboard pattern of open and built squares and the diagonal street system 164 9.4 Copy of a map of Jerusalem drawn by community members showing ownership of many of the lots 168 9.5 Map of Jerusalem showing settlement pattern c. 1814, noting the location of the Mansion (A), Wilkinson’s second house (B) and the houses of many of the faithful sisterhood who did not reside in the Mansion (houses are plotted on the 1942 United States Geological Survey (USGS) map). Hollow circles denote where the USGS shows extant houses. Solid dots denote houses no longer extant in 1942 169 10.1 Clay model of Jerusalem, showing the Hurva at right and the Dome of the Rock at left, 1968. Louis I. Kahn Collection, the University of Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission 180 10.2 Hurva Synagogue, first proposal. Site plan of the Old City of Jerusalem, 1968. Louis I. Kahn Collection, the University of Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission 181 10.3 Hurva Synagogue, first proposal. First-floor plan, c. July 1968. Louis I. Kahn Collection, the University of Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission183 10.4 Hurva Synagogue, first proposal. Section, 1968. Louis I. Kahn Collection, the University of Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission 184

Figures xi 10.5 Hurva Synagogue, first proposal. Scale model, 1968. Louis I. Kahn Collection, the University of Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission 186 10.6 Plan of the Temple of Jerusalem, from La geographie sacree, et les monuments de l’histoire sainte, Joseph Romain Joly, 1784. General Research Division, the New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations189 10.7 Louis I. Kahn [1901–74] Southeast Pylons, Temple of Ammon, Karnak, Egypt, 1951. Pastel on paper. 8¼” x 14 3/8”. Signed middle right: ‘Lou K ‘51’. Collection of Sue Ann Kahn Collection, courtesy Lori Bookstein Fine Art 192 10.8 Temple of Edfu. Ancient Apollinopolis, Upper Egypt. From The Holy Land, Syria, Idumea, Arabia, Egypt and Nubia, 1842–49. General Research Division, the New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations 192 10.9 Hurva Synagogue, first proposal. Scale model of exterior, 1968. Louis I. Kahn Collection, The University of Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission193 11.1 St Gelasius (formerly St Clara), now the Shrine of Christ the King, by Henry J. Schlacks, as seen in 2013 201 11.2 St Clara’s interior in 1948. The high altar is seen against the walnut-paneled walls. Two side altars are those of Our Lady of Mount Carmel (left) and of St Thérèse of Child Jesus (right), with its elaborate hanging light fixtures 202 11.3 The Mass of dedication of St Gelasius church, presided by Cardinal Cody, the Archbishop of Chicago, 5 October 1980. The Mass is celebrated at the new table altar, facing the congregation. Behind the cardinal one can see the white separation wall and the opening. The walls of the old interior are noticeably painted over, and one of the 204 new pendant lights is seen at the top corner of the photo 11.4 Proposed redesign of St Clara – St Cyril interior, 1978. From the Fourth Annual Awards Dinner Invitation, 3 205 November 1978 11.5 Interior of the Shrine during a Nuptial High Mass in 2012. Large red curtains are used to partially cover the openings of the two sacristies on left and right 207 11.6 A simplified floor plan of the Shrine of Christ the King (formerly St Clara), showing the current (2013) position of the pews, altars and curtains 208 12.1 The Berlaymont Monastery along the rue de la Loi in Brussels. Postcard, early twentieth century 215

xii  Figures 12.2 Jacques Boseret-Mali and Sister Françoise Hanquet on the construction site at Argenteuil, c. 1961 219 12.3 Arne Jacobsen, Munkegård School, general plan, ca 1956 221 12.4 Groupe Structures, Berlaymont monastery and school. First sketch project, June 1960 223 12.5 Arial photograph of the new Berlaymont Institute just after completion224 12.6 Berlaymont monastery and school, interior view of the chapel 224

Contributors

Jessica Basciano is currently based in Ottawa where she teaches at the School for Studies in Art and Culture at Carleton University. An architectural historian, she specializes in the architecture of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century France, with an emphasis on religious monuments and the relationship between architectural practice, archaeology and historiography. She received the Ph.D. in art history and archaeology from Columbia University in 2012 after completing her dissertation, “Architecture and Popular Religion: French Pilgrimage Churches of the Nineteenth Century.” Her research has been funded by fellowships from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Lurcy Charitable Trust and the Whiting Foundation. Jose Bernardi is an associate professor at the Design School, Herberger Institute for the Design and the Arts at Arizona State University. His work is focused on modern and contemporary design and architecture in Latin America. His publications include, among others, Luis Barragán: Architecture as Revelation, essay in The Religious Imagination in Modern and Contemporary Architecture: A Reader Routledge; first edition, March 2011, edited by Renata Hejduk and Jim Williamson; the Review of “Latin America in Construction: 1955–1980” MoMA Exhibition and Catalogue, Journal of Architectural Education, July 2015; several essays in the Encyclopedia of 20th-Century Architecture, edited by R. Stephen Sennott, Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, New York, 2004; and essays in the Encyclopedia of Contemporary Latin American and Caribbean Cultures, edited by Daniel Balderston, Mike Gonzalez and Ana M. López, Routledge, London, 2001. Anne Englot is a professor of practice in architecture and humanities in the Arts, Culture and Media Department at Rutgers University–Newark and co-directs Express Newark a 50,000 square foot university-community arts collaboratory. Previously, a full professor of architectural studies and design at Morrisville State College (State University of New York), she helped initiate the college’s laptop initiative in 1998 and published on teaching with technology, earning the Distinguished Professor Award and

xiv  Contributors the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching. She was visiting professor in the Syracuse University School of Architecture in the fall of 2013 and has been a visiting critic at Cornell, Syracuse, Buffalo and Colgate Universities. She serves on the boards of Newark Preservation and Landmark Committee and the Preservation Rightsizing Network. Anne holds an interdisciplinary Ph.D. in the humanities, M.Arch from Syracuse University, a BA in French and studio art from Binghamton University and a certificate of French from L’Institut Catholique in Paris. Josep-Maria Garcia Fuentes is an architect and lecturer in architecture at the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape at Newcastle University, and a fellow at the London School of Economics–Catalan Observatory. He is also adjunct in architecture at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya – BarcelonaTECH, where he graduated as an architect (2005), with a master’s in architecture (2007), and a Ph.D. (2012) with a dissertation titled “The Construction of Modern Montserrat.” JosepMaria researches on the history of architecture, history of ideas, heritagemaking processes and preservation. He has been visiting professor at Tongji University (China, 2013), the Universidad de Concepción (Chile, 2014) and the Politecnico di Milano (Italy, 2017). He has been awarded the First National Prize of Spain for university graduates (2006), and his work has been supported by the government of Spain (2007–2011), the Samuel H. Kress Foundation for the Society of Architectural Historians (2011) and the Santander Bank (2014). María González Pendás is an architectural historian, currently a Mellon postdoctoral fellow in the Society of Fellows in the Humanities and lecturer in the Department of Art History and Archeology at Columbia University. She received her Ph.D. in architecture, history and theory from the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University, and a master’s in architecture from the Polytechnic University of Madrid. Dr González Pendás research probes the intersection of architectural history with political history, history of technology and theories of secularization, mostly across the Iberian world during the twentieth century and as a way to unpack the oftenelusive ways in which architectural designs, discourses and practices have participated of reactionary forms of power and ideologies. Her work has received the support of the Fulbright Commission, the Temple Hoyne Buell Center and the Graham Foundation, among others. She has written articles on architectures and imaginaries of exile, on the geopolitics of Félix Candela’s shell technology, on labour practices and the economics of concrete construction in Mexico, and on the architecture of propaganda and diplomacy in Franquismo. Dr González Pendás is currently working on a book that unpacks the entwined development of architectural modernism, fascism and Opus Dei in the context of Spain and the Cold War.

Contributors xv Alicia Imperiale, Ph.D., is a lecturer at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and 2016–17 fellow at the Society for the Humanities at Cornell University. She brings her background as architect and artist to bear upon her scholarly writing through her close reading of architectural form opening up larger cultural and intellectual ideas. She is author of New Flatness: Surface Tension in Digital Architecture (Birkhauser, 2000), “Seminal Space: Getting under the Digital Skin,” in Re: Skin (MIT Press, 2006), “Dynamic Symmetries,” in Anne Tyng: Inhabiting Geometry (ICA, 2011) and “Stupid Little Automata” in Architecture & Culture (2014). She is author of the forthcoming book Alternate Organics: The Aesthetics of Experimentation in Art, Technology & Architecture in Postwar Italy. Her research has been supported by the Center for the Humanities at Temple University Faculty Fellowship, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts Research Grant and the American Academy in Rome, among others. Kate Jordan is a lecturer in history and theory in the Faculty of Architecture, University of Westminster. She regularly lectures at the V&A and previously taught architectural history at Queen Mary University of London. She wrote her doctoral thesis (UCL) on the role of nuns in the design and construction of nineteenth and twentieth-century convents – a subject upon which she has published and given numerous conference papers. Her current field of research is Benedictine architecture of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. She is a former member of the Education Sub-committee of the Society of Architectural Historians Great Britain and currently serves on the Twentieth Century Society’s Casework Committee. Ayla Lepine is a visiting fellow in art history at the University of Essex. Her research focuses on the Gothic Revival and modern medievalism. She is arts editor of the Marginalia Review of Books and a trustee of Art and Christianity Enquiry. She has published on Anglican monasticism, sacred visual culture and the meanings of modern Gothic imagery in Architectural History, Visual Resources, Music and Modernism, The New Elizabethan Age, the Oxford History of Anglicanism, and the Church Times. She has co-edited Gothic Legacies: 400 Years of Tradition and Innovation in Art and Architecture (with Laura Cleaver, 2012) and Revival: Identities, Memories, Utopias (with Matt Lodder and Rosalind McKever, 2015). Barbara Burlison Mooney is an associate professor in the School of Art and Art History at the University of Iowa where she teaches courses on American architecture, landscape design history, African American art and art history methodology. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and her first book, Prodigy Houses of Virginia, published by the University of Virginia in 2008, addressed

xvi  Contributors Virginia’s eighteenth-century colonial mansions and their owners. Her edited volume, titled Vernacular America: Architectural Studies from Winterthur Portfolio, was published by the University of Chicago Press and Winterthur Portfolio in 2014. Mooney has also published articles on African American slave dwellings, Spanish Colonial Revival architecture, the restoration of Lincoln’s New Salem in Illinois and early settler impressions of the American tallgrass prairie landscape. Her chapter in this volume draws from her current book project, which investigates George P. Stauduhar’s church designs in the American Midwest. Tamara Morgenstern is an independent scholar based in Los Angeles and South Florida. Dr Morgenstern received her MA and Ph.D. degrees in architectural history from the University of California, Los Angeles, and her BA degree from Brown University. Her doctoral research focused on early Baroque architecture and urban planning in the ports of southern Italy and Sicily. Her master’s thesis examined Louis I. Kahn’s Hurva Synagogue proposal in Jerusalem. Currently, she is researching early twentieth-century architecture in Los Angeles. She also has extensive professional experience in architecture, design and preservation. Sven Sterken is an associate professor at the Faculty of Architecture of KU Leuven where he teaches courses in the history of architecture and urban planning, and heads the Faculty Doctoral Programme. A founding member of the research group ARP (Architectural Cultures of the Recent Past), his current research focuses on how architecture serves the territorial strategies of large organizations. His current project “Catholic Territories in a Suburban Landscape. Religion and Urbanization in Belgium, 1945–1975” studies for example how the Roman Catholic Church tried to secure a religious presence in the rapidly evolving (sub)urban landscape after World War II. A former co-chair of DOCOMOMO Belgium, he is actively involved in the debate about the future of the modern heritage. Anatole Upart, born in the Soviet Union, grew up in Minsk, Belarus, but spent the next half of his life in Chicago, having gone to the School of the Art Institute and University of Illinois at Chicago. Presently, he is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Art History at the University of Chicago, specializing in Italian Renaissance architectural and urban history. His current research examines effects of religious communities on the built environment in the early modern period as well as in the midtwentieth century. His dissertation focuses on the Eastern Slavic presence in early modern Rome and that community’s architectural footprint in the city. Anatole lives in Chicago’s Hyde Park with his wife and four kids.

Introduction Building the kingdom: architecture, worship and the sacred Kate Jordan and Ayla Lepine

Each year on 20 June, the Anglican Benedictine nuns at St Mary’s Abbey in West Malling in Kent mark the dedication of Malling Abbey Church. The architects were Robert Maguire and Keith Murray; the concrete fusion of Brutalism and architectural forms from the earliest centuries of Christianity was completed in 1966. During the Office of Vespers, the nuns sing, Within your house of prayer, O living God, your people stand, Ourselves the temple of the Spirit And the place of your indwelling; alleluia.1 Modern Architecture and Religious Communities focuses primarily on Christian sites and features important new perspectives on synagogue architecture and built environments for experimental and bold religious communities. In each case, structuring the pattern of living around the discernment of deepening spiritual experience is a core element in determining architectural solutions. As such, Modern Architecture and Religious Communities is as much about modernism and modernity as it is about the special circumstances for scholarship and for experience arising out of the construction and inhabitation of sacred spaces. The word ‘modern’, from the sixteenth until the nineteenth centuries, largely stood for the idea of the present, current and new. The term ‘modernism’ describes a particular type of architecture characterized by a reduction or indeed elimination of ornament and an ideology of a-historicism linked to an impassioned quest to shed historicist associations with the past in architecture and in culture. Those who championed what became the Modern Movement architecture tended not to call themselves ‘modernist’, at least not at first. As Mary McLeod observes, architects and critics suspicious of this new architecture’s values used the word somewhat cynically.2 Beyond distinctive architectural features, principles and practitioners, the concept of ‘modernism’ and ‘modernity’ has been a loose and ambiguous one from as early as the 1930s and 1940s. One of the key purposes of Modern Architecture and Religious Communities is to craft a constellation of approaches to sacred space for distinctive

2  Kate Jordan and Ayla Lepine international communities across a range of traditions and aesthetics in order to demonstrate that each of these places and groups is undoubtedly and self-assertingly ‘modern’ in their own unique way. In every case, an architectural language emerged and took hold for a set of people bonded to one another in order to assert themselves in their relationship to their own time, to God and holiness and to history. Some communities did so anachronistically, some with avant-garde defiance and some with a profound sense of utopian commitment to the longed-for eschatological kingdom not built with human hands. The struggle to experience the sacred through architecture is, in part, rooted in the immateriality of holiness as well as its beauty. The theologian T. J. Gorringe writes convincingly, The perspective of creation points us away from the anthropocentric city to one in which the wider ecology is fundamentally respected. God the Reconciler is the one who ‘breaks down the walls of partition’ both between God and humans and between humans themselves. God is therefore the source of all attempts to realize community.3 In a growing field of architectural historical research on sacred space in the modern world, critically acclaimed books by Robert Proctor on Roman Catholic British architecture and Victoria Young on Marcel Breuer’s designs for the monks at Collegeville, alongside essay collections including Mohammad Gharipour’s Sacred Precincts: The Religious Architecture of Non-Muslim Communities Across the Islamic World (2014) and Karla Britton’s Constructing the Ineffable (2010), have traversed a vast range of materials and approaches in recent years. Moreover, the interdisciplinary meeting points across theology, religious studies and art and architectural history has seen increasing interest in the identifying new theologies of art and architecture, as well as the specific intensities and affective capacities of holy things.4 Histories and cultures of women’s religious communities also attract scholarly attention and open up new perspectives on key figures and important spaces in studies of the sacred. Social histories such as Carmen Mangion’s Contested Identities: Catholic Women Religious in England and Wales (2014) have helped shape the discipline, providing valuable quantitative data on which to build new readings of women’s identity, labour and economic and creative capital within communities, whilst architectural historians such as Timothy Brittain-Catlin have explored the specific role of religious in design and spatial planning.5 Lynne Walker’s many studies of women as artists, architects and patrons have expanded architectural historical knowledge of the complex interplay between gender and sacred spaces.6 In contrast, with some exceptions, very little research has been produced on either the history or culture of modern male religious communities – and yet this distinctive monastic architecture played key roles in the formation and promotion of ecumenism and liturgical movement theology. The importance of monastic sites as key turning points for architectural development

Introduction 3 was clearly articulated by Le Corbusier in an interview about his design for the monastery at La Tourette in 1961. He said, When a work reaches a maximum of intensity, when it has the best proportions and has been made with the best quality of execution, when it has reached perfection, a phenomenon takes place that we may call ‘ineffable space’. . . It belongs to the domain of the ineffable, of that which cannot be said.7 The role of architecture in forging and expressing communities’ sacred bonds within themselves and to others as sites of inclusion, as well as sites of fellowship, permeates this book’s 12 chapters. What makes a building sacred? As the architectural historian Richard Kieckhefer explains, When the Psalmist felt cut off from God, he reminded himself that he could renew his contact with the divine – where he could behold the power and glory of God – was the Temple in Jerusalem. This is where God was present . . . One can even speak of a certain nostalgia for the Temple as a key theme in religious architecture.8 How might these spaces be recognized as ‘none other than the house of God’ and the ‘gate of heaven’? Increasingly throughout the twentieth century and indeed beyond into our own time, this was not a matter of style but of, in the architect Ninian Comper’s terms, ‘atmosphere.’9 Indeed, as Kieckhefer asserts, ‘When construction of the building is completed, construction of the church can begin.’10 The sacred spaces discussed in the pages that follow are primarily, though not exclusively, churches. They are urban, suburban and rural. In some cases, they are attached to dwellings and other centres of human life, and in others, they are worship spaces that stand-alone in the midst of their greater – and often complex and contentious – architectural context. Each of them aspires to a quality of timelessness, harnessing the material and conceptual tools available and desirable. Each attempts to build a bridge to the universal by shaping and refining the particular. They also vary widely in style and type, demonstrating merely a taste of the breadth of diverse responses to seeking the sacred in architectural tradition and innovation. Sometimes the most radical holy architecture is the most simple and the most aligned with a quest for first principles. In 1958, the influential French journal L’Art Sacré published an article by the Swiss architect Rainer Senn. Senn’s focus was ‘Transparent Poverty’, and the article was so significant that it was discussed across the channel in the Architects’ Journal in 1960 and translated for the journal Churchbuilding (then under the editorship of the Maguire and Murray architectural partnership) in 1962. In projects such as Senn’s church near Nice, which consisted of a wooden tent framed by simple timber walls (the

4  Kate Jordan and Ayla Lepine cost of the building was £50), he was combining simplicity with a strong theological message supported by the now-established aims of the liturgical movement. Senn wrote that he ‘tried to arrange the seats about a “centre” and to emphasise this centre by spatial means and by the use of specially directed light’ so that those within the sacred space ‘should be aware on the one hand of his togetherness with others and on the other hand of his relationship to a common centre.’11 This concept of a community gathered together before God was the key focus of liturgical renewal and revision that went hand in hand with the ascent of modernist architecture and designers including Rudolph Schwartz, Le Corbusier and Marcel Breuer. The corporeality of being present with God and with one another could, however, take many forms. The new forms and new liturgies promoted by Peter Hammond in mid-twentieth century Britain were modern in a different way from A. W. N. Pugin’s mid-nineteenth-century Gothic Revival manifestoes, but both communicated persuasively and impactfully about needful radical changes in religious culture and architecture.12 As this book demonstrates, it was not only the aesthetic and practices of modern architecture that brought groups of people together in new ways to explore the sacred and to establish zones of liminality between humanity and the divine across the twentieth century. Architecture explored in this book is often theologically complex and paradoxical. As such, these sites are difficult to locate in the classic trajectories of modern architecture. Indeed, an attempt to plot them in a linear account would entirely miss their value – their significance lies in the very fact of their social, political and aesthetic resistance. Instead, the buildings of religious communities, groups whose stylistic choices and modes of production frequently operated outside the canonical timeline, must be viewed on alternative axes. We might rethink the historiography of such buildings by consciously integrating their paradoxes into our critical approaches. But how can we read buildings that present as innately and wilfully illegible? How do we begin to find a language? In their account of early modern art and architecture, art historians Alexander Nagel and Lorenzo Pericolo have recently highlighted the significance of ‘aporia’ in constructing readings of obstinate or ahistorical subjects: These works make it impossible for interpretation to settle on a single reading, thus forcing the effort of interpretation to double back on its own procedures. They produce the bafflement or aporia that, according to Aristotle, serves as the initial impulse to philosophical inquiry.13 Here Pericolo and Nagel suggest that we must resist the urge to make the subject conform to traditional accounts but rather to embrace the insolubility of paradoxical art and architecture: The aporia forces us not merely to come up with a different solution; by necessity it forces a reconsideration of the approach itself, “the thinking

Introduction 5 of the path”, and inquiry that also figures a history. Why is there a path there? How was it beaten? Why is the path no longer passable? What other paths are implied by the existence of this one? What lies between the paths?14 In their analysis of ‘subject as aporia’ Nagel and Pericolo are clear that not all works of art and architecture might be considered aporias but those that are reveal the instability of teleological narratives and collapse the boundaries between correct and incorrect, success and failure. What then distinguishes the architecture of religious communities? Why are these buildings different and why do they resist definition and organizing principles? The key to this resides in the complex networks and forces that produced (and continue to produce) the architecture described in the following pages. Of the infinite ways that we might read the architecture explored in Modern Architecture and Religious Communities, we must consider them first and foremost as sites of collective identity. As such, they operate as crucibles to examine Henri Lefebvre’s conception of space as a social product. Lefebvre’s significance to architectural history and theory lies in his shift of focus from ‘things in space to the actual production of space’.15 For Lefebvre, space is a product of social forces and a producer of social practices – what is at stake is the diversity of agents and practices that make places and the influence that places bring to bear on diverse agents and practices. In this model, the role of the individual in place-making is diminished; the primacy of architect and patron, central to canonical readings of architecture, dissolves. Moreover, Lefebvre’s emphasis on the everyday and experiential qualities of places allows scholars to sharpen their focus on a wide range of material and imaginary features – no aspect of a building is of any greater or lesser significance and none possesses any empirical value. Conceptualizing social phenomena as a dense matrix of interactions and encounters has been taken further by the sociologists Bruno Latour and Michael Callon in their development of Actor-network theory. Here human and non-human actants are equal agents in the creation of social structures, orders and practices. Actor-network theory offers potentially rich ways of reading the sites of religious communities as it accounts for and integrates, not only the ritual, use and activity that shape and are shaped by built space but also the material products and vestiges of those practices. For Latour, No science of the social can even begin if the question of who and what participates in the action is not first of all thoroughly explored, even though it might mean letting elements in which, for lack of a better term, we would call non-humans.16 The articulation of history and tradition through visual and material culture has special significance for religious communities – such objects bind groups together, project corporate identity and are the material expression of sacred concepts and theologies. Moreover, viewing material space as nothing more

6  Kate Jordan and Ayla Lepine than a map of relations between people and things destabilizes the hierarchies of making and using. Modern Architecture and Religious Communities aims to bring together diverse approaches to architectural history that emphasize the importance of networks and dismantle received value judgments. The notion of space as a social product has important implications for feminist readings of space, as geographers and anthologists such as Linda Bondi and Doreen Massey have suggested.17 If space is socially produced rather than by individual agents or actors, then its patterns are gendered. Tracing these patterns has opened new routes into gendered readings of architecture enabling a number of scholars to explore and map women’s experience in places and place-making. The role of women as designers and builders is a historical phenomenon that has been difficult to reconstruct but has generated innovative and dynamic responses. Scholars such as Lynne Walker and Alice Friedman have been pivotal in describing women’s activity and restoring their authority as makers of architecture.18 Walker has traced a history of women as designers from the early modern amateur tradition to contemporary practice, while Friedman, in exploring the authoritative female gaze in architecture, has suggested oblique ways of reclaiming women’s agency. Elizabeth Darling and Leslie Whitworth have also made an important contribution to the field in their review of contemporary critical approaches to the history of women in architecture. Importantly, they query the utility of reading space as the product of a network of anonymous actors, suggesting that this diminishes the significant contributions to architecture of individual women.19 Many of the communities discussed in the following chapters are either mixed or comprise single-sex female groups. They provide unique opportunities to explore both the collective and individual contributions of women to architecture – as designers, builders, patrons and users – and offer news ways of engaging feminist discourses. Much of the research presented in Modern Architecture and Religious Communities highlights the importance of the architecture of religious communities in illuminating the many contributions that women have made to build space. This volume presents buildings as conundrums that command us to expand our critical reach, embrace contradictions, explore across and beyond disciplines and engrave and traverse new paths. It does so by bringing together an array of approaches that are diverse but united in their attempt to reflect the social, artistic and theological richness of religious communities and their building projects. Beyond the contribution that they make to the field of religious architecture, however, they also reveal the wider limits of architectural histories that are plotted on a single plane.

Holy ground, modern experience The first section of the book, Pilgrimage and Modern Journey, opens with Jessica Basciano’s discussion of the roles that Carmelite nuns played in the

Introduction 7 design of their immense pilgrimage church in Lisieux, dedicated to St Thérèse of the Child Jesus and Holy Face. Basciano makes a close reading of the theological and cultural significance of architectural idioms and draws on the community archives to build a detailed account of how and why the nuns selected styles. Importantly, she argues that the building of the church played a crucial part in promoting and shaping the international cult of Saint Thérèse. – the Vatican took a particular interest in the site – suggesting that women were key players in the development of Roman Catholic culture and theology in the early twentieth century. Monastic communities were central to the transformation of worship wrought by the Liturgical Movement from the beginning of the twentieth century. In Chapter 3, Josep-Maria Garcia Fuentes, charts the rebuilding of the modern monastery at Montserrat, a medieval site that was destroyed during the Peninsula War, describing the networks of production as a ‘complex process involving the newly reinstated community of monks and various social and cultural groups’. The building of the monastery was highly charged: simultaneously significant to both liturgical renewal and to the increasingly independent political and cultural identity of the Catalans. Though Montserrat was an important site in the modernization of the Roman Catholic Church, Garcia Fuentes argues that the site operated as a ‘device’ to generate ‘the illusion of an idealised history and past’.20 María González Pendás touches on similar themes in her chapter ‘Modernity Consecrated: Architectural Discourse and the Catholic Imagination in Franquista Spain’ in which she considers the intricate relationship between politics and theology in the master planning of Spain’s post-war cultural identity. González Pendás offers the example of Javier Saénz de Óiza and José Luis Romany’s 1954 Camino Chapel to explore the ‘nexus of relationships’ between ‘architecture, culture and politics’.21 Her reading of the chapel aims to dismantle the standard narratives of modernity and modernism in church building, as she argues that, though, pioneering in its modernist forms, the chapel aimed to promote the reactionary nationalism of the Franco regime. In conclusion, her analysis warns against conflating the avant-garde with the progressive. In contrast, the architecture of an experimental community explored by Alicia Imperiale in Chapter 4, reflected an ideology that was actively progressive. In her account of the architect Paolo Soleri’s planned community, Arcosanti, in Arizona – a utopian secular group shaped by a shared emphasis on ecology – Imperiale interprets ‘religious community’ in its broadest and most inclusive sense. Her description of the Tielhard de Chardin Cloister at Arcosanti illustrates the ways in which Soleri drew on the writing of the Jesuit priest Pierre Teillard de Chardin, author of theologically controversial tracts which fused spirituality with ecology, to give form to his architecture. Imperiale suggests that, for Soleri, ‘architecture is religious, not because it is built or used by an established church but because it teaches its inhabitants

8  Kate Jordan and Ayla Lepine ways to contemplate spirit and earth.’ Here ritual gives way to philosophy is the guiding architectural principle. The second section, Monasticism and Religious Houses focuses on cloistered and simple-vowed religious communities and their architecture. In her chapter ‘Prairie Progressivism’, Barbara Burlison Mooney draws out the different roles of architect, patron and user in a detailed analysis of the building of St Benedict’s Convent. Mooney opens with an account of the church architect George Staudahar exploring his oeuvre and his particular use of historicist styles. She proceeds, however, to query his authority as the designer of his most ambitious work, the Chapel of the Sacred Heart at St Benedict’s Convent, Minnesota. In an account that has parallels with Jessica Basciano’s opening chapter, Mooney explores the role of the female community in building their chapel and examines the ways in which they were able to ‘shape their liturgical environment . . . well beyond a determination of overall style’.22 From the American Midwest, we move to an English monastic site: the complex designed for the Society of St John the Evangelist (SSJE), Oxford by G. F. Bodley. Here Ayla Lepine carefully unpacks the relationship between community, theology and art in Anglican monasticism: Lepine presents Bodley’s architecture as one, not only with his religious convictions but also his poetry. As with Alicia Imperiale’s account of Arcosanti, Lepine explores a symbiotic relationship between the spiritual and the aesthetic in sacred architecture: in this case, between the theology of the SSJE’s founder, Richard Meux Benson and G. F. Bodley’s designs and writing. In doing so, she extends the concept of religious community beyond the cloister, pressing the importance of the religious and artistic milieu of nineteenth-century Anglicanism to monastic architecture. Continuing with British monasticism, Kate Jordan considers a community of Carmelite nuns who undertook the manual building of their own chapel. The accounts of this project, provided in a series of letters from a former ‘building nun’, highlight the significance of prayerful labour in the theology and culture of Carmelite communities; here the architecture is as much a spiritual process as sacred product. The final chapter in the book’s section on monasticism travels across the Atlantic from Europe to Latin America. It considers the importance of Mexican nationalism and politics alongside the establishment of Luis Barragán’s unique architectural plans for the monastery at Tlalpan. Jose Bernardi offers an account of Barragán’s unique position in Mexican architectural history with the monastic project at its core. With its ingenious use of light and colour, and its juxtapositions of interior and exterior, as well as the extraordinary and the quotidian, the Tlalpan site was, in Bernardi’s view, a culmination of Barragán’s own struggles with articulating architectural holiness. Anne Englot’s chapter begins the section titled Urban Cultures and Holy Cities, and brings us back to the United States. Englot explores this new nation’s first generations of architectural innovation. The powerful and eccentric figure of Jemima Wilkinson, a highly influential religious leader in

Introduction 9 eighteenth-century America, is the key to unlocking new interpretations of Thomas Jefferson’s own civic, conventional and indeed foundational architectural views. Wilkinson’s ‘Jerusalem’ community, which began with hundreds of followers, makes an insightful contrast with the sturdy classicism that framed the emergence of an independent United States in these tumultuous and revolutionary years. The theme of conflict and religion takes on new meanings with Tamara Morgenstern’s chapter on Louis Kahn. Kahn was commissioned to design a new synagogue in Jerusalem in 1967 on the site of the old Hurva Synagogue which was destroyed in 1948. Morgentern’s analysis of this challenging and ultimately unbuildable project is permeated by political and religious dynamics always present within the unfolding dialogue regarding Kahn’s boldly modernist and intensively spiritual design. Her key themes of memory and origin speak articulately to the foundational importance of the Temple in Jewish theology and architecture. Modern Architecture and Religious Communities then makes the journey from Israel to the United States to concentrate on a very different set of cultural circumstances surrounding the church of St Gelasius, an amalgamation of Catholic sites for a diverse population in Chicago’s Woodlawn area. Here Anatole Upart demonstrates the connections between two different types of overlapping and sometimes conflicting institutional systems: the city and the church. Changes within Catholic communities at the local, national and, indeed, international levels through the establishment of Vatican II reforms and their complex legacies reaching into the last years of the twentieth century are set within the context of Chicago’s distinctive neighbourhood and the delicate negotiations suffusing local areas. The sweeping visions of Jefferson explored in Anne Englot’s chapter are contrasted entirely here with a highly effective and insightfully sharp focus on the social parameters of a couple of blocks in densely residential Chicago. The watchwords here, as Upart’s narrative unfolds, are ones familiar from so many urban histories: growth, decline and revival. In Chicago in 1893, the World’s Fair transformed the city. In Brussels in 1958, its role of host for the World’s Fair also had major architectural and cultural impacts. As Sven Sterken outlines in his chapter on nuns, suburbia and education, modern architecture was deployed as a sign of specific values that united new thinking to religious devotion within a post-war framework. Sterken, whose expertise in regional modernism through his strong links to DOCOMOMO is apparent, also considers the Berlaymont Institute and nuns as educators within the wider tensions of stability and impermanence. Similar to Upart’s reading of the shifting boundaries and buildings for Roman Catholics in Chicago, Sterken’s consideration of the nuns as architectural patrons in Waterloo, on the outskirts of Brussels, is set against the backdrop of an institution that was both eminent and long-standing but also seemingly perpetually on the move. Not dissimilar to Morgenstern’s explication of the high stakes in Kahn’s Hurva Synagogue designs, Sterken’s

10  Kate Jordan and Ayla Lepine interpretations position his Belgian monastic case study in close relationship with both relocation and renewal. Modern Architecture and Religious Communities concludes in the midst of a meditation upon cycles of architecture, culture and belief.

‘Shaped, hewed, cemented’ Social groups formed around shared religious beliefs encountered significant change and challenges between the mid-nineteenth and late twentieth centuries. Modern Architecture and Religious Communities, 1850–1970: Building the Kingdom is the first collection to take a broad, thematically driven case study approach to this genre of architecture and its associated visual culture and communal experience. The book’s 12 chapters are divided into three themes to highlight research synergies. The themes for Modern Architecture and Religious Communities are Monasticism and Religious Houses, Urban Cultures and Holy Cities and Pilgrimage and Modern Journeys. Whether a Roman Catholic congregation in suburban Chicago, a group of nuns gathering around the memory of a young saint in France or a highly organic community of desert dwellers escaping the pressures of city life in a utopian spiritual experiment on the edges of architectural possibility, the groups of people working together to express religious conviction through architecture share surprising links in common. As the chapters in Modern Architecture and Religious Communities clearly show, the drive to craft religious space that articulated the particularities of modernity in urban and rural contexts across multiple continents continued well into the twentieth century and continues to inform wider architectural and theological practices. The authors represented in this volume speak with a coherent voice across their diverse research, claiming that religious communities and their sacred architectural manifestations were not marginal to modern experience but rather dwelled at its core. To be located – to dwell – is to be in tension with the impermanence of human life as contrasted with divine eternity. Modern religious architecture converses with a broad spectrum of social, anthropological, cultural and theological discourses. Readings of sacred spaces offer new angles and perspectives on some of the dominant narratives of the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries: empire, urban expansion, pluralism and modernity. In a post-traditional landscape, religious architecture suggests expansive ways of exploring such themes as revivalism, shaped by the tensions and anxieties of the modern era and powerfully expressed in the space and material culture of faith. The changes in worship and theology in and beyond the Christian church can be read in multiple ways through the different vocabularies of modern religious buildings – sites which are tangible expressions of the interaction between space and place, nationalism and transnationalisms and corporate and individual identity.

Introduction 11 Modern Architecture and Religious Communities explores these buildings through the prism of community. Community might be understood and interpreted in a variety of ways – as physical or conceptual, as ‘place’ or ‘people’. Religious communities may be those which exist in cloistered spaces, removed from society and organized around a set of tightly structured rules and rituals. Alternatively, they may be groups arranged socially, geographically or demographically, formally or informally around a religious focal point. The role of the community in the production and construction of places of worship is always critical but frequently overlooked in traditional architectural discourse, where emphasis is often placed on the individual, be it the patron, architect or user. Sometimes these categories are also productively blurred within the chapters published here. Basciano’s Sisters dedicated to Theresa of Lisieux are as modern as Imperiale’s case study of Arcosanti and the architectural interpretations of Teilhard de Chardin. This book investigates ways in which religious conviction shaped built environments, and many authors identify key points of tension in relation to style, ideology, materials, gender and wider social pressures and contexts. Religious structures and authority, widening definitions of the spiritual and the sacred in relation to movements including modernism and the liturgical movement, and transnationalism in relation to empire, technology, architectural training and political transformation are common themes throughout the book. The strength of the authors’ contributions and intensive, rigorous scholarly dialogue within and beyond the field of architectural history in relation to modernity and religious architecture have spurred the formation of a collection which features many of architectural history’s established and emerging voices, all working worldwide at the fruitful intersections of sacred traditions, architecture and the arts. The motif of being conjoined as one body sharing a unified holy source also permeates the chapters in this book. As the nuns at West Malling sing each June to commemorate the dedication of their mid-twentieth-century church: Here for our cornerstone, Foundation, head, the Christ is set; And we in him shaped, hewed, cemented, Each with each are joined forever; alleluia.23

Notes 1 The Sisters of St. Mary’s Abbey, The Day Office for Feasts and Saints Days, Vol. 3 (West Malling: Malling Abbey, 1997), p. 184. 2 Mary McLeod, ‘Modernism’, in Ian Borden, Murray Fraser and Barbara Penner, eds., Forty Ways to Think About Architecture (London: Wiley and Sons, 2014), p. 187. 3 T. J. Gorringe, A Theology of the Built Environment: Justice, Empowerment, Redemption (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 5.

12  Kate Jordan and Ayla Lepine 4 Recent scholarship in this area has been especially fruitful in work by Graham Howes, Jane Garnett, Gervaise Rosser, Aaron Rosen and Christopher Irvine to name just a few. 5 See Timothy Brittain-Catlin, ‘A W N Pugin’s English Convent Plans’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (2006), pp. 356–77. 6 See, for example, Lynne Walker, ‘Women and Church Art’ in Andrew Saint and Theresa Sladen, eds., Churches 1870–1914 (London: The Victorian Society), pp. 121–43. 7 Quoted in Karla Britton, ed., Constructing the Ineffable (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010), p. 13. 8 Richard Kieckhefer, ‘Architecture and Ways of Being Religious’, in Frank Burch Brown, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Religion and the Arts (Oxford: Oxford University Press), p. 207. 9 J. N. Comper, ‘On the Atmosphere of a Church’, in Anthony Symondson and Arthur Bucknall, ed., Sir Ninian Comper (Barnsley: Spire, 2006). 10 Richard Kieckhefer, Theology in Stone (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 133. 11 Quoted in Gerald Adler, Maguire and Murray, (C20/RIBA), p. 84. 12 Peter Hammond’s work is especially fruitful in this modernist period: Peter Hammond, Liturgy and Architecture (London: Barrie, 1960); Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin, An Apology for the Revival of Christian Architecture in England (London: John Weale, 1843); for a thorough discussion of Pugin’s work and life, see Rosemary Hill, God’s Architect: Pugin and the Building of Romantic Britain. 13 Alexander Nagel and Lorenzo Pericolo, Subject as Aporia (London, New York: Routledge, 2010), p. 2. 14 Ibid., p. 9. 15 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, Trans Donald Nicolson Smith (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2010), p. 36. 16 Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor Network Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 72. 17 Iain Borden, Joe Kerr and Jane Rendell, The Unknown City: Contesting Architecture and Social Space (Cambridge, London: MIT Press, 2002). 18 Lynne Walker, “Women and Architecture”, 244–257 and Alice T. Friedman, excerpts from “Architecture, Authority and the Female Gaze”, 332–341 in Jane Rendell, Barbara Penner and Iain Borden, Gender Space Architecture: An Interdisciplinary Introduction (London, New York: Routledge, 2000). 19 Elizabeth Darling and Leslie Whitworth, Women and the making of Built Space in England (London, New York: Routledge, 2007). 20 Garcia-Fuentes (pp. 49–69). 21 González Pendás (pp. 30–48). 22 Mooney (pp. 91–106). 23 The Day Office for Feasts and Saints Days, Vol. 3 (West Malling: Malling Abbey, 1997), p. 184.

Part I

Pilgrimage and modern journeys

1 Sisterly love in Lisieux Building the Basilica of Sainte-Thérèse Jessica Basciano

Sœur Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face (1873–97) died in obscurity in the Carmelite convent in Lisieux, France, at the age of 24.1 However, owing to the immense appeal of her message of childlike trust in the love of God, which spread rapidly through the publication of her autobiography after her death, she soon became internationally famous and was canonized in 1925. Pope Pius X called her ‘the greatest saint of modern times’.2 The Basilica of Sainte-Thérèse (1929–54) was built in response to the resulting arrival of crowds of pilgrims in Lisieux, which overwhelmed the chapel of the Carmel (Figure 1.1). While architectural critics and historians have understood the Basilica of Sainte-Thérèse as belonging to the architectural tradition of the Sacré-Cœur on Montmartre (1874–1919) – pointing to its massive scale and Romanesque and Byzantine forms3 – in this chapter, I will consider the church from the perspective of the extraordinary growth of women’s religious orders in the nineteenth century. I will argue that the Carmelite nuns in Thérèse’s convent, including her biological sisters, played a vital role in building the church. The basilica was one aspect of how they shaped Thérèse’s legacy, along with editing and publishing her autobiography, and distributing her portrait. Drawing from the archives of the convent and the pilgrimage, I will show that the nuns bought property, raised funds and collaborated with architects on the design. In 1925, the nuns planned to build a Gothic Revival church next to the convent, but two years later, they decided instead to execute the RomanoByzantine design of Louis-Marie Cordonnier on a hill at the edge of the town. They balanced competing priorities: establishing the devotion to Thérèse, protecting their convent’s privacy and tranquillity and promoting a modern pilgrimage with mass ceremonies and the mobilization of Catholics by car, bus and train. While acknowledging the influence of the local bishop, the pilgrimage director and the pope, I will focus on the nuns’ authority in building the church and suggest that it demonstrates how religious vocations created an elite of women in the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century. One aspect of Thérèse’s appeal was her embodiment of a provincial bourgeois Catholic culture that many Catholics felt was under siege by the modern world.4 Her loving family life was an attractive model, and Thérèse’s

16  Jessica Basciano

Figure 1.1  Louis-Marie Cordonnier, exterior view, Basilica of Sainte-Thérèse, Lisieux, 1929–54. Photograph by the author

devotees could often relate to her experience of death and loss from an early age. Thérèse Martin was born in Alençon, Normandy, the last of nine children, only five of whom survived to adulthood. Like Lisieux, Alençon became a site of pilgrimage, though to a lesser extent. In 1928, a neoBaroque oratory designed by the Caen architect René Ménage (d. 1928) was completed next to her house. Through a grille in the oratory wall, visitors could see into the room in which she was born.5 Thérèse’s father was a welloff watchmaker and jeweller who sold his shop to help his wife with her even more successful lacemaking business. Thérèse’s mother died of breast cancer when she was only four. The family then moved to a house called Les Buissonnets in Lisieux. After her mother died, Thérèse identified an older sister, Pauline, as her new mother. So when Pauline left for the Carmelite convent in Lisieux when Thérèse was nine, she was devastated. At 15, she received special permission to enter the cloister herself, before the minimum age of 16. The exception was made following Thérèse’s petition to the pope himself, Leo XIII, during an audience on a pilgrimage to Rome. By 1894, four of the five Martin daughters had joined the community; the fifth became a visitationist (Figure 1.2). Sadly, this near-complete reunification of the sisters did not last long, as Thérèse first coughed up blood at Easter in 1896, and she died of tuberculosis in 1897 at the age of 24.

Sisterly love in Lisieux 17

Figure 1.2 Sœur Geneviève de la Sainte-Face, photograph, Thérèse, her sisters and her cousin, November 1896 © Office Central de Lisieux. (Left to right: Marie du Sacré-Cœur, Agnès de Jésus (Pauline), Geneviève de la Sainte-Face (Céline), Marie de l’Eucharistie (Marie Guérin) and Thérèse)

Despite living in a cloister, soon after her death, Thérèse became known internationally. In the last two-and-a-half years of her life, she had written her autobiography on the order of her sister Pauline, ‘Sœur Agnès’ in religion, who, for some of that time, was also the prioress. In 1898, a year after her death, the Lisieux Carmel printed 2,000 copies of the autobiography, which Sœur Agnès edited and gave the title Histoire d’une âme – Story of a Soul. They sent it to priests and the other French Carmels, instead of the usual obituary. Between 1898 and 1925, the year of Thérèse’s canonization, the autobiography was translated into 35 languages, and the convent distributed over 400,000 copies of the book and 2,000,000 abridged editions in French alone. During this period, the Carmel also sent out over 30,000,000 images of the saint.6 These were usually based on portraits painted by Céline, who was then known as ‘Sœur Geneviève’, or on photographs that she had taken – she had her own darkroom in the convent – and they became increasingly idealized and embellished over time.7 Meanwhile, Sœur Geneviève advised the Père Marie-Bernard, a Trappist sculptor, on the creation of a marble statue of Thérèse holding a crucifix and roses. Placed in front of the Carmel in 1923, it became the most famous statue of the saint, establishing her iconography: 300,000 copies were sold throughout the world.8

18  Jessica Basciano Beyond Thérèse’s identification with a bourgeois Catholic milieu, at the heart of her appeal was her message of God’s unconditional love. She rejected the theology of expiation and vicarious suffering that had permeated French Catholicism in the nineteenth century, and embraced instead a ‘little way’ (petite voie) of childlike trust in God and love for him, of pursuing holiness by performing everyday acts with love.9 She reassured the poor and disenfranchised of God’s accessibility, and many people could relate to the personal struggle with despair that she experienced during her illness. Her desire for daily communion and her teaching on the practice of the theological virtues of faith, hope and charity contributed to changes in the church in the twentieth century.10 Devotion to Thérèse was spurred by reports of miraculous healings as early as 1899 and by soldiers’ invocation of the saint for protection during the First World War.11 In addition to Thérèse’s embodiment of a besieged bourgeois Catholic culture and her reassuring message, her appeal may be understood in terms of what has been called the ‘feminization of religion’.12 In nineteenth- and early twentieth-century France, women attended Mass and took Easter communion more than men, and historians have suggested that this ‘sexual dimorphism’ affected the form of religion, particularly the increase in Marian devotion.13 Thérèse, like Mary, provided a model of female piety. Her life story, with its themes of innocence and withdrawal, resonated with Catholics alienated by modernity.14 With the support of the Catholic press and successive popes, Thérèse was beatified in 1923 and canonized in 1925. The cause advanced rapidly: Pope Benedict XV exempted it from the 50-year delay imposed by canon law.15 Thérèse belonged to an otherwise diverse group of French women who were canonized in the interwar period – a group that also included Joan of Arc, Marguerite-Marie Alacoque (canonized in 1920) and Bernadette Soubirous (sainted in 1933).16 Their gender points to the feminization of Catholicism; their nationality is indicative of a Franco-Vatican rapprochement.17 As devotion to Thérèse increased, crowds of pilgrims began to gather in Lisieux, demonstrating the continuation of the resurgence of pilgrimage that started in France in the 1840s and peaked in the 1870s.18 Pilgrims assembled first at the cemetery where Thérèse was buried and then at the Carmel chapel where her remains were transferred in 1923. The chapel, with its Baroque façade, was built in 1852 and expanded from 1919 to 1923 to accommodate pilgrims and a reliquary.19 This expansion was overseen by Pauline, who was then called ‘Mère Agnès’. She was re-elected prioress in 1909 and stayed in that role until she died in 1951.20 Fifty thousand people participated in the 1923 translation ceremony,21 but the chapel could only hold 600.22 In 1924, the nuns asked the vicar-general of Paris to recommend an architect for a new basilica dedicated to Thérèse.23 He endorsed Julien Barbier (1869–1940), an École des Beaux-Arts trained architect whose credentials included churches in the Paris suburbs, such as the Church of Saint-Maurice

Sisterly love in Lisieux 19 de Bécon in Courbevoie of 1911. Barbier went on to build over 50 churches during his career – buildings that are typically rustic and economical.24 While it was the local bishop, Msgr Thomas Lemonnier, who formally commissioned Barbier to design a basilica in the winter of 1925, the Carmelites requested numerous revisions and studies of side projects.25 Barbier’s earliest project dates to March 1925 (Figure 1.3). It was reproduced in the official journal of the pilgrimage the following year, when the bishop launched a subscription to pay for the basilica.26 Gothic, with a symmetrical

Figure 1.3 Julien Barbier, façade elevation, project for the Basilica of Sainte-Thérèse, Lisieux, signed and dated March 1925, Archives du Carmel de Lisieux

20  Jessica Basciano triangular façade, it incorporates features that aid in the circulation of pilgrims – namely, portals opening onto superimposed churches and stairs and ramps leading to the upper church entrance.27 And it is reminiscent of the first two pilgrimage churches at Lourdes, completed in 1872 and 1889. The similarity makes sense, given the churches’ common function, and the fact that the pilgrimage journal had published a letter that compared the shrines, saying that ‘Lisieux has become a second Lourdes.’28 On the Carmelites’ orders, Barbier created a new project with a portico linking the basilica to the convent. However, the nuns interrupted Barbier’s work to ask him to design a monumental stations of the cross, then a hotel and, finally, a basilica with an altogether different program, incorporating the forms of a ship with three masts and a lighthouse – symbols that Thérèse had used in her autobiography.29 Thérèse was attracted to the image of a ship that cuts through rough waves and leaves no trace of its passing as a metaphor for life that captures its difficulty and transience. She used the lighthouse as a symbol of Jesus and of love, guiding her from life to the shores of eternity.30 In response to the nuns’ request, Barbier created a project with a pointed, prow-like west façade and three spires in the place of masts.31 Charles Jouvenot (b. 1861), an illustrator who worked for the nuns, interpreted the nautical program similarly. He had provided pictures for a children’s version of Thérèse’s autobiography and designed some of the decorative elements of the Carmel chapel.32 For the basilica, he proposed a convex west façade and three spires, as well as a campanile that resembles a lighthouse, which he identified as a beacon (Figure 1.4).33 However, by early 1927, the bishop, following the advice of the nuns and the pilgrimage director, abandoned the site next to the Carmel, as well as Barbier’s plans. The nuns rejected the site and decided instead to build on a hilltop site outside the town, halfway between the cemetery where Thérèse was buried and the convent, that they had purchased for the monumental stations of the cross. The nuns were concerned that building the basilica next to the Carmel would violate their privacy and tranquillity, permitting overhead views of the cloister and exacerbating the noise and congestion of crowds and car traffic in the vicinity. They also rejected Barbier’s plans on the grounds that the Gothic project would be prohibitively expensive and compare poorly with the medieval Gothic churches in Lisieux. Furthermore, the bishop had received numerous letters from abroad criticizing the project as unworthy of Thérèse, including from a Canadian bishop who vowed to ban the fundraising subscription in his diocese until another project was put forward.34 By spring 1927, Mère Agnès had begun correspondence with another architect: Louis-Marie Cordonnier (1854–1940).35 Trained at the École des Beaux-Arts and based in Lille, Cordonnier was 73 years old when he accepted the Lisieux commission. His son Louis-Stanislas Cordonnier continued construction, and his grandson Louis-Marie Cordonnier completed it. The elder Cordonnier had previously won major competitions for civic buildings such as the Amsterdam Stock Exchange (his 1884 design was not

Sisterly love in Lisieux 21

Figure 1.4  (Charles Jouvenot), perspective drawing, project for the Basilica of Sainte-Thérèse, Lisieux, dated August 24, 1926, Archives du Carmel de Lisieux

used), the Peace Palace in the Hague (his 1905 design was built in simplified form) and the neoclassical theatre in Lille (his 1907 design was carried out and the theatre was inaugurated in 1923). At the turn of the century, he rebuilt the Dunkerque City Hall in a Flemish Renaissance idiom, and after World War I, he worked on the reconstruction of ruined towns in the north of France.36 Mère Agnès asked for photographs of one of the churches he rebuilt after the war: that of Saint-Vaast in Béthune. Cordonnier worried about how the prioress would interpret the photographs and explained that the parish church in Béthune was entirely different from the votive church planned for Lisieux.37 Much more closely related to the Lisieux church is Cordonnier’s memorial church and campanile of 1927 in the French national battlefield cemetery of Notre-Dame de Lorette (Pas-de-Calais). With its reinforced concrete construction and Romano-Byzantine forms, particularly its conical-roofed lantern and separate bell tower, Notre-Dame de Lorette became a prototype for the Basilica of Sainte-Thérèse.38 The choice of style reflects the influence of the Sacré-Cœur, consecrated in 1919. Indeed, the Basilica of Sainte-Thérèse resembles the Montmartre church more than any

22  Jessica Basciano of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century pilgrimage churches that were designed in the Romano-Byzantine idiom or the stripped down interpretations of Byzantine architecture built in Paris in the 1930s. The bishop hired Cordonnier to design the church in the summer of 1927.39 The Carmelites gave the new architect considerable input, as they had to Barbier. Mère Agnès asked him for an ‘open chapel or ciborium for open air services, above the tomb’ and a ‘covered cloister connecting this projecting part to the basilica’.40 A 1927 elevation drawing incorporates the ciborium and cloisters, or porticos on either side of the church, as well as a bell tower to the left, in the direction of the town centre, and a monumental staircase, ramps and stations of the cross on the hillside in front, in the direction of the train station (Figure 1.5). The nuns were extremely pleased with the first sketch that Cordonnier sent to them. Sœur Geneviève wrote to him on behalf of the community to express their admiration and gratitude. ‘For some time already,’ she wrote, ‘I had collected church façades by the hundreds, [and] never have I seen anything that combines as many diverse qualities as your masterpiece.’41 With her interest in art and experience working as a sacristan, responsible for decorating the Carmel and its chapel, Sœur Geneviève focused her contribution to the design on the decoration, particularly the iconographical program.42 Cordonnier sought a decision from Mère Agnès on the overall configuration of the basilica. To help her decide, he sent her a book with illustrations of early Christian and Romanesque churches.43 He deferred to the prioress on the general arrangement, because, he told her ‘You alone, know the funds available to you at this moment, and the approximate resources that the subscriptions could bring to you.’44 The subscription campaign for the basilica was launched by the bishop in 1926 and organized by the pilgrimage director, the Abbé Germain (1885–1957, director from 1923), who also supervised construction.45 It became an international effort, with notable success in Brazil, Belgium and Germany.46 The pilgrimage director encouraged devotees to gather offerings from others, even in small amounts, and to approach schools and Catholic organizations.47 The funds collected – 11,000,000 francs by 1928 – were held in the bank accounts of two nuns, one of them Mère Agnès. And the Carmel owned the basilica through a real estate company that was its legal representative.48 Cordonnier deferred to the prioress on the general arrangement, but a major conflict arose between them when they started to plan the decoration of the crypt in 1930. Cordonnier called a drawing that Mère Agnès sent to him by Jouvenot ‘of an obvious banality’ and refused to collaborate with him on the mosaics.49 The architect proposed instead the mosaicist Jean Gaudin (1879–1954), whose mosaic on the esplanade at Lourdes was finished in 1927.50 Mère Agnès responded that: Alas! We have on the subject of the scenes to reproduce in mosaic, the most contrasting tastes, so much so that we will never . . . be able to

Figure 1.5 Louis-Marie Cordonnier and Louis-Stanislas Cordonnier, façade elevation, Basilica of Sainte-Thérèse, Lisieux, (late summer) 1927, Archives de la Basilique, Direction du Pèlerinage Sainte-Thérèse, Lisieux

24  Jessica Basciano agree unless you deign, Monsieur, to take into consideration our wishes and fulfil them.51 She found a photograph of Gaudin’s Lourdes mosaic entirely without beauty and disliked the abstraction of the figures. She did not want the decoration to be appreciated solely by the initiated, like a work in a museum,52 but rather wanted the basilica to conform to the taste of Sainte-Thérèse, ‘who we know and who we want to follow [sic]’.53 In contrast to Gaudin’s mosaic, with its vivid colours and stiff, angular figures outlined by sharp contours, paintings that Thérèse admired and painted herself feature hues that are muted or pastel and softly shaded figures in graceful poses. Their ethereality and sentimentality is consistent with the mass-produced religious imagery that Thérèse favoured, known as ‘Saint-Sulpice art’.54 Although the finished church does not entirely reflect the wishes of Mère Agnès – it lacks the exterior ciborium, and Cordonnier chose Gaudin for the crypt mosaics – she seems to have liked it nevertheless. The nuns could see the basilica rising on the hillside from their cloister, but they did not visit it until they were forced to take refuge in the crypt for 80 days following the D-Day landing and bombings in 1944.55 On their return, Mère Agnès spoke in glowing terms of the ‘marvellous crypt’ and ‘splendid basilica’.56 Beyond its aesthetic appeal, the church addressed the nuns’ concerns about limited space and congestion near the Carmel:57 it could accommodate 10,000 people inside and 40,000 on the esplanade, and it was located close to the train station at a site that permitted long processions.58 Indeed, Cordonnier thought that the most important view of the basilica was from the train station, and he oriented the building towards it.59 This reflects the church’s embrace of train travel and other modern technologies for its own ends, at the same time that it confronted the social and political consequences of industrialization. The view from the centre of town was obstructed until Henry Chéron, the mayor of Lisieux and a senator, demolished a densely populated neighbourhood and created a broad avenue linking the church and the town. This was done in time for the benediction of the basilica in 1937, for which 200,000 pilgrims came.60 The mayor’s embrace of the project was practical, as the pilgrimage brought economic prosperity to Lisieux, making it unusually thriving for a small French city in the 1930s.61 In addition to the role of the nuns, another fascinating aspect of the patronage of the basilica is the close involvement of the pope, Pius XI, in its design and promotion. Pius XI critiqued Cordonnier’s project in 1927 – he disliked the form of the dome – and the architect modified it accordingly.62 Furthermore, the official periodicals of the shrine frequently published the pope’s blessing of the project.63 The basilica was linked to the strengthening of the authority of the Vatican over the French church following the separation of church and state in 1905,64 a tie reinforced by the attendance at its 1937 benediction of Cardinal Pacelli, the papal legate and future Pope Pius XII.65

Sisterly love in Lisieux 25 When the nuns were engaged with Barbier in 1925, the bishop advised Mère Agnès: ‘Sainte-Thérèse did not like milk[,] neither in morals, nor in religion, nor in architecture – hold fast to your ideas, and dominate the architect.’66 Following this suggestion, Mère Agnès, Sœur Geneviève and the Carmelite community forcefully contributed to the planning of the basilica. They nurtured Thérèse’s legacy in this endeavour, as they had in the publication of her autobiography and the dissemination of her image. Thérèse’s sisters brought useful expertise to the task: Mère Agnès, her management skills developed as prioress and Sœur Geneviève, her artistic ability. Their vocations can be understood as part of the unprecedented growth of women’s religious orders in France in the nineteenth century. In the first eight decades of the century, over 200,000 women entered religious orders. By 1878, there were at least 127,000 nuns and novices, outnumbering male clergy almost three to two. The majority of nuns were congréganistes who made no solemn vows and were active in teaching or nursing. However, contemplative orders like the Carmelites also revived, recruiting from well-off families like the Martins.67 In the interwar period, the social status of women in France was lower than in almost any other industrialized nation. Women had limited educational and economic opportunities, married wives had no civil status separate from their husbands until 1939 and women gained suffrage only in 1944. Religious vocations offered women professional careers and an alternative to subordination to a husband.68 The Basilica of Sainte-Thérèse reflects the status and power that women acquired through vocations. It is striking that in a period when women’s roles were narrowly restricted, the Carmelites in Lisieux managed an account worth millions of francs and supervised the planning of one of the largest Catholic churches of the twentieth century.69

Notes 1 I would like to thank M. Emmanuel Houis and Mme Nadine Reguer of the Direction du Pèlerinage Sainte-Thérèse and the sister archivist and Carmelites of Lisieux. Without their generous assistance, this article could not have been written. 2 Pius X described Thérèse in this way in a private audience in 1907. Quoted in G. Gaucher, The Story of a Life: St. Thérèse of Lisieux, trans. A. M. Brennan (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1987), p. 210. 3 Joseph Pichard – who founded the journal L’Art Sacré in 1935 – called the Basilica of Sainte-Thérèse one of the last of the ‘monstres sacrés’. François Loyer has fitted the basilica into a genealogy of Romano-Byzantine pilgrimage churches. See J. Pichard, L’Aventure moderne de l’art sacré (Paris: Spes, 1966), p. 29; and F. Loyer, ‘Une Basilique synthétique’, in C. Laroche, ed., Paul Abadie: Architecte, 1812–1884 (Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 1988), pp. 190–9, on p. 193. 4 The following biographical sketch draws from Gaucher, The Story of a Life; B. C. Pope, ‘A Heroine Without Heroics: The Little Flower of Jesus and Her Times’, Church History, 57:1 (March 1988), pp. 46–60; and R. D. E. Burton, ‘Little Flower: Thérèse Martin’, chap. 2 in Holy Tears, Holy Blood: Women, Catholicism, and the Culture of Suffering in France, 1840–1970 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004), pp. 20–61.

26  Jessica Basciano 5 For a discussion of the pilgrimage and plans for the oratory see ‘2 janvier 1926: 53me anniversaire de la naissance de Sainte Thérèse de l’Enfant-Jésus’, Annales de Sainte Thérèse de Lisieux, 2:1 (1 January 1926): p. 3. For a descriptions and photographs of the oratory see P. Travert, ‘Impressions d’Alençon’, Annales de Sainte Thérèse de Lisieux, 4:7 (July 1928), pp. 146–9, photographs between pp. 156 and 157. See also the photographs in Annales de Sainte Thérèse de Lisieux, 5:6 (June 1929), between pp. 176 and 177. There is a brief obituary of Ménage in Annales de Sainte Thérèse de Lisieux, 4:6 (June 1928), p. 131. 6 Gaucher, The Story of a Life, p. 208; Pope, ‘A Heroine without Heroics’, p. 50. The source Pope gives for the extraordinary number of images is A. P. Laveille, Life of the Little Flower: St. Thérèse of Lisieux, According to the Official Documents of the Carmel of Lisieux, trans. M. Fitzsimons (New York: McMullen, 1952), p. 333. 7 Pope, ‘A Heroine Without Heroics’, p. 50; Burton, ‘Little Flower’, p. 55; T. Taylor, ‘Images of Sanctity: Photography of Saint Bernadette of Lourdes and Saint Thérèse of Lisieux’, Nineteenth-Century Contexts, 27:3 (September 2005), pp. 269–92, on p. 280–4. On Céline’s artistic practice see also S.-J. Piat, Céline: Sœur Geneviève de la Sainte Face, sœur et témoin de Sainte Thérèse de l’EnfantJésus (Lisieux: Office Central, 1963), pp. 99–103. 8 P. Descouvemont, Sculpteur de l’âme: Un Trappiste au service de Thérèse, with a preface by Frère M.-G. Dubois (Wailly: Gieldé, 2000), pp. 8, 76–9. 9 Burton, ‘Little Flower’, p. 38. 10 Gaucher, The Story of a Life, pp. 214–16. 11 Burton, ‘Little Flower’, p. 55; Père Martin, Le Pèlerinage de Lisieux et ses origines (Paris: Horizons de France, 1927), pp. 90–3. 12 C. Ford, ‘Religion and Popular Culture in Modern Europe’, Journal of Modern History, 65 (March 1993), pp. 152–75, on p. 167. 13 C. Langlois, ‘Le Catholicisme au féminin’, Archives des sciences sociales des religions, 57:1 (January-March 1984), pp. 29–53, on p. 30; R. Gibson, A Social History of French Catholicism (London: Routledge, 1989), pp. 180–90. 14 Pope, ‘A Heroine without Heroics’, p. 55. 15 Gaucher, The Story of a Life, pp. 210–11. 16 G. Cholvy and Y.-M. Hilaire, Histoire religieuse de la France contemporaine, 1880–1930 (Toulouse: Privat, 1986), pp. 325–6. 17 J. Vavasseur-Desperriers, ‘La France et le Saint-Siège dans les années vingt’, in Phillipe Levillain (ed.), Achille Ratti Pape Pie XI: Actes du colloque (Rome: École française de Rome, 1996), pp. 775–95, on p. 791. 18 G. Cholvy and Y.-M. Hilaire, Histoire religieuse de la France contemporaine, 1800–1880 (Toulouse: Privat, 1985), pp. 191–6. 19 C. Bernos de Gasz, told La Fondation du Carmel de Lisieux (Paris: St.-Paul, 1912), p. 23. An aisle was added to the north side; a chapel for the reliquary was added to the south. Msgr G. Durand, ‘Le Pèlerinage de Lisieux’, Art de BasseNormandie, 89–91 (1984–85), pp. 78–81, on p. 79. 20 [Sœur M.-E. de Saint-Joseph], Carmélite de Lisieux, La ‘Petite Mère’ de Sainte Thérèse de Lisieux: Mère Agnès de Jésus, 1861–1951 (Lisieux: Carmel de Lisieux, 1953), pp. 84, 90. 21 J. Bertot, ‘La Cérémonie de la translation’, Journal des pèlerins de la Bienheureuse Thérèse de l’Enfant-Jésus, 1:2 (23 June 1923), n. p. 22 In 1924, the Journal des pèlerins reminded pilgrimage directors that the maximum number of people that the Carmel chapel could accommodate comfortably was 600 and asked the directors to limit their pilgrimages to that number. ‘Correspondance’, Journal des pèlerins de la Bienheureuse Thérèse de l’Enfant-Jésus, 2:19 (29 June–5 July 1924), n. p.

Sisterly love in Lisieux 27 23 Msgr Dupin, vicar-general of Paris, to the Carmel, 8 December 1924, Archives du Carmel de Lisieux. 24 On Barbier see S. Texier, ‘Les Architectes, entre audace et compromis’, in S. Texier, ed., Églises parisiennes du XXe siècle: Architecture et décor (Paris: Action artistique de la ville de Paris, 1996), pp. 48–65, on pp. 54–7; and F. Loyer, Histoire de l’architecture française de la révolution à nos jours (Paris: Mengès, 1999), pp. 248–9, 426 n. 789. 25 For the sequence of the commission and successive revisions see the contract between Thomas Lemonnier, bishop of Bayeux and Lisieux, and Julien Barbier, 26 August 1926, Archives du Carmel de Lisieux; and Msgr Dupin to Thomas Lemonnier, 11 October 1926, Archives du Carmel de Lisieux. 26 J. Barbier, ‘Projet de Basilique en l’Honneur de Sainte Thérèse de l’EnfantJésus, à Lisieux’, Annales de Sainte Thérèse de Lisieux, 2:2 (15 January 1926), p. 13; T. Lemonnier, ‘Pour l’érection d’une basilique de Ste Thérèse de L’EnfantJésus à Lisieux’, Annales de Sainte Thérèse de Lisieux, 2:2 (15 January 1926), pp. 14–15. 27 Msgr Dupin to Thomas Lemonnier, 11 October 1926, p. 2, Archives du Carmel de Lisieux. 28 ‘Lisieux est devenu un second Lourdes.’ ‘Autour du projet de la basilique’, Annales de Sainte Thérèse de Lisieux, 2:24 (15 December 1926), pp. 285–6, on p. 285. 29 Msgr Dupin to Thomas Lemonnier, 11 October 1926, p. 2, Archives du Carmel de Lisieux. 30 Sainte Thérèse de l’Enfant-Jésus et de la Sainte-Face, Histoire d’une âme: Manuscrits autobiographiques (Paris: Cerf et Desclée De Brouwer, 2000), pp. 91, 113, 194. 31 A side elevation and plan by Barbier, incorporating these nautical features, are preserved in the Archives du Carmel de Lisieux. 32 On Jouvenot see V. Hardy, ‘Charles Jouvenot’, Journal des pèlerins de la Bienheureuse Thérèse de l’Enfant-Jésus, 1:23 (30 December 1923–12 January 1924), n. p.; 2, no. 1 (13–26 January 1924), n. p. 33 A perspective view dated 24 August 1926 and a plan signed by Jouvenot, both of which include these elements, are preserved in the Archives du Carmel de Lisieux. 34 [Carmel de Lisieux], ‘Premier projet de la basilique: Pourquoi il a été abandonné – projet actuel’, undated, pp. 1–3, Archives de la Basilique, Direction du Pèlerinage Sainte-Thérèse, Lisieux. 35 This correspondence is preserved in the Archives du Carmel de Lisieux. 36 On Cordonnier see J. Formigé, Notice sur la vie et les œuvres de Louis-Marie Cordonnier, 1854–1940 (Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1943); J.-C. Huet (ed.), Théâtre et architecture: Louis-Marie Cordonnier (1854–1940) architecte (Lille: École d’architecture de Lille et des régions Nord, 1985); and O. Lesaffre, ‘Louis-Marie Cordonnier et l’architecture du Nord de la France’, De Franse Nederlanden/Les Pays-Bas Français 23 (1998), pp. 45–61. There is also a dissertation that I have been unable to consult: Diana Palazova-Lebleu, ‘La Place de Louis-Marie et Louis-Stanislas Cordonnier dans les évolutions architecturales et urbanistiques en Europe septentrionale, 1881–1940’ (thèse de doctorat, Histoire de l’Art, Lille 3, 2009). 37 Cordonnier to Mère Agnès, 30 April 1927, Archives du Carmel de Lisieux. 38 The similarity between the two churches is pointed out in ‘La Basilique raconte son histoire’, Annales de Sainte Thérèse de Lisieux, 12 (December 1974), pp. 4–7, on p. 6. On Notre-Dame de Lorette see J.-P. Verney, ‘Les Nécropoles nationales et les monuments des champs de bataille’, in P. Rivé et al., eds.,

28  Jessica Basciano Monuments de mémoire: Les Monuments aux morts de la première guerre mondiale (Paris: Mission permanente aux commémorations et à l’information historique, 1991), pp. 107–18, on pp. 107–8. 39 Contract between Louis-Marie Cordonnier and Louis-Stanislas Cordonnier and Bishop Lemonnier, 31 July 1927, Archives de la Basilique, Direction du Pèlerinage Sainte-Thérèse, Lisieux. 40 ‘Au premier plan chapelle ouverte ou ciborium pour offices en plein air, au dessus du tombeau. Cloître couvert reliant cet avant corps à la basilique. . . ‘ Cordonnier to Mère Agnès, 11 July 1927, Archives du Carmel de Lisieux. 41 ‘Depuis quelque temps déjà, j’avais collectionné par centaines des façades d’églises, jamais je n’ai rien vu qui réunisse autant de qualités diverses que votre chef d’œuvre: C’est fort et gracieux, c’est élégant et grandiose, simple et riche.’ Sœur Geneviève de la Sainte-Face to [Cordonnier], 17 July 1927, photocopy in Archives de la Basilique, Direction du Pèlerinage Sainte-Thérèse, Lisieux. 42 Taylor, ‘Images of Sanctity’, p. 282; Piat, Céline, pp. 102, 128–9. 43 Cordonnier to Mère Agnès, 3 February 1928, typed copy in Archives de la Basilique, Direction du Pèlerinage Sainte-Thérèse, Lisieux. 44 ‘Vous seules, connaissez les disponibilités que vous avez en ce moment, et les ressources approximatives que les souscriptions pourront vous apporter . . . J’ai toujours tenté de réduire le plus possible, mais les dispositions proposées et adoptées ont été prises en vue de satisfaire au nombre de pèlerins et aux services demandés. A vous de décider si elles sont irréductibles ou non.’ Cordonnier to Mère Agnès, 14 February 1928, Archives de la Basilique, Direction du Pèlerinage Sainte-Thérèse, Lisieux. 45 Msgr Georges Durand, ‘Basilique Sainte Thérèse de Lisieux’, 15 January 1983, p. 17, Archives du Carmel de Lisieux. 46 [Carmel de Lisieux], ‘Premier projet de la basilique: Pourquoi il a été abandonné – projet actuel’, undated, pp. 9–10, Archives de la Basilique, Direction du Pèlerinage Sainte-Thérèse, Lisieux. 47 Germain to ‘Cher Abonné’, 31 March 1927, Archives du Carmel de Lisieux. 48 This was a société civile immobilière called the ‘Société Centrale lexovienne’. Carmel de Lisieux, ‘Rapport relatif à la basilique de Ste Thérèse de L’EnfantJésus à Lisieux’, undated, pp. 14–18, Archives du Carmel de Lisieux. 49 ‘J’ai examiné les dessins que vous avez bien voulu me faire parvenir, et qui se composent d’une petite maquette de vitraux, et de dessins divers à l’eau forte. Le dessin de vitrail, d’une banalité évidente, est sans caractère et sans style. C’est même d’un gothique déplorable.’ Cordonnier to Mère Agnès, 3 April 1930, pp. 4–5, typed copy in Archives de la Basilique, Direction du Pèlerinage SainteThérèse, Lisieux. 50 Cordonnier to Mère Agnès, 3 April 1930, p. 5, Archives de la Basilique, Direction du Pèlerinage Sainte-Thérèse, Lisieux. On Jean Gaudin’s mosaic in the Chapelle de Sainte-Bernadette at Lourdes see J.-B. Courtin, Lourdes: Le Domaine de Notre-Dame de 1858 à 1947 (Rennes: Éditions Fransiscaines, 1947), pp. 216–18. 51 ‘Hélas! nous avons au sujet des scènes à reproduire en mosaïque, les goûts les plus opposés, tellement que jamais . . . nous ne pourrons nous entendre, à moins que vous ne daignez, Monsieur, prendre en considération nos désirs et les exaucer.’ Sœur Agnès to [Cordonnier], 6 April 1930, p. 1, photocopy in Archives de la Basilique, Direction du Pèlerinage Sainte-Thérèse, Lisieux. 52 Sœur Agnès to [Cordonnier], 6 April 1930, p. 2–3, photocopy in Archives de la Basilique, Direction du Pèlerinage Sainte-Thérèse, Lisieux. 53 ‘Ainsi serait poursuivie et achevée dans le goût de notre chère Sainte que nous connaissons et que nous voulons suivre, l’œuvre si belle qu’elle vous a confiée. . . ‘ Sœur Agnès to [Cordonnier], 6 April 1930, p. 5, photocopy in Archives de la Basilique, Direction du Pèlerinage Sainte-Thérèse, Lisieux.

Sisterly love in Lisieux 29 54 P. Descouvemont, Thérèse et Lisieux (Paris: Cerf, 1991), pp. 122–3, 200–1; M. Albaric, ‘Le Commerce de l’objet religieux dans le quartier Saint-Sulpice’, in Charles Hamel (ed.), De Pierre et de cœur: L’Église Saint-Sulpice, 350 ans d’histoire (Paris: Cerf, 1996), pp. 131–55, on p. 134. 55 J. Vinatier, Mère Agnès de Lisieux (Paris: Cerf, 1993), pp. 225–33. 56 ‘Notre exil a été adouci par plusieurs messes journalières, avec le voisinage et l’appui de saints prêtres, dans cette crypte merveilleuse édifiée à la gloire de notre grande petite Thérèse. Nous avons pu contempler de près sa splendide Basilique, nous promener, rêvant du ciel sur le Parvis, sous les cloîtres, dont la vue s’étend au loin vers les belles campagnes.’ Quoted in Vinatier, Mère Agnès de Lisieux, p. 233. 57 [Carmel de Lisieux], ‘Premier projet de la basilique: Pourquoi il a été abandonné – projet actuel’, undated, pp. 1–2, Archives de la Basilique, Direction du Pèlerinage Sainte-Thérèse, Lisieux. 58 V. Hardy, ‘A propos des Fêtes de Lisieux’, Le Pays d’Auge, 146:59 (24 July 1937), p. 1; P. C., ‘Étude technique de la construction de la basilique’, Annales de Sainte Thérèse de Lisieux, 29:12 (December 1953), pp. 9–14, on pp. 9–11. 59 ‘La vue la plus importante de l’ensemble est celle vers la Gare vers laquelle le Monument est dirigé et qui, la plus dégagée pour l’instant, le sera encore plus dans l’avenir. Celle vers la Ville l’est moins parce qu’elle est obstruée par les habitations qui se prolongent et se prolongeront jusque près de lui. On arrivera à ses côtés sans avoir pu l’apercevoir. C’est donc le Monument vu de la Gare dont il importe de se rendre compte.’ Cordonnier to Mère Agnès, 3 February 1928, typed copy in Archives de la Basilique, Direction du Pèlerinage Sainte-Thérèse, Lisieux. 60 R. Baschet, ‘La Basilique et les aménagements de Lisieux’, L’Illustration, 4911 (17 April 1937), p. 420; IIe Congrès eucharistique national Lisieux 1937 7–11 Juillet: Bénédiction de la Basilique Sainte Thérèse de l’Enfant Jésus. N. p.: n. p., [1939], p. 44; Hardy, ‘A propos des Fêtes de Lisieux’, p. 1. 61 J. Claire-Guyot, ‘A l’ombre du miracle Lisieux croît et prospère’, Echo de Paris, 4 July 1937, pp. 1–2. 62 Carmel de Lisieux, ‘Rapport relatif à la basilique de Ste Thérèse de L’EnfantJésus à Lisieux’, undated, p. 3, Archives du Carmel de Lisieux. 63 See, among others, Pius XI, ‘Précieuse bénédiction accordée par le SouverainPontife aux Souscripteurs de la Basilique de Lisieux’, Annales de Sainte Thérèse de Lisieux, 3:12 (1 December 1927), pp. 177 and between 184 and 185. 64 J.-M. Mayeur, La Séparation de l’Église et de l’État (Paris: René Julliard, 1966), p. 192. 65 R. Fontenelle, Sa Sainteté Pie XI (Paris: Spes, 1937), pp. 128–35; F. CharlesRoux, Huit ans au Vatican (1932–1940) (Paris: Flammarion, 1947), pp. 223–5. 66 ‘Ste Thérèse n’aimait pas le lait ni en morale, ni dans le culte, ni dans l’architecture – Tenez bien à vos idées et dominez l’architecte.’ I interpret ‘lait’ in this context to mean meekness. Évêché de Bayeux to Mère Agnès, 23 December 1925, photocopied excerpt in Archives du Carmel de Lisieux. 67 Gibson, A Social History of French Catholicism, pp. 104–6; H. Mills, ‘ “Saintes Sœurs” and “Femmes Fortes”: Alternative Accounts of the Route to Womanly Virtue and the History of French Feminism’, in C. Campbell Orr, ed., Wollstonecraft’s Daughters: Womanhood in England and France, 1780–1920 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996), pp. 135–50, on p. 139. 68 J. McMillan, Housewife or Harlot: The Place of Women in French Society, 1870–1940 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1981), pp. 2–4; Philippe Bernard and Henri Dubief, The Decline of the Third Republic, 1914–1938, trans. Anthony Forster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 249–50. 69 Durand, ‘Le Pèlerinage de Lisieux’, p. 79.

2 Modernity consecrated Architectural discourse and the Catholic imagination in Franquista Spain María González Pendás Soon after Francisco Franco’s death in 1975, the architect and critic Ignasí de Solá-Morales assessed the development of Spanish architecture during the Franquista dictatorship (1939–75). In an essay for the catalogue of the 1976 Venice Biennale, which was set out to chart Spanish avant-garde artistic practices during Franco’s regime, Solá-Morales recounted how a modernist language re-emerged in Spanish architecture during the 1950s. The starting point for his narrative was the contested demise of modernism after the Civil War (1936–39), due in part to the association of rationalist architecture with the liberal politics of the Second Republic, as in José Luis Sert’s and Luis Lacasa’s pavilion in the 1937 Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne in Paris.1 Amid the ‘pastiche of the old’ characteristic of the architecture of early Franquismo, Solá-Morales identified a 1954 project, never built, as the ‘origin’ of a new and refined strand of modernism.2 Designed by architects Javier Sáenz de Oiza and José Luis Romany together with the sculptor Jorge Oteiza, Solá-Morales argued that this project not only overturned the prevailing monumental neo-classicism but also went beyond mere rationalization and involved a particular aesthetic sensitivity to technology (Figure 2.1). With its lyrical, cantilevered steel structure floating over an open-ended stone plinth in a Castilian landscape, the level of abstraction in the design represented, in Solá-Morales words, the highest form of the ‘poetics of technology’ that would define much of the best Spanish architecture soon to come.3 Unremarked by Solá-Morales was the typology of this precursor project: the Camino Chapel was a pilgrimage church set alongside the Camino de Santiago, religious in nature. The role that the Catholic Church may have played in the so-called return of modernism in architecture during Franquismo likewise went unmentioned. The move hardly set Solá-Morales apart. Long engrossed in a deterministic view of secularization and the Enlightenment wherein religious regimes are seen as completely displaced by new rational structures and capital systems, historical narratives of architectural modernization rarely address religion, in Spain and elsewhere.4 And yet, as more recently documented in the scholarship, a multitude of religious commissions dominated architectural production during Franquismo,

Modernity consecrated 31

Figure 2.1 Collage. Javier Sánz de Oiza, José Luis Romany and Jorge Oteiza, Chapel in the Camino de Santiago, 1954 Source: Revista Nacional de Arquitectura 161, 1955, p. 12 (Permission granted by Biblioteca COAM, copyright holder of the publication)

ranging from chapels, cathedrals and war memorials, to schools and housing developments.5 Many of these early ecclesiastical projects followed the monumental and historicist tone set by the most conspicuous examples of official architecture, above all Franco’s megalomaniacal war memorial and eventual mausoleum, the Basilica del Valle de los Caídos (Valley of the Fallen) (Figure 2.2). But by the late 1950s, the fact that “the new architecture” could serve religious buildings was well accepted among designers and clerics, and, most importantly, sanctioned by the state. In addition to remarkable modern churches, above all by Miguel Fisac, groups such as the Movimiento de Arte Sacro (Sacred Art Movement) gathered architects, clerics and other artists and intellectuals to promote a variety of cultural initiatives through which to advance a renewal in both the arts and liturgical practices.6 By the time Franco died in 1975, the church had commissioned more than 500 modern buildings and numerous exhibitions, design competitions, conferences and publications, including about 15 special issues in architectural journals, had been dedicated to debate modernism and abstraction in the realms of sacred art and architecture (Figure 2.3). As was the case across Europe, the Catholic Church was a primary patron of the most innovative buildings during the second half of the twentieth century. But, unlike elsewhere in Europe, in Spain churches were at the ‘vanguard’ of the re-modernization of architecture, or so the argument goes, and the Camino Chapel epitomized as much.7

32  María González Pendás

Figure 2.2 Exterior View, Diego Mendez and Pedro Muguruza, Valle de los Caídos, Madrid, 1940–59 Source: @Patrimonio Nacional (Permission granted by Patrimonio Nacional)

Solá-Morales’s silence on the role the church played in this process cannot, however, be interpreted as a mere oversight. Conflicted by the necessity of presenting an architecture that had innovated both aesthetically and technologically while in association with a reactionary regime, the critic avoided all references to the underlying political agenda of architecture, instead accounting for it in merely formal terms and without examining what he called the ‘structural characteristics’ of its development.8 The intricacies of architectural and political ideologies in this case indeed ran deep. Throughout the dictatorship, the alliance between church and state was a bastion of Franco’s power and one of the more reactionary ones. Religion fed the regime’s distinct form of messianic nationalism, what was coded in terms of Nacional Catolicismo (National Catholicism) and was related to but also distinct from Italian Fascism and German National Socialism. While heavily dependent on the party, Falange, the Spanish variation of fascism relied on Catholicism to stand for nationalism and the rejection of liberalism, with the church acting as the basis for the regime’s moral legitimization and authoritarian mentality, conveying the regime’s ultraconservative policies and providing for mass mobilization and popular policing. Catholicism constituted what the historian of religion William Callahan has called the ‘ideological coagulant’ of the various right-wing factions that

Modernity consecrated 33

Figure 2.3 Cover of Arquitectura 2:7, May 1960, a special issue dedicated to new religious architecture showing the interior of a Paris church in Vitoria, by Miguel Fisac designed in 1957 Permission granted by Biblioteca COAM, copyright holder of the publication

supported Franco. As complex as civil-ecclesiastical ties were under Franquismo, a stronger and more regressive alliance between faith and nation could hardly be found elsewhere in the West at this point in time.9The architecture of the Camino Chapel was anything but regressive, to be sure, but any avant-gardism attributed to the forms of religious culture during Franquismo must be taken cautiously. Solá-Morales understood this well – and

34  María González Pendás chose to sidestep ideological analysis in order to praise the building’s aesthetic and technological value. For in order to unpack the progressive aesthetics of the Camino Chapel, one must first ask what was the discourse that underpinned the project and its ‘poetics of technology’? This chapter addresses this question by looking at the nexus of relationships that Solá-Morales turned away from – that is, at the intersection of architecture, culture and politics and, more specifically, the role that the Catholic Church played in the development of a distinct discourse of aesthetic modernism and technological modernization within the field of architecture. As is often the case in the history of religious architecture, and specially of modern religious architecture, typological and stylistic accounts of church design often omit the role religion plays within broader cultural narratives, and how these narratives have worked within institutional and political developments. The discursive dimension of religion was particularly poignant in the context of Franquismo, where the church provided not only patronage for building but also the main institutional armature through which to discuss ideas of cultural modernity. Catholicism, that is, was critical in forming the values and ideas that pertained to the stylistic and technological renewal of architecture – a debate that primarily took place within religious institutions through exhibitions, meetings, lectures, publications and designs. Historian of technology Lino Camprubí has argued for the ways in which National Catholicism both underpinned and was construed through the modernization of the country’s industrial and agricultural infrastructures, and hence by the engineers that conceived of and promoted these advances.10 Architects participated alongside engineers in this process of material development while, distinctively, architecture triggered an intellectual debate on aesthetics and culture that coupled modernizing ideals with those of Catholicism. This debate certainly led to the design of the Camino Chapel and the so-considered return of modernism to Spanish architecture.11Most significantly, however, the formation of this intellectual discourse helped the emergence of a new form of Catholicism that impacted the alliance of church and state in crucial ways. By presenting a fragment of this discourse as it emerged prior to 1954, I argue not only that the Catholic Church was a main patron of modern architecture but also that a particular narrative of architectural modernism redesigned the theological nature and political reach of Catholicism in Franquista Spain, with architects positing their work as a means to consecrate modernization itself. In time, the Camino Chapel crystallized this new form of Catholicism: a Catholicism with modernist aspirations but ultraconservative groundings that would become essential to the regime’s survival.

Eugeni d’Ors and the restrain of the avant-gardes The notion that Catholicism and architecture should join forces in a process of mutual renewal emerged alongside the New State. Franquismo’s very first

Modernity consecrated 35 cultural event was the Exposición Internacional de Arte Sacro (International Exhibition of Sacred Art), which opened the day after Franco’s Victory Parade under the premise of showcasing the Franquista ‘triumphant accord of beauty and faith’.12 Held in the sixteenth-century Villasuso Palace in the northern city of Vitoria between 22 May 22 and 5 August 1939, the show included exemplary works of art and architecture from across the Catholic world, organized by the National Fine Arts Services of the Ministry of Education and curated by its then director, the philosopher Eugeni d’Ors.13 Following the propaganda efforts of the nationals in the 1937 Exposition Internationale in Paris and the 1938 Venice Biennale, this exhibition drew upon Catholicism to construct Franco’s cultural image (Figure 2.4). This was hardly remarkable. The Second Republic had been defined by the

Figure 2.4 Cover of the catalogue for the International Exhibition of Sacred Art, Vitoria, 1939 Publication out of copyright, image by the author

36  María González Pendás controversial secularization of the state and by violent anticlericalism, infamously represented in a material manner by the burning of churches and the looting of sacred art. This anticlerical sentiment became sanguinary with the outbreak of the civil war, and the assassination of priests by anarchists starting in 1936 turned the war into a fully-fledged religious ‘Crusade’ – a trope that was commonplace in Franquista propaganda.14 Franco’s victory in 1939 represented in many ways the triumph of Catholic Spain over the liberal and secular factions of the country, and the church soon regained the institutional and social power it had lost under the Second Republic and assumed governing roles in culture and education.15 In his writings during the war, d’Ors had been instrumental in likening the material destruction of churches and religious art to the loss of cultural and spiritual capital at the hands of the left, and he likewise positioned the 1939 exhibition in these terms. For domestic purposes, the intent of the show was pedagogical, aiming to establish guidelines for the restoration and construction of churches and religious art objects in the aftermath of the war – precisely those objects whose destruction had been most symbolic. The exhibition displayed an impressive 1,200-plus art works gathered from churches and Catholic institutions from eleven different countries, including paintings, sculptures, stained glass, mosaics, vestments, ceramics and metalwork. The works were presented ‘as models of the best attempts and products offered by artists and artisans of the day’.16 With the range of media, d’Ors favoured craftsmanship over industrial production while acknowledging that a synthesis of the arts was inherent to Catholicism. The show also targeted an international support for the regime by proclaiming the ‘ecumenical’ and ‘universal’ nature of Catholicism and its art. The first room of the exhibition housed most of the architectural section, which contained about 100 photographs, models and drawings, while the exhibition also featured a bell tower and the model interior of a chapel built for the occasion. The main impetus behind the exhibition was to demonstrate the fundamental role Catholicism played in the conception of Franquismo, while conferring upon artists and architects a leading position in construing this relationship. As Pope Pius XI wrote in his consecration note for the event: ‘Let the work of architects, painters, sculptors, and craftsmen demonstrate the heightened religious fervour that inflames the soul of the New Spain’.17 As clear as these intentions were, the specific stylistic leanings through which to express the regime’s ‘inherent’ religious fervour were less so. Many of the objects were medieval or classic in style, while some paintings and posters revealed certain ambition towards abstraction, as in the work of Pere Pruna and Georges Rouault. While not completely giving up on figuration, these artists fulfilled d’Ors’s ambition to foster ‘a progressive movement’ in ecclesiastic art.18 It was in the architectural section, however, that d’Ors most clearly revealed his drive for the ‘new architecture,’ as was put at the time, and where he claimed to supply ‘examples of the new style,

Modernity consecrated 37 illustrated as much as possible through models and evocative drawings’.19 Most evocative were two axonometric drawings titled ‘Concrete, Glass and Marble Cathedral,’ Alberto Sartoris’s 1931 project for the Cathedral NotreDame du Phare in Fribourg, Switzerland (Figure 2.5), where a series of rectangular and gridded volumes rest on piloti, intersect irregularly with each other and, shown from above, appear as if suspended on an empty background. Only the title signalled the religious nature of the building. This was the ‘futurist’ diversion of religious architecture, or as was argued at the time, the objective and non-monumental interpretation of a cathedral.20 Other projects shown – by Auguste Perret, Fritz Metzger and Dominikus Böhm, among others – exemplified ways in which the latest building materials and compositional strategies were meant to serve a church building.

Figure 2.5  Axonometric. Alberto Sartoris, Notre-Dame du Phare, progetto per Friburgo, 1931. India ink on tracing paper Source: Archives de la construction moderne, École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, fonds Alberto Sartoris (permission granted)

38  María González Pendás D’Ors’s ambitions regarding religious renewal were not focused on architecture alone. The exhibition also included photographs and objects from the Benedictine Abbey of Maria Laach, in Germany, and works by architect Dom Bellot at the Abbey of Solesmes, in France – both of which were leading institutions in the Catholic Reform Movement that had been unfolding throughout Europe since the early twentieth century, aiming to bring the church into accord with processes of modernization, and calling for the aggiornamiento (bringing up to date) of Catholic practices. With his exhibition, d’Ors looked to engage the Spanish ecclesiastical hierarchy with this movement, which in Spain had been only marginally taken up in the Benedictine Montserrat Abbey in Catalunya.21 The architect in charge of the Montserrat’s renovation, Santiago Marco, was a close collaborator of d’Ors in the exhibition, as was cultural critic Jaques Lassaigne, who served on the exhibition advisory board. Lassaigne was a contributor to L’Art Sacré, the French journal leading the reform movement from the perspective of a twofold renewal of liturgy and the arts. Since 1937, the journal had launched a campaign against the populist mass production of the Catholic imaginary, an idea d’Ors also promoted in the exhibition, calling instead for Catholic culture to engage with the artistic avant-gardes.22 The August 1939 issue of L’Art Sacré included a review of the exhibition by Lassaigne, who positioned d’Ors’s efforts as in sympathy with the journal’s and deemed the show ‘one of the most important exhibitions in recent history’.23 Most significant for Lassaigne was the way in which d’Ors had interwoven space and aesthetics with the political and spiritual reconstruction of the torn nation. Indeed, the preeminent role d’Ors gave to architecture and how it informed his notion of culture cannot be underestimated. D’Ors had initiated his intellectual trajectory in the 1900s as the leading voice of Noucentisme, the Catalan movement that reacted to the liberalism of modernism with an alternative model of modernization based on a call to order. In tandem with the rise to power of the ultraconservative nationalist Lliga Regionalista (Regionalist League), d’Ors appealed to a new Catalan identity that was as metropolitan as it was anchored in an ideal Greco-Roman Mediterranean heritage based on rectitude and moderation in moral values and on order and classic proportion in aesthetics.24 D’Ors turned his holistic philosophy of aesthetics into a theory of architecture through the concept of the ‘Morphology of Culture,’ where he drew from the formalism of Heinrich Wölfflin and Jacob Burckhardt to identify form and ideology as the two sides of Culture – with a capital C, as the Hegelian spirit of the times. Through the Morphology of Culture, d’Ors wrote, Each particular work must be interpreted as a sign and index of a larger spiritual and stylistic complex. In each work, let us note this once again, the works merge with, and are equivalent to, the creation of artists, philosophers, men of science, men of state and captains.25

Modernity consecrated 39 It was in fact works of architecture that d’Ors considered the most perfect manifestation of Culture, where ‘the material, the intellectual and even the evangelical are manifest at the utmost level of collaboration and equilibrium’.26 The architectural style and construction system dominant in a particular time and place were for d’Ors a reflection of Culture, whereas aesthetic values were plausible in so far as they cohered with the prevailing moral and political values. In speaking of the spirit of the times, d’Ors referred specifically to governmental structures, to the ‘political forms’ architectural forms were translated into and derived from.27 D’Ors’s most salient evidence for his thesis was the pairing of the dome and centralized power, manifested in the emergence of the figure of the pope king in fifteenth-century Italy. The monarchy-dome equivalence represented, in d’Ors’s view, the prevalence of order in the Renaissance. In its turn, the disruptive and subjective aspects of avant-garde art were both effect and cause of the political and moral liberalism of the late nineteenth century. This amounted, in d’Ors’s vision, to an unspiritual and informal Culture. While critical of the avant-gardes in their presumed association with secularism, d’Ors was wary of historicist and pastiche approaches to art. His aim was for a conception of Culture that was both of-the-time modern and religious. The 1939 exhibition marks the moment in which d’Ors became receptive to avant-garde aesthetic currents, which he deemed as deserving attention only in so far as they could be drawn away from the ‘false path’ of liberalism within which they had emerged.28 Put differently, d’Ors posited that through a restraining redeployment of their innovative and fragmentary impulses, the repertoire of the avant-gardes could be retrofitted for religious purposes and hence be productive of a new Catholic Culture. The notion of tradition was d’Ors’ prime means of restraint, as best expressed in one of his most celebrated aphorisms: ‘Originality is not possible outside of Tradition. What is not Tradition is plagiarism’.29 Tradition allowed d’Ors to set boundaries on subjective creativity and speculative thinking, to mediate between individualists intentions of revolutionary potential and the literal copying of historical referents. In the combination of liturgical norms, ecclesiastic laws and moral dogma, the Catholic Church provided with the most convenient framework for tradition, at once legal, divine and trans-historical. It was thus in the context of sacred art that he was able to accept ‘with special sympathy. . . . new and beautiful forms’.30 Accordingly, for d’Ors, it was essential that the artist himself be Catholic – a contentious issue in the reform movement at the time on whether the religiosity of the artist guaranteed the sacredness of the work itself. The piety of the designer was of the essence for d’Ors, as he called artists to work with faith and ‘humility’ in order to control ‘the will toward a total rupture with the artistic forms of the past and the blind search for new forms’.31 The aim was, quite simply, to consecrate modernism and to curb genius with faith.

40  María González Pendás

Miguel Fisac’s consecrated modernism and the rise of Opus Dei The way in which d’Ors’s exhibition projected a tight bound of church and state fit comfortably the purposes of the nascent regime. But the reformist ethos that he called forth in aesthetics and liturgy was rather more at odds with the nature of the civic-ecclesiastic relationship dominant at the time, which took the most antimodern and rhetorical derivation possible. The architecture section of the show was received with scepticism, denounced as too ‘shocking’ and presenting a ‘strange novelty’.32 D’Ors left his government post soon after the show and the tendency in religious architecture remained within the historicist and ‘exuberant expressions’ of the Valle de los Caídos, what echoed a narrative of triumphalism and moral sovereignty explicit in pairing Franco with God. While in the margins of the state’s cultural apparatus, d’Ors’ thinking remained, however, ubiquitous, and his appeal to subordinate avant-garde forms of religion while reconsidering Catholicism itself would take other, less evidently official, routes.33 In architecture, it was Miguel Fisac who most effectively folded d’Ors’s ideas into a theory of architectural modernism and, while doing so, participated in the consolidation of a radically new Catholic institution: Opus Dei. Meaning the Work of God, Opus Dei was the lay Catholic movement founded by the priest José María Escrivá de Balaguer in Madrid in the late 1920s. Despite his later disdain for the institution, which he joined prior to the war and left in the mid-1950s, Fisac was an important actor during the period that saw a marginal group of lay men gathered around a charismatic priest gain remarkable influence. While continuously operating in the clandestine register of its origins, Opus Dei would become, as is best known, one of the most powerful branches of the Roman Catholic Church. But before that, Opus Dei proved crucial to Franquista politics. Despite the spectacle of a tightly organized confessional state, the animus that had built up against the church prior to the war was not completely eradicated after its conclusion in 1939. The re-Catholicization of the country during the early years of Franquismo was bombastic and certainly effective at a political level, but it remained rather superficial at a social level. Put simply, a large segment of the population remained religiously alienated. With d’Ors acting as an influential older voice, a few independent intellectuals and institutions aimed at alternatives to the ultraconservative bent of the mainstream religious hierarchy, rejecting its ineffectiveness in the pastoral reconstruction of society. Sociologist of religion José Casanova has argued for the deviation of the Spanish Church from a state-centred to a society-centred strategy, where the effect of religion was gradually transposed from the clergy towards laymen with a renewed cultural discourse on Catholicism.34 Launched through means other than the pulpit, that is, this new mode of Catholicism was less pompous and less explicit in binding Franquismo with God. But in so far as it became deeply ingrained in Spanish society and politics, it was eventually

Modernity consecrated 41 more effective. The two most significant institutions in yielding this turn were Acción Catolica, more directly related to the church hierarchy but expanding in its social reach and, distinctively Spanish and lay in nature, Opus Dei. With the founding of Opus Dei, allegedly following a divine revelation in 1928, Escrivá proposed a reform to both the institutional and theological dimensions of Catholicism, specifically in the unique tension he established between the material world, daily lay activities and the spiritual subject. Escrivá’s main theological basis called to recognize everyday life and, most crucially, one’s work as the primary locus of holiness and the basis for an ‘apostolate of a professional character’.35 Escrivá’s followers were not necessarily ordained, and ideally were not, but rather cultivated their faith in every sphere of daily life through the most orthodox of Catholic practices, such as sacrifice, confession, penitence and abstinence as the means to commune with God in the world. Opus Dei’s main characteristic was its innerwordly theology: the ways in which it vindicated a way of being in the world while abstaining from the worldly, bringing a ‘militant type of Protestantism’ together with orthodox Catholic asceticism.36 One of the most significant and least understood aspects of Opus Dei was the fact that its ultraconservative moral grounding and practices sustained a particular model of modernization.37 Folded into Catholic traditionalism was Escrivá’s ‘programmatic theory of the present’, as Casanova has put it, according to which Opus Dei members espoused the new professional elites and certain aspects of modernization as the means for their redemptive task.38 In this selective embrace of modernization, economic and technological progress was meant to coexist with messianic absolutes – and with the values and apparatus of the political right.39Throughout the 1950s, Franquismo went through several cabinet changes where non-party technocrats replaced military officials in order to bring about the rationalization of the government, its alignment with the democratic West and the liberalization of the market economy. It was no accident that these new state men largely belonged to Opus Dei, having entered the government after promoting technological, scientific and aesthetic modernization from within the ranks of academia. The model of reactionary modernism that they brought to bear, to borrow from Jeffrey Herf, allowed for a reorganization of the political and economic systems that, in the promise of spiritual self-fulfilment and religious redemption, deferred social progress as the ultimate end of modernization.40 In doing so, and in holding on to Catholicism as their ideological core, Opus Dei ideologues best suited the purposes of the regime at that point in time. Not only was Fisac instrumental in the conception and development of Opus Dei, as one of the few early followers of Escrivá, but also his architectural designs were crucial to the institutional development of the movement.41 Beginning with his very first solo project in 1943, the Church of the Holy Spirit in Madrid, Fisac gained a reputation for church building and the mouthpiece in everything pertaining to new religious architecture

42  María González Pendás (Figure 2.6). The building was also the cornerstone of the National Center for Scientific Research, the elite institution that served as a platform for the intellectual and social expansion of Opus Dei in the 1940s.42 Most relevant for the purpose of this story, however, was the fact that Fisac folded Escrivá’s theology and d’Ors’ Morphology of Culture into an architectural theory that, if not the articulation of an Opus Dei style per se, came nothing short of attempts at an Opus Dei mode of cultural discourse. In a series of conferences and articles beginning in 1948, including the variously published ‘Directions and Misdirections in contemporary Religious

Figure 2.6 Exterior view. Miguel Fisac, Chapel of the Holy Spirit for the National Research Council, Madrid, 1943. A drawing of the buildings on Montserrat around 1844 and images from paintings and engravings of the old buildings as they were before their destruction by the Napoleonic troops in early nineteenth century Source: Revista Nacional de Arquitectura, 78, 1948, p. 200 (permission granted by Biblioteca COAM, copyright holder of the publication)

Modernity consecrated 43 Architecture,’ Fisac articulated a critique and reformulation of architectural modernism in tandem with a critique and reformulation of the status of Catholicism. Echoing D’Ors’ parallel between built forms and society, Fisac argued that Spain merited a notion of culture based on a deep sense of order for which architects ought to strip off ornaments and historicist quotations in their buildings.43 As in the ‘Morphology of Culture’, for Fisac, architecture was a ‘portrait’ of society, and religious architecture was a reflection of the religiosity of the times.44 Accordingly, for Fisac, the status of religious architecture relative to secular architecture pointed to the role religion itself played in society. As for many before him, the Gothic cathedral was Fisac’s quintessential evidence of this thesis, as it exemplified a period in which architecture had not only encapsulated the zeitgeist but also an index of the prominence of religion in culture and politics. In his own era, however, the ‘expressive mode’ of churches revealed to Fisac a deep social crisis – a crisis of faith. Denouncing the functionalist bent in religious architecture across Europe, Fisac interpreted modernism as proof of the predominance of material over spiritual values. With side-by-side images of the Saint Charles Church in Lucerne by Fritz Metzger, which had been shown by d’Ors in 1939, and the interior of a swimming pool, Fisac claimed Catholicism itself was falling as low as this architecture, ‘to the level of cinemas and garages’.45 Modernist churches were for Fisac rightly of the times as they responded to rational planning, deployed the latest of building technologies and were less concerned with symbolic value than with function. But strict functionalism lacked a spiritual dimension, Fisac claimed, a type of ‘lyricism’ he could only describe as ‘that something else’.46 For Fisac, modernist churches signalled religion losing its once-leading role in society, but he still considered that the moment was ripe for Catholicism to take command over modernization – and to do so at a global scale, since communism and Protestantism, the ‘materialist theories’ as he referred to them, had failed in their liberatory ambitions. However, contemporary Catholicism was not yet spiritual or orthodox enough to take on its historical role of redeeming the world, as far as Fisac was concerned. Catholicism should cleanse itself in values, rites and forms. As he put it, In the Catholic world also, everything that is false falls, the dry and rotten branches fall, all the piety, all the whining, every empty pious book, it all falls. Thank God! All that is left, face to face, is Truth versus Lie, materialism versus the Gospel.47 Considered in relation to medieval Christian thought and pre-Romanesque architecture, for Fisac, the challenge of the day was to purge the world of the values and products of materialism. Likening the process of aesthetic abstraction to the quintessential Catholic value of asceticism, he claimed, ‘The pagan world has tarnished nature with sensualism and lust. The

44  María González Pendás Christian can no longer look at it. We need centuries of asceticism, so as to clean through penitence so much dirt.’48 The ways in which Fisac spoke of divesting architecture of ornament, of form following the program of the Mass and of a supposed truth-value for architecture both in material and moral terms, brought him all too close to the rationalist rhetoric he otherwise despised as empty materialism. For Fisac, modernism had certain validity; it was simply not perfected. As for d’Ors, the formal and technical repertoire of modernism could be salvaged by consecrating them – like the modern world itself. New religious architecture was not a matter of adapting new aesthetic and technological means to the layout of a church. The challenge was to permeate modernism itself with spiritual content, to ‘Christianise abstraction’, as Fisac later put it.49 Only in this manner could modern architecture aid in fulfilling the new challenges Catholicism faced under regimes of social modernity. For Fisac, the role of a church, as a building, was not only that of a container where religion occurred but also how it occurred to the faithful. That is, the materiality of the church was itself an instrument of religion, a mediator, so to speak, of religious feelings and beliefs. Moreover, the primordial vehicle to imbue an otherwise dehumanized architecture with that ‘something else’ was the architect: a good Catholic architect. Only a designer who was able to live and work like a true Christian could consecrate modernism. No theory or experience could help: ‘You get it by believing.’50 Drawing from d’Ors and Escrivá’s rhetoric in El Camino (The Way), the book of maxims first published in 1939 with a cover by Fisac, Fisac’s transferred Opus Dei values into the modernist tropes of liturgical functionalism, the truth-value of construction and abstraction, urging the redefinition of a ‘new way’ for art and architecture through asceticism. In his view, ‘the world is in need of humble purification,’ and stripping architecture off ornament was a means to achieve as much.51 The connection between a particular cultural ethos or discourse and Opus Dei ideology was hardly self-evident and that was very much the point of Opus Dei modus operandi. Fisac never referred to the relationship between his ideas and the organization, and he eventually left the movement, bitterly, in the mid-1950s, going as far as destroying all archival trace of his association. Yet, as he put it at one point, what brought him close to Escrivá was his reformist drive and the possibility of developing an ‘apostolate of the intelligence, an apostolate that could reach all fields of knowledge and artistic creation’.52 The ideas that Fisac articulated during the late 1940s and early 1950s were but part of this effort, aiming at an Opus Dei apostolate through architectural discourse. It was this discourse that Oiza adopted in designing the Camino Chapel in 1954, where this chapter began. The challenge for Oiza at the time, likewise, was to consecrate the forms, tropes and technologies of architectural modernism, but he went a step further in identifying more sophisticated building technologies as his source. Quoting the use of three-dimensional grid structures by Mies van der Rohe and Konrad Wachsmann, Oiza asked,

Modernity consecrated 45 ‘Is it not possible to fill in with spiritual content those clean forms that new techniques, at the forefront of all spheres of knowledge, provide?’53 To achieve this goal, Oiza, like d’Ors and Fisac before him, asked the architectural profession to reconsider its role and redefine it in sacred terms: ‘We must return to feeling architecture in terms of ministry service, and to conceive of the architect like a priest.’54 Extending Fisac’s claims from issues of ornament to issues of technology, Oiza conceived the Camino Chapel as the consecrated version of high-tension electricity poles, claiming the project was a nod to the infrastructures of the nation’s industrialization and in fact a ‘transformer of religious energy that receives from high above a renewed testimony to our faith’.55 For Oiza, the Camino Chapel brought technology under the banner of God and positioned Catholicism as the value system that ought to lead technological processes of modernization, crucial to Fisac’s fellow members of Opus Dei. While the Camino Chapel lacked the traditional markers of Catholic architecture, its ‘poetics of technology’ nonetheless signalled an ambition for a spiritual and evangelical power of technology, or for a consecrated technology, so to speak. In this, the Camino Chapel was a monument to Opus Dei ethics of modernization – an implicit symbolism Solá-Morales was unable to articulate. For it was above all in the apparent distancing of technological, political and religious registers where Opus Dei’s project and eventual success resided. And that was the gap that the Camino Chapel effectively widened. In all, the new lay and modern Catholicism emerging under Franquismo – as d’Ors advanced it, Fisac channelled it and the Camino Chapel articulated it – forged a particular cultural imagination, a value system and set of concepts that would certainly occupy aesthetic and discursive registers among the Spanish architectural intelligentsia far and beyond religious buildings in years to come.

Notes All translations are by the author unless otherwise noted. 1 Fernando Martín, ‘El Pabellón de la República Española en la Exposición Internacional de París, 1937,’ in Valeriano Bozal et al, eds., España. Vanguardia artítstica; Jordana Mendelson, Documenting Spain. Artists, Exhibition Culture and the Modern Nation, 1929–1939 (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University, 2005), pp. 125–184. 2 Ignasí Solá-Morales, ‘Arquitectura española contemporanea: balbuceos y silencios,’ in España. Vanguardia artítstica, pp. 198. See also Alexander Cirici, La estética del franquismo (Barcelona: Gustavo Gili, 1977), p. 41. 3 Solá-Morales, ‘Arquitectura española contemporánea’, p. 197. 4 Sociologists and anthropologists have challenged the enlightenment thesis of secularism for quite some time, most critically following Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007) and Talal Asad, The Formations of the Secular (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003). As in other fields entangled with processes and narratives of technological modernization, architectural history has been slow to engage with this debate. Marginal but important arguments on the religious dimension of modernism in architectural theory have been made by Richard Wittman, “The Hut and the Altar: Architectural

46  María González Pendás Origins and the Public Sphere in Eighteenth-Century France,” Studies in Eighteenth Century Culture, 36:1 (2007), pp. 235-259; Fritz Neumeyer, The Artless Word: Mies van der Rohe on the Building Art (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1994) and Renata Hedjuck, The Religious Imagination in Modern and Contemporary Architecture (New York: Routledge, 2011). For religion and postmodernism see Jorge Otero-Pailos, Architecture’s Historical Turn: Phenomenology and the Rise of the Postmodern (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), pp. 25–99. A larger scholarship exists in the history of religious architecture per se, which diverges from addressing religion in the development of modernism I here propose. See for instance Richard Kieckhefer, Theology in Stone and Julio Bermudez, ed., Transcending Architecture: Contemporary Views on Sacred Space (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2015). A recent collective study of unexplored and unexpected religious spaces is in Anthony Acciavatti, Justin Fowler and Dan Handel, ‘Kingdoms of God’, Manifest, 2 (2015). 5 Eduardo Delgado Orusco, Entre el suelo y el cielo. Arte y arquitectura sacra en España, 1939–1975 (Segovia: Fundación SEK, 2006) and Esteban Fernández Cobián, El espacio sagrado en la arquitectura española contemporanea (Santiago de Compostela: Colexio Oficial de Arquitectos de Galicia, 2005). Scholarship on the prominence of religious commissions in the second post-war is fast expanding, see specially Robert Proctor, Building the Modern Church: Roman Catholic Church Architecture in Britain, 1955 to 1975 (Farnham, Surrey:Ashgate, 2014) and Gretchen Buggeln, The Suburban Church: Modernism and Community in Postwar America (Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minesotta Press, 2015) 6 Elena García Crespo and Eduardo Delgado Orusco, ‘Father Aguilar and His Time: The Challenge of Today’s Artists and the Church Today’, Cultural Heritage, 44 (2006), p. 51–70. 7 Eduardo Delgado Orusco Arquitectura Sacra Española, 1939–1975: De la Posguerra al Concilio (Ph.D. Dissertation, Madrid: Universidad Politecnica, 1999), p. 22. 8 Solá-Morales, ‘Arquitectura española contemporánea’, p. 192. 9 William J. Callahan, The Catholic Church in Spain, 1875–1998 (Catholic University of America Press), p. 351, 383; Javier Tusell, Franco y los Católicos (Madrid: Alianza Editorial), p. 80. For an argument on the need to expand the historical understanding of fascism beyond its canonical German and Italian models, and an analysis of a Catholic-based mode of fascism in 1930s Argentina, see Federico Finchlestein, Transatlantic Fascism. Ideology, Violence, and the Sacred in Argentina and Italy, 1919–1945 (Durham : Duke University Press, 2010). 10 Lino Camprubi, Engineers and the Making of the Francoist Regime (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2014), 9. 11 I have elsewhere unpacked the deceptive implications behind the notion of a ‘return of modernism’ and the productive relationship between architectural modernism and the Franquista regime in María González Pendás, “Apátridas Architectures: Candela, Sert, and the Return of the Modern to Postwar Spain,” in Coming Home? Conflict and Return Migration in the Aftermath of Europe’s Twentieth-Century Civil Wars, ed. by Sharif Gemies and Scott Soo (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2013), p. 52–69; and “Politics of the Void: Franquista Spain at Expo’58,‘ in Architecture of Great Expositions 1937– 1959: Messages of Peace, Images of War, ed. by Rika Devos, Alexander ORtenberg, and Vladimir Paperny (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2015), p. 161–77. 12 ABC, May 23, 1939, p. 13.

Modernity consecrated 47 13 Eugeni d’Ors (1881–1954) had been secretary of the Institut d’Estudis Catalans and director of the Departament d’Instrucció Pública de la Mancomunitat de Catalunya before the war. In 1937, he co-founded the first Franquista Section of Press and Propaganda, and in 1938, he was appointed chief of the General Service of Beaux Arts of the Education Ministry, in which capacity he was also in charge of the Spanish contribution to the 1938 Venice Biennale. 14 For thorough study of the propaganda wars and the various visual manifestations of the conflict as crusade, see Miriam Basilio, Visual Propaganda, Exhibitions, and the Spanish Civil War (Burlington, NY: Ashgate, 2013). A most recent critical reassessment of the relationship of art and politics during Franquismo, is Maria Dolores Jiménez-Blanco, Campo Cerrado. Arte y poder en la posguerra española, (Madrid: Museo de Arte Reina Sofia, 2016) a catalogue of the fielddefining exhibition of the same name. 15 Callahan, The Catholic Church, 349. 16 EIAS, Catálogo de la Exposición Internacional de Arte Sacro, (Zarauz: Ministerio de Educacion, Jefatura Nacional de Bellas Artes, 1939), p. 18. Art history literature on the period often includes mention of this exhibition but little attention has been given to the specifics of the show. Only Miriam Basilio, Re-inventing Spain: Images of the Nation in Painting and Propaganda, 1936–1943 (Ph.D. Dissertation, New York University, 2002) and Andere Larrinaga, ‘La Exposición Internacional de Vitoria de 1939: Un híto artístico en la posguerra española,’ Ondare 25 (2006), pp. 221–32, look at the show in some detail, in both cases with the emphasis put on painting. 17 ‘Bendicion de Su Santidad Pio XI,’ Vatican, February 9, 1939, in EIAS, p. 3. 18 EIAS, p. 30. 19 Ibid., p. 38. 20 ‘L’architecture nouvelle et l’église’, Anthologie, 19:1 (November 1938), pp. 10–11; op.cit Christopher Adams et al. (eds.), Piety and Pragmatism: Spiritualism in Futuristic Art (Roma: Gangemi Editore, 2010). 21 Josép-María García-Fuente, La construcción del Montserrat Moderna (PhD Dissertation, Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, 2012). 22 Françoise Caussé, ‘La critique architecturale dans la revue L’Art Sacré (1937– 1968)’, in Livraisons d’histoire de l’architecture 2 (September 2001), pp. 27–36. 23 Jaques Lassagne, ‘Une esposition internationale d’art sacré in Espagne’, in L’Art Sacré (August 1939), pp. 245–6. 24 José Luis Aranguren, La filosfia de Eugenio d’Ors (Madrid:Espasa Calpe, 1981); Laura Mercader et al. (eds.), Eugenio d’Ors del arte a la letra (Madrid: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, 1997); and Mendelson, Documenting Spain, pp. 5–15. 25 Eugeni d’Ors, Teoría de los Estilos y Espejo de la Arquitectura (Madrid: Aguilar), p. 76. 26 Ibid., p. 244. 27 Ibid., p. 203. 28 Pensamiento Alavés, May 20 1939, p. 3. 29  ’Glosari. Aforística de Xènius I-XIV,’ La Veu de Catalunya, 31-X-1911. 30 EIAS, p. 29. 31 Ibid., p. 31. 32 Pensamiento Alaves, August 4, 1939, 19. 33 For d’Ors’s relevance during Franquismo see Gabriel Ureña, Las vanguardias artísticas de la posguerra española (Madrid: Istmo, 1982), p. 19; Julián Díaz Sánchez and Angel Llorente. La Crítica de Arte en España, 1939–1976 (Madrid: Istmo, 2004), p. 47. Rare in the scholarship, an analysis of the effect of d’Ors’ philosophy in the younger generation of architects in Spain, with a focus on the

48  María González Pendás concept of Mediterraneidad is in Jean-Francoise Lejeune, ‘The Modern and the Mediterranean in Spain Sert, Coderch, Bohigas, de la Sota, Del Amo’, in Modern Architecture and the Mediterranean. Vernacular Dialogues and Contested Identities (London: Routledge, 2010), p. 65–94. 34 José Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), p. 81. 35 Jose María Escrivá de Balaguer, El Camino [1939] (Madrid: Rialp, Kindle ed.), maxim 347. 36 Callahan, The Catholic Church, p. 427. 37 José Casanova, The Opus Dei Ethic and the Modernization of Spain (Ph.D. Dissertation, New York: New School for Social Research, 1982), p. 241. 38 Ibid., p. 270. 39 José Casanova, ‘The Opus Dei Ethic, the Technocrats and the Modernization of Spain,’ in Social Science Information, 22:27 (1983), p. 29. 40 Jeffrey Herf, Reactionary Modernisms: Technology, Culture, and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984). 41 Ramón V. Díaz del Campo, Miguel Fisac: arquitecto, teórico, artista (Ph.D. Dissertation, Universidad Castilla la Mancha, 2009), pp. 98–102, 107–37. 42 The literature on Fisac’s architecture is extensive, yet it invariably focuses on formal and technical analyiss of the works and celebratory biographical accounts that pay little attention to ideology critique, much to his aliance with Opus Dei. See, for instance, Francisco Soler, Miguel Fisac (Madrid: Pronaos, 1996). For Fisac’s religious architecture see Felipe Morales, Arquitectura Religiosa de Miguel Fisac (Madrid: Libreria Europa, 1960) and F. G. Cuéllar, La obra artística de Fisac, Adsuara y Stolz en la Iglesia del Espíritu Santo (Madrid: CSIC, 2007). For an argument on Fisac’s formative role on Opus Dei and the intellectual and architectural development of CSIC in the 1940s, see Alberto Moncada, Historia Oral del Opus Dei (Barcelona: Plaza y Janes, 1992) and Camprubi, Engineers, pp. 44–55. 43 Miguel Fisac,’Lo clásico y lo español’, Revista Nacional de Arquitectura, VIII: 78, (June 1948), pp. 198–7. 44 Migiel Fisac, ‘Orientaciones y desorientaciones de la arquitectura religiosa actual’, Arbor, 12:39 (March 1949), p. 380. 45 Ibid., image page. 46 Ibid., p. 388. 47 Ibid., p. 389. 48 Miguel Fisac, ‘El mundo necesita arte abstracto’, Correo Literario, November 1, 1953, p. 13. 49 Miguel Fisac, ‘Problemas de la Arquitectura Religiosa Actual’, Arquitectura, 1:4 (April 1959), p. 6. 50 Fisac, ‘Orientaciones y desorientaciones’, p. 388. 51 Fisac, ‘El mundo necesita arte abstracto’, p. 13. 52 Moncada, Historia Oral del Opus Dei, p. 93. 53 Javier Saénz de Oiza, ‘Catedral in Madrid’, Revista Nacional de Arquitectura 12:23 (March 1952), p. 40. 54 Ibid., p. 36. 55 Ibid., p. 34.

3 The construction of modern Montserrat Architecture, politics and ideology Josep-Maria Garcia Fuentes The modern architectural construction of the monastery of Montserrat in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was a singular process. It ran parallel to the symbolic and material reconstruction of the Catalan and Spanish monasteries after the Mendizábal decree of 1835, which ordered the state confiscation of church properties. As a result of this decree, the upkeep of the church properties was neglected and many fell into ruin. Then, while the overall structure of the state was being rethought, it was sought to impose a grand modern symbolism on the network of monasteries by overlapping their various readings beyond the limits of their religious significance. This endeavour was hotly contested by diverse cultural and political groups which fought among themselves to capitalize on the monasteries’ symbolism, leading nevertheless to the reconstruction of some of these buildings. In the case of Montserrat, the reconstruction was a complex process involving the newly reinstated community of monks and various social and cultural groups. The process was moreover shaped by a lack of information on the medieval monastery, which had been destroyed in the course of the Peninsular War (1807–14). This made it necessary to develop a new architectural model for the project, to obtain funding and to raise the necessary widespread support among the people. What’s more, the architectural model of the reconstruction changed several times, always remaining tied to the intricate negotiation process on the symbolism of the monastery and of the strange mountain where it stands. This is exemplified by Antoni Gaudí’s use of the mountain as an architectural model for his religious buildings in general and for his projects at Montserrat itself. A complex architectural model finally came to be applied which was related to the Benedictine plan while combining different revivals and architectural styles which aimed to recreate an idealized history of Catalonia that would be closely connected to the history of the monastery and of the Catholic religion. Accordingly, Montserrat may be considered the result of a complex process of defining an invented tradition – to use Hobsbawn’s well-known expression1 – that was closely linked to the modern construction of Catalonia and Spain at large. This is not, however, a static tradition that was created in a set form and preserved but rather a dynamic one that evolved and

50  Josep-Maria Garcia Fuentes changed in step with the social, political and cultural changes affecting both these territories. As will be shown, what Montserrat has symbolized at any given time, is the outcome of a complex process of debate and negotiation between all the agents who felt represented by it. These actors have always taken part in the construction process in defence of their own interests. The process began in 1844, when permission was granted to reopen the shrine and to re-install the Madonna in the monastery’s church. It may be noted, however, that the Queen Regent’s authorization did not actually allow the reopening of the monastery but only the establishment of a small group of priests leaded by a ‘president’ who would care for the church and the other buildings, since religious orders remained forbidden in the country under the Mendizábal decree. After years of abandonment following its confiscation in 1835, the church was in a deplorable state of repair.2 The monastery had been all but destroyed by the Napoleonic army in the Peninsular War and the long years in which it had remained uninhabited accelerated its deterioration. The only serious attempt to rebuild Montserrat had been the architect Antoni Cellers’s partial project for the reconstruction of the church in 1829. Thus in 1844, a great effort was required, not only to obtain financial resources for the reconstruction of the buildings in ruins but also to achieve the full reopening of both the shrine and the monastery itself. To make matters worse, the political and social context hardly favoured this enterprise because of the constant tension and alternation between the liberal and conservative parties in Spain throughout the agitated nineteenth century. There was yet one more problem, however, and it was of an architectural nature. The shortage of accurate documents and plans of the whole set of buildings destroyed during the Peninsular War made not possible to allow their reconstruction. Beyond the imprecise representations in the profuse paintings versions of the Madonna of Montserrat,3 the only information available of the destroyed architecture were the few partial views by Alexandre L. J. de Laborde on his plates for the Voyage pittoresque et historique de l’Espagne (Picturesque and Historic Trip to Spain), taken just a few years before the destruction ensue (Figure 3.1).4 This lack of documentation, together with the fact that the destroyed architecture was not a canonical architecture as would have allowed the original state-of-the buildings to be established by a study of the ruins or of minor vestiges that had been preserved, made almost impossible any attempt to rebuild what had been destroyed. Making a possible reconstruction all the more complex, at the time of their destruction, the old monastery and the shrine had been undergoing a process of major change in which the medieval structures were being refurbished to lend them a new monumental air in line with the austere models of nineteenth-century military architecture. In other words, the buildings had been destroyed in the midst of a transformation, as could be seen from the various alignments and volumes of the remaining ruins. Of course, the eighteenth-century buildings and the church (which dated from the fifteenth century) were the structures

The construction of modern Montserrat 51

Figure 3.1 A drawing of the buildings on Montserrat around 1844 and images from paintings and engravings of the old buildings as they were before their destruction by the Napoleonic troops in early nineteenth century

that had been best able to withstand the gunpowder explosions and fires in the Peninsular War, while the medieval structures had proved more fragile. What could be done in the face of this situation? Should an attempt be made to complete the monumental buildings and preserve the medieval ruins or should they be rebuilt? The lack of documents and the absence of

52  Josep-Maria Garcia Fuentes a canonical architecture made this decision even harder since stronger arguments than architectural ones alone were called for. Whatever the case, it was necessary to devise a new architecture – that is to say, to invent a new building that would rise from the existing ruins. The dilemma arose with the first attempts to rebuild the complex and the initial decisions that were made. Just after reopening the shrine and the church, some minor works were begun that highlighted the misgivings of the priests in charge of the buildings and their architects. A case in point, was an episode involving the intervention of the young architect Elies Rogent, who passionately defended the preservation of the ancient Gothic cloister ruins which were about to be demolished in accordance with the initial idea of consolidating the monumental vestiges and using them as a model for future developments.5 This was one of the first manifestations of Catalan Romanticism and the associated positive reappraisal of medieval architecture.

The initial projects This situation, which offered no clear solution owing to the many social, political and architectural challenges involved, changed when a young Víctor Balaguer (1824–1901) began to be interested in Montserrat in the 1850s. His interest in Montserrat might seem surprising since he was a promising young journalist and a romantic writer who soon became a prominent liberal politician, writer, historian and Freemason, and arguably the foremost inventor of Catalonia’s and Spain’s national symbols in the nineteenth century.6 The explanation is that Montserrat was a key reference in the ambitious political, social and cultural plan that Balaguer sought to unfold in the course of his life. Víctor Balaguer, who called himself the ‘Troubadour of Montserrat’ from an early age, dreamed of creating a new federal nation comprising all the peoples of Spain and Portugal. This idea had parallels in the Italian reunification process as well as in Victor Hugo’s dream of a ‘pan-Latin’ federation. Balaguer’s political proposal for a federal system, however, allowed for the coexistence of both Catalan and Iberian nationalism since he was also an active Catalan politician who attempted to reinvent Catalonia’s glorious past as a model for its future institutions. In many of his books and texts (mainly in the earliest ones written as a youth on his travels throughout Europe), Balaguer reflected broadly on the relationship between peoples and their heritage and monuments which, to his mind, tell us of the history of nations, of ‘their memories’ and of their traditions which are ‘invented by poetry and conserved by credulity’.7 Noting that all nations could be defined by their monuments, he tried to build a new reference system to bolster the federal nation he sought to create. According to Balaguer, this ambitious symbolic system was to be based on the monasteries because, as he himself explained in an early work entitled Los frailes y sus conventos . . . (The Friars and their Monasteries. . .), an ‘eminent traveller [. . .] told us, summarizing his travels and having visited

The construction of modern Montserrat 53 almost all the nations in the world,“the Orient is a palace, France is a castle, Italy is a garden and Spain is a cloister” ’.8 This book gives detailed histories and descriptions along with tales and traditions of many Spanish monasteries with a view to reinventing and reconceptualizing them as places of importance in the definition of ‘we’. In his subsequent works, Balaguer managed to create and relate other networks to this main one in Spain. In Cuatro perlas de un collar. Historia tradicional y artística de todos los célebres monasterios catalanes (Four Pearls of a Necklace. A Traditional and Artistic History of All the Celebrated Catalan Monasteries),9 he focused precisely on the great Catalan monastic complexes. Lastly, in other articles and books, he centred on Montserrat, which he felt was the most important monastery of all. Thus Balaguer sought to turn Montserrat into the foremost element of his political, social and cultural project for an Iberian Federation. In the symbolic universe, based on his personal interpretation of the dilapidated and forgotten Catalan and Spanish monasteries, the most important element was Montserrat owing to the multiplicity of interpretations that could be attributed to the unique mountain where the monastery and the shrine stand.10 His special interpretation of the mountain of Montserrat and his exceptional interest in it were grounded in the Romantic approach to Montserrat taken by Wilhem von Humboldt on his visit there in 1800,11 a few years before the destruction of the old buildings by Napoleon’s troops. For the German Romantics, who were not at all interested in the Madonna, the shrine or the monastery but rather in the mountain itself and especially both the landscapes that could be seen there and from there, the strange mountain quickly became proof that it was possible to define a new spirituality over and above the existing religions. This original understanding of Montserrat, which was quite probably known to Balaguer, made it possible to turn it into a symbol shared ‘by all’ at one time, a symbol beyond its religious significance. Balaguer considered Montserrat a potential ‘symbol for all’, religion aside, thanks to its capacity for being shared by Catholics and non-Catholics, by religious and non-religious groups and ultimately by as many social, political and cultural collectives as possible. This potential, which had been revealed by the German Romantics, was soon recognized by the Catalan Romantics as well. In addition to this original understanding and to the books cited earlier, Balaguer used other devices and tools to foster his political and symbolic system. These tools included the newspaper which he founded and directed entitled La montaña de Montserrat (The Mountain of Montserrat) other literary works and particularly the use of his political and social influences to promote the preservation of the ruins of different monasteries, such as Ripoll, or their artistic reconstruction as in the case of Montserrat.12 It may be noted that Balaguer also tried to replace the social taste for classical models with a Romantic appreciation of Gothic architecture. For Balaguer, Gothic architecture represented the liberal world of the medieval cities while the

54  Josep-Maria Garcia Fuentes local elites considered that it stood for the recovery of medieval Catalonia’s and Barcelona’s splendour, evoking a time when the city had dominated trade in the Mediterranean. In keeping with these ideas, Balaguer photographed himself with a narrow focus before the ruins of the Gothic cloister to create the illusion that the cloister was complete. These same ideas influenced many projects for the reconstruction of different monasteries. In accordance with his national imaginary, Balaguer considered that the works at Montserrat should be funded by a popular subscription headed by the Queen of Spain, with himself as secretary. The subscription was set up in 1857 and just after its creation, the first architectural projects were discussed. Of course, all of these strategies were looked upon with approval by the small group of priests in charge of the church at Montserrat, who were on close terms with Balaguer since his initiatives represented the best way of consolidating their religious community and of continuing with the reconstruction works. Given these circumstances, without Balaguer’s support, a project like this would have been impossible. Despite these advances in the political and social consolidation of Montserrat’s symbolism, however, the doubts on architectural matters remained unresolved, as was revealed by the project drafted after the establishment of the popular subscription in 1857. The works were commissioned by the committee in charge for the popular subscription to the architect Francisco de Paula Villar and were soon begun with the consolidation of the church or, more precisely, with the transformation of its neoclassical decoration into the Gothic style. So while respecting and preserving the overall architectural structure, all of its details were Gothicized. This change on the architectural language of the church was understood in moral terms by both the architect Villar and the priests in charge of the shrine and the monastery. They considered the classical and neoclassical styles to be ‘pagan’ while deeming the Gothic and the ‘Byzantine’ styles to be those which best evoked the ‘Christian’ or ‘Catholic’ character.13 This understanding clearly differs from the values associated by Balaguer to the Gothic architecture that have been noted earlier. Nevertheless, the entire project of the shrine and monastic complex could not be conceived in the ‘Gothic’ style for two main reasons. The first of these involved an architectural consideration: not only was it hard to develop a general project in Gothic style for the whole irregular set of both medieval and eighteenth-century ruins but also there was the challenge of relating this architecture to the very special nature of the mountain of Montserrat. Secondly, the popular subscription posed grave financial problems since the funds it raised were insufficient, even with the Queen’s support. In fact, the combined funds of the subscription and the royal donation did not even suffice to refurbish the church. The project of 1857 evolved in step with the constantly changing political and social contemporary context in Spain, as well as with Balaguer’s different roles within the different situations. In 1870, after a tumultuous period marked by the exile of Queen Isabella II and the Glorious Revolution of 1868, the Spanish crown was offered to Amadeus of Savoy, the son of the

The construction of modern Montserrat 55 king of Italy. Balaguer, one of the members of the official Spanish committee that travelled to Italy to meet Prince Amadeus, was soon to become a minister and a strong supporter of the new king. This was probably when Balaguer’s dream of an Iberian Federation came closest to becoming a reality. It is not surprising that the new king visited the shrine on the mountain in the company of the ‘Troubadour of Montserrat’ or that this visit led to the drafting of a new architectural project which was more ambitious than that of 1857. The new project envisaged the Gothic transformation of the church’s austere exterior as well as the enlargement of the church by means of a new and exuberant camarín chapel. However, the camarín designed by Villar was not of the traditional type. The most common camarín found in many churches along the eastern and southern coasts of Spain in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries consisted on a chapel set above and behind the high altar which was designed to accommodate a sacred image, usually a Madonna, and it formed part of the altarpiece or set within an exterior volume of a tower or campanile.14 The new camarín at Montserrat by Villar was to be placed within an exterior volume added to the church but the architect designed a triple apse to this end instead of a traditional tower. The large main apse in the centre, encompassing the interior volume of the camarín itself, was set about three metres above the church floor, with two small apses placed on either side to house stairways which gave access to the chapel from inside the church. Both the volume and organization of the new camarín seemed to recall the Chapel of the Holy Shroud in the Royal Palace of Turin, intensifying the symbolism and hopes for the new king from Italy. Beyond this ambitious new project for the church, however, the architect did not propose a design for the monastery as a whole. The definition of the overall project for the whole set of the monastery and the shrine and its relationship to the strange mountain still continued to pose the architectural challenge of building the modern Montserrat. Be that as it may, the project of 1871 was never realized because King Amadeus’s reign ended abruptly with his abdication in 1873. This marked the end of Balaguer’s dream since Amadeus’s abdication was accompanied by the collapse of the federal project and the upsurge of various nationalist movements, most of which were of a strongly secular character. Despite this new context, Miquel Muntadas – by now officially recognized as the abbot of Montserrat’s religious community – decided to commence construction of the new camarín according to the project plans of 1871. However, the social and political obstacles and financial problems impeded the progress of the works, which moved ahead quite slowly.

Towards a dilemma of styles: one same architecture – Romanesque or Gothic, depending on opinions The situation changed again with the appearance of a conservative group of clerics with political ambitions based in the town of Vic (near Barcelona), called ‘El grup de Vic’ or the Vic Group (Figure 3.2). Said group was

Figure 3.2 Left: Víctor Balaguer in front of the ruins of Montserrat’s Gothic cloister with other poets and writers from Catalonia and Provence in 1868. Centre: The project for the new camarín chapel. Right: The Vic Group in front of the new ‘Romanesque’ apses of Montserrat

The construction of modern Montserrat 57 concerned about early Catalan nationalism’s secularity and took advantage of the prevailing circumstances. Seeking to define a new Catholic Catalan nationalism, the Vic Group appropriated the symbolic universe that Balaguer had created in connection with the great Catalan monasteries, changing its meaning to suit their needs. In this way, the Vic Group sought to turn Balaguer’s open reference system into a symbolic reference for the Catholic Catalans alone, excluding all others.15 According to the political ideas of these clerics, Catalan nationalism was inseparable from Catholicism, as was demonstrated by the history of the monasteries – they considered that the birth of Catalonia as a nation was directly linked to the building of the first monasteries on Catalan territory. With this idea in mind, the Vic Group organized two large popular festivals at Montserrat in 1880 and 1881, seeking to invent a new tradition and to dramatize the close relationship which it wished to reshape between the holy image venerated at the monastery, the Catalan nationalist political movement, the mountain of Montserrat and the Catalan landscape.16 To achieve this goal, passions were purposely inflamed in the period leading up to the festivals by means of an intense campaign in a newspaper founded to this end, La Veu del Montserrat (The Voice of Montserrat). The group organized several activities and popular pilgrimages to the shrine and the mountain that were used to request donations to complete the construction of the new camarín. It is interesting to note the particular way that the Vic Group referred to the camarín chapel, since they did not consider it to be in the Gothic style but rather in the Romanesque. Jaume Collell – the leading ideologist of the Vic Group – wrote that the new camarín is ‘in the Romanesque style with some modifications out of keeping with its character’.17 These ‘modifications’, of course, were the dominant Gothic elements of the project, as have just been mentioned. The building and its architecture were the same, but they were understood in a completely different way. This change in the understanding and appraisal of architectural styles was one of the main distinctions between Balaguer and the Vic Group. While Balaguer was largely interested in Gothic architecture, the Vic Group focused on the Catalan Romanesque – which was being defined for the first time at that moment – and strove to foster the taste for it. The works on the new camarín chapel could not be completed, however, since the popular donations simply did not cover the construction budget. This situation, however, was also the result of the strategy of the Vic Group which considered what it called its first ‘patriotic-religious campaign’ at Montserrat to be merely the first step in their plans to define and spread a new imaginary around the Catalan monasteries and landscape. After Montserrat, a second and more ambitious ‘campaign’ began, involving the reconstruction of Ripoll monastery (held to be Catalonia’s most ancient religious foundation and the birthplace of the Catalan nation) in an idealized Romanesque style. By means of this second ‘campaign’, the Vic Group not only sought to intensify its social impact but also to distinguish its ‘campaign’ from Balaguer’s project.

58  Josep-Maria Garcia Fuentes It should be emphasized that the Vic Group’s Montserrat campaign produced many social and cultural tensions among people who felt themselves represented by the monasteries and especially Montserrat. Some writers and journalists such as Valentí Almirall spoke out against the Catalan Church’s attempt, led by the Vic Group, to appropriate their symbols for the Catholics and the Church alone, symbols which had first been claimed and aggrandized by Balaguer. In other words, these people were opposed to the appropriation by a few of ‘what belonged to all’.18 The result of these campaigns and tensions was to popularize the monasteries and particularly the mountain of Montserrat.

The ‘miracle’ of Catalonia These tensions thus came to mark the popularization of the strange mountain beyond its religious significance among the Catalan people at large and not just the elites, as had been Balaguer’s aim. The ‘Catalanist culture’19 began to take shape in the 1880s and 1890s, and different social and political groups avid of symbolism and imaginaries looked to the mountain of Montserrat for the symbol they were seeking. The activities that became popular at that time included those of the first excursionist associations, which brought more visitors to Montserrat, primarily from an interest in the natural and bizarre qualities of the mountain rather than in its religious significance. Many of these groups, mainly those organized as associations of scientific excursionist with cultural and political aims, were eager to contemplate Montserrat’s unique natural qualities, taking pleasure in its landscapes while considering the mountain to be a unique vantage point and a sort of scientific observatory. So while groups connected with the church spread their ideas through pilgrimages and festivals, these other groups made use of alternative devices such as walks, picturesque trips or panoramas. Indeed, in nineteenth-century Europe, panoramas such as the one built for the Universal Exposition of Barcelona in 1888 were one of the most important tools for spreading knowledge among the masses. The panoramas consisted of a painting on a large canvas presenting a 360° view, with its ends joined to form a full circle, which could be as much as 15 metres tall and which was exhibited in a purpose-built structure so that its enveloping effect instilled the viewer with an intense sensation of amazement and of immersion in what was represented. What was represented on the canvas used to tell an historic or realistic narrative and became a spectacle that attracted visitors in large numbers thanks to the realism of their simulacrum. The panorama on Montserrat built in 1888 reproduced the simulacrum of an excursion to Montserrat, and it clearly lent primary significance to the enjoyment of the views while reducing its single image of the church to a little diorama of secondary importance in which a large lectern obscured the Virgin Mary, who is venerated there.20

The construction of modern Montserrat 59 Panoramas, like postcards or guides for picturesque walks, among other devices, became key mediators between people, the mountain and the monastery during the last two decades of the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth. In this way, by the end of the nineteenth century, Montserrat had become a popular symbol for many different groups, which led inevitably to conflicting ways of understanding the mountain. For example, taking advantage of the circumstance that the mountain was still under disentailment, a group of businessmen, backed by Víctor Balaguer, decided to build a rack railway running from the railway line at the foot of the mountain to its summit, where they hoped to build a scientific observatory or, as some called it, a Temple of Science. The rack railway was finished in 1892, catalyzing fruitful tensions in the different ways of understanding the mountain. These tensions were augmented by the construction of various vantage points about the mountain, built next to the new restaurants and beside the hermitages that had been restored by the monks and the church to emphasize the mountain’s sacred character – of course, the new hermitages were rebuilt in the Romanesque style in keeping with the Vic Group’s imaginary. The enthusiasm for ascending the mountain was further encouraged by the plan to install several lifts, some of which would even be excavated into the mountain itself, but these plans never saw the light of day. Indeed, by the end of the nineteenth century, the passion for Montserrat was so great that some social groups even built small replicas of the mountain, such as the one installed in Barcelona’s Ciutadella Park in 1895 (Figure 3.3). All these initiatives were viewed with concern by the monks and other Catholic groups who, under the leadership of the Vic Group’s ideologist Collell, also decided to build a set of monuments along various paths with the clear intention of emphasizing the mountain’s sacred character. The main feature of this type was the ‘Monumental Rosary’ formed by a series of monuments – one for each Mystery of the Rosary – placed along the path connecting the shrine and the monastery to the cave where legend holds that the ‘Invention’, i.e. the discovery of the Madonna of Montserrat took place. The monuments, which were based on picturesque theories and techniques,21 were designed by different architects and paid for by various social and religious associations. The overall set of monuments could be said to resemble a great narrative device seeking once more to stress the links that were to be forged between the mountain, the landscape, Catholicism and the nation. The monument that best illustrates this strategy is Gaudí’s contribution to the mountain’s Monumental Rosary. In his creation, the boundaries between nature and monument are blurred, and, as Lahuerta has pointed brilliantly, his intention was to draw a parallel between religious and national rebirth by placing the Resurrected Christ and the Catalan flag next to one another.22 The monument by Gaudí also exemplifies how he and other architects who identified with Catalan Catholic nationalism understood the unique nature

Figure 3.3 Postcard from late nineteenth century showing the miniature replica of Montserrat built in Barcelona’s Ciutadella Park

The construction of modern Montserrat 61 of the mountain of Montserrat in architectural terms. For them, as for Humboldt,23 the mountain was a sort of venerable old cathedral in ruins and they sought to use it as a model for their religious constructions. One has only to think of the Sagrada Família basilica or the Colònia Güell church to grasp this close relationship. Indeed, the tension between the mountain’s sacred and secular character, and the popular replicas of Montserrat such as the one mentioned in Barcelona, help to better understand the symbolism and imaginary of the Sagrada Família, and to situate it, not as an isolated work of Gaudí, but as one closely linked to the process of constructing the modern Montserrat and to the cultural and socio-political context of the times. It may be noted that this complexity and explosion of the imaginary connected with the mountain of Montserrat around the end of the nineteenth century and in the opening decades of the twentieth also was due to the position adopted by the monastery’s abbots – called as well presidents of the community of priests during the firsts years after the reopening of the shrine in 1844, when the religious orders where forbidden in Spain. These abbots and presidents always remained equidistant with respect to all the groups that had an affinity with Montserrat. For example, they were on good terms with Balaguer and with the Vic Group since, naturally, both these agents helped to bolster the continuity of the still feeble religious community in their own way. This care taken by the monks of Montserrat to avoid political definition stemmed from the collective remembrance of the suppression of the monasteries in 1835 and also, in the specific case of Montserrat, from the destruction of the old monastery in the Peninsular War, a conflict in which the religious community had positioned itself politically with disastrous effects. The outcome of all this was the popularization of the mountain, which truly became the Montserrat ‘of all’ in the decades preceding and following the turn of the twentieth century. It was not by chance that the last page of one of the most popular books on the history of Catalonia, published in 1898,24 contains an idealized composition depicting all the contemporary architectures designed to shape the modern Catalonia and its new nationalist movement, culminating with the mountain of Montserrat (Figure 3.4). Indeed, according to Joan Maragall, who was quite probably the foremost contemporary writer and thinker in Catalonia, Montserrat’s origin is linked to that of the Catalan nation, and their histories will run parallel until the last days of them both. In the words of Maragall,25 Montserrat was ‘the miracle of Catalonia’. As the symbol of all Catalan people despite their differences, the mountain of Montserrat sublimated the distinctions between all those who felt themselves represented by it.

An architecture for an idealized history This heated debate on the mountain finally led to an architecture that was suitable for building the modern Montserrat beyond the dilemma of styles

62  Josep-Maria Garcia Fuentes

Figure 3.4 One of the most popular books on the history of Catalonia, published in 1898, with an idealized composition showing all the contemporary architectures designed to shape the modern Catalonia and its new nationalist movement, culminating with the mountain of Montserrat.

which had existed before the blossoming of the mountain’s symbolism. After a few foiled attempts at defining an overall project for the shrine and the monastery, the election of a new young and energetic abbot in 1912 lent renewed impetus to the process. On his election, Abbot Antoni Marcet was a young man in his 30s and very well connected with the political, social and cultural circles of Barcelona. Within the modernization movement that was spreading throughout the country in those years, the new abbot wanted to consolidate the community of monks and to transform the monastery and the shrine through its modernization and cultural renewal. The models for this process were local as well as international, including, for example, the

The construction of modern Montserrat 63 prosperous monasteries of Austria and Bohemia,26 which became models for monastic organization and cultural life as well as for architecture. After some attempts to establish an overall project for Montserrat and especially following the endeavours to define a façade for the monastery and the shrine, the new abbot decided to ask the architect August Font for ideas. Font, by then an elderly architect, was in charge of the new façade of Barcelona’s Cathedral in the Gothic style. In his proposal for Montserrat, however, Font did not envisage a religious aesthetic but based his design on a clearly civil architecture inspired by the monumental civil buildings of the city of Barcelona and its surroundings: a model halfway between the urban palaces and the masies or stately traditional Catalan farmhouses to be seen in the countryside. In this way, his proposal recognized the debate surrounding the popularization of the mountain and went beyond the dilemma of styles. Indeed, it acknowledged the principal imaginary of the times with respect to the monastery and the shrine, which were considered in many popular publications ‘the palace of the Queen of Catalonia’ (that is to say, of the Madonna of Montserrat) and especially ‘the masia or casa pairal (ancestral house) of all Catalans’. This was a widespread imaginary, and in the case of the masia, it was not only connected with Montserrat but also with the idea of the nation and the family. In a text entitled La casa pairal (The Manor House), Gaudí himself wrote, ‘The casa pairal or masia is the family’s little nation. The family, like the nation, has its history, foreign relations, changes in government, etc. [. . .] The ancestral family house has been called the casa pairal.’27 Consequently, it is not surprising that the image of Montserrat, the national shrine of all Catalans, was that of a prosperous masia or casa pairal, in short, that of a country mansion. However, the elderly Font, despite the appropriateness of his idea, at that time represented a lapsed generation of architects that was disconnected to the enormous modernization process the Catalan society was facing in the 1930s at the cultural, social and political levels that was known as Noucentisme – a process that also had echoes in the plans for Montserrat by Abbot Marcet. According to these premises, and as a consequence of this search for both local and international modernization referents, the architect Josep Puig i Cadafalch was appointed director of the works in 1917. At that time, Puig i Cadafalch was a mature respected architect in addition to being one of the foremost politicians in Catalonia. He was the president of the Commonwealth of Catalan Municipalities or Mancomunitat de Catalunya as well as a prominent and internationally recognized historian and archaeologist. Puig i Cadafalch began the works in Montserrat with some small commissions. In a first stage, he worked on the refurbishment of the old monastery library with the intention of turning it into an idealized English university library. After this work, the architect soon went on to a new Romanesque cloister for the monastery and other interior spaces, the new exteriors spaces of the shrine, the new façade and finally the general plan. The works were

64  Josep-Maria Garcia Fuentes carried out between 1917 and the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, with the overall outline for the project completed around 1930. Although the final proposal would appear to conceal diverse architectures behind an exterior unity, it might be understood differently if considered in the light of the contemporary imaginary of Montserrat described earlier. As mentioned, Montserrat was considered the masia or casa pairal of all Catalans, not only of Catholics but also of all Catalans as a people. It was the ancestral home, the stately country farmhouse or masia of the whole Catalan family. This was precisely the ‘miracle’ of Montserrat, as Maragall termed it. Montserrat was the symbol that could sublimate the differences between the Catalans, since its history is linked so closely to the history of Catalonia that they may be said, in a way, to be one and the same. This was the imaginary that made it possible for the community of monks to aspire to play a key role in contemporary society without adopting a clearly defined political position, allowing it to appeal to society at large in order to subscribe funds for the monastery’s construction. This too was the imaginary behind Puig i Cadafalch’s project (Figure 3.5) for the reconstruction of Montserrat. Puig i Cadafalch devised a complex architectural model inspired roughly on the traditional Benedictine plan. That is with all the buildings integrating the monastery placed around one or several cloisters situated on south side of the church and accommodated to local circumstances. However, the buildings and spaces projected by the architect within the whole plan were not defined together as a unity but in different architectural languages or styles. The architect and the monks chose each style as the more suitable for their functions. In the final proposal, that was partially built and to a great extend drawn, there were idealized Gothic, Romanesque and traditional Catalan civil architecture, and even radical modern architecture in some interior spaces too. All these different inner architectures were brought together under a unified exterior architecture in Renaissance revival style – as was the fashion in Barcelona during that period for political reasons, since the Renaissance period was seen as a reference for the contemporary ambitions for modernization. Through the free use of architectural styles and their uncommon mix within a single set of buildings, Puig i Cadafalch managed to create an idealized representation of the entire history of Catalonia from the Middle Ages to the present within the Montserrat itself, as if the whole construction of Montserrat were a sort of panorama or device that would create the illusion of experiencing an idealized history and the past. This is what we realize when we analyze the works and projects by Puig i Cadafalch in Montserrat as a whole set of interventions and in detail as well. If we look to the project for the new cloister, for example, the first draft dates from 1923, and the first versions were defined in a quasi-Renaissance style with echoes of Brunelleschi. The project was translated into the Romanesque style before it was carried out, however, since it was considered that the cloister should

Figure 3.5 Pamphlet from 1928 conceived to spread the news of Puig i Cadafalch’s project in order to raise funds for its construction. It shows a general view of his project and states that no major reconstruction had yet been undertaken since the monastery’s destruction in the Peninsular War

66  Josep-Maria Garcia Fuentes represent the monastery’s foundational period: the Vic Group’s imaginary still lived within the church. Finally, original medieval stonework was used to recreate the historic atmosphere, as is shown in contemporary postcards of the ‘Romanesque cloister’ (Figure 3.6). The overall project of Montserrat’s exterior seems to recall the Austrian monasteries and especially Melk. The volumes and platforms were arranged to define a ritual of approach that relates landscape and architecture, as in the Ancient Greek shrines. Although there were some problems with the definition of the project because of the difficult geometrical plan of the buildings as a whole, the old Gothic cloister was saved from destruction. One sees this, for example, on observing Puig i Cadafalch’s general view for

Figure 3.6 Two postcards showing the new Romanesque cloister just after its completion and its refurbishment with authentic medieval stonework

The construction of modern Montserrat 67 the public presentation of the project in which the remains of the old Gothic cloister are hidden behind a dark plant that had been carefully positioned to this end. Beyond the project details, however, it is important to stress the success of the overall strategy unfolded by the community of monks. They organized a painting competition, opened a museum to display artwork and archaeological objects, promote Biblical and natural sciences28 and, among other cultural and social activities, published books on the history and foundation of the monastery in connection with the history of Catalonia.29 Some of these initiatives were carried out in an unconscious or intuitive way rather than to a carefully established plan, but all of them succeeded in enriching and consolidating the multiple readings of Montserrat and its idealized history. In this respect, an interesting article on the monastery and the shrine was published in The National Geographic Magazine in 1933 in which the journalist John Long states, Most of the present buildings are comparatively new’ but ‘so faithfully have the monks followed the lines of the older parts of the Monastery in making additions that even the new garage, for modern pilgrims who come by motor, has an age-old air of permanence.30 The architects in conjunction with the community of monks had finally found the key element in enabling the reconstruction of Montserrat. Puig i Cadafalch’s project, however, was brought to a standstill by the Spanish Civil War and was never completed. Nonetheless, when the works were resumed after the war, the new architect Francesc Folguera and the new abbot Aureli Maria Escarré applied a very similar strategy to the new works and projects, which unfortunately proved to be of very poor architectural quality.31 This marked another upheaval and another stage in the process, but the main guidelines for the reconstruction had already been established in Puig i Cadafalch’s excellent project. The construction of Montserrat was tied directly to the idealized construction of Catalan history, which formed the essence of the project. The process that unfolded in the development of the modern Montserrat shows how the past and the national, religious and political identities were constructed in and through architecture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The process also shows how religious architecture not only creates a built environment for religious purposes and records history like any other architectural construction but also, like all architecture, it builds history and the past, an idealized past: that other realm that lies beyond religion.

Notes 1 E. Hobsbawm and T. Ranger (eds), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). 2 F. X. Altés, L’església nova de Montserrat (1560–1592–1992) (Barcelona: Publicacions de l’Abadia de Montserrat, 1992). J. M. Garcia-Fuentes, The

68  Josep-Maria Garcia Fuentes Construction of Modern Montserrat (Ph.D. Dissertation, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya-BarcelonaTECH, 2012). 3 See several examples of these representations in J. Laplana, Montserrat. Mil anys d’art i d’història (Barcelona: Angle Editorial, 1998). 4 These plates are not too accurate in terms of quantity (some important views and spaces lack, like for example the facade) but also in terms of quality (they contain some alterations of proportions and dimensions, something that happens often in engravings). 5 A. Font i Carreras, Elogio del arquitecto y académico D. Elías Rogent y Amat, leído en la sesión que se celebró el día 30 de diciembre de 1897 (Barcelona: Impremta Barcelonesa, 1897), pp. 12–13. 6 J. M. Garcia-Fuentes, ‘A Nation of Monasteries: The Legacy of Víctor Balaguer in the Spanish Conception of National Monuments’, Future Anterior, 10:1 (2014). 7 V. Balaguer, Recuerdos de Viaje (Barcelona: Imp. Brusi, 1852), pp. 5–6. 8 V. Balaguer, Los frailes y sus conventos. Su Historia, su descripción, sus tradiciones, sus costumbres, su importancia. 2 Vols. (Barcelona: Librería Española, 1851), p. 5. 9 V. Balaguer, Cuatro perlas de un collar. Historia tradicional y artística de todos los célebres monasterios catalanes. Santa María de Ripoll, Santa María de Poblet, Santas Cruces, y Sant Cucufate del Vallés (Barcelona: Librería Española). 10 J. M. Garcia-Fuentes, ‘The Construction of Modern Montserrat’, pp. 59–94. 11 W. von Humboldt, ‘Der Montserrat bey Barcelona’, Allgemeine geographische Ephemeriden, XI (1803), pp. 265–313. 12 J. Ganau, Els inicis del pensament conservacionista en l’urbanisme català (1844–1931) (Barcelona: Publicacions de l’Abadia de Montserrat, 1997). J. M. Garcia-Fuentes, ‘Dissecting Montserrat. On the Cultural, Religious, Touristic and Identity-Related Construction of the Modern Montserrat’, in A. Trono, ed., Tourism, Religion and Culture: Regional Development through Meaningful Tourism Experiences (Lecce: Mario Congedo Publisher – University of Salento, 2009), pp. 239–60. 13 F. P. Villar y Lozano, A. S. M. La reina de las Españas, Restauración artística de Montserrat, 1860, Real Biblioteca, Palacio Real de Madrid, Madrid. VII-M-229. 14 G. Kubler, Ars Hispania. Historia Universal del Arte Hispánico; Arquitectura de los siglos xvii y xviii (Vol. 14) (Madrid: Editorial Plus-Ultra, 1957), pp. 285–91. 15 M. Comas, ‘L’anticipació dels símbols, “Cuatro perlas de un collar” de Víctor Balaguer’, El contemporani, 32 (2006), pp. 70–5. 16 For this discussion: J. Massot, Els creadors del Montserrat modern: cent anys de servei a la cultura catalana (Barcelona: Publicacions de l’Abadia de Montserrat, 1979). J. Ll. Marfany, La cultura del catalanisme. El nacionalisme català en els seus inicis (Barcelona: Editorial Empúries, 1995). E. Ucelay Da-Cal, El imperialismo catalán. Prat de la Riba, Cambó, D’Ors y la conquista moral de España (Barcelona: Edhasa, 2003). F. Roma, Del paradís a la nació. La muntanya a Catalunya. Segles xv-xx (Valls: Cossetània Edicions, 2004). 17 J. Collell, ‘Lo Milenar de Montserrat’, La Veu del Montserrat (3 April 1880), p. 110. 18 V. Almirall, ‘Lo Milenari de Montserrat. I. Antecedents y preparatius’, Diari Català, 329 (1880). 19 J. Ll. Marfany, La cultura del catalanisme. El nacionalisme català en els seus inicis, pp. 74–6. 20 J. M. Garcia-Fuentes, ‘The Construction of Modern Montserrat’, pp. 187–218. 21 J. M. Garcia-Fuentes, ‘Rethinking Pilgrimage Through the Theories of the Architectural Character and the Picturesque’, in Michael Geovine and David Picard

The construction of modern Montserrat 69 (eds.), Tourism and Seductions of Difference. 1st International Conference Tourism Contact Research Network. Conference Proceedings (Lisbon: Universidade de Lisboa, 2010). 22 J. J. Lahuerta, Antoni Gaudí (1852–1926). Arquitectura, Ideología y Política (Madrid: Electa, 2999), p. 254–88. 23 W. von Humboldt, ‘Der Montserrat bey Barcelona’, pp. 265–313. 24 A. Bori i Fontestà, Historia de Cataluña. Sus monumentos, sus tradiciones, sus artistas y personajes ilustres (Barcelona: Imprenta de Henrich y Ca., 1898). 25 J. Maragall, ‘Montserrat’, Diario de Barcelona (2 July 1905), p. 686. 26 About this interest see: A. Albareda, La congregació benedictina de Montserrat a l’Àustria i a la Bohèmia (Barcelona: Abadia de Montserrat, 1924). 27 A. Gaudí, ‘La casa pairal’, in A. Gaudí (L. Mercader, ed.), Escritos y documentos (Barcelona: El Acantilado, 2002), pp. 285–7, on p. 285. 28 On the creation of these museum and exhibitions: J. Laplana, Les col·leccions de pintura de l’abadia de Montserrat (Barcelona: Publicacions de l’Abadia de Montserrat, 1999), pp. 9–108. 29 See, for example: A. Albareda, Història de Montserrat (Barcelona: Publicacions de l’Abadia de Montserrat, 1931). A. Albareda, L’abat Oliva. Fundador de Montserrat (Barcelona: Monestir de Montserrat, 1931). 30 J. Long, ‘Montserrat, Spain’s Mountain Shrine’, The National Geographic Magazine, LXIII:I (1933), pp. 121–30, on p. 125. 31 J. M. Garcia-Fuentes, ‘The Construction of Modern Montserrat’, pp. 379–461.

4 Paolo Soleri’s Teilhard De Chardin Cloister at Arcosanti Alicia Imperiale

Paolo Soleri (1919–2013) is best known for his visionary experimental building project in the American south-west desert that began in the early 1970s and survives to this day. Arcosanti remains an ongoing materialization of his ideas and his once evolving vision about building and blending community, ecology, futurism, architecture, spirituality, creativity and philosophy (Figure 4.1). It is here that in 1972, Soleri began designing a Teilhard de Chardin Cloister as an addition to his community Arcosanti, which is essentially an open-ended building project, a centre of training at the edges of architectural practice. This unique project and community may echo Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West where Soleri studied for a time, but it is a far different project that still presents itself as an alternative residential architectural act and learning community. In his book Arcology: The City in the Image of Man of 1969 Soleri proposed 30 cities he termed ‘arcologies’, of which Arcosanti is the only built example (Figure 4.2).1 Arcology reflects his notion of the fusion of architecture and ecology: a sustainable practice of development based on concentrating manmade construction within a very small footprint and leaving the natural landscape to return to its primordial state. Begun in part by an early ecological awareness introduced by Rachel Carson in her Silent Spring of 1962, the 1960s was a decade in which a heightened awareness of the damage of technology and development that inspired many architects to turn towards an ecological and sustainable practice. Soleri’s debut as an architect in the United States came with the inclusion of his design Beast Bridge in the 1948 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art entitled The Architecture of Bridges. This sculptural conception for a bridge was a prestressed concrete structure designed to span an impossibly wide canyon. It was at once an intensely formal gesture that celebrated the material of which it was made and an ambitious and most unlikely design. The design is a signature metaphor for Soleri’s poetic style that tended to be enigmatic and elusive, as well as ambitious, intuitive and complicated. Soleri’s built projects, designs, theoretical writings and commentaries are marked by this style. His intuition, creativity and spiritual concerns often centred on an abiding interest in materiality, yet he made bold leaps to join

Paolo Soleri’s Teilhard De Chardin Cloister 71

Figure 4.1 Arcosanti, late 1970s model of the project in Arcosanti, Arizona. Photo credit: Ivan Pintar

ideas that often seem contradictory, or impossibly irrational. This enigmatic quality both marks and obscures Soleri’s ideas and his work that was an attempt to envision architecture as a challenge to the supremacy of traditional, intellectual or formal methodologies. Such an enigmatic and provocative style may explain why responses to Soleri and his work range from the superlative to the dismissive. Yet if the veil of this style is pulled aside, there is a simple view of Soleri as a pioneer in uncharted territory in postwar architecture. It was an area where an abiding interest in materiality and spiritual ideals in architecture were unbridged. Soleri’s attempt to bridge this chasm found a powerful ally in Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s profound meditations on Earth and human consciousness. Soleri discovered the writings of Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955) shortly after they were published in the early 1960s, several years after Teilhard’s death.2 Ordained as a Catholic priest and trained as a philosopher and paleontologist, Teilhard de Chardin focused on the paradox of the material and spiritual relationship that was inherent and evolutional in all terrestrial matter, biology and human consciousness. In his deeply poetic philosophy, Teilhard saw Earth as a complex entity consisting of multiple levels of life. Teilhard became inspirational to a generation who found his philosophy to be a visionary treatise on the relationship with the planet that they too felt was neglected in human consciousness. Teilhard’s discussions of humankind

Figure 4.2 Arcosanti – original design of Arcosanti. Arcology for a population of 1,500, comparative isometric view of Cosanti Foundation and Arcosanti at the same scale; designed by Paolo Soleri, from Arcology – City in the Image of Man, published by MIT 1969 Photo credit: Cosanti Foundation.

Paolo Soleri’s Teilhard De Chardin Cloister 73 on the thin crust of the earth and of nature’s beauty and fragility resonated for Soleri and others in a decade marked by an awakening to ecology and the damage humankind had done to the earth’s fragile balance. Soleri was inspired by Teilhard’s writings and sought to demonstrate that architecture is religious, not because it is built or used by an established church, but because it teaches its inhabitants ways to contemplate spirit and earth. Soleri sought to make the spirituality that he found in Teilhard’s writing manifest in concrete form. Rather than speak directly of Christ or of the Catholic doctrine, Soleri absorbed Teilhard’s spiritual writings on the meditation on the beauty of the natural world, of the matter of Mater, of Mother Earth. Teilhard’s version of the spiritual evolution of humankind focused on the higher states of both physical and spiritual order and their relation in human consciousness. Moving from the geosphere (the mineral earth), to the biosphere (life), he coined the term ‘noosphere’ (from the Greek, noo, for mind, human consciousness) to describe the ‘vast thinking membrane’ that would unite all humankind as a single living unity.3 Recently, Teilhard’s concept has been adopted as an early description of what the Internet has become: a ‘place’ that hosts the multitude of thoughts and ideas of collective human experience.4 The equivalency relies on the idea that spirit and thought are ephemeral and evanescent as are the invisible connections of electronic communication; therefore, these facets of the Internet seem to render Teilhard’s work prescient for the contemporary digital world.5 Whether this proposition is correct or valuable remains to be seen, but if it is an apt and parallel summation for Soleri’s evolving understanding of Teilhard’s concept of the noosphere, it is useful to keep in mind. The proposition equates the transfer of information via technological means with what Teilhard described in geological terms of time and the transformation of matter into alternate forms of life. In Soleri’s work, the motif will take the form of an attempt to ‘simulate the Divine’ and accelerate the generation of consciousness through material means, techniques and planning. Soleri’s testament to how deeply inspiring Teilhard’s work was took form in 1972 in his design for a new building project at Arcosanti that was to be called the Teilhard de Chardin Cloister. Soleri attempted to give architectural form to Teilhard’s meditations on the nature of Earth and biology and human consciousness. His design was a means to express what he understood in built form, and he could be both poetic and provocative. Soleri recognized the cloister as a traditional form used by a contemplative religious community, but he did not intend to reference Teilhard’s Catholicism and was not designing a space for a traditional religious community. His plan was to re-task the semantics of a contemplative space to become a deeply contemplative residential and meeting space for individuals who live in or who visit Arcosanti (Figure 4.3). His design for the cloister appropriates the spiritual ethos of contemplation that is expressed in the cloister form and opens it up to the questions of environmentalism and the relationship that human beings have to the earth.

Photo credit: David DeGomez

Figure 4.3 Teilhard De Chardin Cloister, plan of upper terrace. Designed as part of the Arcosanti project in Arcosanti, Arizona, 1972, colored china ink stencil work and transfer lettering on clear print vellum, drawing size 75 inches by 36 inches

Paolo Soleri’s Teilhard De Chardin Cloister 75 It is a provocation to be contemplative about ecology and architecture. As such, it is a Catholic reiteration of his primary building directive and thus very much an appropriate cloister for Arcosanti. He envisioned a community that, while laical, would be deeply invested in a spiritual contemplation of the natural world and humankind’s need to sit lightly and consume less in an act of reverence to Mother Earth. The cloister is also a model that closes itself off from the outside and directs one’s attention from the outside world to the contemplation of the fundamental values and catechism of particular religious traditions. In the Western Christian traditions of faith, asceticism, humility, community, silence, poverty, self-denial and obedience, and at times music are intended to be expressed by and embodied in and supported by the space and material of the cloister. The process of walking, sitting, praying, working or singing, as well as the rigors of a regimented life are also parts of the process of meditation, which calms the multiplicity of voices and distractions in preparation for a deeper knowledge of the universe, a road to consciousness and an epiphany of sorts are all part of a larger spiritual program that the cloister supports. The cloister began as a design for a centre for thoughtfulness, community living and a meditation space about action that would assist in the preservation of earth’s fragile environment. What was germane in 1972 quickly evolved within a few years of the initial construction of Arcosanti to keep pace with Soleri’s developing theory. Soleri maintained the nomenclature of the still unbuilt Teilhard de Chardin Cloister, but in recent years, the context for the cloister shifted as design programs for the expansion of housing, conference centres, an energy producing solar ‘energy apron’, galleries, cafes and restaurants were all rethought so that Arcosanti would grow large enough to achieve ‘critical mass’, a central concept in Soleri’s theory of arcology (Figure 4.4). In order to simulate the divine and produce consciousness about the environment, Arcosanti needed more built so that there would be a bigger scale, more efficiency, more miniaturization and more compaction intentionally separate from developed areas in a remote location in the desert. The inhabitants of Arcosanti would live in close proximity to one another in a meditative environment that was intended to be a place of study, learning and introspection as a means to produce a higher level of consciousness. As Soleri’s thesis moved to link a return to the land to the high technology of computational connectivity and add a highly sophisticated and concentrated energy apron, the ironies and questions began to multiply. A certain critical mass was needed in Soleri’s thesis for the compaction to produce consciousness, but the relationship between a digital project and a compacted contemplative community is not clear. (Figure 4.8). The significance of living within a cloistered community is deeply challenged if one is constantly connected through the Internet outside of the physical isolation of Arcosanti’s remote location. Despite these contradictions, there is a larger lesson to be taken from the writings of Teilhard de Chardin and how they were of a fundamental importance to Soleri’s writing and projects over time.

76  Alicia Imperiale

Figure 4.4 Arcosanti 5000. The model of Arcosanti 5000 structures shows a concentrated environment of living, working, schools, medical support, social spaces, parks and entertainment. There is no need for the automobile and its support structure within the city environment Photo credit: Michael E. Brown

Gaia In Teilhard de Chardin, Soleri found a philosopher that gave voice to a deep and abiding vision about the environment and human relationship on Earth, which for Soleri was at the core of the practice of architecture, even if he was not necessarily able to make the direct translation from idea to form or from thought to matter. What matters is that Soleri never ceased to try to make these connections. He found inspiration in how Teilhard spoke about a divine aspect of the matter of the earth. He called this the Divine Milieu, of matter becoming spirit, which is the evolution of matter into higher and higher forms of consciousness. Starting from the geological formation of the earth, Teilhard saw the evolution of living organisms culminating in the unique capacity of the human brain.6 He used the brain as an example of the compaction of matter into ever-greater concentrations, a miniaturization that appears to compress increasing levels of consciousness into increasingly less material form. He viewed the brain as an expression of the formula that nature produces consciousness through the compression of matter and that consciousness requires less matter as it evolves. Humankind is thus a ‘noosphere’ a ‘thinking layer’ superimposed on the earth’s surface of living matter, the ‘biosphere’ which sits on the inorganic ‘lithosphere’.7

Paolo Soleri’s Teilhard De Chardin Cloister 77 Teilhard’s vision of nature and the place of humankind in nature can be nested within a long history of mysticism in the West. As with many of the mystics before him, Teilhard proposed an alternative to traditional Christian mysticism. In his work, it is evident that he was searching for a new spirituality that was not constrained by doctrine, but he was searching for a connection to contemporary life in different cultures and throughout time. In that sense, he was a wanderer between the past, the present and the future, as well as the East and West, and this way of thinking was an important model for Soleri. While many of Teilhard’s writings were directed towards observant Catholics, Teilhard often wrote more general meditations intended for thoughtful individuals who were outside of the traditional church who might be searching for a spirituality to reflect upon the complexity of modern society and to find a deeper meaning of life.8 Teilhard was trained as a theologian and as a scientist, but he was also a poet and a philosopher. His strong attraction to nature was thus a source of deep interest and inquiry but also a deep meditation regarding the relationship between humankind and nature. The idea of wholeness and unity in nature was a powerful one for Soleri as well. It is as if the search to find the spiritual in matter was a means for ending the long dichotomy between matter and spirit. Soleri’s interpretation of Teilhard’s meditations would be part of the central core of his building and architectural program. In Teilhard’s notion of a ‘being taking form in the totality of space’, Soleri found an evocative and inspirational image for his desire to build a city in the vast open spaces of Arizona’s desert so that the ‘being’ that Teilhard referred to as a vision of the Divine is taken up by Solari in his desire to make a city in this image, moulding amorphous matter so that the city takes form in the totality of space.9 His form giving sought to give architectural form to the principle of being in concert with this goal of merging of matter and spirit, or being in ‘communion with the Earth, the Great Mother’ as Teilhard described in his mediations. Soleri can find in Teilhard a kindred spirit where the contemplation of nature is a central and unifying motif. In his meditations on nature, Teilhard reveled in the image of the vast expanse of the desert and the bottomless ocean. It was an exuberance that implicitly sheltered and relativized Soleri’s own penchant for the dramatic. Teilhard’s vision was both poetic and ecstatic. He gave himself over to this sacred reverie, which he summarized as a state of being where the forests with their ‘life-laden shadows seek to absorb me in their deep warm folds’.10 His embrace of nature seemed to have held Teilhard secure and provided him with a deeper connection to his ability to immerse and express himself in his vision of Gaia. Teilhard’s references to this were compelling and multiple: ‘In the glitter, the sweet scents, the boundless expanses, the bottomless depths.’ Teilhard wrote that he had ‘surrendered myself of matter’ and in doing so, he was connected through nature to God.11 Teilhard believed that matter has a cosmic role, it is ‘lower in order but primordial and essential, of union . . . Christ in his humanity contains all

78  Alicia Imperiale the unyielding immensity and grandeur of the world’, and this idea was then extended to the idea of the sheltering of all humanity.12 This epiphany is what connects Teilhard’s Christianity to his sense for the Divine Milieu as the Mother and Mater that is the ‘Shelter’ and the form giving quality of nature. Thus Teilhard could be expansive and heartfelt in his appreciation for Mother Nature as she is a profound matrix for the realization and materialization of the Divine. In Teilhard’s words, this comes as a poetic defiance: And why indeed, should I not worship it, the stable, the great, the rich, the mother, the divine? Is not matter, in its own way, eternal and immense? Is it not the absolutely fertile generatrix, the Terra Mater, that carries within her the seeds of all life and the sustenance of all joy?13 The meaning that Soleri made of Teilhard’s passionate and joyous defence of Mater and materiality is locked into Soleri’s designs and provocations such as in Arcosanti, which contains Soleri’s understanding of Teilhard’s formulations on the dynamic image of Mother and Child. For Teilhard, the fundamental relationship in nature is matter giving birth to consciousness. In Soleri’s work, this dynamic is scaled to the size of a city. The city is the Matrix holding a ‘thousand minds’. It is a physical locus for a growing consciousness. Intended as the material expression of Soleri’s cosmology about Mater and consciousness, the Teilhard de Chardin Cloister was conceived of as a maternal structure within which one finds space for contemplation and reflection to nurture consciousness. It is a material expression of Mater designed to underscore that the new city is a matrix that looks inward and out over the vastness of the Arizonan desert (Figure 4.5). In The Omega Seed: An Eschatological Hypothesis of 1981, Soleri wrote that the ‘simulation of the divine will provide man with a blueprint for creation, not only of our physical environment, but also of a new stage in the evolution of mankind’.14 Soleri took the term ‘omega’ directly from Teilhard, which led him to posit a novel and controversial merging of his views of faith and science.15 In Teilhard’s theology, this process of evolution would continue until humans evolved towards an ‘omega point’ when a potential for material and spiritual convergence with the divine emerges. In Soleri’s formulations, the omega point is the goal of consciousness that is to be reached by changing practice so that life is lived as if a ‘simulation of the divine will’, or in accord with nature. For Soleri, it was sufficient that the ‘noosphere’ as conceived by Teilhard provided him with a resonant metaphor for his new city, wedding this understanding of Teilhard’s concept of the ‘noosphere’ to his idea about the ‘simulation of the divine’ in his design of ‘super-structural organisms’ his term for the arcologies.

Photo credit: David DeGomez

Figure 4.5 Teilhard De Chardin Cloister, South elevation. Designed as part of the Arcosanti project in Arcosanti, Arizona, 1972, colored china ink stencil work and transfer lettering on clear print vellum, drawing size 137 inches by 36 inches

80  Alicia Imperiale Arcology, a contraction of architecture and ecology was Soleri’s translation of Teilhard’s living membrane of consciousness that encircles Earth. Soleri’s design program for new cities called for greater efficiency, more compaction or concentration and less material. The ‘simulation of the divine’ is a way to follow nature and become more conscious as a result. Cities are arcologies when they employ sustainable development that concentrates construction within a very small footprint thereby leaving the natural landscape to return to its primordial state. Soleri’s arcologies give form to the idea of sustainable practice and suggest that he was one more pioneer who explored a new ecological awareness that was introduced by the ecological awareness of the 1960s; but Soleri’s route to this concern was still marked by Teilhard’s deep concerns for Gaia as a living being. Soleri’s ecological approach merged with Teilhard’s musings fused the technological and the spiritual. For example, he discussed the need to use technology to aid cities and society: Our technology, if not our conscience, will not allow us to take halfmeasures in response to our problems for much longer . . . Architecture is city planning, as it is ecology.16 This statement by Soleri underscores his rejection of the notion that his visionary drawings, or the built work at Arcosanti, are blueprints for an unbuilt utopia. The statement is also a refusal to conflate the use of technology with destructive speculation and disregard for the environment. Soleri believed that technology was necessary to build in an ecologically responsible and sustainable manner. In fact, good city planning was to be an ‘imitation of the divine’, but the divine was Gaia and the imitation was of the laws and ways of nature. To the extent that cities were organized to imitate nature, they approached the sacred.

Miniaturization ‘Complexification’ was Soleri’s neologism for the process that would transform matter into ever-increasing levels of efficiency through compaction. Following Teilhard, Soleri could express this principle as an article of faith in city planning: Society must become a true organism that will perform adequately. This will be made possible through the power of miniaturization. The physical miniaturization of its container, the city, is a necessary step to this end.17 Soleri’s solution was directed towards urban implosion rather than explosion. The city should contract and intensify. This was a first rule. The processes of compaction and intensification raised issues: in order to hold its

Paolo Soleri’s Teilhard De Chardin Cloister 81 information in ‘negentropic’ form, it should imitate evolution and ‘complexify’ itself through intense miniaturization. Language could fail Soleri; or it could assist him, and it was often a hybrid of poetics and techno-speak: A city of 600,000 should become a single, recycling, organic arcology. The people would not live in crowded ghettos but on the outer skin of a towering arcology that faced toward a nature that was once again natural.18 In describing his idea of complexity, Soleri imagined the city as the site of the intense overlap of activity and cooperation, leading to a richer, less segregated urban life. This was a secular idea for Soleri, but is still deeply spiritual as his formula for the spiritual was to ‘simulate the divine’. His cities were to house individuals, and in the intensity of communal life, a society would develop that would be a greater force of consciousness by compaction and intensification far beyond what can be attained by individuals (Figure 4.6). Arcologies were challenging places in which to live; they were meant to be placed in very remote and wild natural settings, further linking Soleri’s thought to that of Teilhard’s ideas of nature being godly. While the community that would make up the city would be a plurality, the identity of each

Figure 4.6 Arcosanti. The foundry apse with west housing and the vaults viewed from south Photo credit: Yuki Yanagimoto

82  Alicia Imperiale arcology would be clearly defined in the make-up of the inhabitants and echoed in its physical form. Soleri did not envision prescribing who would join each kind of arcology. He saw its building as one of continual process, one in which individuals would self-select to live in and develop and build an arcology, a new kind of world citizen who was aware of the problems that progress had effected on the natural environment. Living in the arcology would ask for a renunciation of past excessive comforts in the land of urban sprawl and ask each member to join the group willingly in a renunciation of the comforts and excesses of the modern world and to move towards living frugally. This frugality was key to building community and essential for physical involvement required for building the arcology. It is in this sense that an arcology functions as a monastic setting, a modern desert laity. Asked what the community of an arcology might offer and demand of a family transplanted from suburban Scottsdale, Soleri responded, The family would have to accept the fact that it is not isolated. . . [and] would have to accept limitations as far as the physical opulence of its environment is concerned . . . it would find in the city many things that the family cannot deliver − the real culture side of the community.19 Soleri did not dwell in quotidian notions of the family and the community for long. He was a visionary and imagined something larger, echoing Teilhard de Chardin’s aesthetic approach to life. Soleri advocated for harmonious and good design of human inhabitation in accord with the natural environment as a theological belief system. It is not a catechism tied to the traditions of the Catholic Church, but rather one that used Teilhard’s writing as a springboard for the primacy of aesthetics in the process of making. Soleri saw his role as an architect to create form in a process that he called aestheto-genesis. In his essay ‘The Religion of Simulation’, he defined aestheto-genesis as ‘transforming matter into beauty’, a beauty that is both aesthetic and compassionate.20 In Arcology: The City in the Image of Man, Soleri illustrated his program for the maternal city as the seat of a developing consciousness in a series of arcologies that are predicated on the ‘industry of the mind’, such as the cities of Logology, Babel IIC, Theodiga and Theology. Unlike most cities he had designed which had an industrial base, these cities are based on making spaces conducive to knowledge generation and reception, and are akin to what Soleri might have imagined occurring within the Teilhard de Chardin Cloister. Soleri described the city of Logology as being organized around the ‘industry of the mind.’ Rather than heavy industry, ‘the industry of the mind is a light industry’.21 The ethereal quality of thinking in these cities is countered by manual activities, of crafts and artisanal endeavors of all kinds. Soleri conceived of the neighbourhoods and housing areas as rectilinear forms. These areas were considered the mundane portions of the city in contrast to

Paolo Soleri’s Teilhard De Chardin Cloister 83 the spiritual and scientific spaces in the city. Soleri returned most often to the motif of the apse as the quintessential form to represent the convergence of the material and the spiritual in the city’s contemplative spaces. In another arcology, Babel IIC, the 565 acre octagonally shaped city rises 1,750 meters above the chasm of a mineral mine pit. Soleri described it is as reflective city, ‘as an organism could if conjunctly hollowed out and endowed with a capacity for inner observation’, but being situated on the mine pit invites reflection on the finite nature of material resources.22 By the close observation of a scarred and depleted landscape, what he termed a ‘disemboweled organism’, reflections on a more holistic idea of the environment could emerge. These would suggest economy, compaction of living spaces so that as a ‘citizen’ moves around the city, she is able to apprehend the totality of the city as an organic entity, or organism. Soleri used provocative siting and compaction as motifs over and over in his cities: inhabitations are clustered within the thick (70 meters) walls of the city. In an extreme opposition to suburban sprawl, people are drawn into communities made up of ‘those people who for nearness, affinity and common utilities tend to form a microcommunity contained along with the other neighborhoods by the macrocommunity’.23 It is clear that Soleri was very concerned with community, with the ability to choose one’s neighbour, to be brought together through common interest, an elective affinity. These communities are secular in that they are not aligned with traditional religions; but they are still spiritual in nature; reflection, meditation and environmental awareness are causal agents for the accrual of communities. For Soleri, the outcomes of these more ephemeral aspects of society are intimately linked with physical form. Soleri concluded the quintet of abstract ‘thinking’ cities with the city he named Theology. It is a proposal for a city much like the architectural typology of a monastery where a common faith and goals for the common good such as providing sustenance, farming, mining or trade meet. By its nature, the monastery in its relation to the environment is an echoing of the individual, the monad, living in community and organized with other similar individuals, set off in a remote environment away from the city. A monastery is most often self-sufficient in all of its needs. In Theology, Soleri extended the idea of monastic living by choosing a specific site and a specific population of 13,000 to create a combination of cave-dwelling and metropolitan life. Ecologically the city would use its setting within the cave wall to conserve energy, and like the Anasazi pueblo cliff dwellings with which he was familiar, the cities would connect the upper bluff to the valley floor. In addition to these practical concerns, which form the basis of his arcology, the cut made through the vertical cliff face was an example of what Soleri called mineralized history found in a cross section of time in the fossil specimens and in the successive geological stratas . . . A museum of the history

84  Alicia Imperiale of the world with history documented by its own happening has great pedagogical potential and would serve as a relevant tool for research.24 This sensibility again points to the influence of Teilhard on Soleri’s work. Soleri’s contemplation of the physical world was a means to access an ineffable lesson locked in the compacted time that is held in matter. The earth engenders the contemplation of science and faith. It is where the material world sparks the spiritual world. Soleri noted attributes that he believed were essential to a full spiritual life: universal understanding, ontological insight (investigation) and secularism. These attributes constituted ‘a trinity of one, essential to the reconstitution of priorities, giving to science and technology their due but no more’.25 Soleri thought that a contemporary monastery would be a secular one and that his arcologies of thought and learning, his abstract machines, were leading examples: In the West it was the monastery that faced the mega-machine of the secular establishment . . . the new monastery must be the secular city, or at least its core, the learning center.26 This is where Soleri explicitly discussed his idea of the central importance of the monastery as city a place of thinking and meditation. The program of the learning centre is what he proposed with the learning centre at Arcosanti, focused on the living, meeting and contemplation areas within the Teilhard de Chardin Cloister. These reflections on secularism are key to understanding how he would the approach the Teilhard de Chardin cloister.

Soleri, the noosphere and the Teilhard de Chardin Cloister In the original 1972 design for the Teilhard De Chardin Cloister at Arcosanti, Soleri sought to align form with the theology of Teilhard De Chardin. The cloister was envisioned as a community for like-minded individuals who shared a faith centred on protecting the fragile environment. They would be grouped closely together to build the highly dense new arcology. The cloister, as he described it at the time, was intended to house visitors, but it was to house them within a cloister and twin basilicas so they had space for mediation and reflection. Working with Teilhard’s concepts of the ‘noosphere’ and ‘The Threshold of the Terrestrial Planet’ provided Soleri with fertile material for his design of the cloister. The design is a commentary against the misguided use of technology that he felt had caused rampant consumerism and the destruction of the planet. Rather than reject technology outright as cause and symptom, he advocated for technology as a powerful instrument but recognized that ‘its positive expression must go hand in hand with spirituality’ and that

Paolo Soleri’s Teilhard De Chardin Cloister 85 ‘only in synergy with spirituality can technology serve as an antidote to [the] destruction of the human environment’.27 The Teilhard de Chardin Cloister was to be a place to meditate and contemplate humankind’s excesses and relation to the earth. Being removed from the city and set into a particular structure in the desert echoes a hermit’s removal from society for meditation and contemplation. In this sense, Soleri’s cloister is a place turned inward and removed from the banalities and chaos of everyday life. His plan provided for the basic physical elements of monastic life: a retreat to an internalized contemplative space, common spaces for sharing meals, for worship and walking prayer, as well as individual spaces for sleep, ablution and private meditation. Set high on the edge of the mesa bluff, the project was to be bilaterally symmetrical, organized around a central apse which acts as the cloister with covered walks. Rather than be closed totally onto itself, it is organized around an outdoor hemicycle theatre covered by the apse, which faces out to the vast expanse of the desert, thus moving the object of meditation from the interior space and focus on the mind, linking interior meditation to a contemplation of nature. The central space is flanked by east and west ‘basilicas’ and backed by smaller spaces for housing. The twin basilicas in which one contemplates the great beams of sunlight and the East Sunrise Gate and the West Sunset Gate emphasize the object of contemplation: nature herself, her seasonal cycles and the cycles of life, death and rebirth. By having two basilicas, and echoed in the two gates, Soleri is giving us clues as to the secular nature of the cloister. Rather than having one basilica with a traditional focus on the altar, he gives us two enclosed spaces that are darkened so as to accentuate the penetration of sunlight. The twin basilicas destabilize what could have been a monotheistic ritual space (Figure 4.7). Before granting Soleri credit for giving form to a spiritual vision of architecture that was so deeply influenced by Teilhard’s abiding love of Gaia in all her manifestations, we need to reconcile his writings and designs with what has been made manifest in Arizona. There is much that Soleri finds of value and beauty in Teilhard, but as his own theories developed, especially in the direction of technology, the work alerts us to the ironies of twentyfirst century spiritualities. As an original attempt to create a contemplative space that used the semantics of architectural forms to express an ecological metaphysic made manifest in the proposed Teilhard de Chardin Cloister was one thing. As a design that ‘sacramentalizes technology’, this new-age cloister runs the risk of literalizing the spiritual. The cloister design would exist at a fulcrum point within Arcosanti, where the dualities of the religious and the secular, the spiritual and the mundane, as well as the natural and technological all come into paradox. Religion is our salvation; the rejection of religion is our salvation. Only technology can save us; only the earth can save us. The cloister that is not a cloister manifests the fundamental paradox in the relations between spirit and matter.

Photo credit: David DeGomez

Figure 4.7 Teilhard De Chardin Cloister, section through apse looking east. Designed as part of the Arcosanti project in Arcosanti, Arizona, 1972, colored china ink stencil work and transfer lettering on clear print vellum, drawing size 61.25 inches by 35.5 inches

Paolo Soleri’s Teilhard De Chardin Cloister 87

Figure 4.8 Critical mass is the first ‘major phase’ of development of Arcosanti. It is planned to be a town of 500 to 600 people who will live and work, study and/or visit. This will be the staging ground for the subsequent larger development of Paolo Soleri’s most recent design for Arcosanti, Arcosanti 5000 Photo credit: 3D Rendering – Young Soo Kim

Notes 1 P. Soleri, Arcology: The City in the Image of Man (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1969). 2 P. Soleri, ‘Beginnings, Ends and Means: An Introduction, with John Strohmeier and Kathleen Ryan, December, 2000’, The Urban Ideal: Conversations With Paolo Soleri (Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Hills Books, 2001), p. 36. 3 P. Teilhard de Chardin, ‘The Threshold of the Terrestrial Planet: the Noosphere’, The Phenomenon of Man (New York: Harper & Row, 2008, 1959), pp. 180–4. Originally published in English in 1959 from the French Le Phénomene Humain (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1955). 4 J. Kreisberg, ‘A Globe, Clothing Itself With a Brain’, Wired, 3:6 (1995), p. 108. 5 V. Mosco, The Digital Sublime: Myth, Power, and Cyberspace (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004). 6 P. Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man, 1959, p. 182. 7 J. Huxley, ‘Introduction’, The Phenomenon of Man, p. 14. 8 U. King, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin: Writings (Maryknoll, NY: Urbis Books, 1999), p. 24. 9 P. Teilhard de Chardin, The Heart of Matter (London: William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd., 1978), pp. 74, 235.

88  Alicia Imperiale 10 P. Teilhard de Chardin, ‘Cosmic Life’, in Writings in Time of War (London: Collins, and New York: Harper & Row, 1968), p. 29. Translated by René Hague 11 Ibid., p. 30. 12 Ibid., pp. 69–70. 13 Ibid., pp. 29–30. 14 P. Soleri, The Omega Seed: An Eschatological Hypothesis (New York: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1981), p. 5. 15 P. Teilhard de Chardin, The Future of Man (London: Collins, 1964, 1950), p. 115. Originally L’Avenir de l’homme (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1959). 16 A. Lima, Soleri: Architecture as Human Ecology (New York: The Monacelli Press, Inc., 2003), p. 29. 17 P. Soleri, Arcology, p. 5. 18 W. I. Thompson, Passages About Earth: An Exploration of Planetary Culture (Lindisfarne Press, 1990, 1974), pp. 36–45. 19 P. Soleri, ‘The Architecture of Consciousness’, The Urban Ideal: Conversations With Paolo Soleri (Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Hills Books, 2001), p. 77. 20 Ibid., p. 79. 21 P. Soleri, Arcology, p. 57. 22 Ibid., p. 63. 23 Ibid., p. 64. 24 Ibid., p. 108. 25 Ibid. 26 Ibid., p. 109. 27 A. Lima, Soleri, p. 337.

Part II

Monasticism and religious houses

5 Prairie progressivism George P. Stauduhar and St Benedict’s convent Barbara Burlison Mooney

In early 1911, the Rock Island, Illinois, architect, George P. Stauduhar, who was already well known in the American Midwest as a respected and efficient church designer, received a letter written in a beautiful hand scolding him for his delay in sending plans for the design of a new chapel for St Benedict’s Convent at St Joseph, Minnesota.1 Although the letter was signed under the collective name, ‘The Sisters of St Benedict,’ it was likely written by Mother Cecilia Kapsner, the abbess of the convent since 1901 and legal signatory to any building contract. As if she were reproving an errant schoolchild, Mother Cecilia upbraided the 46-year-old architect for his tardiness. Then, just in case he might dismiss her as merely a complaining woman, she pointedly alluded to similar disapproval from male religious of the diocese: Bishop Trobec and Abbot P. Engel and a number of the clergy have made frequent inquires as to why we do not proceed with the building and cannot understand why you do not send the plans. Only yesterday two clergymen from St Paul called to see the chapel and were certainly more than a little surprised to find that we did not even have the plans.2 Mother Cecilia’s letter to Stauduhar informs us immediately that the Sisters of St Benedict’s Convent (styled St Benedict’s Monastery since 1996) were not the least hesitant to exert their female religious authority over the credentials of a professionally trained male architect.3 Because of their decisions as fully engaged architectural clients, Mother Cecilia and her fellow religious elicited from Stauduhar a design for a chapel and an academy building that recognized their religious devotion and dignity, while at the same time signaled a willingness to embrace specific elements of modernity. St Benedict’s Sacred Heart Chapel, whose cornerstone was laid in 1912 and was dedicated in 1914, and its accompanying academic building, St Teresa Hall, completed in 1913, were in part the result of Stauduhar’s training, professional experience and reputation for well-constructed, economical churches that satisfied the needs of small town Catholic, Lutheran and German Evangelical congregations on the Midwestern prairie.4

92  Barbara Burlison Mooney Educated in the late 1880s at the University of Illinois under the direction of Nathan Clifford Ricker, who was the first graduate of any American collegiate architecture programme, Stauduhar became a successful specialist in church architecture.5 More than 60 of his churches survive from Glendale, Ohio, Dazey, North Dakota, to Kingman, Kansas. His churches include a range of scale and materiality: the diminutive, 24-foot-wide frame Sacred Heart Church at Dimmick, Illinois, and the large, 157-foot-long masonry and steel Chapel at St Benedict’s.6 Although he submitted plans to Presbyterian and Episcopalian congregations that were planning new building campaigns, including a 1894 avant-garde arts and crafts design for an Episcopal Church in Moline, Illinois, Stauduhar was only able to win commissions from Catholic, Lutheran and German Evangelical clients. Over the course of his professional career, Stauduhar employed Romanesque, Gothic, Castellated, Renaissance and Baroque ornamental vocabularies. Sixty per cent of his churches, however, were in a Gothic Revival style. Prior to St Benedict’s, Stauduhar designed only two known religious buildings with classicizing features: an 1895 Colonial Revival church in Philo, Illinois, and a 1900 Christopher Wren–inspired remodeling of a Streator, Illinois, church. In 1916, he created a Flemish Baroque design for Catholics of Belgian origin in Atkinson, Illinois, that made a gesture to the scrolled gable facades of Jesuit Counter Reformation churches in Antwerp and Louvain. St Benedict’s Chapel of the Sacred Heart, however, did not allude to St Walburg Convent in Eichstätt, Bavaria, from where the first Benedictine sisters to America had emigrated in 1852. Even less did it acknowledge the domestic character of the wooden buildings at St Joseph Convent in St Mary’s Pennsylvania, from where the founding sisters of St Benedict’s had come to Minnesota in 1857.7 Throughout his career, Stauduhar earned commissions by competing with both big city architects and small-town building contractors. Previous clients gave him new work, and he also won commissions from pastors who had admired a particular Stauduhar church and desired a similar design for their congregations. Such was the case with a 1924 Lutheran Church in Arapahoe, Nebraska, based on Stauduhar’s 1913 Gothic Revival Lutheran church in Buffalo Prairie, Illinois.8 By contrast, a skilled artisan prompted Stauduhar’s commission for the Sacred Heart Chapel. In preliminary research for a new chapel in 1910, Mother Cecilia Kapsner and Procurator Sister Priscilla Schmidtbauer had visited Benedictine convents at Clyde, Missouri, and Atchison, Kansas, both of which were embellished with rich liturgical furnishings by Egid Hackner, a La Crosse, Wisconsin, designer and manufacturer of church furniture. Impressed by the quality of his work, the Sisters of St Benedict’s Convent at St Joseph asked his advice concerning a suitable architect. Hackner recommended Stauduhar. Subsequently, on 1 March 1911, Stauduhar received a letter from Father Henry Borgerding, the convent’s chaplain who was appointed from nearby St John’s Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota. In this

Prairie progressivism 93 letter, Fr Borgerding invited the Rock Island architect to submit plans specifically because Hackner had advocated for his work.9 Despite Hackner’s recommendation, Fr Borgerding let Stauduhar know that the sisters would be active participants in the building process by making critical decisions concerning aesthetics and building program. Fr Borgerding told him that the sisters had already decided on the general character of the Chapel: ‘It is settled that the style should not be Gothic’ and that ‘the building should not be so very costly on the outside as the place for display of architecture, [but] rather commodious & beautiful inside.’ As if to emphasize the sisters’ agency and diminish his own clerical male authority, Fr Borgerding made a point of saying that although he could ‘not control their choice; I can promise your work a fair consideration.’10 Sacred Heart Chapel at St Benedict’s proved to be Stauduhar’s largest and most ambitious church commission (Figure 5.1). It held its designation as a chapel not because of its size, but because it served a religious community rather than a parish. By contrast, the smaller and less aesthetically ambitious Gothic Revival place of worship for St Joseph, Minnesota, parishioners was officially called a church. Despite its titular designation, St Benedict’s Sacred

Figure 5.1 Exterior of the Chapel of the Sacred Heart, St Benedict’s Convent and College, St Joseph, Minnesota Courtesy of the University of Illinois Archives

94  Barbara Burlison Mooney Heart Chapel was, for its setting on the vast prairie, impressive in scale, possessing a dome 135 feet high and having a seating capacity of 550.11 On its exterior, the Chapel of the Sacred Heart exhibited restrained Renaissance features. The Chapel rested on an elevated basement story, differentiated by its warm yellow brick, which was inset every six courses to convey the impression of a sandstone ashlar masonry foundation from afar. Walls surmounting the basement, by contrast, were built of buff-colored brick that suggested limestone masonry. Immediately above the basement level, a covered ambulatory surrounded the nave portion of the Chapel. Large round-arched, clear-glassed windows illuminated the nave and choir elevations. At this point, Stauduhar deployed a feature of classical architecture that had its origins in ancient Rome – namely, a trabeated colonnade of Doric pilasters superimposed over arcuated openings. The entablature surmounting the pilaster colonnade is composed of two planar fasciae, a frieze without triglyphs and metopes and a cornice that also acts as a gutter. Rising above a polychrome tile roof, the dome presented the focal point of exterior design. The dome consisted of a tall drum surrounded by a colonnade of free-standing Ionic columns and surmounted by a plain entablature and attic level. Above the attic level, Stauduhar placed an elongated ribbed dome. While the profile of his dome seems unusually attenuated to those more familiar with ancient or Renaissance prototypes, it can be compared to two similarly stilted domes framing the Gemdarmenmarkt in Berlin that were designed by Karl Philipp Christian von Gontard, who had studied under Jacques-François Blondel in Paris in the mid-eighteenth century.12 Stauduhar’s Chapel used a Latin cross plan with a round apse to the west and transepts terminating in round projections to the south and north. The principle entrance to the Chapel was not visibly public but rather connected to the convent via a colonnaded link. Beautifully embellished elevated cloister walks on the north and south allowed novices and students to enter the Chapel’s nave without going out of doors (Figure 5.2). An antiphonally positioned choir used by the sisters for daily liturgical offices was located directly below a dome on pendentives, conferring greater religious approbation to that space. Smaller altars were found on either side of the main altar and in the transept apses. A sacristy round in plan and a vestry square in plan flanked the sanctuary and were linked to each other via an annular corridor behind the main altar. As Fr Borgerding had directed Stauduhar in his initial letter, the interior of the Chapel of the Sacred Heart received the more costly share of embellishment (Figure 5.3). Because the Chapel was significantly altered in 1981, we must rely on historic photographs and descriptions to envision the splendor of the original interior.13 Sixteen granite columns quarried from Rockville, Minnesota, were positioned to divide the centre aisle from the side aisles of the nave and support the dome. Wall surfaces exhibited elaborate foliate and shell ornament, and floors were faced with marble and terrazzo veneers. Additional scagliola (a composite stucco process used to imitate marble since

Prairie progressivism 95

Figure 5.2 Cloister walk connecting St Teresa Hall to the Chapel of the Sacred Heart, St Benedict’s Convent and College Courtesy of the University of Illinois Archives

the seventeenth century) columns and pilasters articulated walls.14 Electric lighting played a dramatic as well as practical role, and Stauduhar placed hidden lighting at the dome’s base and around the sanctuary’s arch in order to accentuate the significance of these areas.15 The Sisters of St Benedict’s determination to shape their liturgical environment went well beyond a determination of overall style and programmatic requirements. Their participation in the building process had originated in their decision to employ Egid Hackner’s interior furnishings, which they considered fundamental to their daily liturgical lives. They approved all ornamental decisions, such as the design of the pews, stalls and the size and position of the altar and continued to consult with Hackner, who proudly used the Chapel in his advertising.16 One example of the sisters’ engagement

Courtesy of the University of Illinois Archives

Figure 5.3 Interior of the Chapel of the Sacred Heart on a postcard used by Egid Hackner

Prairie progressivism 97 in the design process is particularly informative. They directed Hackner to base his design for the main altar on images found in the 1719 Latin and German translation of the Italian architect and priest Andrea Pozzo’s 1693 treatise on pictorial and architectural perspective – a volume that the Sisters owned.17 Although the altar, built of Carrara marble, Sienna marble and carved wood, is not a direct copy of any plate in Pozzo’s treatise, its circular plan and motif of angels supporting a triumphal crown as a baldachin do find precedent in his illustrations. Clearly, the sisters were doing their own architectural research. By insisting that the chapel be ‘not Gothic,’ the sisters were embracing an up-to-date, Beaux-Arts style. More extravagant versions of this idiom had appeared in Minnesota just prior to their chapel, including the French École des Beaux-Arts trained architect, Emmanuel Louis Masqueray’s 1905 St Paul’s Cathedral in St Paul, his 1906 Basilica of St Mary in Minneapolis and Cass Gilbert’s 1896 Minnesota State Capitol in St Paul. Although the Sisters of St Benedict’s would have, no doubt, claimed that the design of the Chapel was intended solely to give greater glory to God, one cannot help thinking that there may have been a little architectural competition in play, specifically with the church of their male Benedictine counterparts at St John’s Abbey, about five miles away in Collegeville, and with the proCathedral of their bishop in St Cloud, about six and a half miles away. The 1879 Romanesque Revival church at St John’s Abbey was based on the 1876 Cathedral of Green Bay, Wisconsin, which in turn was inspired by Friedrich von Gärtner’s Ludwigskirche in Munich, completed in 1844.18 The 1884 Romanesque Pro-Cathedral of the Holy Angels in St Cloud was built from plans provided by the New York City architect William Schickel, who had studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Munich and was consequently influenced by its former director, von Gärtner.19 While St John Abbey’s twin towers surpassed in height the dome of the Sacred Heart Chapel, its Romanesque Revival style was no longer the most fashionable architectural idiom in 1911. Until the completion in 1961 of Marcel Breuer’s Abbey Church at St John’s, the sisters might have argued that their chapel held architectural pride of place. While the sisters’ new buildings were clothed in historicizing ornament, they were constructed using modern techniques used in contemporary skyscrapers. Photographs taken during construction and archival documents indicate that the Chapel employed a complex combination of load-bearing brick walls, steel skeletal framing for the roof and dome and a Corr-Mesh reinforced concrete system for the floors.20 St Teresa Hall used a more simple system of concrete frame construction with a non-bearing stone facing at the foundation level and brick infill above. The Sisters of St Benedict’s were embracing new technology but integrating it with the historical visual features that they found so meaningful. The sisters’ participation in the building process included not only the selection of architectural style and liturgical furnishings but also encompassed

98  Barbara Burlison Mooney the supervision of construction. Although there is no evidence indicating that the sisters molded the bricks or built the walls of the Chapel of the Sacred Heart and St Teresa Hall in the same way that early students at Notre Dame University in Indiana or Hampton Institute in Virginia did, at least one of their number took an essential role in erecting these new buildings. Sr Priscilla Schmidtbauer, the convent’s procurator, regularly corresponded with Stauduhar.21 An extensive number of her letters to Stauduhar indicates that she served as an on-site project supervisor, acting as his eyes and ears and reporting progress and problems. For example, in one letter, Sr Priscilla informs Stauduhar about accounts: ‘Referring to the Brioschi-Minuti work, would say that we met their pay-roll of August 14 which amounted to $906.54.’ She goes on to tell Stauduhar that the metal lather was dismissed on account of drunkenness, and otherwise inattention to his work, and we have permitted Mr Curtis to work here . . . but insisted that Mr Minuti also stay on the job, which he finally did.22 The ornamental plaster firm to which she is referring was hardly a provincial enterprise with little experience in large-scale projects. Just prior to working on the Chapel of the Sacred Heart, this company had worked on the Grand Central Terminal in New York City, designed by the associated firms of Reed and Stem and Warren and Wetmore, and had also worked on the ornamentation of the Morgan Library in New York City, designed by Charles Follen McKim.23 Not intimidated by Brioschi-Minuti’s prior credentials, Sr Priscilla let male laborers and contractors know that they were being held to the highest standards of craftsmanship and behavior. Sr Priscilla also kept a careful eye on the cost of building materials and was wary of relying on the general contractor, Butler Brothers of St Paul, Minnesota: ‘We need a carload of cement, and have asked Butler Bros. for prices. Would also like to have you submit prices for comparison, if you have any.’ Although Sr Priscilla seems to have managed quite well on her own, she, like many other architecture clients, demanded the architect’s more personal attention to the project. She ends her letter emphatically, perhaps even sarcastically: ‘Hoping that you will find it convenient to be here soon, as you see there are many things which need your personal attention.’24 Sr Priscilla’s position of authority in the building process no doubt reflected her superior administrative and accounting abilities, but she may have also had some additional skills. A letter from J. C. Schmidtbauer to Sr Priscilla has a salutation, ‘cousin’, and alludes to her concerns about electrical work. J. C. Schmidtbauer would serve as vice-president of Julius Andrae and Sons Company of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a firm that introduced the first incandescent lighting to Milwaukee.25 Through family connections, Sr Priscilla likely had access to a measure of building expertise.26

Prairie progressivism 99 Construction of the Chapel of the Sacred Heart marked a high point in the architectural evolution of the Sisters of St Benedict’s. Their history from the time they moved to Minnesota in 1857 witnessed an ambitious expansion of their facilities for the ora et labora requirements of Benedictine monasticism. Their early years, however, were inauspicious. For their first eight days in the summer of 1857 in St Cloud, Minnesota, the sisters lived in a no doubt stifling attic of a log cabin owned by Wendelin Merz. They then rented a former tavern and boarding house from John Tenvoord, one of the first German settlers in the region. The following year, local Catholic laymen built them a new convent and school constructed of an un-insulated balloon frame covered with clapboards. When they moved to the nearby town of St Joseph in 1863, accommodations were likewise unpromising and crude.27 The sisters’ eventual and rather spectacular change of fortune began when they started to offer a superior secondary boarding school education for girls. The increased demand for more advanced female education on the prairie allowed them to embark on a series of large building projects that incorporated educational facilities, a convent and a chapel.28 Beginning in 1879, the sisters erected four substantial brick buildings.29 All but one of these buildings were articulated by slight references to Italianate or Second Empire detailing and demonstrate that in 1910 the convent and academy already owned a somewhat classicizing though very restrained character. Some of the interiors, however, were far from plain. The 1892 convent chapel in St Scholastica Hall could hold 330 sisters and students. It proved too small for graduation ceremonies when a much larger audience of tuition-paying parents and visiting clergy attended, but the fact that the chapel was ornamented with Doric columns and had a barrel-vaulted ceiling indicates that the sisters not only wanted Stauduhar to design a much larger and lavish setting for their liturgical offices and one that acknowledged contemporary fashion – namely, the Beaux-Arts – but also that he respect the architectural continuity of their campus.30 The Sisters of St Benedict’s expected, indeed demanded, a highly aestheticized liturgical setting marking critical diurnal points of their communal prayer life reciting the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary, as well as for Mass, First Friday Sacred Heart devotions and other communal prayers. This stood in marked contrast to the material culture of the remainder of their daily lives.31 Because their vows included the rejection of private property, the Sisters of St Benedict’s led lives far more austere than most of the students that they taught. More significantly, since their arrival in the United States, the sisters had practiced St Benedict of Nursia’s sixth-century CE rule: they slept in open dormitories with little opportunity for privacy. Even the curtained partitions, similar to those employed for the academy girls at St Benedict’s, represented a notable break in the strict tradition exercised by American Benedictine women religious. Sleeping accommodations for wealthy students in the second part of Stauduhar’s commission at St Benedict’s – namely, St Teresa Hall completed

100  Barbara Burlison Mooney in 1913 – are particularly noteworthy. This new academic building contained a gymnasium in the basement, a new library, assembly room and several classrooms on the first and second floors. The first floor also served as the location for a museum, art rooms and sewing rooms.32 Fine sewing was an important part of the early history of St Benedict’s Convent and the design of vestments continued to serve as a critical economic component of Benedictine self-sufficiency. Consequently, the study of art constituted a vital part of the curriculum. Stauduhar had some difficultly locating a highquality lantern slide projector that would focus on a wall 57 feet away – a distance that suggests the large number of the students and novices learning this discipline.33 He personally acknowledged the role of art and art history in their institution by donating a print of St Peter’s Basilica to the library.34 A more significant innovation was found on the top two floors of St Teresa Hall. Surrounding a two-story atrium illuminated by a skylight within its modern concrete flat roof were a number of private rooms for students whose parents could afford additional boarding fees (Figure 5.4). Private student rooms in St Teresa Hall allowed an older part of the complex to be reconfigured into a few private cells for religious, although many sisters continued to sleep in curtained dormitories well into the 1960s.35 Yet remodeling even a few of the sleeping accommodations for students and sisters into separate rooms signaled a modern, progressive interpretation of religious life and religious education – one that acknowledged the value of personal privacy and private contemplative prayer, and broke with a strict communal interpretation of Benedictine Rule. Although private cells had appeared in the late Middle Ages, their presence at St Benedict’s represented a departure from the strict communal practices found in the United States.36 The Sisters of St Benedict’s more progressive attitude towards privacy and their interest in up-to-date architectural styles coincides with their expansion of the curriculum for young Catholic women in 1913 to include college-level courses. Mother Cecilia Kapsner’s ambitious building projects were linked to a vision of providing young Catholic women with advanced education. Similar to the development of their academic buildings, the curriculum of St Benedict’s evolved to embrace changing needs on the Midwest prairie. When they first came to St Cloud in 1857, the sisters’ religious mission was straightforward: to teach catechism and literacy to children of the many German immigrants who had begun to arrive in 1854.37 The sisters, however, encountered resistance from those same immigrants who found the cost of parochial education in addition to taxes in support of public schools burdensome and who also relished the greater say they had in public school administration. The German-speaking sisters, however, possessed other more genteel skills that proved to be the key to their early survival.38 The first prioress of St Benedict’s, Mother Willabalda Scherbauer, for example, taught drawing and painting in addition to singing.39 Her abilities in the arts are not entirely surprising. She had been trained at St Walburg Convent in Eichstätt, Bavaria, a foundation whose artistic heritage dates back to the medieval period.40

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Figure 5.4 Private room and gymnasium in St Teresa Hall, St Benedict’s Convent and College Courtesy of the University of Illinois Archives

While Catholic religion, Catholic priests and Catholic education repelled most Protestant settlers in Minnesota, the Sisters of St Benedict’s European proficiency in music, art and fine needlework earned admiration among St Cloud’s elite Protestant female settlers who found cultural conditions on the frontier so appallingly impoverished they were willing to send their

102  Barbara Burlison Mooney daughters to the sisters for instruction in these arts or commission fine sewing from them.41 When the sisters moved to St Joseph, Minnesota, they confronted similar disinterest in their primary school and were forced to do laundry and mending for St John’s Abbey in order to survive. The critical step forward occurred when the sisters began to offer what most public schools on the Midwestern prairie could not – namely, a first-rate secondary school education for young women. Although St Benedict’s Academy had aspects of a finishing school in the 1880s, its emphasis on humanities and the arts, rather than solely on practical skills, provided an intellectually and culturally expansive education that surpassed many rural public high schools at the time.42 Academic standards and expectations, however, had considerably advanced by the beginning of the twentieth century, and under the leadership of Mother Cecilia, St Benedict’s addressed more ambitious goals. As at many public and private colleges and universities in the late nineteenth century, the role of classical education in the modern world was a topic of debate.43 The sisters decided that although they would retain their traditional strength in arts and classical humanities, they would also include a rigorous science path. At the collegiate level, the bachelor of arts required only one math and one science course, but included courses in, for example epistemology, cosmology, patristic and scholastic philosophy, as well as Latin, Greek and German. The bachelor of science degree, however, required four years of science, two of math, one of economics and offered instruction in topics such as differential equations, plant taxonomy, comparative anatomy, organic chemistry, mechanics and hydrostatics. To underscore the importance of modern science in the curriculum, course catalogues made a point of including photographs of laboratory classrooms and apparatus.44 The advanced education of the college and the aesthetic opulence of the Chapel of the Sacred Heart should be seen not only as the result of the sisters’ self-sacrifice and frugality but understood within a broader context of prosperous economic conditions in the American Midwest at that time. In so much as the sisters chose a life in which they relinquished private property and their inheritances, profits from tuition, board and fees could be directed to building campaigns. And in this period, profits were indeed increasing. Of course, there were periods of recessions, panics and grasshopper plagues, but taking the long view, this era experienced agricultural expansion, especially after 1900. Innovative agricultural technology, such as steam-traction engines, proved dramatically more efficient than mules. Not many farmers had the cash to buy one these behemoths, but many could hire itinerant companies that moved their equipment from farm to farm during planting and harvesting. Railroad networks connecting small towns to Chicago and Duluth, and the increased use of grain elevators expanded markets for Midwest grain to the East Coast and Europe. Construction of silos providing silage for diary cows over the winter, the invention of the Babcock tester for standardized butterfat content, and the professionalization of dairy

Prairie progressivism 103 production in creameries allowed farmers to take advantage of economies of scale and more distant urban markets.45 While few Midwestern farmers could afford to send their daughters to St Benedict’s, the merchants and bankers who became wealthy from those farmers came to take an optimistic view of the future, and this confidence translated into a desire for the intellectual as well as social development of their daughters. The modern technologies that expanded Midwestern agriculture also made Stauduhar’s projects at St. Benedict’s more affordable (Figure 5.5). Railroads transporting rural grain, lumber and dairy to Midwest cities brought in return competitively priced terracotta ornament from Chicago and Corr-Mesh steel from Buffalo. Ever expanding webs of rail lines and later electric interurban lines linking small Midwest towns allowed

Figure 5.5  Construction workers with manufactured terracotta ornament from Chicago in the Chapel of the Sacred Heart, St Benedict’s Convent and College Courtesy of the University of Illinois Archives

104  Barbara Burlison Mooney Stauduhar to travel easily between clients and construction sites, and consequently brought down the cost of architectural projects. All of these larger economic and technological conditions made construction of the Chapel of the Sacred Heart, St Teresa Hall and progressive education on the Midwest prairie possible. Examining Stauduhar’s work for the Sisters of St Benedict’s yields several significant lessons. First, his ambitious designs undermine a conventional narrative that positions the use of modern materials as occurring chiefly within the context of the modern building types such as the skyscraper. Second, it refutes a view of this period in the Midwest as one that witnessed religious decline because of industrial, commercial and secular expansion. Finally, the designs for St Benedict’s demonstrate how not all modern clients deferred to the presumed authority of professional architects. Because of their active engagement in the research, design and construction phases of building, the Sisters of St. Benedict’s collaborated with Stauduhar to create a chapel and an academic building that architecturally dignified their liturgical practices and signaled their embrace of a progressive ascendency of rigorous female education on the American Midwestern prairie.

Notes 1 Funding for research for this chapter was provided by an Arts and Humanities Grant and an Obermann Center for Advanced Studies Grant, both from the University of Iowa. 2 Sisters of St. Benedict’s to Mr. Geo. Stauduhar, n.d., University of Illinois Archives, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, George P. Stauduhar Papers, record no. 26/20/42 (hereafter GPS Papers), St. Benedict’s Academy, St. Joseph, Minn., 1911 subject file, Box 7. The bishop had to approve any building project. 3 On 23 March 1996, the Convent of St. Benedict’s was renamed the Monastery of St. Benedict’s. Sr E. Hollermann, email message to author, 29 April 2013. 4 W. B. Mitchell, History of Stearns County, Minnesota (Chicago: H.C. Cooper, 1915), p. 277. 5 For Ricker, see P. Kruty, ‘Nathan Clifford Ricker: Establishing Architecture at the University of Illinois,’ at www.arch.illinois.edu/about/history/ricker/ [accessed 28 April 2013]. 6 Mitchell, History of Stearns County, p. 278. 7 Sr M. G. McDonald, With Lamps Burning (St. Paul, MN: Sisters of the Order of Saint Benedict, 1957), pp. 3–19; J. F. Hamburger, Nuns as Artists: The Visual Culture of a Medieval Convent (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), p. 9. 8 Pastor G. Viehweg to G. P. Stauduhar, 7 July 1924, GPS Papers, Box 4. 9 Egid Hackner was born in Bavaria in 1856, apprenticed in church art in Freistadt in 1871–1874, studied further at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Munich and immigrated to the United States in 1880. E. Hackner, ‘Records and Reminiscences,’ La Crosse County Historical Sketches 7 (September 1945), pp. 1–18. 10 Fr Borgerding to Geo. P. Stauduhar, 1 March 1911, GPS Papers, Box 7. 11 McDonald, With Lamps Burning, p. 168. 12 F. H. Schmidt, ‘Expose Ignorance and Revive the “Bon Goût”: Foreign Architects at Jacques-François Blondel’s École des Arts,’ Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 61:1 (March 2002), pp. 4–29.

Prairie progressivism 105 13 GPS Papers, Box 51. G. Simmins, ‘Women Religious as Architectural Patrons: Three Case Studies – One Franciscan and Two Benedictine,’ American Benedictine Review, 61:3 (2010), pp. 242–56. 14 E. Hackner Co. to Geo. P. Stauduhar, 27 May 1912, GPS Papers, Box 7. 15 G. P. Stauduhar, ‘Chapel of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, St. Joseph, MN,’ GPS Papers, Box 51. 16 E. Hackner Co. to Geo. P. Stauduhar, 17 February 1913, GPS Papers, Box 7. 17 Mitchell, History of Stearns County, 279. Unfortunately, systematic library records at St. Benedict’s did not begin until 1917, making the date of the acquisition of the German translation of Pozzo’s publication difficult to determine, M. D. Neuhofer, ‘The Beginnings of Two Major Benedictine Libraries: St. John’s and St. Benedict’s in Minnesota,’ American Benedictine Review, 52:1 (2001), pp. 77–83. 18 C. J. Barry, Worship and Work: Saint John’s Abbey and University, 1856–1992 (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1993), pp. 141–3. 19 Mitchell, History of Stearns County, Minnesota, 239. For Gärtner’s influence on American architecture, see K. Curran, The Romanesque Revival: Religion, Politics, and Transnational Exchange (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003), pp. 83–93. 20 Chapel of the Sacred Heart and St. Benedict’s Academy photographs, GPS Papers, Box 51. Butler Bros. to Geo. P. Stauduhar, 2 November 1912, GPS Papers, Box 7. For Corr-Mesh technology, see Sweet’s Catalogue of Building Construction (New York, NY: F. W. Dodge Co., 1913), pp. 278–80. 21 McDonald, With Lamps Burning, 171. 22 Sr Priscilla to Geo. P. Stauduhar, n.d., GPS Papers, Box 7. 23 K. Ofstum, ‘100 Stories and Building,’ Construction Dimensions (March 2003), at www.awci.org/cd/printpage.pl?url=www.awci.org/cd/archiveArticles.pl?id=249 [accessed 29 April 2013]. 24 Sr Priscilla to Geo. P. Stauduhar, n.d. although probably 1913, GPS Papers, Box 7. 25 Electrical Work 73 (17 May 1919), p. 1053. 26 J. C. Schmidtbauer to Sr Priscilla Schmidtbauer, 3 April 1913, GPS Papers, Box 7. 27 Mitchell, History of Stearns County, p. 280; Sr G. McDonald, ‘Pioneer Teachers: The Benedictine Sisters at St. Cloud,’ Minnesota History 35:6 (1957), p. 268. 28 M. Koop, ‘St Benedict’s Convent and College Historic District,’ National Register of Historic Places Registration Form, 1988. 29 Mitchell, History of Stearns County, pp. 275–6. 30 Mitchell, History of Stearns County, p. 275. 31 McDonald, With Lamps Burning, pp. 138–9. 32 Mitchell, History of Stearns County, p. 277. 33 Bausch and Lomb Optical Co. to Geo. P. Stauduhar, 2 May 1912, GPS Papers, Box 7. 34 Sr Cecilia Kapsner to Geo. P. Stauduhar, 7 April 1911, GPS Papers, Box 7. 35 McDonald, With Lamps Burning, p. 169. 36 N. Bauer, ‘Monasticism After Dark: From Dormitory to Cell,’ American Benedictine Review 38:1 (1987), pp. 95–114; J. F. Hamburger, P. Marx and S. Marti, ‘The Time of the Orders, 1200–1500,’ in J. F. Hamburger and S. Marti, eds., Crown and Veil: Female Monasticism From the Fifth to the Fifteenth Centuries (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), pp. 67–70. 37 Mitchell, History of Stearns County, pp. 195–7. 38 McDonald, ‘Pioneer Teachers,‘ pp. 268–70. 39 Mitchell, History of Stearns County, p. 12, 33. She was also able to obtain a 1,000 florin donation from the King Ludwig II of Bavaria. McDonald, With Lamps Burning, pp. 61–2.

106  Barbara Burlison Mooney 40 Hamburger, Nuns as Artists, passim. 41 Mitchell, History of Stearns County, p. 269. 42 Sr G. McDonald, ‘A Finishing School of the 1880’s: St. Benedict’s Academy,’ Minnesota History, 27:2 (1946), pp. 96–106. 43 K. A. Mahoney and C. Winterer, ‘The Problem of the Past in the Modern University: Catholics and Classicists, 1860–1900,’ History of Education Quarterly, 42:4 (2002), pp. 517–43. 44 St Benedict’s College and Academy Thirty-fourth Annual Year Book, 1916–17, GPS Papers, Box 7, passim. 45 R. D. Hurt, American Agriculture: A Brief History (Ames: Iowa State University, 1994), pp. 221–86.

6 Modern, Gothic, Anglican The society of St John the Evangelist, Oxford Ayla Lepine

O Time, great builder! Shall the thoughts of men Grow to a stately edifice; and then, Standing awhile, the glory of a day, Thy hand but touch with grace its drear decay? Yet here and there a carved flower is found Half hidden, lying low, on grassy ground, And here and there the thoughts of one long gone Shall live, – or dying, die to be re-born.1 The Victorian Gothic Revival architect G. F. Bodley’s (1827–1907) only published book, Poems, was produced over the course of at least a decade; life, death and the arts are all constant themes. ‘Immortal Thought’ apostrophizes time as an architect whose materials are men’s ideas, which are subject to decay, change and disappearance. Bodley then contemplates the fragment and the ruin. Here decorative sculpture, inspired by natural forms, is rediscovered generations later, preserving the mortal edifice of thought in an architectural representation of mortality which, though a material survival of a past age, points forward only to the hoped-for immortality of the resurrection. Bodley was part of a select group of art-architects who struggled for ‘better things’; clarity not only in the poetry of architectural design but also the strong relationship between architecture and theology framed his practice. These bonds have formed the core of my research into Bodley’s convictions as expressed in his designs. His work for the monastic Society of St John the Evangelist (SSJE) in Oxford used Gothic architectural motifs in the 1890s and first years of the twentieth century to express their asceticism and crystalize an ongoing medievalist Victorian approach to the radical and rapid growth of Anglican monasticism (Figure 6.1). This cultural and religious phenomenon took hold with E. B. Pusey and supporters of the Oxford Movement in the middle decades of the nineteenth century and quickly spread. Sisterhoods and convents were far more successful and prolific than brotherhoods, and the two most prominent latter groups were both established

108  Ayla Lepine

Figure 6.1 George Frederick Bodley, west façade and tower, St John the Evangelist, Oxford, 1894–96; 1904–6

in Oxford – SSJE and the Community of the Resurrection. The SSJE site in East Oxford is both Gothic and modern. It also reveals Bodley’s preoccupations with change and eschatology towards the end of his career. Moreover, this chapter pairs Bodley’s Gothic Revival work for SSJE with its founder Richard Meux Benson’s own theological writings. Though Benson was no longer father superior when Bodley designed the church in 1894–96 and its tower in 1904, his foundational beliefs about monasticism, humanity and the Incarnation are infused within this modern Anglican Gothic project. Unlike Bodley and the constellation of Gothic Revivalists who had changed the architectural character of British Anglicanism in the United Kingdom and throughout the empire across the long nineteenth century, Benson did not make strong ideological or theological links between artistic material beauty and holiness.2 Benson believed that there was a ‘danger to the real activity of the soul in music, painting, architecture.’3 There are, however,

Modern, Gothic, Anglican 109 clear links between Benson and his fellow founders’ monastic convictions in modern Anglican Britain and the church Bodley designed for SSJE in the 1890s. The SSJE was founded in 1866. They are known colloquially as Oxford’s Cowley Fathers because of the neighbourhood where their house was established in Marston Road in 1868, and they commissioned Bodley to design their church and cloisters there for an expanding and successful community with an international reach at the height of the fin-de-siècle. Each man who joined the Anglican community was already ordained a priest, and they took vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, and lived together communally. The austere complex and associated projects for the Society exemplify Bodley’s concerns with death and resurrection, both in relation to a uniquely Anglican monastic life and the Gothic Revival itself; these ideas were also connected to his own reflections on a long career by an architect at the top of his field in his seventieth decade. Since the 1870s, Bodley had been interested in developing his Victorian Gothic Revival idiom in relation to friars’ churches in Northern Europe.4 The ideas at play in the design for the church of St John the Evangelist in Oxford consider the buildings as extensions of the monastic community’s corporate body, suspended in a liminal tension between adhering to and eschewing materiality. This was exemplified by the Society’s founder, Richard Meux Benson, who believed a community strives to ‘give up the world really, truly, brightly, spiritually . . . stepping aside from this world as much as possible.’5 This chapter places SSJE’s Oxford buildings in dialogue both with Benson’s thinking about the religious life and with G. F. Bodley’s own poetry and prose. Together, this cluster of ideas and spaces frame an interpretation of SSJE on the brink of the twentieth century and Bodley’s work for them at their Oxford headquarters. Born in 1827, George Frederick Bodley was one of the earliest pupils of the Victorian eminent architect George Gilbert Scott.6 His first independent work at churches such as St Michael and All Angels in Brighton, St Martin’s in Scarborough and All Saints at Selsley – culminating in the 1860s masterpiece of All Saints, Jesus Lane in Cambridge – provided opportunities to experiment with collaborative artwork within a Gothic Revival and ecclesiological framework (Figure 6.2). He was one of the first architects to employ William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones and their associates to produce stained glass, wall painting and even textiles, and Bodley also worked with Charles Eamer Kempe. Many of these partnerships lasted for decades; indeed, C. E. Kempe designed the stained glass for St John the Evangelist in Oxford, including an east window populated with monastic saints springing from the root of Jesse. In the late 1860s, Bodley entered into a partnership with the architect Thomas Garner. Their best-known work from this period includes St German’s in Cardiff, St Salvador’s Dundee and Holy Angels at Hoar Cross in Staffordshire. Bodley and Garner also worked on a grand neo-Renaissance altarpiece for St Paul’s Cathedral, multiple projects

110  Ayla Lepine

Figure 6.2 George Frederick Bodley, aisle, All Saints, Cambridge, 1862–71

for Oxford and Cambridge including the chapel and hall at Queens’ College, accommodation ranges for King’s College and work in the chapel at Jesus College in Cambridge. In Oxford, their work included a bell tower for Christ Church, the St Swithun’s Quadrangle at Magdalen and – for clients outside the University – the monastic church of St John the Evangelist for SSJE. Bodley also co-authored designs for Washington National Cathedral in Washington, DC, with his former pupil Henry Vaughan, and supervised the young Giles Gilbert Scott’s first years of work on Liverpool Cathedral. Later churches included St Mary of Eton, Hackney Wick and Holy Trinity, Prince Consort Road: one a mission church in East London and the other in fashionable South Kensington neighbouring the Royal Albert Hall. The fusion between theology and architecture in Bodley’s commissions reached an unprecedented level of restrained power in his designs for St John the Evangelist in Oxford.

The society of St John the evangelist: modern Anglican monasticism The Society formally began on 27 December – St John’s Day – in 1866 with three men who decided to take vows of poverty, obedience and chastity, founding an order along medieval Christian lines which would mix contemplative life in community with mission work.7 The founder Richard Meux

Modern, Gothic, Anglican 111 Benson was, like the priest John Mason Neale – who also founded the sisterhood of the Society of St Margaret in East Grinstead in 1855 – inspired by the Orthodox unity encapsulated in ‘sobornost’. He was also, like many in the Oxford Movement, drawn to the church fathers. Patristics was a more appealing form of theological inquiry than the medieval scholasticism of theologians such as Thomas Aquinas who, though Benson respected his prolific and important work, had paved the way in Benson’s view to rationalism and ultimately modern agnosticism at the cost of mysticism and an experiential approach to apprehending Christian principles. Religious societies of men and women were being established throughout the country as an aspect of pre- Reformation Anglo-Catholicism. The year 1866 was also important for ritualist publications, as the second edition of Frederick Lee’s substantial Directorium Anglicanum was produced and Charles Walker’s The Ritual Reason Why appeared on the shelves of numerous clergy who supported their arguments and put these ancient traditions into practice by commissioning new vestments, plate, and architecture. These were Bodley and Garner’s chief patrons. Though his life and work were directly inspired by the Oxford Movement, Benson was uncertain about the value of grand Gothic Revival architecture and is reputed to have referred to SSJE’s first Oxford mission house as ‘the ugliest building in Oxford’ not with regret, but with a kind of ascetic pride.8 R. M. Benson’s theology acknowledged its inspiration by Oxford Movement founders such as John Henry Newman and John Keble, but was especially indebted to the writing of Edward Bouverie Pusey, who served as Regius Professor of Hebrew at Christ Church, Oxford from 1838–1882. After Newman’s conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1845, Pusey continued to be a figurehead for the Oxford Movement’s first principles. The church historian Owen Chadwick coupled Benson and Pusey’s writings as ‘ecstatic’ interpretations of Christian life and God’s power.9 Benson also knew Charles Dodgson, having met him as an undergraduate. Dodgson’s 1858 portrait of Benson portrays him as earnest and pensive. He does not confront the camera, instead gazing intently at some absent object or distant concept. It was taken in the same year that Benson conducted the first spiritual retreat in Oxford since the Reformation at Cuddesdon, a training institution for clergy just outside the city. An account of an undergraduate who attended the 1870 retreat indicates Benson’s appeal: The words of the blessing as he spoke them, the tone of the voice, the upward gaze of the eyes, all struck home to one’s heart as the most intensely spiritual act one had ever witnessed. It was almost like a physical sensation of contact with the spiritual world . . . It was unlike any other discourse one has ever heard: spontaneous, copious . . . and poetical, but always above all things vibrating with an intensity of spiritual vitality and power.10 Benson’s lectures, many of which were extemporised, privileging the optic over the haptic, though his theology

112  Ayla Lepine of materiality and embodiment – particularly in relation to the sacraments – permeated his work. In the late 1860s, he implored, Oh! Hear that voice, ‘Look unto me, and be ye saved’. ‘Look unto me’. Alas how Satan would have us misread, misunderstand these words. ‘Look to me not as I am but as I was’ . . . ‘Look to me upon Calvary and forget me upon the throne of my glory’ . . . ‘Look to me and be content to remain far away.’ But no, ‘Look to me’ must ever mean, ‘Look to me and behold me as I am’. [St John says] ‘I saw heaven opened and Jesus standing at the right hand of God’ . . . Oh, glorious vision of the most high God! Glorious vision of Jesus Christ! ‘Look unto me’.11 When SSJE began in the 1860s, they were the first formal monastic brotherhood in the Church of England’s history.12 In 1870, an American chapter was established in Boston, though tensions between Benson and the American SSJE Charles Grafton were high, and the American branch was somewhat separate from UK activity as early as 1900. In 1873, Fr Page and Fr Biscoe left for India and set up a mission in Mumbai (then Bombay), which soon moved to Pune. By the 1880s, a group of SSJE brothers were also working in South Africa. Like the Anglican sisterhoods, including the Society of St Margaret and All Saints Sisters of the Poor, missions largely followed in the wake of empire building. In 1890, Fr Benson stepped down as father superior and Fr Page took the lead. Richard Meux Benson died in 1915. In 2012, the Society came to an end in the United Kingdom, though the American branch continues to thrive in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

St John the evangelist, Oxford: Bodley’s modern monasticism St John the Evangelist was Bodley’s only opportunity to design an entire complex for a modern Anglo-Catholic monastic foundation. In 1894, the Cowley Evangelist published an article outlining the building’s character in relation to a blend of monastic and social missionary identity in Oxford: As in structure it will be simple and severe, so there must be in it a reserve in the use of ornaments, of music and of ritual adjuncts generally, so that the Church may fill a place of its own, and offer rather a contrast than a comparison wit the more splendid and varied ceremony which is properly used in the Parish Churches of Oxford.13 The site’s pairing of complexity and simplicity imparts a serenity based on a striving for balance. The church also included a ‘People’s Chapel’ to the north, a large vestry and chapels dedicated to the Holy Spirit and Holy Name. The church was well appointed for processional use and AngloCatholic liturgies. The aisles embrace the tower on both sides, and the

Modern, Gothic, Anglican 113 asymmetry instigated by the presence of the song school and side chapel on the north side is balanced by several boldly projected flying buttresses and a solidly severe outline on both east and west. The structure has four bays and a clerestory throughout. The exceptionally long chancel marked by a step and Bodley’s usual black-and-white marble was for the use of the order, and the screen’s cloistering purpose is evident in its tightly traceried design (Figure 6.3). The historical differentiation between the congregation and the clergy and the serving party is articulated here in both purpose and execution more effectively than in any of Bodley’s late buildings. Edward Warren remarked, ‘The austere dignity and ordered reticence of its high white interior give to this church a peculiar distinction – a calm severity, well befitting its use.’14 The site coupled harshness and tranquility, reflecting the uncompromising hardness of the community’s rule interwoven with monastic simplicity. Moreover, the building’s integrated structural and decorative components are expressive of the drawing together of disparate individuals

Figure 6.3 George Frederick Bodley, nave, St John the Evangelist, Oxford, 1894–96

114  Ayla Lepine into an (ultimately consummate) whole in the model of the True Presence in the sacraments and the hope of the resurrection. As Benson explained, Without the glorified body of Christ as abiding in the faithful as their perpetual nourishment . . . there is only an agglomeration of individuals . . . And as we received our communion the Blessed Spirit gave us our resurrection body.15 The body of the church is Bath ashlar, which Bodley was using frequently by this time in his career. The high white interior and methodical flow of space in the church underpins its late Decorated and early Perpendicular Gothic derivations. The church’s simple compositional elements formed the framework for a comparatively complex interior programme, richly augmented with text and pattern. As a drawing for the church had been exhibited at the Royal Academy that year, it is not surprising that St John the Evangelist was on William Fawcett’s mind when he presented Bodley with the RIBA gold medal in 1899. Fawcett remarked that the building ‘is remarkable for its quietness and simplicity – but what a grand simplicity it is!’16 This character of majestic restraint pervades the structure and holds the various materials and their handling together in a plan that balances spacious form with compartmentalized delineations in painted surfaces, stone and wood. St John the Evangelist, Anson claimed, ‘is full of that quiet, restrained beauty and subtle refinement of which he was a master.’17 The layered arrangement of flattened forms that clad the exterior contrast with the rich interior design scheme, according to an 1899 article in The Builder that was printed to mark Bodley’s gold medal achievement.18 However, this exterior effect produced by overlapping elements of the same material is less a contrast with the interior than a simile for it. At St John the Evangelist, Bodley was expressing the same ideological qualities of interplay and pattern with stone that he was achieving in two-dimensional space with paint, albeit with radically different methods and treatment. An 1897 photograph of the church shows the rough stone on either side of the east entrance indicating where the cloister was later built to connect the mission house accommodation to the church.19 It demonstrates the dynamic effect of the massive conical pinnacles, without which the very simply planned structure would appear stunted. The exposed flying buttresses convey a permanence and bolstering stability as a metaphor for the order’s tenacity and, paradoxically, its privileging of divine reality above material gain. In medieval architecture, flying buttresses are used to support stone vaulting. Here, while the buttresses do serve a structural function in the provision of stability, their architectural status is primarily as a symbol of permanence and strength. Simple solidity is favoured over fussy detail or declamatory ornamentation. The main focus of attention on both the east and west facades is a crucifixion carved in high relief from the same ashlar as the building’s exterior. A thin string course defines the clerestory level

Modern, Gothic, Anglican 115 and is bisected by the easternmost buttresses. The nave buttressing features double springing arches. A single load-bearing arm positioned on either side of the central five-light window ensures optimal open space between the vertical mass of the buttress and the characteristically sheer east wall. The overall effect is a complex interplay of weighty stone ringing a simple shell with measured, repeated depth; the eye weaves back and forth through the inner and outer exterior layers of the structure. When the building project began in 1894, the Society was thoroughly at the centre of Anglo-Catholic ritualism. They noted that ‘incense was used for the first time with us, Brother Maynard being the Thurifer.’20 The same Brother Maynard had worked in Bodley’s office and acted as clerk of works for St John the Evangelist, also assisting with the painting. The close connection between Bodley and SSJE in principles as well as social networks was embodied in this monastic art-architect. At the opening of the church in June 1896, a choir of boys sang in the rood loft, a full procession filled the air with incense and the church with vestments and yet Benson was less convinced about the church than his fellow fathers. When he first saw the church in 1896 he wrote, ‘My own life was more suited to the days of infancy, and I am glad to be out of the way of the world’s welcome.’21 Benson own sense of simplicity and restraint had, however, informed the design for the Society’s new church from its very foundations. He may not have seen this clearly, but others did. The Builder commented that the tower, ‘like the rest of the church [is] simple, and, indeed, severe in character, as was especially desired by the Cowley Fathers.’22 The Builder published a drawing of the St John’s tower in 1904 as a part of a series of illustrations documenting the architectural offerings at that year’s Royal Academy exhibition.23 The drawing of the building, seen from the west, includes representations of SSJE brothers surrounded by birds within a perpendicular intersecting pathway. The figures are generic rather than portraits, and their monastic identity is enforced by their controlled position in the foreground. The surrounding birds give the scene a romanticized monastic – even mildly Franciscan – character. In the engraving, the monks’ dress is not consistent with the Society’s habit, which was based on a simple cassock to which a knotted cord was only added in the early twentieth century. The figures are not only there for scale but also to demonstrate the nature of the project. While the church is derived from town models, its purpose was primarily to serve the order’s daily round of Mass and offices. Negotiating the tension between the public and private functions of the building is a clear priority in the tower, which was completed in 1906 as a later addition. The west side of the building faces the street, though it is considerably set back from Iffley Road, and yet there is no prominent main entrance. Yet the entire form of the tower is reminiscent of college late gothic gateways, which Bodley drew on for his own gateways and towers for college commissions such as Christ Church and King’s. At St John’s, Bodley opted for a porch rather than a central entrance, to aid the vertical

116  Ayla Lepine rise’s sheer severity. The tower’s success is in its compositional simplicity and alignment of supporting forms to create a satisfying undulation of light and shadow on either side of all four of the two-light west windows. On the inside of the church, two great piers ascend into the low pointed arch that demarcates the nave from the tower narthex. This element also impedes the flow of light into the narthex, ensuring that visitors to the church who are not members of the SSJE – and would therefore enter from the Iffley Road western doorway – are immediately brought into a space set apart from the brightness and the traffic of this busy road connecting eastern Oxford the centre of the town. Viewed from the east, it is evident that there are in fact two arches: one directly above the other; the topmost arch is nearly identical to the chancel arch that marks the next eastward progression of liturgical differentiation. Arch pressed next to arch maintains a layered effect but does not necessarily translate into a sense of bulk or thickness. The crisp lines provide adequate transition between the painted surface of the barrel-vaulted ceiling, studded with ribs and their boss details. The topmost arch is set into the join as if suspended between wall and ceiling; this is reflected in the termination of the final incomplete bay at the west end. Here the arch springs directly from the wall halfway to its peak, with no shaft or pier of its own. The moulding fused into the large pier that binds the nave is of the same ashlar stone, and this integration creates a seamless formal unity. Where the shafts surrounding the pier spring into an arch, the measured layering of mouldings across the smooth surface of the soffit create light and shadow dynamics that all play across a consistent texture. The bow of the arch is gentle but moderate, and the eye follows the differentiated layers of ashlar to the tri-tiered capital, which plays on the same qualities of linear smoothness as the progress of the arch, though at a perpendicular angle. As the wide central moulding passes through the girdling capital, it is halved in diameter to accentuate the bulge of the shaft that contains and supports the realization of the arch’s curving thrust. The choices Bodley makes in his proportions while working with the same material create a satisfying linear pattern with very little sacrifice to depth, allowing the mass of the columnar clusters to function without drawing attention to their weight. This feature of Bodley’s structures achieves the effect of solid strength without appearing heavy or burly. Very minor changes of handling with consistent materials produce results with calm but present energy. Something as simple as the termination of an arch in a capital, which fuses shafts to a pier is the embodiment of benevolent control exerted over objects that gain the ability to express life and movement through design. St John the Evangelist appears seamless. The muted tertiary colour scheme of russet and olive tones allows for the complex intricacy of patterns to appear optically harmonious and unified despite, as at Bodley’s Queens’ Chapel in Cambridge, an enormous proliferation of design variations (Figure 6.4). The bosses are squared and as is typical with Bodley’s interpretation of medieval detail, the curling gilded

Modern, Gothic, Anglican 117

Figure 6.4 George Frederick Bodley, detail of nave ceiling, St John the Evangelist, Oxford, 1894–96

arrangement of vegetation in low relief changes at each rib crossing. Painted leaves springing from fourteenth-century-inspired trefoil undulations turn to expose their undersides. This effect is mimicked by the scrolls, which frame lone words, each signaling a Christian virtue. These two elements face each other in a formal dialogue, where the latter twist inward to expose red reverses. A simple tripartite spray motif frames the scroll. The text changes in each segment, reading as a Latin list of Christian virtues framed by the twisting stylized ‘IHR’ insignia to either side. These are held in place by the same projecting spray, which emanates from an object that may represent a pomegranate, a common symbol for Christian unity and the growth of the faith. Tudor roses are interspaced with these. In this ceiling scheme, the quality of differentiation is held in the text. The points at which letters exceed the scroll’s boundaries are markers of gothic’s irregularity and grotesqueness, creating a visual dialectic of control and excess. Curves, stylized leaves or floriated trails of the upcoming letter frame words in the inscriptions. This effect allows the letters to serve not only as legible incorporations of scripture and doctrine into design, literally theological architecture, but also as formal elements separate from their collective meaning as words. Bodley’s consistent decoration of organ cases using text may push the potential of this theory further, as the boundaries and protrusions of interacting text and border behave as musical notes on a staff. For Bodley, a major

118  Ayla Lepine strength of the Gothic style was its mutability and combinative properties, which he relied upon to formulate harmonious compositions. Benson, who believed that religious communities were ‘bound together by the very foretaste of heaven’ developed a theology of baptism based on the foundational importance of a corporate group as a living body.24 The Society, a composite of individuals attuned to one another through devotion to God, is also deeply and intimately connected to the entire worshipping body of Christ, the Church in all its members. Benson explained, ‘We must then realize this indwelling of the body of Christ.’ “ ‘We are members of his body, of his flesh and of his bones.’ ”25 And this is the cause of the sanctity of the human body. When a child is brought to be baptized, the body of that child does become the body of Christ. Oh, we must consider the sanctity of a baptized person by reason of his union with Christ! And this is what we must dwell on in ourselves to that we may understand the great necessity of bodily purity. The body is not a mere adjunct of the nature which is formed to rejoice in God, but the body is the very instrument through which we have our fellowship with God.26 Nikolaus Pevsner went so far as to call St John the Evangelist Bodley’s chef d’oeuvre in Oxford, placing it above his work at Magdalen, University College and Christ Church.27 When founded in 1866, the Society for St John the Evangelist’s primary purpose was to develop a monastic community along Anglo-Catholic principles: the sacraments, daily offices, poverty and corporate living as a basis for outreach as well as semi-isolated contemplative prayer. At their Oxford mission house, the brothers’ personal asceticism and adherence to the doctrine of the church fathers and the medieval monastic models were of central importance. By 1894, the Cowley fathers, as they were known, had outgrown their 1868 red-brick residence and oratory, and the order commissioned Bodley to design a church to be used both by the order and those in the wider community. Its semi-parochial status reflected the outward looking aspect of service to the public that was an integral part of this order’s rule. The chosen site for the new church was south of the existing mission house, facing onto Iffley Road. Bishop Stubbs of Oxford laid the foundation stone in May 1894 and the building work began. The bulk of the church was finished in 1896, and the foundation stone for the tower was laid in 1901; the same year that cloisters were built for the order, connecting the older mission house to the church. The structure was completed with the addition of its tower in 1904–6. In his important study of Victorian religious communities, Peter Anson describes St John the Evangelist’s architectural effects as being evocative of plainchant.28 The structure is experienced musically and, specifically, modally; its surfaces feature undulating, complementary patters evocative of antiphonal sung prayers. It is an ornamentation strategy based on calland-response psalmody in liturgical services. In 1899, Henry Wilson saw the connections at St John’s between seeing, hearing and believing: ‘The music, the painting, the colour, and the architecture, the Religion as the heart of it

Modern, Gothic, Anglican 119 all, make one realize, as nothing else could, the Art of Religion and the Religion of Art.’29 The Sisters of Bethany – another Victorian Anglican religious sisterhood – donated the altar for the Holy Name Chapel at the southeast corner of the church in 1895.30 This convent produced large numbers of embroidery commissions and had a strong working relationship with the architect Ninian Comper as well as with Watts and Company, who provided all of the fittings and furnishings for St John’s through G. F. Bodley.31 Bodley himself donated the east window in the north aisle’s Holy Spirit Chapel in 1902.32 The subject is Saints Ambrose and Saint Athanasius, two fathers of the church cited by R. M. Benson as sources of inspiration for his writing and the establishment of the community of St John the Evangelist. Bodley’s interest in the church fathers has not been explored by other academics, but there is no doubt that his perception of religion, Christian history and the role of architecture in expressing theological points are all at stake in choosing these two saints as his gift to the order. This also supports the supposition that the cope and chasuble produced by Watts for Benson in 1882 may also have been a gift from Bodley, who admired the order and relied heavily on the flourishing of religious orders – both convents and monasteries – to provide handiwork and ongoing architectural and textiles commissions. In Anglo-Catholic ritualist spaces, architectural hermeneutics extend from structural interpretations towards developing the meanings of ritual dress. Bodley designed a gold-embroidered silk cope and chasuble for Benson in 1882 (Figure 6.5). The exact origins of the commission are unknown, though it is unlikely that Benson requested them himself and more probable that they were an offering to him and the Society from a reasonably wealthy Anglo-Catholic lay patron. They may have been given by Bodley himself, who also donated two windows to the church. The simplicity of Bodley’s designs for St John the Evangelist with their consistent tropes of enclosure and enfolding effectively pair openness and confinement in a variety of different ways through a gothic idiom. Moreover, just as the cloisters are spaced apart, the choir and sanctuary within the monastic church function compositionally and ideologically as sacred space within sacred space. It is a metaphor for the Holy of Holies and Bodley’s design focuses more on encasing and enshrining in this project than in any other in his oeuvre. By considering the church and cloisters in terms of Bodley’s contemporary writing, it is possible to gain fresh purchase on how their forms reflected the monastic community, their primary intended users. The site must be understood through the theologically rich metaphor of the temple and a spatial strategy of indicating sacred importance by relying on tropes of concentricity and material layering. This instigates an architectural response to the ancient Biblical concept of a temple wherein God and humanity fully meet one another. That is to say, a material representation of the Holy of Holies that presents an invitation to relate wholly with the divine. In this idea, the architecture and poetry that inspired Bodley and informed his own time can be yoked together.

120  Ayla Lepine

Figure 6.5 George Frederick Bodley, chasuble, c.1882 (Hoare Gallery, Liverpool Cathedral)

In 1633, the Anglican metaphysical poet George Herbert published a collection of works titled The Temple. Herbert’s project, profoundly important to many in the Victorian spiritual revival, can be tied directly to Bodley’s Oxford work for the SSJE. This is apparent not only in its conception of forms and the reflexive relationship between texts and sacred spaces but also in the reference to Herbert’s poetry made in Bodley’s design for textiles used in liturgical activities at the monastery. Vestments, including a chasuble incorporating sunflower and other important symbolic plant motifs across the back panel, also feature embroidered text across the front panel. The word ‘Iesu’ embroidered across the fabric is probably, as will be explained next, a reference to Herbert’s poem of the same name, included in The Temple. It takes an at once playful and profound approach to the meanings and implications of the Incarnation. When a celebrant for the Mass at St John the Evangelist wore this chasuble, he was transformed into an extension of

Modern, Gothic, Anglican 121 the church’s worshipping body and magnified the qualities of Christ’s sacrifice and atonement. Textiles such as this one, which were based on medieval examples revived and reinterpreted by Victorian designers, gave symbolic language to this complex theological concept. The texts and images incorporated into these works created an important link with Britain’s Christian past and drew together multiple strands of Gothic Revival culture in liturgy, craft, architecture and decorative arts. Indeed, his work for SSJE in Oxford was a fulfillment of Bodley’s own view of liminality and asceticism, as indicated in his poem ‘L’Envoi’: Of Thee, beloved Art, Infinitude Imaginable made. In quietude Lift, with Thee, hearts entranced to loftier mood.33

Notes 1 Bodley, Poems, 1899, p. 61. 2 Michael Hall, George Frederick Bodley and the Later Victorian Gothic Revival in Britain and America (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2014), p. 379. See also, G. A. Bremner, Imperial Gothic: Religious Architecture and High Anglican Culture in the British Empire (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2013). 3 M. V. Woodgate, Father Benson of Cowley (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1953), pp. 144–5. 4 Hall, G. F. Bodley, 2014, p. 377. 5 R. M. Benson, Instructions on the Religious Life (London: Mowbray, 1951), pp. 19–20. 6 For an overview of Bodley’s life and work, see Michael Hall, George Frederick Bodley and the Late Victorian Gothic Revival in Britain and America (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2014). 7 The other two were Oliver Sherman Prescott and Simeon Wilberforce O’Neill, who had previously been a housemaster at Eton. Like Benson, O’Neill came from an Evangelical background. See Martin Smith (ed.), Benson of Cowley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), p. 7. 8 Peter Anson, The Call of the Cloister: Religious Communities and Kindred Bodies in the Anglican Communion (London: SPCK, 1964), p. 80. 9 Henry Chadwick, The Mind of the Oxford Movement (Oxford: Blackwell, 1960), p. 48. 10 Richard Meux Benson, The Collected Letters of R. M. Benson SSJE, 2 Vols (London: Mowbray, 1920). 11 Quoted in Martin Smith, Benson of Cowley, 1980, p. 47. 12 For a basic history of SSJE see Peter Anson, The Call of the Cloister, pp. 72–90. 13 George Congreve SSJE, ‘The New Church’, Cowley Evangelist, March 1894, p. 35. 14 Edward Warren, ‘The Life and Work of George Frederick Bodley’, RIBA Journal, 3rd Series, 17 (1910), pp. 325–6. 15 Richard M. Benson, quoted in Smith, Benson of Cowley, 1980, p. 44. 16 William M. Fawcett and G. F. Bodley, ‘RIBA Gold Medal’, RIBA Journal, 3rd Series, 6 (1899), p. 478.

122  Ayla Lepine 17 Peter Anson, The Call of the Cloister, p. 72. 18 ‘Works by Mr. G. F. Bodley, ARA’, The Builder, 62 (9 November 1899), p. 15. 19 SSJE Archive, St John the Evangelist Oxford, photo album. 20 Cowley Evangelist, June 1896. Quoted in Hall, G. F. Bodley, 2014, p. 378. 21 Quoted in Smith, Benson of Cowley, 1980, p. 98. 22 The Builder, 87 (1904), p. 418. 23 Tower of St John’s, Cowley’, The Builder, 87 (22 October 1904), p. 418. 24 Benson, Instructions on the Religious Life, 1955, p. 89. 25 KJV, Ephesians 1.30. 26 Benson, Instructions on the Religious Life, 1955, p. 36. 27 Nikolaus Pevsner and Jennifer Sherwood, The Buildings of England: Oxfordshire (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974), p. 58. 28 Peter Anson, The Call of the Cloister, p. 73. 29 Henry Wilson, ‘Art and Religion’, Architectural Review, 5 (1899), p. 278. 30 SSJE Archives, Foundation papers. 31 Mary Schoeser, The Watts Book of Church Embroidery (London: Watts and Company, 1998). 32 SSHA, St John the Evangelist, Book 2, 15. 33 Bodley, Poems, 1899, p. 167.

7 The ‘building sisters’ of Presteigne Gender, innovation and tradition in modern-era Roman Catholic architecture Kate Jordan In 2010, the recently completed Stanbrook Abbey in North Yorkshire won a prestigious Civic Trust Award: the twin virtues of simplicity and sustainability drew wide approval, and the judges commended the design as ‘an exemplar for new buildings within a rural setting’.1 The opening of the monastery attracted the attention of the national press, not only because of the award winning design but also because it offered a window into the intensely private world of Benedictine nuns, a strictly enclosed order that rarely permit access to or ventured beyond the confines of the monastery. The articles turned inevitably on the novelty of ‘eco nuns’, and much was made of the women’s roles in shaping the new convent. The architect, Gill Smith of Fielden Clegg Bradley Studios, for example, revealed that the nuns had researched environmentally sustainable building methods and had even suggested some of the techniques employed by the architects at Stanbrook.2 Describing how the sisters had trawled the Internet for information, she remarked, with palpable surprise on how ‘clued up’ they were. But in fact, another community of contemplatives, in this case Carmelite nuns, had attracted similar attention some 60 years earlier. Long before second-wave feminism quickened the debate on women’s role in the Catholic Church, before the Internet provided ready access to information and skills and before the liturgical revolution of the Second Vatican council, these nuns provided not only the specifications for their chapel but also dug the foundations, mixed the mortar, laid the block work and cast the lintels (Figure 7.1). The ‘building sisters’, as they were subsequently styled, confounded popular notions of women religious as passive, private, contained and disempowered.3 This chapter suggests that a retrospective reading of the sisters’ chapel (now the Church of Our Lady of the Assumption and St Thérèse) as a space which conspicuously breaks with tradition while simultaneously articulating the most orthodox positions of the Catholic Church and challenges the received narratives of liturgical reform and modernity in Catholic architecture.

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Figure 7.1 Carmelite nuns working on the nun’s choir of the Church of Our Lady of Assumption and St Thérèse, 1954 Courtesy of Alan Randall, Menevia Diocesan Archives

The making of convent spaces by nuns, facilitated by the high degree of autonomy afforded by the Catholic hierarchy, is a phenomenon that belongs neither to the twenty-first nor even the twentieth century but is rooted in a long tradition.4 Moreover, the otherness of nuns as women within the Catholic Church, combined with the complexity of ascribing private and public spaces in buildings that had to accommodate both religious and lay, liberated their architecture from the cultural sectarianism that had divided English Catholicism through the nineteenth to mid-twentieth century: the prevailing emphasis within women’s religious communities on practicality and parsimony eclipsed the overwhelmingly male debates over the rectitude of architectural styles. That the circumstances of the following case study appear unusual does not indicate that they were unique but rather that new media had created opportunities for recording and broadcasting it and, importantly, that the sisters themselves deliberately marshalled this media in order to gain publicity and raise funds. In addition to press reports of the site, I have been fortunate to be able to draw much of the following description and analysis

The ‘building sisters’ of Presteigne 125 of the building programme at Presteigne from two first-hand accounts. The first was provided by Sister Anne of Christ who was, at the time, a novice in the Carmelite community at Presteigne and participated in the construction of the Church of Our Lady of Assumption. This report is valuable not only because there are so few secondary sources but also because it gives voice to the women who commissioned, paid for and built the church and offers a singular insight into a collective identity that is made concrete in this building.5 The second is a narrative offered by Francis Pollen’s widow, Lady Thérèse Sidmouth who visited the nuns with Pollen and observed the builders at work. Her perspective on Pollen’s work and the extraordinary resolve and skill of the women who built his church gives form to the following account.

The ‘building sisters’ In 1951, 14 Carmelite sisters arrived in the small town of Presteigne, Wales, at the invitation of Bishop John Petit, who was keen to find a community of contemplatives to found a centre of prayer and provide a church for the fledgling parish. The sisters secured ‘Greenfield’, a large early nineteenthcentury house which had recently been vacated by the army and would serve as the monastery. Sister Anne remembers the journey from the convent in Birkhamstead to Presteigne: In midsummer 1951 we all moved down to Wales. The younger sisters went first to clean up the house. We travelled in livestock vans with the goats, sitting on bales of hay. The elders came down two weeks later with the pony and sheep.6 Within weeks of their arrival, the sisters extended the living space by erecting huts on the site (the Carmelite Rule required that all sisters occupied individual cells) and installed an altar bread bakery which provided the means to generate an income. They also began developing plans and accumulating the materials necessary for building a chapel. Mother Michael Dawes, the prioress of the community, took charge of the project. As with most female religious orders, in practical matters, the community was largely autonomous from diocesan control, and all of the major decisions concerning the building programme at Greenfield were taken by Mother Michael. Funds for the projects were extremely limited – the community was largely self-sufficient and owned little more than a small amount of livestock. It soon became apparent that employing professional tradesmen to build the chapel would be beyond the means of the community, and so Mother Michael decided that the sisters could undertake the building work themselves. One of the difficulties arising from such a venture was that it meant that the community would require a temporary dispensation from enclosure until the work was completed. Another problem, of equal if

126  Kate Jordan not greater weight, was that none of the sisters had previously received any training in construction skills. Sister Anne recalls, One of the younger nuns had shown aptitude in construction work by turning an outhouse into a goat stable, using discarded planks, so M. Michael gave her some E.V.P. “Do it yourself” books, “Teach yourself Brickwork”, “Teach yourself Roof ing” etc., and asked her to become forewoman and learn the Building Trade. She would be joined by all those who were strong enough. A priest friend taught some carpentry skills and bought tools for us’.7 Work on a temporary chapel commenced in 1952. The sisters dismantled a conservatory and built a brick wall which was then roofed with asbestos sheeting. This provided a chapel for the laity, while the sisters worshipped in the adjoining ‘best room’ of the main house. With the construction of the permanent chapel in mind, the sisters swapped the glazing bars and glass from the conservatory for five iron windows from an army hut. Mother Michael also bartered the community’s flock of geese for a solid oak door from the cellar of Greenfield and purchased, with the little money that they had, some African hardwood flooring from an old army hut. In 1953, the sisters began the construction of the choir, which would annex the monastery (Figure 7.2). The quantity of the hardwood flooring dictated

Figure 7.2 Nun’s choir Photograph by Gil Chambers, 2011

The ‘building sisters’ of Presteigne 127 the size and shape of this simple rectangular building. Ever resourceful, the sisters learned on the job and drafted in advice as they went: We borrowed a concrete mixer and bought blocks and cement as we could afford. A master stonemason and bricklayer taught us his art, instructing us in ‘quoins’ and lin tels and the use of level and plumbline etc. His son, a carpenter, taught us the principles of doorways and roofing. Our G.P., who had built a mission hospital in China, gave guidelines over finishing the eaves, when we reached the roof’.8 The lack of funds meant cutting back on the most basic tools. As Sister Anne recalls, ‘We had no scaffolding but managed with trestles and planks, carrying up blocks in our aprons and cement in buckets until we reached roof height.’9 In March 1951, the sisters were visited by the architect Francis Pollen who was then an undergraduate architecture student and had been commissioned to alter the interior of a neighbouring house belonging to Lord Rennell of Rodd. Lord Rennell’s wife was keen to introduce Pollen to the Carmelite community and, on visiting the building site, Pollen immediately offered to donate plans for a parish church that would adjoin the nun’s choir – a building that was to be his first executed design (Figure 7.3). By early 1954, the plans were ready, and the sisters commenced building. M. Michael was keen to use local stone, but it soon became clear that this would prove too costly, and so it was decided that it would be reserved for the porch and plinth only. The sisters gathered stone from local quarries and ‘ruined buildings’, which they brought back by lorry and began the heavy building work (Figures 7.4 and 7.5): The plinth was capped with concrete laid in situ in preparation for the block walls. Younger sisters worked on the block-work, a pair of us laying outer and inner leaf as the walls went up. The more elderly cast the concrete mullions . . . for the porch of which we required over 60. M. Michael cut the foundation/corner stone inserted into the stonework of the porch, and we had the concrete floor of the sanctuary and nave laid by August 1954. We then continued work on the bell tower, which had massive concrete, carried up by two middle-aged nuns in buckets; Trojans of the whole exer cise!’10 Financing what had become a rather more ambitious plan than the sisters had at first envisaged, proved difficult. In the early stages, the sisters saved from the meagre income that their work generated and received small donations from local people and visitors, but after their work gained the attention of the press (in particular Pathé News), the donations began to accumulate in both number and value.11 Despite this, the community was still required to take out a bank loan, which meant that the church could not be consecrated until 1976 – the year that the loan was finally settled.

RIBA Drawings and Archives Collection

Figure 7.3 Francis Pollen’s designs for the Church of Our Lady of the Assumption, 1954.

The ‘building sisters’ of Presteigne 129

Figure 7.4 Carmelite nuns on the building site of the Church of Our Lady of the Assumption, 1954 Courtesy of Alan Randall, Menevia Diocesan Archives

As with most convent building projects, an uncertain trickle of funds meant that the buildings emerged piecemeal. The church was, in fact, in use before the altar was installed: in November 1954, Mass was said for the first time at a temporary altar, and it was not until the following year that the permanent altar was completed. The annals record the following: Early in 1955, we built the stone altar, our greatest privilege of all. Deep into the ground its foundations had long been laid, and stone by stone it rose – some of the stones being relics of ancient monastic churches, collected for us by our friends’.12 Not surprisingly, the completion of the altar, as the lyrical tone of this account indicates, was invested with profound significance. By the end of

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Figure 7.5 Carmelite nuns on the building site of the Church of Our Lady of the Assumption, 1954 Courtesy of Alan Randall, Menevia Diocesan Archives

1955, the doors into the sacristy were hung, the side chapel was completed, the statues installed and the grille between the nun’s choir and the sanctuary was put in place. Further additions and decoration of the interior continued sporadically over the proceeding years – notably a stone plinth for the tabernacle, made to Francis Pollen’s design, which was finally erected in 1975. The last addition was a Eucharistic inscription on the east wall, given in 1988 by the Welsh writer and artist David Jones, who had also donated an inscription for the wall behind the altar some years earlier (Figures 7.6, 7.7 and 7.8).

Figure 7.6 The Church of Our Lady of the Assumption Photograph by Gil Chambers, 2011

Figure 7.7 Altar Photograph by Gil Chambers, 2011

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Figure 7.8 Interior (looking east) Photograph by Gil Chambers, 2011

Innovation and tradition Within the emerging canon of modern Catholic architecture, the Church of Our Lady of the Assumption, if not pioneering, is an interesting reworking of vernacular and Italianate themes that offers an opportunity, as Alan Powers suggests, to examine Pollen’s ‘remarkable command, even at this early stage, of three-dimensional form, undoubtedly learnt from the study of Lutyens’.13 The space is characterized by an austerity that foreshadows the move towards solid, simple forms that characterized Catholic church building after the Second Vatican Council in 1962 and which is consummately expressed in Pollen’s Abbey Church of Our Lady, Help of Christians (1964–74) for the Benedictine community at Worth. A question arises, then,

The ‘building sisters’ of Presteigne 133 as to what prompted this modest departure from the neo-Gothic and Byzantine styles that predominated in the early post-war years: was it Pollen’s vision or the specifications of the ‘building nuns’? I suggest that the church is a coalescence of Pollen’s gift for imagining sacred space, of constrained budgets and of the Carmelites spiritual emphasis on simplicity, asceticism and themes drawn from nature. The nuns certainly had their own ideas, having, as mentioned, already commenced the choir by the time Pollen made his first visit. The creative relationship between the two seems to have come into play in the functional design of the space, and it is in this capacity that the church presents its most intriguing feature. The rustic altar, which was built by the nuns to their own design out of stones reclaimed from a Welsh monastery, stands away from the east wall on a raised platform. This would have been extremely unusual for a church built in the 1950s: before the introduction of the vernacular Mass in 1962, which required the priest to stand behind the altar, facing the congregation, altars were abutted to the east wall. On first inspection, then, one might read this configuration as a post-Vatican II reordering of the space but, in fact, it formed part of the original plan specified by the sisters. This feature was not, however, designed to promote lay participation but rather to enable both the nuns (through the conventual grille in the adjoining choir) and the parishioners in the nave to see the altar while the priest celebrated Mass with his back to the congregation. Though the church appears to blaze a trail in liturgical reform, it was, in fact, expressly dedicated to orthodox patterns of worship and ritual and serves to remind us that experimentation with form is not always the concomitant of progress – the chapel at Presteigne was built for a congregation that was doctrinally conservative and the unusual arrangement of liturgical space was a direct response to this. If the configuration of space did not, despite appearances, represent a break with convention, neither did the phenomenon of ‘building sisters’: a range of long-standing traditions among contemplative religious across Europe informed the building project at Presteigne. The Rules of contemplative orders such as the Carmelites emphasize asceticism and physical labour, and specify particular configurations in the ordering of monastic space, such as the building of individual cells for the religious.14 Moreover, the isolation that strict enclosure demanded meant that it was often easier for both men and women to undertake manual work themselves than to find ways of sidestepping the Rule in order to admit lay artisans. Such practices became a part of the spiritual and practical functions of religious life, and were transferred between communities and across national boundaries.15 M. Michael’s decision to build her own church was not born of a desire to challenge the status quo but instead drew on a firmly established precedent: she had, in fact, been inspired by photographs of the Carmelite community in Cologne rebuilding the bomb-damaged roof of their convent.16

134  Kate Jordan The emphasis on prayerful labour and ascetics drove a comparable building programme in London undertaken by enclosed religious between 1940 and 1958. Dom Constantine Bosschaerts, an Olivetan Benedictine monk from Belgium, produced ambitious plans for a modern monastic site in the suburb of Cockfosters. The church and community buildings, designed as a double house for nuns and monks, were conceived by Bosschaerts as a base for his liturgical movement missionary enterprise, ‘Vita et Pax’. Unlike the Carmelites at Presteigne, the community drew consciously and uncompromisingly on the Modern Movement. In 1948, the Catholic Herald records the aim of the Cockfosters Benedictines as being to identify Benedictine monasticism today with progressiveness, as it was centuries ago, their means being what is most modern in art and architecture and lighting, their end being that we shall find God in a colourful building of noblest dimensions17 The building of the site, as at Presteigne, attracted the attention of the press, not least because of the spectacle of monks and nuns undertaking manual building – as with many enclosed orders, in addition to the spiritual accent on work, the Rule did not permit the employment of paid labour. In common with the community at Presteigne, funds for the Cockfosters site were limited and sporadic, and the building programme took place in several phases. The only part that was faithfully completed to Bosschaerts designs was the church hall, which came to serve (and continues to do so) as the parish church. Evidence suggests that the tradition of female religious as builders and designers also flourished within apostolic communities (those that took simple vows and undertook work within the parish). Though their vocations differed from the Carmelites at Presteigne and the Benedictines at Cockfosters, they shared a spiritual emphasis on toil. The Sisters of the Good Shepherd, a French congregation dedicated to the rehabilitation of ‘penitents’ (former prostitutes and convicts) offer a compelling example of this. Their first foundation (established in 1831) was built with the smallest resources, and the sisters contributed directly to the construction, as the annals record: The building of the church at the Good Shepherd was progressing thanks to the activity of the nuns, for all took part in the construction of the house of God . . . the nuns zeal acted as a stimulus to the workmen.18 A brief reference to a picture of St Euphrasia in a biography of the Good Shepherd foundress, Mother Pelletier, sheds important light on the theological significance of the church building programme at Angers. A sister expresses her approval on noticing that one of the penitents carried ‘a little picture of St Euphrasia, occupied in erecting churches’.19 St Euphrasia of Constantinople was the daughter of a Roman nobleman who, according to

The ‘building sisters’ of Presteigne 135 legend, chose a hermetic life rather than marry the Emperor Theodosius.20 The form of mortification that she chose was to carry heavy stones from one place to another. No hagiography of St Euphrasia that I have found suggests that her labour was undertaken in the construction of churches – rather that the value of the exercise resided in onerous physical toil. The building projects of the Pious Disciples of the Divine Master, a female community founded in Rome in 1926 by Father James Alberione, comprised a dual act of devotion: facilitating both worshipful labour and the production of spaces and objects of spiritual beauty. The specific mission of the Pious Disciples was to produce art and architecture that illustrated and adorned the liturgy and, being among the very few women religious in the early twentieth century to receive semi-formal training in architecture, they were able to immerse themselves in every part of the creation of their churches.21 At the Church of the Divine Master in Alba, completed in 1936, the sisters undertook some of the manual building work. One sister recalled, We, aspirants were brought to the site during the time of recreation which lasted for an hour or so. We were a group of about 60, between the ages of 15 and 18. Fr Manera guided us in transporting the brick and passing them to the workers, part of the way with the cart, the rest on foot. The work was like a chain and if one stopped, we all stopped! . . . At the beginning it was like sport for us, but then the bricks seemed heavier and we ran out of breath easily [. . .] when the church was finished it was said to us: ‘Look! The work of your hands now sings the glory of God’.22

Conclusion A complex picture of nuns as designers and builders has begun to emerge in recent years, as this volume suggests, but there are, as the examples illustrated in this chapter reveal, difficulties in positioning their work within the critical framework of architectural history. Alan Powers is the only scholar to examine Pollen’s work at Presteigne in any detail, but, while he does describe the construction work of the nuns, he is circumspect about their contributions: Since they had no money, Mother Michael proposed that they should build the chapel themselves, and Francis produced what he described as ‘nun-proof’ draw ings . . . Apparently the nuns, working under the direction of the redoubtable Mother Michael, were so excited by the prospect of putting in the windows that they are about a foot too low in the wall’.23 From a canonical perspective, it would be difficult to build a case for the Church of Our Lady of the Assumption as a pioneering example of Catholic

136  Kate Jordan architecture. I suggest that its value, instead, lies in the way that it negotiates a variety of spatial and theological demands. As a church, it had to provide open access to parishioners and formal space for worship. As a convent chapel, it had to facilitate operation of the Carmelite Rule, allowing the religious to see the Mass without being seen by the parishioners. Aesthetically, it had to reflect the monastic spirit of the religious community whilst also maintaining the pattern of a parish church. Importantly, it had to be built cheaply, using and re-using whatever resources were available to a design that could be realized by a team of inexperienced construction workers. Finally, and perhaps most significantly, it reveals valuable insights into the spirituality of the community of Carmelites at Presteigne and hints at a theological commonality with other women’s religious orders. It is certainly testament to the extraordinary will of the women who made it, as Lady Sidmouth, widow of Francis Pollen suggests, The community of 18 nuns were well into their 60’s, yet they mixed cement, swung blisteringly heavy hammers to break the stone for rubble for the foundations, dug the foundations, & roofed the building themselves – 30ft. above ground. When they were of offered a pile of stone from the local village, they got permission from their bishop to borrow a lorry, leave their enclosure, load the heavy stones onto the lorry & bring their bounty back to the convent . . . They learnt everything from one of those yellow Teach Yourself books, which were popular at the time. There was a lovely account in one of the papers how, when the last tile had been fixed on the roof, the nun climbed down the steep ladder – all of 30ft – joined her fellow builders who, leaning on spades & pickaxes were led by Mother Michael in prayers of thanksgiving.24 Buildings such as the Church of Our Lady of the Assumption do not fit easily into the linear narratives of Catholic architecture because their creative trajectories – inconsistent and often contradictory – are wayward. They are not the unproblematically traditional spaces of conservative church builders, but neither are they the product of a heroic modernist vision. They are, in all respects sites of otherness. Rarely are the lines of distinction between architect, patron and builder as blurred as in the building projects of religious communities – the difficulty of attributing authorship to such sites is perhaps a reminder of the futility of attempting to do so with any building. Moreover, the historical primacy of architects as the sole makers of architecture has done much to elide the diverse roles of women in place-making. It seems fitting, therefore, to close this chapter with the observations of Lady Sidmouth, one of the last remaining women to have witnessed the ‘building nuns’ of Presteigne. I shall never forget driving to Presteign [sic] to stay with friends in the winter of 1953. Francis had been out of the country for sometime &

The ‘building sisters’ of Presteigne 137 hadn’t seen what progress had been made. Arriving late on a cold, frosty, night, we couldn’t resist going to see the chapel. We couldn’t believe our eyes – There was a full moon lighting up the bell tow er. We could see the oak door, which they had brought from their convent in Berkhamstead, in place. The building looked as though it had been there for centuries – it was hard not to weep tears of joy.25

Notes 1 Fielden Clegg Bradley Studios, ‘Stanbrook Abbey‘, at www.fcbstudios.com/ news.asp?n=452 [accessed October 2011]. 2 In an interview with the Guardian the architect Gill Smith describes the creative relationship between the sisters and the architects, ‘Ideas for green features came from both sides. . . (the sisters) had done their research on the internet and there are techniques that we’ve used that we (sic) were able to suggest’. Riazut Butt, “Get Thee to a Nunnery – Just Make Sure It Has an Eco Loo,” The Guardian, December 1, 2008. 3 Alan Randall, “Down Memory Lane: The Building Sisters of Presteigne”, Menevia News, May, 2010, 9. 4 Much of the material that informs this chapter is drawn from my doctoral thesis on the role of nuns in convent building. Kate Jordan ‘Ordered Spaces, Separate Spheres: Women and the Building of British Convents, 1829–1939’ (UCL, 2015). 5 Sister Anne of Christ arrived in Presteigne as a novice in 1951. She joined six other novices from the Carmel in Birkhamstead and seven older sisters from the Carmel in Notting Hill. She worked with the rest of the community in the building of the Church of Our Lady of the Assumption. Sr Anne now lives in the Carmelite Monastery in Stillorgan Dublin and is the last of the ‘building sisters’. Her memories of the project were recorded in a series of letters sent to me between 8 July 2011 and 4 January 2012. 6 Letter from Sr Anne of Christ, 20 July 2011. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid. 10 Letter from Sr Anne of Christ, 20 July 2011. 11 The building project was reported in both the local and national press. Articles included John Lee, ‘Oh for a cement mixer‘, 14 March 1956, Menevia Diocesan Archives (supplied by diocesan archivist, Alan Randall), “Convent Builders”, Pathé News, 1954 at www.britishpathe.com/video/convent-builders [accessed October 2011]. 12 ‘The Establishment of Papal Enclosure at the Carmelite Convent, Presteigne, Radnorshire 24 November 1956, Feast of St John the Cross’ Menevia Diocesan Archives, (supplied by Alan Randall). 13 Alan Powers. Francis Pollen: Architect 1926–1987 (Oxford: Robert Dugdale, 1999), p. 24. 14 ‘The Rule of St Albert’,at http://carmelnet.org/chas/rule.htm [accessed October 2011]. 15 Sister Anne of Christ suggests that the involvement by nuns in convent building is an international tradition among Carmelite women that continues today in Carmels from South Africa to the North of England. Letter dated January 4, 2012. 16 Alan Randall, ‘Down Memory Lane: The Building Sisters of Presteigne,’ Menevia News, May, 2010, p. 9.

138  Kate Jordan 7 A Staff Reporter, ‘Cockfosters Prepares‘, Catholic Herald, May 14, 1948. 1 18 Henri Pasquier, Life of Mother Mary of St Euphrasia Pelletier (London: Burnes and Oates, 1953), p. 144. 19 A. M. Clarke, Life of Revered Mother of St Euphrasia Pelletier, First Superior General of the Congregation of Our Lady of Charity of the Good Shepherd of Angers (London: Burnes and Oates Ltd, 1895), p. 62. 20 ’If she found herself assaulted by any temptation, she immediately sought the advice of the abbess, who often enjoined her on such occasions some humbling and painful penitential labor; as sometimes to carry great stones from one place to another.’ J. G. Shea, Little Pictorial Lives of the Saints: With Reflections for Every Day in the Year: Compiled From "Butler’s Lives" and Other Approved Sources: To Which Are Added Lives of the American Saints: Placed on the Calendar for the United States by Special Petition of the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1894). 21 Many of the sisters attended the school of Beata Angelico: an organ of the community (of the same name) founded in 1921 by Mons. Giuseppe Polvara, a priest, painter and architect. 22 Sr Louise O’Rourke, ‘The Principal Churches of the Pauline Family: Icons of the Spirituality of Father James Alberione for the Pauline Family’, PDDM Dissertation, 2009–10. 23 Alan Powers, Francis Pollen: Architect 1926–1987 (Oxford: Robert Dugdale, 1999), p. 24. 24 Email from Lady Therese Sidmouth, 8 April 2012. 25 Email from Lady Therese Sidmouth, 8 April 2012.

8 Revolution and revelation Luis Barragán’s monastery at Tlalpan Jose Bernardi

Infused by his religious belief, Luis Barragán’s work was distanced from the architectural establishment that clearly embraced the ideological goals of secularization officially sanctioned by the revolutionary government in Mexico. This chapter will discuss the Monastery of Las Capuchinas Sacramentarias del Purísimo Corazón de María in Tlalpan, a work that synthetizes Barragán’s personal values, his intuitive methodological design approach and a complex aesthetic philosophy. Designed and built c.1953–60,1 the small monastery alludes to the core of Barragán’s ideological struggle during the aftermath of the Mexican revolution. This long and bloody event began as a revolt in 1910 and ended in the late 1920s, radically awakening Mexico from the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz. As a result of the revolution, the country embraced a rational and secular world. In the midst of those rapid changes, Barragán struggled between the reconciliation of being a Mexican architect in the modern age – one whose work evolved in a time and context of change – and the spiritual debt he owed to the powerful religious faith of his upbringing and his conservative political views. Attracted by the nature of the project, a meditative Franciscan community united by prayer and withdrawal, Barragán not only designed but also contributed towards financing the complex. This work encapsulates most of Barragán’s personal memories and aspirations to recreate a lost paradise. His architecture was autobiographical: Underlying all that I have achieved, are the memories of my father’s ranch where I spent my childhood and adolescence. In my work I have always strived to adapt to the needs of modern living the yearning of the magic of those remote nostalgic years.2 A series of evolving personal and social political circumstances provide a significant context for this project. Belonging to a wealthy family of landowners in the privileged world of a pre-revolutionary hacienda, he was born in 1902. This conservative and hierarchical provincial world was suddenly agitated by the 1910 revolution.

140  Jose Bernardi Guadalajara, the capital of the state of Jalisco, became one of the major centres of Catholic resistance against the secularization process and the power of the revolutionary central government. Barragán was part of the intellectual and political circle that offered resistance to the federal state and adherence to the local conservative powers advanced by Efraín González Luna, a Catholic leader, also the founder of the opposition party, the Partido de Acción National (National Action Party). After Barragán’s return from his first trip to Europe in 1925, González Luna was one of his most important clients in Guadalajara.3 The tension between Mexican traditions and changes brought by the modernization of the country, and the debates about the depiction and interpretation of the past were the expression of the struggle among different visions about the future of the country. Two major lines of action developed in response to the muralist enterprise. The flamboyant Diego Rivera epitomizes one of these positions. He elevated the pre-Hispanic past as the only rightful source of inspiration and a socialist future as the only option for the country. In his work, the achievements and uniqueness of centuries of colonial Mexico where ignored or demonized. Against the background of impressive and hieratic gestures of pre-Columbian civilizations, Rivera’s large murals depict the brutal imposition of the Christian faith, with merciless conquerors and subservient monks. Opposite from Rivera’s attitude is one of the other giants of the moment, Jose Clemente Orozco, who criticized Rivera’s historical distortion. Orozco dismissed Rivera’s interpretation as picturesque and full of dramatic gestures as a sort of ideological, manipulative idealization of an indigenous paradise that would serve and be consecrated by the government, more oriented towards propaganda, but deceptive and contrary to the flow and complexity of history. Orozco’s position was fully realized in his frescoes at the former Jesuit College of San Idelfonso in Mexico City of 1922. In this cycle of paintings, Orozco recognizes the value of colonial times as an integral part of what the country was, advancing a more balanced interpretation of the complexity of Mexican history. In the complex process of modernization brought to the country by a nationalist revolutionary government that exalted a pure origin, Barragán agreed with Orozco and understood that the future lay in a diverse metropolis. Critical of Rivera’s negative depiction of Catholic influence in the country, Barragán reflected, ‘The modern is gaining its place and populism is calming down. That is not what is national, our past is not a dramatic novel in white and black. Orozco has been always right.’4 Barragán met Orozco in 19315 on a trip to New York and was impressed by his ability to see extraordinary elements in everyday things. From Orozco’s murals, Barragán became aware of the aesthetic power of minimal, monumental shapes. He was also inspired by Orozco’s use of abstract intersection of planes, powerful shapes embedded with almost sculptural qualities and large geometric constructions activated by the presence of heroic, inscrutable human figures. Informed by his trips, friendships and practice, Barragán rejected a populist approach and slowly began to articulate his own response

Revolution and revelation 141 and translate it into spatial and architectural terms: ‘If we want to be modern we have to follow the traditions of doing contemporary architecture.’6 The election of president Manuel Ávila Camacho, 1940–46, a professed Catholic, stopped the openly anticlerical policies and changed the name of the official party from Party of the Mexican Revolution to Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) – a name still in use today. With the access to power of President Miguel Alemán in 1946, the political climate in the country finally profoundly changed, reversing the ideological approach of the previous administrations. Alemán implemented a substantial retreat from the socialist revolutionary rhetoric and the abandonment of a confrontational approach against the church. By then, the PRI had held strict control of the state since 1929, and the focus of the federal construction efforts were still concentrated in education, health and popular housing. The architectural establishment, closely aligned with the policies of the party in power, had officially embraced in most cases the formal language of the International Style. The topic of a true national architecture was highly debated, with competing variations of a modernist, strictly narrow functionalist approach, combined with the echoes of pre-Hispanic imaginary and the addition of picturesque Spanish and Californian colonial devices. Barragán himself, between 1920 and the early 1940s, had explored different approaches of all those tendencies in his own search for a personal language.

The seduction of the centre I just heard of your fabulous ventures and I pray the Lord that you may be successful in them. Perhaps when you have made these fantastic sums of money you will be able to devote yourself to the quiet life of study so frequently longed for. Letter from Ignacio Díaz Morales to Barragán, October 19457

In the 1940s and ’50s, Barragán explored and formulated the most defining components of his architecture, producing what critics recognize as his first major accomplishments and moving towards what he later called ‘an emotional architecture’ – a term he adopted from his friend and collaborator Mathias Goeritz in 1949.8 After his arrival in Mexico City, Barragán abandoned the architectural language he used in Guadalajara. The fast moving, speculative nature of his practice in the capital required the pragmatic use of the principles of the International Style. Barragán’s fascination with the new opportunities offered by the metropolis is evident in his writing. There everything was speed. The vitality of the center seduces me enormously. The speed of how events occur, the smell of newness, the sensation of being ‘truly’ alive. Here you are no one. Nobody asks nor is interested in somebody else’s life. This is protection. I am free to be myself.9

142  Jose Bernardi Liberated from the constrictive provincial environment of Guadalajara, Barragán proved to be a savvy business operator. ‘In 1940 I purchased a big plot of land situated in the then Calzada de Madereros’, and, being his own client, there he was ‘able to work with freedom. . . . developing an environment based on my personal taste, expressing both popular architecture and the convents, and, at the same time, a manifestation of contemporary architecture’.10 The silence and simple gestures of the colonial religious of the past were conduits that led him to find his contemporary architectural language. In his Pritzker acceptance speech, Barragán noted, The lessons to be learned from the unassuming architecture of the village and provincial towns of my country have been a permanent source of inspiration. Such as, for instance, the whitewashed walls; the peace to be found in patios and orchards; the colorful streets; the humble majesty of the village square surrounded by shady open corridors.11 Taking advantage of the opportunities offered by the construction boom in the growing metropolis, he achieved financial independence with successful urban interventions, such as the real state development of the gardens in El Pedregal from 1945 to 1953. With the help of two investors, José and Luis Bustamante, he purchased an unoccupied area of rocks and lava originated millennia ago from eruptions of the Xitle volcano, and located in the southern part of Mexico city. This large development part offered Barragán the opportunity to explore his ideas about the relationship between nature and architecture. Working in harmony with the geomorphic formations, he designed demonstration houses, open spaces with plazas and fountains to allure investors. To promote the development, he requested photographs to Armando Salas Portugal. A serpent-like sculpture designed by Mathias Goeritz completed the scheme in 1951. Since his arrival to the capital Barragán had been able to invest, speculate and sell lots in the Tacubaya area also, and, more importantly, he has gained recognition as an architect in the city. Between the late 1940s and early 1950s, he designed and built his house in Tacubaya, the gardens at El Pedregal and the Prieto Lopez, located at the gardens development. Those works are now considered to be important achievements in his oeuvre and receive critical acclaim as a turning point in Mexican architecture. Since Barragán withdrew from active management in 1953, major changes occurred in El Pedregal, and few of his original ideas remain, leaving behind enigmatic and highly abstracted photos by Salas Portugal. Selectively chosen by Barragán, these now legendary images contributed the place’s mythical allure.12 In an evolving search for a personal language appropriate to the new conditions of the time and a growing dissatisfaction with what he perceived as the vulgarization of taste, he resented that his clients don’t know the fact that a new architecture should not be distanced from the new requirements of modern live. Nor this matters to

Revolution and revelation 143 them, they only want and architecture that they can sell and will bring a return to their investment.13 Frustrated by the lack of sophistication and the constraints imposed by his clients, he gradually turns in a different direction. Financial success offered the freedom to devote his creative energies to endeavors more attuned to his deeply felt ideological beliefs. He was ‘sick of listening to clients talking about their tastes. I am quitting my clients. From now on, I am going to work for one client only: myself’.14 Serving the needs of his clients and investors had run counter with the evolutions of his reflections about the present conditions in society. He had identified the malaise of modern life as the destruction of intimacy and private life. ‘Any architecture that does not express serenity is wrong and does not comply with its spiritual mission’,15 he wrote, feeling that public life had invaded the privacy of homes, characterized now by the ‘lack of interior life’, where ‘intimacy and privacy are being relegated and are not part of our time’.16 By the late 1940s, working with all those principles, he had reached a mature language in his house and gardens in Tacubaya – a place that became his personal refuge from the aggressiveness of contemporary life, a place with ‘spaces and time for enchantment and to be enchanted’.17 He harshly criticized the estrangement of humanity from the natural world. ‘Nature is now fragmented and humanity is fragmented. The dialogue between man and nature has became also fragmented, now is a hysterical monotonous monologue.’18 Despite growing success, the architects José Villagrán Garcia and Juan O’Gorman always considered Barragán a secondary architectural figure who had no commissions from the government and held no official positions of power. They dismissed his work as having a ‘decorative quality’ and ‘not being consistently architectonic’.19 As the debates about the identity of Mexican architecture continue and evolved during the more business oriented administration of President Alemán, Juan O’Gorman dismissively labeled the work at El Pedregal as ‘processed gardens’, as an example of ‘what Mexican architecture shouldn’t be’, and he particularly noted that the volcanic rocks of the site had been stripped of their ‘aggressiveness’. O’Gorman’s comments clearly centred on the principal motivation in Barragán’s design – an abstracted modernism full of references to monastic colonial typologies. O’Gorman described Barragán’s Prieto House at El Pedregal as no more that new bourgeoisie ‘monastic modern[ism]’.20 Barragán’s attack on functionalism and emphasis on beauty was also counter to an architectural establishment highly committed to serve the needs of the masses. ‘Why architecture be only for use? Why not for pleasure? Only primitives, or refined people are concerned with beauty.’21 He interpreted traditional architecture not a model to imitate but as a source of inspiration to abstract principles of design and conducive to a way of life different from the aggressions and pressures of modern times. He was

144  Jose Bernardi inspired by the aesthetics of modernism but critical of the mechanization and monotony of a superficial application of modernist skill. His concentration on an ideal retrieval from the aggressiveness of life and disdain for the masses alarmed those committed to resolve larger social issues affecting society. Villagrán noted the limitations of Barragán’s aestethic, since, he wrote, it was ‘inadequate to economic production, and is limited to an small number of examples for a determined class or user’.22 Crucially important in the evolution and definition of Barragán’s work is his meeting in 1949 with Mathias Goeritz, the German sculptor, painter and architect who, escaping the horrors of National Socialism arrived in Mexico. Goeritz’s opening of the experimental space El Eco, in 1953, was a challenge to the rampant dominance of functionalism in Mexico. ‘The principal function of architecture is emotion,’23 Goeritz argued, and his manifesto was directed against the crashing effects of ‘an exaggerated functionalism and so much logic and utility within modern architecture’. His emotional approach to architecture represented an alternative to the exhausted rhetorical nationalism of the muralist by contrasting it to the poetic action of a simple boundary of walls containing ineffable emotion. As a result of the search for the identity of Mexican architecture and the need to link traditions with modern demands, the issue of ‘plastic integration’ was at the centre of the debate in artistic and architectural circles in the 1950s. Juan O’Gorman had decorated the exterior of his house and the library at the University City with mosaics directly making reference to the Aztec mythology. Contrary to the realistic approach of depicting the indigenous past and the revolutionary Mexico, Goeritz understood El Eco as an experiment and defined his work ‘a plastic prayer’. His approach to plastic integration was not a mere programmatic issue and dismissed the prevalent tendency of just ‘superimposing paintings or sculptures to buildings as you would superimpose a poster of a movie’. Barragán and Goeritz were friends, and there was an ongoing communication concerning the project. Barragán was listed as the artistic advisor in an article published after the opening of El Eco.24 This was a transformative moment for Barragán. The ongoing dialogue between Barragán and the younger émigré, attacked by Diego Rivera as a foreigner producing abstracted, non-utilitarian art,25 had provided Barragán with a point of departure to frame and define his architectural search for spirituality and peace. By the late 1940s, Barragán was, as Octavio Paz lucidly identified him, ‘a modern but not a modernist’.26 At Tacubaya, he had explored how to live in serenity by linking the concept of interiority – understood as time lived – and the concept of peacefulness – understood as an enchanted space. Interiority and contemplation were key components of a personal retreat; now he was able to continue that exploration for a religious community living in semi-seclusion.

Staged prayer, or the manifestation of the divine In 1952, Alemán inaugurated part of the University City complex. It was conceived as the intersection of international tendencies and local traditions,

Revolution and revelation 145 a persistent subject at that time. Financed by the state, still the major client in the country, the University City was its most ambitious and symbolic endeavor, with a master plan developed by Mario Pani and Enrique del Moral. The University library, designed by Juan O’Gorman, Gustavo Saavedra and Juan Martínes Velazco, was enriched by bold configurations in colorful mosaics, establishing a connection between the past and the present. The murals embody the prevalent approach towards plastic integration and are the culmination of the muralist cosmogony that had dominated the artistic cultural production in Mexico since first officially sponsored by Vasconcelos in the 1920s. Simultaneously, far away from the official narrative of large sponsored projects, Barragán secluded himself in an architecture of devotion: the monastery in Tlalpan. In 1952, Barragán learned about the monastery of ‘a meditative religious order devoted to continuous prayer to the glory of the Holy of Holiest’ was in ‘badly need of repairs’. The monastery, located in Tlalpan, a southern suburb of Mexico City, belonged to the Capuchins, an Observant-Franciscan order. He became interested ‘in the nun’s plight and set up and appointment to visit them’. During the visit, ‘the nuns mentioned that they would like to make arrangements for a small space so that they may pray together’, in other words, a small oratory. Barragán suggested the construction of a complete chapel and ‘promise[d] to help them’.27 This work was the most personal of his whole career, crystallizing his past experiences and memories. A devout Catholic, he had a strong affinity to the Franciscan charisma and its understanding of beauty in the natural world, the mind, the body and the spirit as the manifestation of the divine on earth. The reconstruction of a Franciscan monastery had also a tremendous symbolic significance. Saint Francis of Assisi’s radical decision to move away from wealth and his family become public only after praying at San Damiano – a dilapidated church outside his city. There chroniclers’ report that in a mystical experience, he heard a gentle voice asking him. ‘Francis, don’t you see that my house has collapsed? Go and repair it for me.’ In this transformative moment, Francis, finding a new sense of purpose, answered. ‘Yes Lord, I will, most willingly.’28 This project would allow him to reconnect the Catholic traditions he deeply respected with the present. He would look for inspiration and recall the basic character of the Mexican monastic type – a world of meditation and penumbra. Barragán admired the monasteries of the colonial past, with its poignant, silent courtyards and solid masonry, and felt inspired by the religious intensity those structured evoke. He made a concrete reference of his veneration for this architectural type in his Prizker remarks, when specifically mentioning the Chapel at Tlalpan as inspired by the monumental colonial monasteries. He said, Being a Catholic, I have visited with reverence the now empty monumental monastic buildings that we inherited from the culture and powerful religious faith of our colonial ancestors . . . How I have wished

146  Jose Bernardi that these feelings might leave their mark on my work, as I tried to do in the Chapel of the Capuchinas Sacramentarias in Tlalpan, in Mexico City.29 He had worked many years before in the restoration of the two parochial churches in villages near Guadalajara. The commissions came through his godmother, who donated the funds to restore and enlarge the church in Amatitán between 1937 and 1942, and the church in El Arenal from 1940 to 1941. He collaborated in this work with his friend Ignacio Díaz Morales, who took charge of the construction process.30 At Tlalpan, he explored the different metaphors of a spatial and tectonic narrative, constantly refined by trial and error during construction. Motivated by his search of an emotional architecture, he thought to design every aspect of the experience, from the architecture to the liturgical symbols in the Mass. Barragán took complete control of all aspects, from the overall scheme of design to the simple benches on pinewood in the chapel sacristy, the vestments and the altar cloth. At Tlalpan Barragán staged a choreographed withdrawal from the world, a receptacle for his memories, a sequence of unfolding emotions, revealing a divergent version of what modern architecture could be in Mexico. Refusing to adhere to any architectural tendency or to apply the theory of architecture predominant at that time, he chose to express emotions. Barragán meticulously developed his work through an abstract, yet elaborated aesthetic based on intuition, observations in reading and travels.31 Fernando Romero defines Barragán’s approach to design as a method of translation of an image, beginning with a series of experiences transformed into a narrative – an architectural sequence anticipated by imagining the movement of the body in space.32 After several conversations with the client, and before he began drawing, Barragán would image a series of movements of the body and then translate them into a narrative. Barragán would explain his methods as ‘dreaming’ colors and situations, patiently translating that narrative into a spatial sequence.33 This narrative was constantly refined by trial and error during the construction, by changing materials, the height or color of a wall or the material of a floor pavement to achieve the desired atmosphere of wonder, contemplation and abandonment of the outside world. The Capuchin monastery is located in an elongated and relatively narrow site, with a north-south orientation. Of modest proportions, the original monastery had two gardens and an orchard. Barragán recreates this small patio as the intermediary cloister between the street and the private precinct of the nuns, clearly separating the public areas in the northern part and the secluded private areas of the monastery in the southern side. The public entrance facing north has a humble wooden door on Hidalgo Street, followed by a transitional area, a vestibule of white plastered walls and a threshold leading to the courtyard. To the right, through a small gallery, Barragán located the priest’s office, the sacristy, two confessionals, the transept

Revolution and revelation 147 of the faithful attending Mass or praying and, across the courtyard, the new chapel, completed by 1960. Barragán also renovated and restored the larger private areas of the monastery, located in the southern part of the lot. In the ground floor, the refectory and some cloistered areas, facing the larger, private garden upstairs, Barragán placed the nuns’ cells and the areas reserved for different activities for the religious community. Almost imperceptible from outside, the entrance opens to a small cloister that leads to the public areas and the chapel. Recalling the process of construction, Barragán stated, At the chapel of the Capuchinas Sacramentarias del Purísimo Corazón de María I studied attentively lights and colors because it was very important to create an atmosphere of peacefulness and spiritual reflection. The idea of penumbra was very important in this project. 34 Penumbra was seen by Barragán as the human search for protection and refuge, revealing our humanity, and as the slow process of revealing the splendors of the divine. In addition, the project was also a study of the capacity of materials to elicit an atmosphere of wonder and the importance of the integration of the design components. Through the integration of the arts and architecture Barragán manifests deeply felt principles about the role of religion in society. In ‘all the great artistic productions the plastic arts were integrated, and were the result of a society that was perfectly integrated around something fundamental: religion. Our experience, in a disintegrated society, has been a disaster’.35 The monastery in Tlalpan was his answer. Just before entering into the small courtyard there is a perforated wall. The dazzling yellow of the grating on the screen walls marks the boundaries between two worlds, announcing the entrance into a sacred place. The whole journey is infused with a spirit of joyful expectation, a processional movement towards the chapel. The small patio is paved in black volcanic stone tiles, a small fountain, a concrete painted black with water overflowing and flowers offered daily as a prayerful gift manifests the congregation’s daily commitment to a humble routine of prayer and celebration (Figure 8.1). The chapel is oriented in an east-west direction, enclosing the entrance courtyard on the southern side and captures all the essential elements of an emotional architecture. At the threshold of the chapel, although the source of light is not readily clear, the senses are immersed by the luminosity of the place. All is peaceful and quiet, and an atmosphere of meditation and contemplation surrounds the altar. Solitary nuns, concentrated in their hourly act of adoration in silent prayers, augment the intensity of the religious atmosphere in the chapel. Two discreet sources of light enter the chapel, impregnating it with radiant oranges and golden yellows (Figures 8.2 and 8.3). One source comes from the grille of the chorus loft, up above the entrance, on the eastern wall and only accessible from the cloistered area

148  Jose Bernardi

Figure 8.1 Exterior patio, convent and chapel of the Capuchinas Sacramentarias del Purísimo Corazón de María, Tlalpan, Mexico City Architect: Luis Barragán (Guadalajara 1902–Mexico City 1988) Photo: Armando Salas Portugal (Monterrey 1916–Mexico City 1996) © 2014 Barragán Foundation, Switzerland/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

by the novices. This latticed wall strongly recalls the golden grilles of the abandoned monasteries of colonial Mexico. The other source comes from a stained glass window on the slanted triangular space, with a hinge reinforcing the altar as the focus of the composition. This oblique wall is truly exceptional in Barragán’s oeuvre – a device used only when working with Mathias Goeritz and similar to the strong triangular shape in Goeritz’s El Eco. They also use this same form in the monumental Torres de Satélite in 1957. The prismatic space created by the slanted wall has no furniture, and its large proportions occupying almost one-third of the chapel can be only explained by something more than utilitarian reasons. It only holds the powerful presence of a stoic wooden crucifix painted orange. The large cross, perceived from the central nave of the chapel only as the presence of a shadow projected on the western wall, where the altar is located. The intention of this space is to hide, and yet gradually reveal, the presence of the cross and to emotionally charge the empty place with the shadows of something that cannot immediately be seen. The window’s abstract stained glass, designed by Goeritz, emanates a powerful effect and

Revolution and revelation 149

Figure 8.2 Chapel interior, convent and chapel of the Capuchinas Sacramentarias del Purísimo Corazón de María, Tlalpan, Mexico City Architect: Luis Barragán (Guadalajara 1902–Mexico City 1988) Photo: Armando Salas Portugal (Monterrey 1916–Mexico City 1996 © 2014 Barragán Foundation, Switzerland/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

directs radiance towards the altar. Light and shade become a skin, indeed, almost a texture. The altar is the focus of the composition. It was constructed using sketches and detailed instructions provided by Barragán, This composition recollects the magnificent exuberance of Mexican Baroque that harnesses the light, reflecting a diaphanous glow. The refectory, located on the eastern side of the lot and overlooking the large cloistered garden, also embodies the stoic simplicity of colonial monasteries yet translated into contemporary language. Plain pinewood furniture and a free-standing magenta crucifix is a place where the community gathers to share their meals in

150  Jose Bernardi

Figure 8.3 Chapel interior with stained glass, convent and chapel of the Capuchinas Sacramentarias del Purísimo Corazón de María, Tlalpan, Mexico City Architect: Luis Barragán (Guadalajara 1902–Mexico City 1988) Photo: Armando Salas Portugal (Monterrey 1916–Mexico City 1996 © 2014 Barragán Foundation, Switzerland/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

prayer. When speaking about this chapel, Barragán referenced the masterpiece of popular Baroque, Santa Maria of Tonatzintla, near Cholula, where the overloaded ornate almost becomes a texture in itself, or a second skin. For Barragán, plastic integration was not an additive process, but rather a magical and religious phenomenon that had been part of the human religious experience for centuries. Barragán was being modern by returning to the sources and making archaic traditions contemporary.36

Barragán and his circumstances In his personal search to combat the anxiety of the modern world, Barragán’s grounding in memory and faith is reinforced by his intellectual connection with the ideas of the Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset, for whom life is seen from a biographical perspective. Ortega’s ideas and influence in Mexico transformed the philosophical horizon of a generation of intellectuals eager to free themselves from the dominance of a positivist approach, and Barragán’s circles were all familiar and embedded with the

Revolution and revelation 151 thinking of the Spanish philosopher and of his disciples. Ortega asserts, ‘We build ourselves as a novelist construct characters, we are our own novelist, we construct ourselves though action.’ 37 This philosophical approach will resonate with Barragán’s biographical understanding of his work, since life is, in Ortega’s conception, not an essence or static, but rather man is what has happened to him, what he has done. For Ortega, man lives in view of the past; life is what we do and what happens to us. ‘I am myself and my circumstances, does not mean only the doctrine which my work expounds and propounds, but also that my work is an active example of the same doctrine.’38 This Ortegan notion of ‘I am myself and my circumstances’ and Barragán’s insistence on identifying his work as autobiographical suggest how deeply embedded in Barragán’s articulation of his oeuvre Ortega y Gasset’s ideas are. 39 Several themes advanced by Ortega resonate in Barragán’s and create a scaffolding for his reflections and practice. Ortega provided a critique of a modernity founded in Cartesian pure reasoning, favouring instead the spontaneous – a ‘vital sensibility’ informing a particular moment in history and expressed by a generation pursuing major cultural, artistic and political goals. According to Ortega, there is a conflict between the uncritical technocratic approach to implement a modern agenda and the creencias – the profound personal beliefs that are the sustenance of self, basic convictions that are central to our humanity and resistant to any scientific scrutiny. Dispossessed of those core belief individuals are left in a feeling of collapse and desolation.40 Ortega advances an understanding about how subjectivity relates with the realities of the outside world, identifying two basic attitudes of interactions. One is the common, typical reaction, changing a personal belief to adapt to the world, emphasizing the importance of things and of the world, abandoning personal beliefs and becoming part of the world, blending into an uncritical, homogeneous mass. The other option is withdrawal, the folding into oneself by looking into our innermost belief and experiences – a conscious act of retreat from the world. Barragán’s friend, the philosopher Edmundo O’Gorman, revealed in his work a vein of Ortegan ‘perspectivism’ – the understanding that we look and interpret the world through our own past and personal perspective – by advancing his idea of history not as a matter of archive but rather interpreting the human past as ‘our own past, ours and not of strangers’. 41 Barragán was fully aware of Ortega’s ideas through his contacts with the Spanish émigré José Gaos, one of Ortega’s favourite disciples, who frequented O’Gorman’s circle and had arrived to Mexico in 1938 after the defeat of the República. Through Edmundo O’Gorman, Barragán was exposed to Gaos’s ‘personalism’ – a philosophical approach that pushed the limits and implications of a personal withdrawal. Gaos’s personalism moves the individual to a melancholic state of retrieval. Ultimately, for Gaos, ‘there is no dialogue at a deep level, only can be a monologue in solitude’.42 In a world perceived as chaotic and controlled by an establishment supported

152  Jose Bernardi by the masses, that, according to Barragán, only want comfort, security, order and homogeneity, his response to the vulgarization of modern life is a withdrawal to a walled garden, recreating a peaceful paradise. An architect, he thought, ‘was an artist who can banish anxiety and create illusions’.43

Silent beauty: life between extremes A proud Catholic, his religious belief tinted and offered him a ‘perspective’ from where to define his work.44 He saw his architecture’s role as bridging and interpreting different traditions; his architecture was ‘an struggle to adapt to the need of modern life the magic remembrances of those far away and nostalgic years’.45 His search for a personal architectural language is based on a rejection of the core values of modernity emanating from his deeply felt religious convictions. From the retreat of his elitist private practice and solitude, Barragán was not outside modernity, but certainly critical of its more secular stances. Before his late recognition, he was the solitary architectural figure of the modern era in Mexico, almost ignored outside his country and not taken into serious consideration in Mexico. Even in 1976, when Emilio Ambazz organized an exhibition of his work at the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the event was not given the attention it deserved in Mexico. Ironically, although never trying to ‘be regional’, or to represent the identity of a national Mexican architecture, after he was conferred the 1980 Pritzker Prize, he became the de facto representative of what Mexican modern architecture was. Since his passing in 1988, his work has been replicated at the risk of becoming almost a cliché – a formula devoid of Barragán’s deep religious vein, his regards for the spiritual needs of a human being and the clear ideological rejection of modernity’s defining characteristics and core values. A stereotypical reading of his work as the blending of the duality modern vernacular reduces Barragán’s contribution to a tasteful combination of stylistic opposites. This underestimates his deliberate process of shaping his legacy through carefully edited images and patient aesthetic research. More than anything else, his mature work reaches out and reinvigorates a long cultural and artistic trajectory in Mexico: the unfolding of the sensual, the magical and the ceremonial, a conservative, deeply felt religious fervor and the pursuit of the divine in a solitary, almost monastic, disposition.46 In his final years, Barragán concentrated his attention on a few precious works. Tlalpan is his personal religious statement to propagate his gospel. His Chapel at Tlalpan encapsulates Barragán’s belief that only religion and beauty are barriers against what he perceived as ‘the grave of dehumanization and vulgarization brought by modern life’. His contribution to modernity was his belief that ‘the architect should announce in his work the gospel of serenity’, 47 and this could only be achieved by immersing his work in the beauty of light, creating an atmosphere conducive to praise God, expressing in contemporary terms the ideals of Francis of Assisi. He navigated skillfully

Revolution and revelation 153 between two extreme, polarized worlds, immersing himself for many years in the practice of architecture and in real estate speculation, while stubbornly rejecting the emptiness and commodification of the modern world, staging nostalgia, feeling that ‘art and religion give meaning to life’. Without religion, he wrote, ‘We won’t have cathedrals, or pyramids, or history of art.’48 Without religion and myth, we would not have had Tlalpan.

Notes 1 Several sources provide different dates for the design and construction of the monastery and the chapel. In Barragán’s curriculum vitae signed in 1968 is noted: ‘Between 1952 and 1955. . . (Barragán) began in this year the reconstruction of the convent at Tlalpan and the construction of the chapel . . . during two to three years he attended the construction until it was done.‘ Antonio Riggen Martinez (ed.), Luis Barragán. Escritos y Conversaciones, Biblioteca de Arquitectura, El Croquis Editorial, p. 56. The Barragán Foundation provides the dates 1953–60. Guide Barragán. Barragán Foundation/Arquine + RM. Editor: Federica Zanco in collaboration with Ilaria Valente, p. 138. According to Raul Ferreras, Barragán learned about the plight of the nuns in the early 1950s. Documentation on the project appears in 1954. The chapel was consecrated in 1960. However, his associated Raúl Ferrera mentions consecration date as 3 July 1959. According to Ferrera, the ‘process that was followed throughout the Tlapan project’ was the following: ‘He attained an idea he liked, but he was not completely satisfied. He decided to to seek the advice of some friends, among them, Jesus “Chucho” Reyes Ferreira, a great painter of infallible aesthetic taste.‘ According to Ferrera, Barragán also sought the advice of other friends and writes. ‘They contributed with what Luis Barragán would classify as “wise suggestions” offered to him in a simple and colloquial manner.‘ Ferrera also listed the technical staff. ‘The field work was directed by architect Jaime González Luna, by the Construction Manager Clemente Coyote and by Master Carpenters, José and Eleuterio Cortés. Alejandro Margáin was the Head of the Design Section. Engineers: Pablo Gonzalez López and architect José Creixell, very good friends of Luis Barragán, prepared all the calculus, and supervised all of the engineering work.’ Luis Barragán. Capilla en Tlalpan ciudad de Mexico. Photographs by Armando Salas Portugal, and text by Raul Ferrera, (Sirio Editores, 1980), p. 11–13. 2 Acceptance speech 1980, the Hyatt Foundation, the Prizker Architecture Prize, 1980. Presented to Luis Barragán. Text in Spanish written and signed in Mexico City between April and May, presented in June. Spanish version. Antonio Riggen Martinez (eds.), Luis Barragán, Escritos y conversacionses, (Madrid: Biblioteca de Arquitectura, El Croquis Editorial, 2000), p. 60. 3 Designed in 1929, the González Luna House is recognized as one of the most significant works of Barragán’s early period, when he was in Guadalajara. 4 On Ferdinand Bac and Guadalajara. Text from September 1932 (Archive Rafael Urzúa) Antonio Riggen Martinez (ed.), Luis Barragán. Escritos y Conversaciones (Madrid: El Croquis Editorial, 2000), p. 18. 5 Barragán travelled to New York between Febrary and March of 1931. Antonio Riggen Martinez (ed.), Luis Barragán. Escritos y Conversaciones, p. 10. 6 Reflections on modern architecture in Mexico and the USA. Mexico Distrito Federal. September 1938. Antonio Riggen Martinez (ed.), Luis Barragán. Escritos y Conversaciones, p. 20.

154  Jose Bernardi 7 Letter from Ignacio Gomez Morales to Luis Barragán, 2 October 1945. Quoted in Luis Barragán: The Quiet Revolution, p. 103. Luis Barragán: The Quiet Revolution, ed., Federica Zanco. (Milano, Italy: Skira; Switzerland: Barragán Foundation, 2001). 8 Emilio Ambasz, Architecture of Luis Barragán (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1976), p. 105. In 1975, Ambacz interviewed Barragán, who carefully edited the text before publication. There, Ambasz writes, ‘[Barragán] generously acknowledges the philosophical influence of Mathias Goeritz.’ 9 On Ferdinand Bac and Guadalajara. Text from September 1932 (Archive Rafael Urzúa) Antonio Riggen Martinez (ed.), Luis Barragán. Escritos y Conversaciones, 2000, El Croquis Editorial, p. 19. 10 Curriculum vitae, General information. Signed in Mexico City in August 1968. From the private archive of Arq. Ignacio Díaz Morales. In Antonio Riggen Martinez (ed.), Luis Barragán. Escritos y Conversaciones, pp. 54–5. 11 Luis Barragán, 1980 Laurate, Acceptance Speech, The Pritzker Architecture Foundation Prize 1980: Luis Barragán (the Hyatt Foundation, 1980). 12 Luis Baragan’s gardens of El Pedregal, Keth Eggener (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2001). 13 Reflections on modern architecture in Mexico and the USA. Mexico DF. September 1938. Antonio Riggen Martinez (ed.), Luis Barragán. Escritos y Conversaciones, p. 21. 14 A propos Barragán: formation, critique and influence. Kenneth Frampton, p. 17. The Quiet Revolution, ed., Federica Zanco (Milano, Italy: Skira; Switzerland: Barragán Foundation, 2001). 15 ‘Constructores del sol: cinco arquitectos Mexicanos,’ Clyve Bamford Smith, in Antonio Riggen Martinez, ed., Luis Barragán. Escritos y Conversaciones, p. 90. 16 Luis Barragán. Entrevista sobre el cuestionario. Antonio Riggen Martinez, ed., Luis Barragán. Escritos y Conversaciones, p. 94. 17 Reflections on ideas by Eduardo Rendón. Notes by Barragán, August 1945, Antonio Riggen Martinez (ed.), Luis Barragán. Escritos y Conversaciones, p. 27–8. 18 Constructores del sol: cinco arquitectos Mexicanos, Clyve Bamford Smith, in Antonio Riggen Martinez, ed., Luis Barragán. Escritos y Conversaciones, p. 90. 19 José Villagrán, one of the most influential modernist architects of the time considered Barragán’s work as only scenography and highly individualistic, unable to be mass produced or only available to the few. José Villagrán, ‘Carta a un amigo’ (1951) quoted by Luis E. Carranza in The Struggle for Form: Cultural Production in the Mexico of Luis Barragán, p. 273. In Luis Barragán the Quiet revolution, ed., Federican Zanco (Milano, Italy: Skira; Switzerland: Barragán Foundation; New York: Distributed in North America by Abbeville Publishing Group, 2001). 20 Mexican Journal, Selden Rodman, quoted in ‘Contrasting Images of Identity in the Post-War Architecture of Luis Barragán and Juan O’Gorman.’ Keith L. Eggener, Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, 9:1 (2000). 21 Mexican Journal. The conquerors Conquered, Selden Rodman. Antonio Riggen Martinez (ed.), Luis Barragán. Escritos y Conversaciones, p. 71. 22 José Villagrán, ‘Carta a un Amigo,’ 1951. Quoted in Luis E. Carranza, The Struggle for Form: Cultural Production in the Mexico of Luis Barragán, p. 273. Federica Zanco (ed.), The Quiet Revolution (Milano, Italy: Skira; Switzerland: Barragán Foundation; 2001). 23 Manifesto de la Arquitectura Emocional, ‘Cuadernos de Arquitectura’, (Guadalajara), no. 1, March 1954. 24 Mauricio Gomez Mayorga. ‘Sobre la libertad de creación,‘ Arquitectural Mexico, núm 45, Marzo de 1954, p. 54. Quoted in Los Ecos de Mathias Goeritz,

Revolution and revelation 155 Ensayos y Testimonios. Textos del Seminario Mathias Goertitz. UNAM. Coordido por Ida Rodríguez Prampolini and Ferruccio Asta. Instituto de Investigaciones Esteticas, Antiguo Colegio de san Idelfonso. Universidad Autonoma de Mexico, 1997. 25 Mexican Journal, Selden Rodman, p. 94–5. Quoted in Expressions and Emotional Architecture in Mexico: Luis Barragán’s Collaborations with Max Cetto and Mathias Goeritz, by Keith L. Eggener. Journal of the History of Architecture, Band 25/Vol.25 George Hersey (New Haven, CO: Yale University, 1995.) 26 Octavio Paz, ‘Los usos de la tradición,‘ Artes de Mexico, monographic issue ‘En el mundo de Luis Barragán,‘ (n.23, 1994), p. 33. 27 Luis Barragán. Capilla en Tlalpan ciudad de Mexico. Photography by Armando Salas Portugal and text by Raul Ferrera, Sirio Editores, 1980. 28 St. Francis of Assisi (14ed.) Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Garden City New York: Image Book, pp. 54–6. 29 Luis Barragán, 1980 Laureate, Acceptance Speech, the Pritzker Architecture Foundation Prize 1980: Luis Barragán (the Hyatt Foundation, 1980). 30 Federica Zanco in collaboration with Ilaria Valente (eds.), Guide Barragán (Barragán Foundation/Arquine+RM, 2002). 31 (20) Antonio Riggen Martinez (ed.), Luis Barragán. Escritos y conversaciones, p. 131. 32 Translation, by Fernando Romero, Actar, 2005, p. 10. 33 Luis Barragán, arquitecto: [exposición] de octubre de 1985 a enero de 1986. Museo Rufino Tamayo, c. 1985, p. 30. 34 The colors of Mexico. Interview with Jorge Salvat, 1981. Antonio Riggen Martinez (ed.), Luis Barragán. Escritos y Conversaciones, p. 129. 35 The gardens of Luis Barragán, Interview with Alejandro Ramírez Ugarte, 1962. Antonio Riggen Martinez (ed.), Luis Barragán. Escritos y Conversaciones, p. 86. 36 The gardens of Luis Barragán, Interview with Alejandro Ramírez Ugarte, 1962. Antonio Riggen Martinez (ed.), Luis Barragán. Escritos y Conversaciones, p. 93. 37 José Ortega y Gasset, 1991, Antologia, (Barcelona: Textos Cardinales-Ediciones peninsula ‘Autenticidad y vocacion’, 1933), p. 250. 38 José Ortega y Gasset, José. Obras Completas, Vol. I. Ed. Taurus/Fundación José Ortega y Gasset, Madrid, 2004, p. 757. 39 Luis Barragán, 1980 Laureate, Acceptance Speech, the Pritzker Architecture Foundation Prize 1980: Luis Barragán (the Hyatt Foundation, 1980). 40 Ideas y Creencias (Ideas and Beliefs: on historical reason, a course taught in 1940 Buenos Aires, published 1979 along with Sobre la razón histórica). 41 Conciencia de la historia: ensayos escogidos. Edmundo O‘Gorman; selección y notas, Humberto Beck e Iván Ramírez de Garay. Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, 2011. 42 José Gaos, De la Filosofía, Fondo de Cultura Económica, México 1962. 43 Luis Barragán, Interview with Elena Poniatowska, 1976. Martinez (ed.), Luis Barragán. Escritos y Conversaciones, p. 93. 44 Meditation of the Quixote. José Ortega y Gasset (op. cit.) pp. 171–2. According to Julián Marias, also a disciple of Ortega and best interpreters, the personal perspective is the real, but not the ultimate reality, rejecting any subjectivism or reduction of the real to the person who holds that perspective. From the Ortegan perspective, ‘circumstances organizes reality, is one of the components of reality and God holds each of those personal perspectives’. 45 Text of his acceptance speech in Spanish, signed in Mexico City in 1980 and written between April and May, presented at the ceremony in June. Antonio Riggen Martinez (ed.), Luis Barragán. Escritos y Conversaciones, p. 60. 46 Roger Bartra, La jaula de la melancholia: identidad y metamorfosis del mexicano (Mexico: Grijalbo, c.1987), p. 173.

156  Jose Bernardi 47 Acceptance speech 1980, the Hyatt Foundation, the Prizker Architecture Prize, 1980. Presented to Luis Barragán. Text in Spanish written and signed in Mexico City between April and May, presented in June. Spanish version. Luis Barragán, Escritos y conversacionses, ed., Antonio Riggen Martinez, Biblioteca de Arquitectura, El Croquis Editorial, 2000, pp. 58–61. 48 Luis Barragán, 1980 Laurate, Acceptance Speech, the Hyatt Foundation.

Part III

Urban cultures and holy cities

9 Situating Jerusalem Poiesis and techne in the American urbanism of Jemima Wilkinson and Thomas Jefferson Anne Schaper Englot In 1776, a new nation was born, ‘conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that ‘all men are created equal’.1 The same year, Jemima Wilkinson,2 a young woman from Rhode Island, awoke from a grave illness and announced that she had had a vision: her spirit died and in her body was reborn a new spirit called the Publick Universal Friend.3 She went on to become an important religious leader and the founder of a community where all men and women lived as equals. The year 1776 had been tumultuous for Wilkinson. She had been ‘taken under dealing’ – a Quaker term meaning disciplined – by her Quaker Meeting because she had joined a group of ‘New Light’ Baptists. She refused to renounce her affiliation with the New Lights and was then ‘disowned’. After the illness, Wilkinson began preaching. She spent the next 12 years on the road, preaching at many important venues such as St. George Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia and the steps of the New Haven, Connecticut Courthouse, where Ezra Stiles, then president of Yale College, heard her speak. She was a charismatic preacher who attracted adherents from Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island to her New Light– inspired Quakerism. She preached repentance, but accepted everyone as she had been told in her vision: Room, Room, Room in the many Mansions of eternal glory for Thee and for everyone . . . For everyone that will come, may come, and partake of the waters of life freely, which is offered to Sinners, without money and without price. A favourite Bible passage was Malachi 2:10, ‘Hath we not all one father? Hath not one God created us?’4 In 1789, Wilkinson led her followers, numbering more than 300,5 to land they had purchased in the Finger Lakes region of New York State, what was then the American frontier. Here Wilkinson founded the religious community of Jerusalem,6 embodying the aspirations of her society.

160  Anne Schaper Englot In this chapter, I compare the built landscape of Wilkinson’s community to the normative urbanism proposed by her contemporary, Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson is remembered as a founding father, statesman and gentleman architect. While both Jefferson and Wilkinson left a physical imprint on the built landscape, Wilkinson is barely remembered, despite being renowned during her lifetime. In the same contemporary travel journals that describe Jefferson,7 it was also noted that Wilkinson drew crowds when she spoke in Philadelphia. She created a remarkable religious community where women had agency and identity, and where place and space were fluid. Wilkinson was visited by many traveling dignitaries and was invited to attend and speak at the signing of the Treaty of Canandaigua in 1794 between the Haudenosaunee8 and the still new American government. In order to frame the contrast between the normative, gridded planning model proposed by Jefferson and the map of Jerusalem, I extend the Ancient Greek concepts of techne and poiesis, as developed through the work of Heidegger,9 to describe modes of making architecture. Heidegger defines techne as ‘a bringing forth’, a craft or art, production or fabrication, actions related directly to producing and building from architectural plans. Poiesis is a process ‘which renders the potentiality of the not yet into explicit actuality’10 and describes a method of building that is contextual, begins without a preconceived plan and where negotiations occur during construction. Poiesis and techne are two ‘ways of making’ which produce very different, and I would argue, gendered results. I will first discuss the techne of Jefferson’s urbanism in reference to which I will situate Jerusalem’s poiesis.

Jefferson’s grid In 1784, while a member of the Second Continental Congress, Thomas Jefferson chaired the committee tasked with devising a plan for governing the western territory. The son of a surveyor, Jefferson proposed a grid. By this act and others, Jefferson exerted a deep and lasting influence on American town planning, imprinting the grid onto the land recursively and at varying scales as a way of defining space that is still used today. With the adoption of the Land Ordinance of 1785, the federal government established a system by which land was surveyed and divided into six-mile square townships for sale and distribution. Each six-mile square township was further divided into one-square-mile sections, which could be further subdivided into quarter sections, then quarter-quarter sections. Steven Hurtt and others describe its form as a ‘diagram of the American political experiment’, and a representation of ‘liberty and its expression in freedom of movement and assembly, equality of opportunity, change over stasis, infinite and open systems over finite and closed systems, and the individual over the societal’. 11 The grid may have reflected social order as Hurtt suggests, but it also ensconced an economic regime. The creation of regular-sized parcels, all

Situating Jerusalem 161 given an equal value (despite topographical variation), facilitates commodification. This fact was not lost on Oliver Phelps and Nathaniel Gorham who, in 1877, purchased the pre-emptive rights to approximately 6,000,000 acres of land in Western New York, at a cost of $1,000,000. This purchase included land west of Seneca Lake and stretched north to Lake Ontario and south to Pennsylvania.12 The Phelps and Gorham (Figures 9.1 and 9.2) purchase was being negotiated while the Continental Congress was still formulating the Land Ordinance of 1785; however, the officials organizing the sale decided to employ the proposed grid plan to sell off the land in sixmile square townships. Starting from a north to south meridian, surveyors marked six-mile-wide columns or ranges. Lines that ran east to west at sixmile-square intervals divided the ranges into townships. The ranges were numbered east to west, and townships were numbered from south to north, beginning with number one at the south-east corner. Hildegard Binder Johnson, who studied the effect of the ‘US Rectangular Land Survey’ on settlements in the American West, points out that this was not a novel scheme, saying, The grid-pattern town is not American or exclusively western in origin. Straight streets and rectangular or square blocks are the simplest way

Figure 9.1 Map of New York State showing location of the Phelps and Gorham purchase Drawn by Anne Schaper Englot

Figure 9.2 Map showing the Phelps and Gorham purchase, originally drawn in 1790. Jerusalem, the seventh township located in the second range, is outlined. Members of the community also lived in the seventh township in the first range where the map incorrectly identifies Wilkinson’s settlement as a ‘Quaker settlement’

Situating Jerusalem 163 to attain lots of equal size and streets with easy two-way turns for vehicles. It is an archetypal settlement, both in practical colonization and on utopian plans.13 Hurtt underscores Binder Johnson’s point that the grid is an archetype: ‘The American grid is a predominantly formal order; it does not depend on perceptual incident for cognitive understanding’;14 he made the point, essentially, that the grid is not an order that respects place or topography. Binder Johnson says that the form of the grid is inherently non-hierarchical and therefore emphasizes ‘homogeneity rather than heterogeneity’, and its selection was therefore appropriate as an armature to develop the ideals of American democracy.15 A shortcoming is the gridiron plan’s relentless sameness. Binder Johnson quotes Horace Cleveland, a nineteenth-century landscape architect, who described the ‘monotonous character’ of the grid’s application in towns in the American West.16 Yet Hurtt acknowledges that in any real application of the grid ‘the ideal becomes hierarchic’17 and that ‘hierarchies perceived within the grid are the result of particulars of location and use, not of the formal order itself’. The grid in its ideal form may reflect the egalitarian promise of the new democracy, but it is impossible to avoid the ‘particulars of location and use’ in any real implementation. This renders the ideal of a non-hierarchical grid a ‘utopian’ proposition.

The techne of Jeffersonville Thomas Jefferson was introduced to coordinate paper, also known as graph paper, while living in France. From the moment he began drafting his designs exclusively on this gridded paper, it was inevitable that the grid would be reiterated: as in the geometric mechanism or techne evidenced in Jefferson’s plans for the University of Virginia, the town of Richmond and Jeffersonville. Jefferson developed this nucleated plan 18 Figure 9.3 in tandem with the continental grid and intended that it should serve as a model for the planning of towns defined by the density of the aggregate population and, crucially, the public nature of structures at the centre: courthouse, meeting house, store and church within the newly surveyed townships. Jeffersonville was one of several town plans he developed where residential blocks alternated checkerboard style between houses and parkland. Jefferson described the merits of the scheme in a letter to the Comte de Volney in 1805: Such a constitution of atmosphere being requisite to originate this disease as is generated only in low, close, and ill-cleansed parts of a town, I have supposed it practicable to prevent its generation by building our cities on a more open plan. Take, for instance, the chequer board [sic] for a plan. Let the black squares only be building squares, and the

Image provided by Jeanne Burke, the Clark County Historian, Jeffersonville, Indiana

Figure 9.3 Jeffersonville, 1802 showing the original checkerboard pattern of open and built squares and the diagonal street system

Situating Jerusalem 165 white ones be left open, in turf and trees. Every square of houses will be surrounded by four open squares, and every house will front an open square. The atmosphere of such a town would be like that of the country, insusceptible of the miasmata which produce yellow fever.19 The plan, first proposed for an expansion of New Orleans, was never built precisely as drafted; rather, versions exist in Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky. It was also presented to state assemblies in Louisiana, Mississippi and Indiana – where Governor William Henry Harrison favoured it for expansion.20 The gestalt of the plan is somewhere between the agrarian ideal of the Garden of Eden and the urban ideal of the New Jerusalem. Hurtt says, ‘He very explicitly wanted a land that is midway between too much and too little civilization,’21 and is rather a combination of an urban centre within a rural field. Each iteration of Jeffersonville evidences the techne of the grid. Echoing Jefferson, Hurtt observes, ‘Both the closed and the open, the stable and the dynamic, seem to be requisites for the healthy human psyche, and stabilizing elements are present in both the rural and urban grid.’ In the plan for extending the town of Richmond, Virginia, it is clear what Jefferson intended concerning the form of the townships defined by the continental grid. The abstracted grid ordering the western territories was to be reiterated at a smaller scale within the town and balanced by the Arcadian landscape, as evidenced in this passage by Hurtt: Open rural landscape, groups of farm buildings and silos cluster together usually on a slight rise . . . the denser aggregate of the town similarly operates as the comparatively open agricultural landscape. In the town itself, the town square, so common in America, acts as a final stabilizing center and counterpoint to the unbounded street grid and field of blocks. Like the township and the street, the town square itself is an idealized form. Derived from the common that was the original center of the New England township, each of the names by which this urban space is known tells something of its character and meaning: common, green, or square . . . On this common square green the meeting hall of Puritan and Quaker origin was built. In this meeting hall the rights of franchisement in both the religious and secular community were exercised. When the township and the grid became codified as the national pattern, the town square was unconsciously codified as well. To this square accrue the archetypal qualities of a cosmic center described by Mircea Eliade or James Doherty. Commonly, such centers are quadrilateral in form and oriented to the compass points. Their centers are usually occupied by, in Doherty’s words, ‘a shrine or tower where the union of heaven and earth, man and god is ritually consummated. The archetypal quadratic form underlies the description of the holy city of the New Jerusalem [my italics] in the Book of Revelations’.22

166  Anne Schaper Englot

The poiesis of Jerusalem To Jemima Wilkinson the need for a community space where religious rites were exercised was certainly ‘unconsciously codified in her Quaker upbringing’. During her time as an itinerant preacher, two meeting houses were built to house her followers: one in South Kingston, Rhode Island, and the other in New Milford, Connecticut.23 However, Jerusalem, New York, never developed as a nucleated town, like the communities described earlier, despite having a critical mass of inhabitants. There is no distinct church, courthouse, meeting house nor grouping of businesses. Wilkinson’s followers did not imprint the landscape with the techne of the surveyor’s grid. Rather, they accepted the existing roads and trails developed by the Seneca Nation, which followed topographic features, and instead of a town square, there were several important nodes located several miles apart, primarily residential centres where a public function such as a mill or tavern could be located. Poiesis allowed the form and housing typologies of the community to remain emergent, developing over time and reflecting the fluidity of members’ needs and relationships. The first is Wilkinson’s house,24 the Mansion, which was the heart of the community and where she most often held meetings. She lived there with 20 or so other women who were referred to as her ‘family’ or the faithful sisterhood. A second typology was the single female house such as Anna Wagener’s house, or the single male house, such as that of Moses Hartwell. The single women’s houses were often located near the Mansion and the cheese-making and weaving workshops on land donated to the women by Wilkinson. This type was rather fluid – many of the women in the community being, to employ Mark Wigley’s term, ‘mobile’ – sometimes allowing the owner to house another single woman, such as when Anna Styer stayed with Lucinda Goodspeed. Single men occasionally had a single or widowed female as a housekeeper, constituting a third type, as in the case of Sarah Clark who shared a roof with and kept house for Thomas Hathaway. A fourth type of living arrangement was the single male group home. This type is exemplified by the first structure erected in the settlement: a large log house. A fifth typology was a conventional family home:25 some followers who joined the community as a family continued to live together, often ignoring Wilkinson’s recommendation of celibacy. 26 Territory is said to manage personal identity, but during this period, American women had a different relationship with the land than today; land did not represent enfranchisement, or wealth or self.27 The boundaries that fixed women were the limits of the interior space of the home – whether it was their home or an employer’s home – not the geographic space of the city or the landscape. A woman’s territory/identity at this time in particular was necessarily fluid. The arrangement of buildings in Jerusalem does not reflect traditional organization of the public or private sphere because Wilkinson, as a woman,28 knew the extent of disenfranchisement of women in traditional American society. She didn’t see the need to replicate the techne of Jefferson’s hierarchical planning model within her settlement. Hurtt seems untroubled by this distinction, glossing over the gender and racial restrictions within American

Situating Jerusalem 167 society, stating that the ‘township was the key to franchisement, or citizenship, in the community. In England and, consequently, in colonial America, rights were tied to property . . . on one’s possession of property, a freehold’. The improvement over this in America was that land possession was no longer tied to ‘inheritance or divine right’. 29 Women, Native Americans and African Americans would not receive the vote for 100 years or more and did not have the right to own property within the legal systems of either country until the turn of the twentieth century about 100 years after the establishment of the continental grid. As Hurtt points out, the same discrimination was enacted against white European males who did not own land; however, in America, this group at least held the prospect of enfranchisement. Had landownership been the only criterion for enfranchisement, Wilkinson would have been entitled. On a map of Jerusalem drawn by community members, 15 of the 40 lots are marked with the initials ‘UF’ (Universal Friend). Hurtt states that the ‘minimal freehold qualification in the Colonies was approximately fifty acres’. The size of the ‘freehold’ determined the right of the landholder to hold political office. The higher the office, the larger the number of freehold acres required.30 Wilkinson’s 15 lots would have comprised approximately 9,600 acres31 and should have qualified her for enfranchisement (Figure 9.4). The geography of the United States is famously diverse, as are the native peoples and immigrant groups that populate the nation. The ability of a heterogeneous population to adapt its grid squares to individual uses while still maintaining the uniformity of the grid is the genius of the form. The grid served as a relatively neutral (homogeneous) matrix within which heterogeneous individuals or groups could coexist. In other words, the neutrality of the Continental ‘grid’ form allowed groups such as the UFs to exist with a large degree of autonomy within the borders of the overarching order. The loyalty to the community was essential in the case of the UFs, as it was for others who settled as a group, such as the Puritans or the Quakers, who considered the community ‘the “primary covenant,” with its form and values re-created at the national level to become the Constitution. Smith calls the Constitution the “secondary covenant.” ’32 The township, the local instance, is governed by the group covenant. Despite the homogeneity of the grid, Hurtt is able to show how hierarchy can develop. In these towns, hierarchy is defined by location (town square at the centre) and by authority (with the meeting house on the town square being the seat of government or religion). An oft-used illustration of this hierarchy is the survey map of the townships within the Ohio Territory. The 1790 map (Figure 9.2) shows the six-by-six-mile square townships alternately left open and divided into one-by-one mile square lots. In every township, the centre is defined by another square, a two-by-two-mile square that would presumably mark the site of a village, again showing hierarchy marked by central location. After establishing the hierarchy of the town square within the grid, Hurtt asserts another grid model – one that is more compatible with the non-hierarchical grid, yet which offers points of relief within the grid. A well-known example of multiple nodes or centres within the formal organization of a grid is the model of Savannah, Georgia, founded by Gen. James E. Oglethorpe in 1733, which is punctuated by a number of residential squares.

168  Anne Schaper Englot

Figure 9.4 Copy of a map of Jerusalem drawn by community members showing ownership of many of the lots Drawn by Anne Schaper Englot after a copy in the collection of the Yates County History Center. Original map c.1810 in the public domain

In Jerusalem, the grid, imposed by land surveyors, organized the division of property. The existence of multiple nodes suggests a consensus-driven model. However, there is still an undisputed hierarchy. Wilkinson is the most important and influential person in the settlement, though she is not economically or politically influential beyond the boundaries of her society; within the community, she exerts unparalleled influence. One centre was developed at a site near Seneca Lake where Wilkinson’s first house and the first meeting house was located; another centre was located at Nichol’s Corners (Milo Center), and the third centre was at Wilkinson’s final and grandest residence, the Mansion, located at the second settlement (the second house, a log structure was nearby; see Figure 9.5). Each of these

Figure 9.5 Map of Jerusalem showing settlement pattern c. 1814, noting the location of the Mansion (A), Wilkinson’s second house (B) and the houses of many of the faithful sisterhood who did not reside in the Mansion (houses are plotted on the 1942 United States Geological Survey (USGS) map). Hollow circles denote where the USGS shows extant houses. Solid dots denote houses no longer extant in 1942 Drawn by Pauline Englot, on the USGS NW/4 Penn Yan 15’ Quadrangle, 1942, Potter, NY

170  Anne Schaper Englot spaces attains importance in the social life of the community. Although these multiple centres do exist, it is the Mansion that becomes the primary, hierarchical centre, just as the square is the centre of the towns that Hurtt describes. The centre hall of the Mansion is analogous to Hurtt’s meeting house on the square. The faithful sisterhood lived at the core of the community; they possessed the power and autonomy to travel and move as they wished. The form of this community – created by powerful women – is telling.

Gender and utopia For the UFs, this world was simply a stop on their journey to the next life: the life after time, where they would know God. The world they created in Jerusalem was the means towards achieving entry into the real Eden – the good place. As Anthony Vidler wryly notes, All utopias have done this to a degree, of course, from the Renaissance to the present – no place could be understood as a potential good place if we did not in some way find our own place in its habitat.33 In other words, in order to imagine a good place, an ideal (i.e. heaven or utopia), we need to be able to recognize some aspect of that good life within our own reality. Within the matrix of the grid, there is a place for Jeffersonville, an idealized utopian condition, and Jerusalem, one of the Foucauldian ‘heterotopias of deviation: those in which individuals whose behavior is deviant in relation to the required mean or norm are placed’.34 The primary difference between the binary of patriarchal/planned order (techne) and matriarchal/contextual order (poiesis) is the way these two orders are conceived and created. Categorization of the process by which a landscape is created, however, is another matter. The habitation of the territory of Jerusalem remained in flux – en poiesis like the identity en procés. The land boundaries were shifting, and the locations of individuals were shifting. The ability of individuals to shift location accommodated their shifting associations with different individuals within the society. What remained fixed was a belief around this pin, identity and place/space that could fluctuate. David Harvey describes a ‘utopianism of process rather than of spatial form’ or a ‘utopianism of temporal process alongside the utopianism of spatial form’,35 which is very close to the poiesis of Jerusalem. In Jerusalem, buildings changed as needs changed and underwent renovation; people frequently moved from one location to another, perhaps building a new house, perhaps going to live with relatives or friends. This flux and change is evident in the absence of a formal order within Jerusalem. Far from producing an undesirable end, the openness of the system allowed developing associations to have an expression in the physical world.

Situating Jerusalem 171 For Wilkinson, there was an absolute break in time – a heterochrony or entering of time – in 1776. The UFs recorded in their Death Book when each member ‘left time’. The UFs believed that they must prepare for the afterlife while on earth, living as pure a life as possible. The woman born Jemima Wilkinson sincerely believed in the ‘death of Wilkinson’s spirit’ and the ‘rebirth of the new spirit of the Publick Universal Friend’. She definitively ceased to live the life one would have predicted for ‘Jemima Wilkinson’ on the day of her death/rebirth. Wilkinson/Publick Universal Friend charted a life of her own creation which did not conform to societal expectations. In doing so, she was mapping an uncharted course. On her journey through the mapped territory of the new states, Wilkinson as the Publick Universal Friend transcends/travels beyond the borders of the spaces Wilkinson could have inhabited before the Publick Universal Friend. She and her followers eventually seek an unmapped territory for their unmapped lives. They move to the frontier and begin again, and then again, to formulate a map that will express their reality. The nucleated, gridded town plan is in fact an over-determined utopian form that had to deform to accommodate the bodies who inhabit it, though its ideal frame is still apparent. Grosz asserts, Relation between bodies, social structures, and built living and working environments and their ideal interactions is not a question that can be settled: the acknowledgment of the multiplicity of bodies and their varying political interests and ideals implies that there is a multiplicity of idealized solutions to living arrangements, arrangements about collective coexistence, but it is no longer clear that a single set of relations, a single goal or ideal, will ever adequately serve as the neutral ground for any consensual utopic form.36 Mapping is an act of circumscription or of definition; it can be a representation of the ideal city or an act of colonization – the first act of dominance. The map may begin as an act of techne, describing a utopic form, but as poiesis brings forth change, the new map must reflect the deviation. The dis/ order and disarray of the structures within Jerusalem bespeaks the poiesis of its inception. It resembles the map I envision in Foucault’s description of the space or a ‘thought without space’ a ‘ceremonial space, overburdened with complex figures, with tangled paths, strange places, secret passages, and unexpected communications’.37 As if to summarize the reason why Wilkinson and her followers did not create a nucleated village, Grosz continues, Utopias are precisely not about consensus but about the enactment of ideals of the privileged, ideals of the government by the few of the many, ideals not derived from consensus but designed to produce or enforce it.38

172  Anne Schaper Englot The modus operandi of the Quaker religion is consensus: discussion of any concern and action based on the expression of consensus39 by the members of a meeting. The UFs, though deviant from the Quakers to the degree that they were led by one strong individual, remained close in terms of theology to Quaker principles. Quaker decision making allows for divergent opinions and invites discussion of varied points of view. It doesn’t ultimately lead to one universal vision, and as Grosz points out, ‘It is a goal-directedness that utopic visions orient us toward, in neglecting the notion of process, precisely because they do not understand the role of time.’40 This point underscores the value of examining communities such as Jerusalem. The manner in which Jerusalem was settled – poiesis/process – and its heterotopic plan allow for the inclusion of time as a determining factor in design. The heterotopic is the other of the utopic, nucleated village of New England. I believe that it would prove fruitful to explore how the closed system of the utopic – its techne – could be meshed or collaged with the poiesis of the heterotopic to create a balance or harmonic plan. How could closed systems build in opportunities for self-determination and change through time? Heterotopia presents a variegated form, irregular, ephemeral, contingent, unbounded, expecting change – an open system accepting difference. Poiesis as a bringing forth allows the contingent and irregular to emerge as time goes on. The advantage of heterotopic plans is that the discussion can take place regarding change. The answer can depend on changing conceptions of good, as opposed to knee-jerk, reactionary, exhortations that ‘it doesn’t conform to the plan!’ We expect a geometric order: symmetrical, radial or gridded; balanced; and demonstrating a clear hierarchy in its form and function (authority at the centre). Heterotopia contains/comprises multiple centres. Figures appear in the field that do not organize easily on the ground. In Jerusalem, the houses and other buildings are not indicative of a higher order imposed upon the landscape. The houses are located according to conditions, to contexts, to adjacencies that reflect the life of the people and the place where they are built. For example, Wilkinson’s first house in the township of Jerusalem was located near the Brook Kendron because easy access to water was important for daily consumption, for cooking and for laundering. The exact spot on the Brook seems to have been governed primarily by the lot locations that Wilkinson was given by Thomas Hathaway and Benedict Robinson who initially purchased the township for 45 cents an acre (14–16 lots are labeled PUBLICK UNIVERSAL FRIEND – several lots are labeled with more than one name).41 Secondarily, the house was located adjacent to existing paths or roads worn from centuries of use by the Seneca. Heterotopia is mindful of terrain. The houses are all located on sites that optimize the landscape, either in terms of access to water or view or access to established transportation routes. Heterotopia is not territorial. Its boundaries are vague and soft, not hard. Where does it end? And who is

Situating Jerusalem 173 included? This is open for inquiry – not to be determined. The boundaries of Jerusalem are evident only on paper. Driving through the countryside, the divisions between Jerusalem and the adjacent towns of Potter or Benton are imperceptible. Because Wilkinson believed in the doctrine of free will, she did not lord her authority over the group; she did not need to maintain constant surveillance over the group. Her beliefs and entreaties to her followers were submitted in the form of ‘advice’.42 Understanding the normative conditions presented by Jefferson’s grid is essential in order to understand how Jerusalem deviates from this norm in its development through poiesis as a critical space of hyper-alterity and heterotopia. From Jerusalem, it is possible to critically assess Jefferson’s grid and to understand that those who were enfranchised in American society – European-American men – were more likely to employ techne as a spacemaking process. Male communitarians, such as Georg Rapp and Christian Metz followed the orthogonal models in their towns. The Universal Friends, who lived lives on the margins of civic space because they were prohibited by law from being civically engaged, built their kingdoms through poiesis. Conceptually, utopia calls for a perfected form, bounded, regular and evident (understandable, discernible). However, unless the purity of the form is protected, overtime, poiesis begins to contaminate the perfect model, addressing the needs of individuals. The plan of Jeffersonville has transformed over time, and the parks have been built upon. It is nearly impossible to resist the human need to change. The intent – the techne, the machine of the perfect plan – remains, but poiesis acts upon it de/form/ing the perfection, humanizing the plan.

Notes 1 A. Lincoln, Draft of the Gettysburg Address: Nicolay Copy. Transcribed and annotated by the Lincoln Studies Center, Knox College, Galesburg, IL. Available at Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress, Manuscript Division (Washington, DC: American Memory Project, [2000–02]), at http://memory.loc. gov/ammem/alhtml/malhome.html [accessed 1 December 2013]. 2 Jemima Wilkinson (1752–1819) also known as the ‘Publick Universal Friend’ or ‘The Friend’ was the first American born woman to found a religion. 3 Wisbey, H. Jr., A. Pioneer Prophetess: Jemima Wilkinson, the Publick Universal Friend (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1964), p. 12–13. The account of her vision was found in her bible and is presumed to have been told by Wilkinson to one of her followers. 4 Wisbey, A. Pioneer Prophetess, p. 134. 5 I have catalogued 337 community members, 184 are women. Of the 184, 93 were single or undefined; 65 were married once; 20 were widowed; 6 were married more than once. 6 Jerusalem was initially a six-mile square township, but the community was not neatly contained within one township. A land dispute, which arose because of a mistake in surveying, led certain community members to forfeit their holding and start anew in the next township. Jerusalem was the second township

174  Anne Schaper Englot purchased by the group. The history of the land dispute is complicated and for the purposes of this chapter will be ignored. 7 LaRochefoucauld-Liancourt, Francois Alexandre Frederic, duc de, Voyage dans les Etats-Unis d’Amerique (DuPont, Buisson, Charles Pougens, eds. Paris, 1799). 8 The Haudenosaunee (misnamed Iroquois by the French missionaries) consist of the original, indigenous nations of the Northeastern United States and Canada: the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida and Mohawk and Tuscarora (who joined later) the Haudenosaunee inhabited much of what is now Upstate New York into the American colonial period. All six nations continue to exist today, though on much diminished and disconnected sovereign territories. For more, see Bruce E. Johansen, and Barbara Alice Mann, Encyclopedia of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Confederacy) (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2000), Print. 9 D. Krell (ed.), Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings (New York: Harper and Row, 1977). 10 P. Nadal, ‘Heidegger’s Critique of Modern Technology: On “The Question Concerning Technology’, Web log post. Be Late. (Wordpress, 12 July 2012. Web, 10 April 2013). 11 S. Hurtt, ‘The American Continental Grid: Form and Meaning’, in Threshold: Journal of the School of Architecture, vol. 2, (New York: Rizzoli, University of Illinois at Chicago, 1983), p. 37. 12 The story of how this land, home to the Senecas, was available for sale and the impact of Sullivan’s campaign and the associated treaties are all an essential parts of this history, yet are outside the scope of this chapter. 13 Binder Johnson, Order Upon the Land, The U.S. Rectangular Land Survey and the Upper Mississippi Country (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), p. 178. 14 Hurtt, ‘The American Continental Grid’, p. 34. 15 Binder Johnson, Order Upon the Land, p. 35. 16 Binder Johnson, Order Upon the Land, p. 180. 17 Per my email correspondence with S. Hurtt received 16 September 2003, 5:15 pm. 18 Wood states that the federal period signaled a trend towards further nucleation of town centres. Villages he illustrates all show a centralized organization where perpendicular streets converge with a public space such as a town or meeting house square where commercial and political life is enacted. Jerusalem, though it contained a sufficient population, did not centralize functions. 19 J. W. Reps, The Making of Urban America: A History of City Planning in the United States (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965), p. 317. 20 Reps, The Making of Urban America, p. 317. 21 L. Marx quoted in Garreau, J. Edge Cities: Life on the New Frontier (New York: Doubleday, 1991), p. 12. 22 Hurtt, ‘The American Continental Grid’, p. 35. 23 Wisbey, p. 92. 24 Wilkinson had three houses over the course of her life in Jerusalem. The first house had to be abandoned because of a mistake in the survey; the second house was where she lived the longest; the third house was the largest and most impressive dwelling. 25 Based on my mapping of the community for which I rely heavily on S. C. Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, Vol. II (New York: Penn Yan, 1951), (published posthumously). 26 A census from 1800 shows 13 households headed by women, all of them members of the ’faithful sisterhood‘ and all but three of them in modern Jerusalem. For the most part, women in the group were widowed and single; some had left their families behind to follow the Friend. Most of the sisterhood moved with

Situating Jerusalem 175 the Friend from the first settlement in Torrey, near Seneca Lake, to the second settlement (site of the second and third home) in Jerusalem. There were some exceptions, such as Anna Wagener, who still lived in the Friend‘s first home in Torrey (at the first Friend’s settlement near Seneca Lake); Mary Gardener, who lived near Anna Wagener; and Martha Reynolds, who lived in her own home at Nichol’s Corners. This living arrangement was also found at the Rappite communities, which were also celibate. The Rappite women would sleep on the ground floor for the convenience of being near the kitchen, and the men would sleep on the second floor. This may or may not have been the case in Wilkinson’s community, where women shared living quarters with men who were not their husbands. 27 Prior to married women‘s property acts being passed – New York being the first in 1848 – at the time of marriage, a woman lost the right to control property inherited from her father prior to the marriage; women did not have rights to acquire any property during marriage. A married woman could not enter into a contract, keep or control her wages or rents, transfer or sell property or engage in a lawsuit. 28 A study of contemporary marriage patterns in several Quaker communities, before 1786, found that only 9.8 per cent of the women living to age 50 were single (their status as ‘spinsters‘ was noted in the death list, indicating this was remarkable) (Wells, Robert V., ‘Quaker Marriage Patterns in a Colonial Perspective’, William and Mary Quarterly, 3d series, 29 (July 1972), table VII, p. 426.) The average number of children born to American wives in the period from 1750 to 1799 was about six (Wells, 437). Wilkinson advocated celibacy for the women and men of her society. It is possible that the trauma she experienced when her mother died in childbirth influenced her position. This position would have been unpopular at the time: if a woman desired to live singly or without children (or if she did not marry or was not able to have children), she would have been marginalized in Quaker society. ‘The economic pressure for women to marry was intense. The Seventeenth Century saw the development of the ideal woman as a bourgeoisie who was to marry and to stay at home minding the house; while married, she was to own no property. She had no voice in the Church or State. Puritan marriage manuals continually reinforced the view that “the man when he loveth should remember his superiority”‘. (Elizabeth Potter, ‘Locke’s Epistemology and Women’s Struggles,’ in Bat-Ami Bar On, ed., Modern Engenderings: Critical Feminist Readings in Modern Western Philosophy (Albany: SUNY Press, 1994), p. 7). This conception was still prevalent in eighteenth century America. Since women in the eighteenth century could not own property, and they did not typically inherit property unless there were no male heirs in the family, marriage was often an economic necessity, because women would have had no other means of support. Land, money or possessions inherited by a married woman would become the property of her husband. Women could own property only if they were widowed and without male heirs Women were financially dependent from birth to death. Men also experienced pressure to marry and, once married, to provide for their wife and children. If widowed, men would often take second wives primarily to care for their children and their homes. Pioneer life was harsh; one poor growing season could mean a winter of starvation for the large farm families. 29 Hurtt, ‘The American Continental Grid’, p. 35. 30 Hurtt, ‘The American Continental Grid’, p. 35, according to the Ordinances of Governance of 1781. 31 A one-mile square lot = 640 acres – 15 lots (assuming the lot lines evenly divided the five-mile square parcel) =9,600 acres. 32 P. Smith, quoted in S. Hurtt, ‘The American Continental Grid’, p. 35.

176  Anne Schaper Englot 33 A. Vidler, ‘Diagrams of Utopia’, in M. C. de Zegher and M. Wigley, eds., Activist Drawing: Retracing Situationist Architectures From Constant’s New Babylon to Beyond (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001), p. 83. 34 M. Foucault, ‘Of Other Spaces’, Diacritics (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, Spring 1986), p. 25. 35 Harvey, Spaces of Hope, p. 173. 36 E. Grosz, Architecture from the Outside: Essays on Virtual and Real Space (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001), p. 150. 37 Foucault, p. xix. 38 Grosz, 2001, Architecture From the Outside, p. 150. This point of course has been made by others before Grosz (i.e. Ricouer). 39 N. Leach, Rethinking Architecture: A Reader in Cultural Theory (London: Routledge, 1997), ‘Habermas places great emphasis on the public sphere as the realm of communicative action. Here he subscribes to a form of inter-subjective communication as a means of overcoming the potential relativism of the ‘language games’ celebrated by various theorists of postmodernity‘, p. 225. 40 E. Grosz, 2001, Architecture from the Outside, p. 148. 41 Wisbey, A. Pioneer Prophetess, p. 120. 42 Wisbey, A. Pioneer Prophetess, pp. 197–204. Republishing of Wilkinson’s ‘The Universal Friend’s Advice, to Those of the Same Religious Society: Recommended to be Read in their Public Meetings for Divine Worship.’

10 Origins, meaning and memory in Louis I. Kahn’s Hurva Synagogue proposal Tamara Morgenstern

In 1967, immediately following the Six-Day War, the government of Israel commissioned architect Louis I. Kahn (1901–74) to design a synagogue on the war-torn site of the nineteenth-century Hurva Synagogue, which had been the primary centre of Jewish worship in the Old City of Jerusalem prior to its destruction by the Jordanians in 1948. Recognizing the enormous political, historic and symbolic significance of building a new synagogue in the heart of the ancient precinct that was so significant to the world’s three great monotheisms, Kahn sought to create a landmark that could assume historical eminence for world Jewry. Over the course of seven years, Kahn created three proposals for the Hurva Synagogue: the first in July 1968 and the second and third between 1968 and 1972. As the centrepiece in the renewal of the Old City, Kahn’s contextual approach projected a vital visual, metaphorical and historical link between the prior site of the original Hurva Synagogue and that of the ancient Temples of Solomon and Herod on the nearby Temple Mount.1 However, Kahn faced what ultimately proved to be insurmountable financial and political hurdles in developing a new religious complex and nationalist symbol for the emergent Jewish state in the unstable post-war period. Inspired by the monumental structures of Western architecture – from Roman ruins to the great pyramids of Egypt – Kahn created buildings relatively late in his career that were of a power and spirituality rarely equaled in the twentieth century. Architect John Lobell said of Kahn, ‘Taken together, his building and his poetry constitute one of the deepest and most sustained investigations into absolute Being ever undertaken by an individual mind.’2 In each of his mature works, Kahn attempted to imbue matter with the fundamental values of human existence. A highly personal, poetic and often-enigmatic body of thought – an architectural treatise of sorts – was formulated through Kahn’s writings, teachings and commentaries on projects. This investigation, focusing primarily on the first and favoured of the unbuilt Hurva designs, explores the myriad seminal sources that Kahn probed for his concept – in both liturgical and symbolic terms – of the archetypal synagogue. A basic tenet of Kahn’s architectural philosophy was

178  Tamara Morgenstern the notion of ‘Volume Zero’, the cardinal source of architectural form that he perpetually sought in the earliest and purest prototypes in human history. Ample evidence suggests that, in a quest for ‘Volume Zero’ for the Hurva, Kahn looked to the temples of ancient Israel and Egypt, to Biblical imagery – from the Garden of Eden to Ezekiel’s visionary temple – and to numerous religious symbols, including Egyptian hieroglyphics and Kabbalistic iconography. In the Hurva’s deceptively simple design, Kahn further reduced the most elemental of architectural forms and human ideals into a potent emblem of the origins and essence of Judaism and the universal qualities of religious worship. Throughout his career, Kahn assiduously struggled with the dichotomy between his early Beaux-Arts training and the prevailing modernist movement in pursuit of a distinct architectural voice. In the 1950s, he broke away from the International Style and began to use the past as an inspiration for architectural form, albeit in an abstracted, subtly referential manner. His mature style – composed of a family of monolithic geometric forms – synthesized new technology, the spare aesthetics of modernism and myriad arcane historical sources. However, as noted by Vincent Scully, ‘Caught up in modernism’s romantic need to invent [Kahn] tended to conceal his sources from everyone other than those before whom it would have been ridiculous to try.’3 Recurrent themes that he pondered included issues of representation versus abstraction, monumentality – which he defined as ‘a spiritual quality inherent in a structure which conveys its feeling of eternity’4 – and a concern with the phenomenological nature of architecture. One of his last projects, the Hurva Synagogue is an amalgamation of Kahn’s progressive political beliefs, social and spiritual values, and the aesthetic philosophy he developed to embody these principles. The site for the proposed Hurva Synagogue was at the geographical and spiritual nexus of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Both Muslims and Christians had prominent holy sites within the Old City. The Muslim Dome of the Rock dominated the ancient Temple Mount, and Christendom was represented by the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Yet, in 1967, there was no significant religious structure in Jerusalem to serve the Jewish people. Barred from ascending the Temple Mount, with only the remaining, visible fragment of its Herodian substructure, known as the Western Wall, or the Kotel, as their chief memorial, Jews longed for a monument to represent their ancient religion. Kahn’s assignment was an epic challenge. The complex history of the succession of synagogues on the Hurva site since the thirteenth century reflects the enormous difficulties inherent in building in the politically explosive Holy City. The nineteenth-century domed, neo-Byzantine Hurva was built over an eighteenth-century Ashkenazi synagogue that had been destroyed in 1720 and was thereafter dubbed the ‘Hurva’ – the Hebrew word for ruin. The vision for the resurrection of the Hurva belonged to two prominent Israelis; Haifa lawyer, Yaacov Salomon, whose family had a long association with the original Hurva

Origins, meaning and memory 179 Synagogue, and Mayor Teddy Kollek hailed as the ‘the Second Herod’ for his massive post-war building campaign. Kahn, as one of America’s leading Jewish architects, who had served as an architectural advisor to the Israelis since 1949, was a logical choice for the commission. It is important to note that Kahn was not a practicing Jew and that his ties to Judaism were predominantly cultural. Through historical research and philosophical discussions with the rabbinate as preparatory study for each of his commissions for the Jewish community, he acquired extensive knowledge about Judaic architectural history and synagogue practice.5 Because of this unusual exposure to Judaism, Kahn created a design for the Hurva that was fresh and powerful, although in many ways outside of Jewish traditions. To Kahn, the compelling physical setting was fundamental to the genesis of his design, as evidenced in two detailed clay models he made of the site and its environs. One showed existing conditions in the Jewish Quarter and the Temple Mount, and the other contained the proposed planning of the Hurva Synagogue, with the recreation of the old Hurva courtyard to the north and the synagogue ruins – to become a memorial garden – to the west (Figure 10.1). The latter model and an early site plan are the only images of Kahn’s somewhat ambiguous and unsolicited overall concept to restructure the Jewish Quarter, wherein a dramatic pedestrian armature, the ‘Street of the Prophets’ – interspersed with plazas and lined with a series of religious and educational institutions – was designed to connect the Hurva with a two-level plaza at the Kotel (Figure 10.2). From his involvement in the neighbourhood planning movement in the 1930s and ’40s, Kahn had developed a belief that architecture could transform society.6 As a founding member of the Jerusalem Committee, an international advisory panel selected to develop a master plan for post-war Jerusalem, Kahn was intimately involved with the planning goals and policies for the city. He seized on the Hurva project as an unprecedented opportunity to reshape and energize an entire urban district through considerations of topography, existing buildings, pathways and monuments. Using principles of ‘imageability’ developed in the 1950s by urban theorist Kevin Lynch, which stressed the importance of distinctive landmarks, monuments and a highly legible urban structure to create civic settings with a strong sense of place, Kahn sought to establish a communal identity within the Jewish Quarter.7 A site section, intriguingly reminiscent of Kahn’s drawings of the Athenian Acropolis in its unabashed monumentality, illustrates the heroic scale that the proposed synagogue would have assumed with respect to the Dome of the Rock on the upper plateau and to the recessed excavations adjacent to the Western Wall. Envisioning a third monumental structure in the ancient city to represent Judaism, Kahn visualized the Hurva – at nearly the same height as the Dome of the Rock – as an icon towering over one of the most memorable skylines of humanity. Indeed, he described the project by suggesting, ‘You might say the synagogue is the Ark, . . . a very precious building.’8 The boldness of the proposal was both its strength and its downfall.

Photograph by George Pohl

Figure 10.1  Clay model of Jerusalem, showing the Hurva at right and the Dome of the Rock at left, 1968. Louis I. Kahn Collection, the University of Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission

Figure 10.2 Hurva Synagogue, first proposal. Site plan of the Old City of Jerusalem, 1968. Louis I. Kahn Collection, the University of Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission

182  Tamara Morgenstern Kahn’s initial scheme was presented with great fanfare at the Israel Museum on 23 July 1968. Extensively publicized in the Israeli press and debated in the Knesset, the powerful design far exceeded the expectations of his clients, as evidenced in a letter from Yaacov Salomon to Kahn: It is quite clear that your conception of the new Hurva is tremendous. It is no longer a reconstruction, which was never intended in the physical sense, nor perhaps in the spiritual, but it envisages a spiritual shrine for the whole of Jewry. It is far greater than anything I had in mind.9 Kahn’s first and most detailed proposal is a perfect square in plan, set on a low plinth, with four massive paired pylons in the shape of elongated, truncated pyramids on each side like huge, free-standing buttresses (Figure 10.3). The Hurva’s monumental symmetry evokes the stripped classicism of architect Paul Cret, Kahn’s mentor at the University of Pennsylvania. Four hollow piers define the central sanctuary and flare out at the upper portion in the shape of inverted pyramids forming a flat roof, with gaps between the square sections through which light filtrates into the sanctuary (Figure 10.4). Natural light is also emitted through the spaces between the roof and the flanking pylons, and between the free-standing modules, creating a dramatic play of light and shadow on the interior wall planes. In the mezzanine, four perimeter corridors, with a sequence of vertical apertures framing views across Jerusalem, weave in and out of the hollow pylons in a complex spatial sequence. Four bridges connect to the upper women’s balcony. Organizational layering is prescribed by the ways that Kahn imagined congregants might interact with the space communally and individually: In understanding the nature of a chapel, I said first you have a sanctuary, and the sanctuary is for those who want to kneel. Around the sanctuary is an ambulatory, and the ambulatory is for those who are not sure, but who want to be near. Outside is a court for those who want to feel the presence of the chapel. And the court has a wall. Those who pass the wall can just wink at it.10 The encircling candle niches, ambulatory and the four staircase modules perform as what Kahn termed ‘servant spaces’ to the central, or ‘served space’, of the core chamber. All of the component parts operate in concert to provide for varying degrees of engagement, as well as for services of different sizes. The Hurva was to be built of the same golden Jerusalem stone as the Western Wall. Replicating both the size and coursing of the ancient retaining wall, the stone of the pylons was to perform a structural role echoing traditional building practice. Ancient and modern materials are vividly juxtaposed with the use of the silvery concrete that Kahn worked so masterfully throughout the interior.

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Figure 10.3 Hurva Synagogue, first proposal. First-floor plan, c. July 1968. Louis I. Kahn Collection, the University of Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.

The second scheme of 1969, developed to alleviate the obstruction of sight lines to the ark, incorporated an unusual curved roof shell resting on twin columns centred on each side of the sanctuary. In the third design, the inner roof structure was changed to an angled shell resting on four solid columns. Four tremendous cylindrical openings and a square aperture at the centre – reminiscent of the great oculus of the Pantheon, which Kahn deemed the ideal space of worship and human congregation with its simple perfection and timeless, universal qualities – pierce the new vaulted roof design. Kahn visualized the Hurva as a completely open building, without enclosing doors or windows, with ‘the air of an occupied ruin from some ancient yet unspecifiable epoch’.11 The concept of the ruin was inspired by Kahn’s visits to the monuments of ancient Rome and Egypt in 1951 and had become an integral part of his mature work. Alexandra Tyng, Kahn’s daughter, wrote about his idea of the ruin as it related to the Hurva, stating: Structurally, Hurva is a ‘ruin’ all the way through to its core because its glare-shielding element is part of its fabric. As a result of his experience with the Hurva Synagogue, Kahn linked the ruin with silence – the word he used to describe the eternal quality in a great work of art that is recognized by all human beings . . . The significance of the Hurva

Figure 10.4 Hurva Synagogue, first proposal. Section, 1968. Louis I. Kahn Collection, the University of Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission

Origins, meaning and memory 185 Synagogue is that it, more than any other building by Kahn, evokes this feeling of silence.12 Kahn characterized the elusive quality of divine resonance inherent in the great monuments of humankind as the moment between Silence and Light. He believed that light is the source of existence, material is ‘Spent Light’, and the making of architecture is the manipulation of structure and natural light. The power and spirituality produced through Kahn’s masterful manipulation of light and matter in the Hurva would have resulted in an iconic Hebraic building. Regrettably, at the time of Kahn’s death on 17 March 1974, neither the plans for the synagogue nor those for the adjacent Hurva Memorial Plaza were sufficiently developed to be implemented.

Beginnings in the Hurva Synagogue Kahn’s power as an architect came from his ability to infuse matter with his hermetic architectural philosophy, founded on notions of Platonic or ideal forms. He attributed a latent animism, or what he termed an independent ‘existence will’, to architectural ideals that, through the intuitive sense of the architect, could manifest in the timeless form of what a space ‘wanted to be’. In the pursuit of incipient architectural form, Kahn stated, ‘Of all things, I honor beginnings. I believe, though, that what was has always been, and what is has always been, and what will be has always been.’13 Inspirations for nascent architecture, or ‘Volume Zero’, rose out of the wealth of imagery amassed from Kahn’s Beaux-Arts training; his extensive travels through Europe, Egypt and the Middle East; his own background and religious upbringing; and a host of volumes on architectural history from his extensive private collection. In addition to copies of books by Ruskin, Vitruvius, Viollet-le-Duc, Palladio and Choisy, Kahn collected numerous publications on the art and architecture of ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt and the Near East. Students and colleagues recounted that, although Kahn didn’t thoroughly read these texts, he would look at the plans, drawings and photographs for hours. From these visual images, he fashioned a repertoire of forms out of which his compositions evolved. Unraveling the probable sources ensconced in the Hurva design aids in formulating a hypothesis of Kahn’s hidden intentions. Kahn had already developed a programmatic abstraction, or ‘order’, for the archetypal synagogue based on synagogue liturgy and paradigmatic Jewish historical architecture in his design of Adath Jeshurun (1954–55, unbuilt) and for Mikveh Israel (1961–72, unbuilt), about which he said, ‘I must be in tune with the spirit that created the first synagogue’.14 Although he typically blurred the distinctions between secular and religious buildings when designing what he termed ‘Places of Assembly’, Kahn did establish a relationship between the ark – the cabinet for the Torah scrolls – and the bimah, or reader’s platform, in the first proposal that followed the

186  Tamara Morgenstern traditional layout of Ashkenazi synagogues (Figure 10.5).15 In another nod to Judaic tradition, three steps led down to the bimah in a configuration reflecting the post-Talmudic tradition of lowering the floor under the bimah platform so that prayers may rise ‘out of the depths’ (Psalms 130:1). Kahn had declared of his work on the Hurva, ‘I have been honored to express the spirit of history and religion of Jerusalem . . . The idea which motivated the design . . . came from inspirations never before felt.’16 No records exist regarding the specific nature of these ‘inspirations’. It is probable that Kahn, who thought of himself as a prophet of the muse of architecture, was stirred by the desire for the rebuilding of the Temple that pervades Judaism. Ample evidence supports the metaphorical presence of the four primary Biblical structures in the Hurva: the primitive Tabernacle, the Temple of Solomon (959–952 BCE) and Herod’s Temple (22 BCE – 4CE) in Jerusalem and the prophet Ezekiel’s Messianic temple. Through his architectural education and prior work for Jewish institutions, Kahn was conscious of the wealth of hypothetical reconstruction drawings of these Biblical shrines. So closely does Kahn’s plan for the Hurva follow Biblical descriptions and postulations regarding the ancient temples that it could properly be added to the actual body of reconstructive thought. Kahn, however, was neither a Zionist, nor an observant Jew. He thus borrowed freely from Biblical, Egyptian and other historical sources to achieve the ageless, timeless forms he sought. Kahn’s freehand sketches, which heretofore have not been analyzed,

Figure 10.5 Hurva Synagogue, first proposal. Scale model, 1968. Louis I. Kahn Collection, the University of Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission

Origins, meaning and memory 187 contain subtle clues into his thought process during the design phase and provide visual links between his mental encyclopedia of forms and symbols and their assimilation and abstraction in the design of the Hurva.

The Tabernacle It is likely that Kahn would have turned first to the earliest Jewish religious structure: the divinely inspired portable Tabernacle that housed the Holy Ark of the Covenant during the wandering of the Jews in the desert. His familiarity with the primitive structure may have been chiefly through Rudolf Wittkower’s book, Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism – a study that had profoundly influenced the architect.17 Wittkower explained the Renaissance theory of divine ratios as they related to this model for the early Hebrew temples: It is not the actual numbers but their ratios that are of importance; and that the cosmic ratios are to be regarded as binding for the microcosm also, is evident from God’s command to Moses to build the Tabernacle after the pattern of the world and Solomon’s resolve to give the proportions of the Tabernacle to the Temple.18 Wittkower’s treatise underscored the importance of Solomon’s Temple – derived from the Tabernacle – as a direct inspiration from God and the archetype for all other orders. He surmised, The Temple of Jerusalem became a natural focussing point for the cosmological-aesthetic theories of proportion . . . for was it not God Himself who had enlightened Solomon to incorporate the numerical ratios of the celestial harmony into his building?19 The rhythmic proportions of the Hurva exemplify Kahn’s concern with principles of ratio and celestial harmonics. He often used musical analogies when referring to architecture, calling his work ‘frozen music’, stating, ‘The column is really a musical expression of an opening in which the solid and the void are in rhythm with each other and this is the beginning of architecture.’20 A page of schematic sketches of the Hurva contains the numerical notations – ‘3–6, 3–6’ – suggesting proportional considerations. Also recalling the spirit of the Tabernacle as prototype, in Towards a New Architecture, a manifesto that was of pivotal importance to Kahn, Le Corbusier, who similarly hoped to revitalize his art by a return to primal impulses in architecture, declared, Is it not true that most architects to-day have forgotten that great architecture is rooted in the very beginnings of humanity and that it is a direct function of human instinct?21

188  Tamara Morgenstern Each of the four sides of the Tabernacle had three openings – one for each of the 12 tribes of Israel – a symbol that Kahn may well have invoked in the three vertical apertures on each side of the Hurva. The most sacred portion of the Tabernacle, the interior ‘Holy of Holies’, was a perfect cube, as is the 32-foot square inner sanctum of the Hurva. In addition, Kahn’s pylons are reminiscent of the free-standing columns forming the perimeter court of the Tabernacle, which were set in copper sockets, ‘broad at the bottom so that the pillars might stand firm’.22 Expressive of its nomadic nature, the Tabernacle relied on a variety of draped fabrics for screening and covering. Although Kahn never clearly delineated draping for the Hurva, notes on a freehand sketch suggest an affinity with the fabric-sheathed Tabernacle: The niches of the candles folded drapes of cloth double layered to protect from the sun The Pillar is the building to the world The inner chamber is thought of as a grapevine arbour. . . express in folded drapes of cloth23

The First and Second Temples Out of the Tabernacle’s rudimentary composition, the great stone temples of ancient Judea evolved. The magnificent Temple of Solomon and the even larger Temple of Herod, built on the same site, are two of the legendary constructs of human history. The tragedy of their destruction and the promise of their redemption in a Messianic age have been central to the Jewish religion for nearly 2,000 years. Kahn requested materials on Jerusalem and the history of the synagogue from the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York before embarking on his design for the Hurva. He also specifically requested an article by Chancellor Louis Finkelstein entitled ‘The Origins of the Synagogue’.24 Finkelstein’s study highlighted the importance of Solomon’s Temple as the model for the development of local prayer halls. Office records indicate that an unidentified reconstruction of the original temple was filed with the slides from Kahn’s first proposal.25 A comparison of the plans of the Hurva with reconstruction drawings of the First and Second Temples, many of which Kahn would have known through their frequent use in architectural histories, reveals the similarities between Kahn’s proposal and these ancient structures.(Figure 10.6).26 Both ancient temples consisted of a series of concentric spaces surrounding the Holy of Holies, which, like that of the Tabernacle, served as the proportional model for the Hurva. Square, outward-facing storage chambers surrounded the temples on three sides. Similar compartments circumscribing the sanctuary in Kahn’s proposal, carved out of the 16 perimeter pylons at the lower level to form ten-foot square, inward-facing niches, echoed

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Figure 10.6  Plan of the Temple of Jerusalem, from La geographie sacree, et les monuments de l’histoire sainte, Joseph Romain Joly, 1784. General Research Division, the New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations

the form, but not the function, of the temple chambers. Designating these alcoves as ‘candle niches’, Kahn stated, I sensed the light of a candle plays an important part in Judaism. The pylons belong to the candle service and have niches facing the chamber. I felt this was an extension of the source of religion, as well as an extension of the practice of Judaism.27 Kahn’s choice of words, in describing the candle niches as an ‘extension’ of Judaic practice, as well as the atypical form of the cubicles

190  Tamara Morgenstern themselves – unprecedented as a programmatic feature in traditional synagogue design – betray his desire to justify the architectural forms he proposed. The monolithic pylons of the Hurva also emulated the massive buttressing in well-known reconstruction drawings by Fischer von Erlach and Jacob Judah Leon. Two monumental columns flanked the entry of Solomon’s Temple, with the cryptic names of ‘Jachin’ and ‘Boaz’. An early sketch depicts paired columns, possibly reminiscent of Jachin and Boaz, centred at each of the four sides of the Hurva. Moreover, close inspection of a photograph of the wood model discloses the presence of two small, cylindrical columns – one at each of the two visible corner openings. Unlike the First Temple, set apart atop a Sacred Mountain, Kahn’s Hurva occupied a central site in the Old City, conforming more closely to Herod’s Temple, which, in the Hellenistic tradition, was integrated into the civic life of the city. It has been surmised that the exterior of Herod’s great edifice was a shell or jacket for an inner structure whose dimensions mirrored those of Solomon’s Temple.28 In response to the intense solar and climatic conditions in Jerusalem, Kahn created a structure composed of two buildings, ‘an outer one which would absorb the light and heat of the sun, and an inner one, giving the effect of a separate but related building’. 29 He said of his unprecedented double-shelled buildings, ‘I thought of the beauty of ruins . . . the absence of frames . . . and so I thought of wrapping ruins around buildings.’30 In addition, the layered edifice bears an intriguing resemblance to the Biblical description of Ezekiel’s Temple, ‘All around, there were projections in the Temple to serve the side chambers as supports, so that [their] supports should not be the Temple wall itself’ (Ezek. 4:6). By drawing on the elemental qualities of the iconic structures of Judaism, Kahn simultaneously invoked layer upon layer of Judaic cultural memory, conjuring, in a single structure, the many epochs of temple history.

Ezekiel’s Temple The Hurva Synagogue as the embodiment of Ezekiel’s vision brings us closest to Kahn’s ideological intent in the conflation of the Hurva ruin with a symbol of the future – a mythological phoenix rising to a new incarnation out of the rubble of Jerusalem. Ezekiel’s prophetic structure, described in the eponymous Biblical book (Ezekiel: 40–44), details the re-creation of the Holy Temple in the Messianic age. The divinely dictated temple was composed of simple, idealized geometries. Its measurements were prescribed to Ezekiel in a vision, by ‘a man who shone like copper’ (Ezek. 40:3). Each of the four walls, like those of the Tabernacle and, indeed, of the Hurva, were punctuated by three great gates for the 12 tribes of Israel. The Hurva’s four hollow piers evoke Ezekiel’s temple plan, with, ‘four surrounding solids of the chambers defining the inner courtyard’.31

Origins, meaning and memory 191 John Wood, in The Origin of Building (c.1741), created what was perhaps the most idealized reconstruction of Ezekiel’s temple. Wood’s perfectly symmetrical square plan, subdivided into four quadrants, was reminiscent of Renaissance centralized plans reflecting divinely inspired ideal geometries, including that of the earliest of human abodes – the Biblical Garden of Eden – divided by four rivers. Kahn owned History of Art in Persia, by Perrot and Chipiez, and was undoubtedly also familiar with their volume on ancient Judaea, which included several drawings of the Temple of Ezekiel, to which the Hurva bears an intriguing resemblance. Architect Stanley Tigerman, referring to Kahn’s proposal for the Jewish Martyr’s Memorial in New York (1964–72, unbuilt), designed concurrently with the Hurva, noted the ideological parallels between Kahn’s Memorial, John Wood’s reconstruction drawing and the Biblical scholar Juan Bautista Villalpanda’s astrological organization of the temple and the Escorial.32 Strongly resembling the Hurva’s layout, these plans, as suggested by Tigerman: Reflect abstraction as a basis for design, an abstraction that is rooted in typical Ezekiel reconstructive thought . . . The concept of “layering” about a sacred center dedicated to aurality is present in many reconstructions of the temples of the Jews.33 Similarly, in the Hurva, Kahn devised a powerful core of worship at the heart of the nine-square grid and articulated concentric gradations of devotional space around the perimeter.

Egyptian influences Kahn’s discovery of the great monuments of Egypt marked a turning point in his artistic vision. And aptly, Kahn turned again to the Egyptian temples for the architectural essence of the Hurva, just as the Jews had 3,000 years before. Indeed, it would have been Egyptian architectural precedents that would have been the likeliest models for the Temple of Solomon.34 Kahn loved Egyptology and among the many books in his personal library were two that he was said to have thumbed through constantly: The Nile, by Egyptologist E. A. Wallis Budge, and The Pyramids of Egypt, by I.E.S. Edwards. Elements of Egyptian plans, massing, geometric form, rhythms of solid and void, and a variety of aperture and columnar influences from Kahn’s drawings of 1951 and from illustrations in these volumes are clearly evident in the Hurva proposal (Figure 10.7). Although ideologically linked to the ancient Jewish temples, Kahn’s aesthetic sensibilities drew him towards Egyptian forms for the structure. The Hurva’s square plan and geometric subdivisions summon remembrances of chapels such as that of Senusert I at Karnak, as well as the royal

Figure 10.7 Louis I. Kahn [1901–74] Southeast Pylons, Temple of Ammon, Karnak, Egypt, 1951. Pastel on paper. 8 ¼” x 14 3/8”. Signed middle right: ‘Lou K ‘51’. Collection of Sue Ann Kahn Collection, courtesy Lori Bookstein Fine Art.

Figure 10.8 Temple of Edfu. Ancient Apollinopolis, Upper Egypt. From The Holy Land, Syria, Idumea, Arabia, Egypt and Nubia, 1842–49. General Research Division, the New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations

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tomb at Saqqara (3100 BCE). The perimeter chambers echo the inwardfacing shrines in the inner sanctuary of Egyptian temples such as those in the Polemic Temple of Horus at Edfu (). These temples, like the Hurva, are composed of an inner and outer structure. At Edfu, the exterior fortress-like wall is separated from the temple by a peripheral corridor, similar to Kahn’s ‘double-wrapped’ buildings. The towering solidity of the ancient pyramids – mesmeric and powerful on the Egyptian landscape – is captured in the monumental vigor of Kahn’s Hurva. Surely, the rhythmic play of solid and void in the Hurva was inspired by Kahn’s memories of the façade of the Temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el Bahari (ca. 1500 BCE), or possibly by the rock-cut temples of Abu Simbel (ca. 1250 BCE). Pointed arches – termed ‘gothic’ by critics in the Israeli press – that pierce the walls of the hollow piers on the upper-level women’s gallery, may more accurately be seen as a reflection of Egyptian pointed arches, such as that of the entrance to the Pyramid of Cheops, at Gizeh (ca. 2570–2500 BCE). Pictured in The Pyramids of Egypt, drawings of the Great Pyramid entry and the inverted ‘V’ vault of the burial chambers at Khendjer may both have served as models for Kahn’s apertures. The flared shape of the piers themselves, likened to the leaves of a tree by Kahn, may have been rooted in the spreading forms of the great Egyptian columns and vegetal capitals such as those in the pronaos of the Temple at Edfu. Massive canted pylons from the New Kingdom period recorded by Kahn, including those of the Pylon of Ramses II at the Temple of Ammon in Luxor (1417–1379 BCE), the Temple of Ammon at Karnak (1525–ca.1512 BCE) and the Temple at Edfu, are clearly evident in the Hurva (Figure 10.9).

Figure 10.9 Hurva Synagogue, first proposal. Scale model of exterior, 1968. Louis I. Kahn Collection, The University of Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission

194  Tamara Morgenstern Reflecting their Egyptian genealogy, the 16 monoliths of the Hurva were revealingly referred to as ‘pylons’ by Kahn. The cropped pyramidal form of Kahn’s pylons is homologous to the truncated pyramids illustrated in both The Nile and The Pyramids of Egypt. Moreover, Kahn’s section through the Hurva pylons echoes a section drawing in The Nile of an alcove in the slanting perimeter walls of the Temple of Chephren at Giza, as well as an illustration in the same publication depicting the source of the Nile, ensconced in a canted mass of rocks – images that may have inspired Kahn’s enigmatic candle niches.

The hieroglyphic and Kabbalistic iconography Several books in Kahn’s library attest to his interest in the Kabbalistic concept of form embodied in primitive pictoral languages, including two books on Egyptian hieroglyphics. In particular, the hieroglyphic of the pyramid in The Nile intrigued Kahn. The triangulated form represented the rays of the sun reaching from the heavens to the earth, symbolizing the very form of Ra – the god of the sun. The architect, a master at the manipulation of natural light, was moved by Budge’s explication on the metaphorical significance of the truncated pyramid: The sun-symbol here represented (the ben-ben) suggests that the earliest worshippers of the sun believed that their god dwelt in a particular stone of pyramidal shape. At a later period . . . a stone of a truncated pyramid was adopted as a symbol of the sun.35 In the compelling emblems of Egyptian hieroglyphics and the Kabbalistic symbolism of his youth, Kahn finally united the ancient sources for the Hebrew temple with the spiritual iconography of Judaism. Central to Kabbalah is the use of mystical symbols to represent philosophical concepts based on the Platonic tradition.36 The Hurva, thus, becomes a massive sign, legible to the initiate, of primordial beginnings and religious mysticism. Kahn referred to the Hurva’s interior roof structure as being ‘like large leaves of a tree’,37 evoking his earlier project for Mikveh Israel, the plan of which has been compared to the Kabbalistic Tree of Sephiroth. The Sephiroth, or Tree of Life, is a metaphor for the ten emanations of God’s creative powers. A Kabbalist bearing the Sephiroth is prominently figured on the cover of Kahn’s copy of the Zohar. In the Hurva, the ‘children of Israel’ were to gather at the base of Kahn’s ‘grapevine arbour’. The grape arbour, often interpreted as the Tree of Knowledge from the Garden of Eden, with the grape as the forbidden fruit, appears in Kabbalistic writings in connection with the mysteries of wisdom.38 Thus the Hurva’s component parts comprise its meaning: the towering pyramidal pylons evoke the Egyptian image of the physical linkage between Earth and the cosmos, while the

Origins, meaning and memory 195 sheltering, quadripartite roof is a metaphor for the Kabbalistic ‘tree of God, which is the tree of the world but at the same time the tree of souls’.39 Kahn’s concern with the metaphysical effect of light on architecture, a concept he termed ‘Matter and Light’, reached a zenith of spiritual expression in the Hurva. In the double-wrapped ruins of the Hurva, Kahn used light like a building material to create spaces of sublime mystery. Each movement through the building reveals a slot, an angle, a pyramidal wedge of light.40 Light becomes matter, and matter dissolves into light in a chaotic geometry of ever-changing architectural hieroglyphics. Kahn loved the otherworldly light emitted by the central oculus of the Pantheon, as well as the brilliant play of mass and light in Le Corbusier’s chapel at Ronchamp, which he ‘fell madly in love with’41 on a visit in 1959. The spirituality of these spaces is present in the unrealized form of the Hurva, which is at once archaic and prophetic of the future, splendidly radiating Kahn’s notions of the Silence and the Light.

Conclusion The philosophical, historical and spiritual explorations that Louis I. Kahn embedded in his work emerged in a synthesized manner as some of the most primitivistic, powerful and provoking architectural forms of the twentieth century. Nowhere in Kahn’s work is that quality of divine resonance more evident than in his proposal for the Hurva Synagogue, where he intuitively created a profoundly insightful Hebraic space that simultaneously extended a welcome to all. Although there are no extant documents delineating the architectural brief presented to Kahn by Yaacov Salomon, national pride, historic continuity and prominence within the Old City were clearly of paramount concern. However, the project that Kahn developed was far grander and more costly than anticipated. Clear references to the ancient temples, as well as the predatory size of the Hurva, sparked centuries-old issues at the heart of Arab-Israeli conflicts that the government of the struggling Jewish state was not prepared to confront.42 Kahn also unwittingly offended Israeli sensibilities by creating a design that was too Egyptian.43 In addition, the Israelis could not concur as to whether the Hurva should be a new and modern synagogue or a faithful restoration of the old structure. Had it been built, the Hurva would have altered the face of Jerusalem. Linked to the Kotel by a series of processional spaces, the proud, autonomous Jewish shrine would have been a cohesive force within Jerusalem, symbolically linking past and present and physically uniting Hurva ruin with ancient Temple ground. A work of monumental physical and symbolic proportions, it would have had the power to assume a celebrated role in the historical continuum of Judaism, exemplifying the long history of exile and promised redemption of the Jewish people, to become a touchstone for Jews in Israel and the Diaspora. Tragically, Kahn’s proposal for a ‘World

196  Tamara Morgenstern Synagogue’ exists only as an idea and a dream of the ever-elusive ‘rebuilding of the Temple’.

Notes 1 The First Temple of Solomon (959–952 BCE) was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BCE. Herod doubled the size of the Temple Mount when building the grander Second Temple (24–4 BCE). Roman armies under Titus demolished Herod’s Temple in 70 CE. 2 J. Lobell, Between Silence and Light: Spirit in the Architecture of Louis I. Kahn (Boulder: Shambhala, 2008), p. 4. 3 V. Scully, in J. Hochstim, The Paintings and Sketches of Louis I. Kahn (New York: Rizzoli, 1991), p. 16. 4 From Kahn’s 1944 essay, ‘Monumentality’, in R. Twombly, ed., Louis Kahn, Essential Texts (New York: Norton, 2003), p. 21. 5 Kahn’s Judaic projects in the United States include Adath Jeshurun (1954–55, unbuilt), the Trenton Jewish Community Center (1954–59, unbuilt), Mikveh Israel (1961–72, unbuilt), Temple Beth-El (built 1966–72) and the Memorial to the Six Million Jewish Martyrs (1966–72, unbuilt). 6 See C. Wiseman, Louis I. Kahn: Beyond Time and Style (New York: Norton, 2007), pp. 42–52, and S. Goldhagen, Louis Kahn’s Situated Modernism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), pp. 11–24. 7 For Lynch’s influence on Kahn, see ibid., p. 120, 248 n.74. 8 H. Ronner and S. Jhaveri, Louis I. Kahn: Complete Works, 1935–1974 (Boulder: Westview, 1977), p. 16. 9 Letter, Salomon to Kahn, 25 August 1968, ‘Hurva Synagogue – All Correspondence’, Box LIK 39, Louis I. Kahn Collection, University of Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. 10 Lobell, Silence and Light, p. 47. 11 D. Brownlee and D. DeLong, Louis I. Kahn: In the Realm of Architecture (New York: Rizzoli, 1992), p. 88. 12 A. Tyng, Beginnings: Louis I. Kahn’s Philosophy of Architecture (New York: John Wiley, 1984), p. 157. 13 Lobell, Silence and Light, p. 54. 14 Gertrude Benson, ‘The Man Behind Mikveh Israel’s New Building’, The Jewish Exponent, (30 March 1962), as noted in Brownlee, Kahn, p. 364. 15 Ashkenazi Jews are from Eastern and Northern Europe and Sephardim are from the Mediterranean countries. Ashkenazi and Sephardic synagogues differ in the relationship between the ark – situated at the front of the sanctuary in both – and the bimah, which is centrally located in Ashkenazi synagogues and is at the opposite end of the longitudinal axis in Sephardic synagogues. 16 Letter, Kahn to Yehuda Tamir, 28 March 1969, ‘Hurva Synagogue – Mr. Yaacov Salomon’, Box LIK 39, Kahn Collection. 17 For Kahn’s interest in Wittkower’s treatise, see Brownlee, Kahn, p. 59. 18 R. Wittkower, Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism (New York: Norton, 1971), p. 103. 19 Ibid., p. 121. 20 J. Digerud, P. Field and C. Norberg-Schulz, Louis I. Kahn (Oslo: arkitektnytt, 1991), p. 2. 21 Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture (London: Rodker, 1931), p. 72. 22 M. Levin, The Tabernacle (London: Soncino, 1969), p. 78. 23 Tzonis, A. ed., The Louis I. Kahn Archive, Vol. 6, Buildings and Projects, 1967– 1969 (New York: Garland, 1987), Drawing #755.36, 18.

Origins, meaning and memory 197 24 Letter, Kahn to Gertrude Serata, Librarian, Jewish Theological Seminary, 2 July 1968, ‘Hurva Synagogue – All Correspondence’, Box LIK 107, Kahn Collection. 25 Brownlee, Kahn, p. 88. 26 The primary sources for Solomonic reconstructions are the Biblical books of I Kings: 6–8 and Chronicles: 2–4. For Tabernacle and Temple reconstructions, see S. Tigerman, The Architecture of Exile (New York: Rizzoli, 1988). 27 Ronner, Louis I. Kahn, p. 365. 28 H. Klein, Temple Beyond Time (Malibu: Pangloss, 1986), p. 98. 29 Brownlee, Kahn, p. 70. 30 Ibid. 31 Tigerman, Architecture of Exile, 96. 32 A drawing by Villalpanda was included in Wittkower’s essay, Architectural Principles, Figure 44a. 33 Tigerman, Architecture of Exile, p. 97. 34 Ibid., p. 62. 35 E. Budge, The Nile (London: Thomas Cook, 1912), p. 521. 36 G. Scholem, tr. R. Manheim, On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism (New York: Schocken, 1960), pp. 96–121. 37 Ronner, Kahn, p. 363. 38 A. Waite, The Holy Kabbalah (New York: University Books, 1990), p. 294. 39 Scholem, Kabbalah, p. 91. 40 For a striking series of computer models of the Hurva Synagogue, see K. Larson, Louis I. Kahn: Unbuilt Masterworks (New York: Monacelli, 2000), pp. 124–97. 41 Brownlee, Kahn, p. 52. 42 For the political complexities surrounding the Hurva proposal, see S. Solomon, Secular and Spiritual Humanism: Louis I. Kahn’s Work for the Jewish Community in the 1950s and 1960s (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1997), 444–49. For reactions by the Israeli press, see pp. 422–5. 43 Ibid., p. 434.

11 Chicago’s Woodlawn neighbourhood The case of St Gelasius Anatole Upart

On 14 October 1923, a crowd of 20,000 spectators gathered to witness laying of the cornerstone for the new Catholic Church of St Clara, designed by Henry J. Schlacks, at the corner of 64th and Woodlawn Avenue in Chicago. The spectacle was a testament to the vibrancy and strength of Woodlawn neighbourhood.1 While German and Irish immigrants formed the bulk of the neighbourhood’s population, the Carmelite Order had an overwhelming presence in the local Catholic parishes and schools.2 In addition, students and faculty of the nearby University of Chicago made Woodlawn their home. The proximity of Jackson Park with its remnants of the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 and a well-developed transportation system seemed to guarantee Woodlawn’s future development. However, by the 1970s, the neighbourhood was in serious economic decline, and local Catholic parishes were experiencing the full effects of it. In 1976, a fire destroyed a large part of St Clara’s interior and damaged its roof. By the 1990s, because of parish consolidations and closures, St Clara was the only functioning Catholic parish in Woodlawn. In June 2002, the archdiocese closed St Clara (then known as St Gelasius) and started to consider options to sell or demolish the church. If not for the whole Woodlawn neighbourhood, the long decline now appears to be in reverse for the former St Clara parish. In 2004, the building was acquired by the Institute of Christ the King, which resumed celebrating Masses in the renovated church. The current renovation of the structure reflects the necessities of the Institute and its liturgical practices, such as the exclusive use of the Tridentine rite and daily recitation of the Divine Office. This chapter outlines and briefly examines some of these transformations (institutional and architectural) and their effect on the every structure of the church. To save time and space, I will not discuss other important issues that had an effect on the parish and its church: the volatility of the racial relations, urban decline and renewal in the United States, demographic and liturgical changes experienced by the Catholic Church in the 1960s–1970s.3 Although I omit all of them in this chapter, these issues remain an integral part of the overall history of the Catholic urban institutions: without considering the effect of these developments, we risk leaving the institutional history and the resultant architectural heritage largely incomplete.

Chicago’s Woodlawn neighbourhood 199

St Clara Catholic Church Old St Clara With the rapid rise of the German population in Woodlawn, a group of German Catholics petitioned Archbishop Patrick A. Feehan to establish another national parish in the neighbourhood.4 In 1894, the archbishop granted the request and appointed Fr Francis Schikowski as pastor of the new parish. The parish was first located in a rented store near the intersection of 69th Street and Stony Island Avenue.5 Within a short time, Mrs Rose Hendricks donated a large lot of 50 x 165 feet near the corner of Woodlawn avenue and 64th street. The new church to be built on this lot would be named St Clara. The following year, with the money collected and loaned from the archbishop, the new $15,000 church building was constructed and dedicated on 28 April.6 The building contained both the church (on the second floor) and a parish school. The School Sisters of St Francis were invited from their Milwaukee convent to teach in the grammar school.7 The rectory was located in the frame house at the corner of the alley between Kimbark and Woodlawn avenues.8 Just two years after the establishment of the parish, the records of 1896 show that there were already 600 parishioners.9 In the first decade of the twentieth century, two events took place that had a significant effect on the parish of St Clara. In 1908, the parish was given to the Calced branch of the Carmelite Order, whose presence in the neighbourhood by then had grown considerably and would continue to increase over the years.10 In the same year, Fr Schikowski was transferred to St Martin Parish, and St Clara welcomed its new pastor, Fr Lawrence C. Diether (1877–1936) of the Carmelite Order.11 The order took over administration and education at that parish as well as in the neighbouring Catholic parish of St Cyril to the east of St Clara. Eleven years later, in 1919, Archbishop Quigley of Chicago ordered that the ‘national’ parishes be restructured into regular ‘territorial’ parishes, with exact geographic boundaries and sermons delivered in English (rather than in German as was previously the case with St Clara and other German churches).12 Thus Woodlawn was divided between Holy Cross Catholic Church in the western part, St Clara in the middle and St Cyril in the east of the neighbourhood. Overseeing the latter two parishes, the Carmelite Order’s influence concentrated in the central and eastern parts of Woodlawn neighbourhood. Fr Diether would eventually succeed in designating St Clara as a National Shrine to St Thérèse of Lisieux upon this Carmelite nun’s canonization in 1925.13 The Carmelite Order also directly oversaw St Cyril Carmelite High School, attached to the parish that, by the 1920s, grew into a large school in the neighbourhood – Mount Carmel High School – that remains to be the last Carmelite institution present in Woodlawn to this day. In the meantime, a series of large projects of expansion was undertaken under the direction of Fr Diether that responded to the population growth

200  Anatole Upart and changing demographic of the neighbourhood. A lot of 50 x 165 feet was purchased to the south of the church and a new school was built in 1911 at a cost of $60,000.14 The school had 200 children. The records of 1910 show 2,500 parishioners, yet in the wake of the status changes, the records of 1911 show a decrease: the parish was now less than a half its former size, with only 1,200 parishioners left. The change of status from ‘national’ to ‘territorial’ after 1910 also meant that the ethnic composition of the faithful was now mixed: German as well as Irish. By the mid 1920s, the number of parishioners at St Clara was restored to the 1910 peak and the figure remained stable until the beginning of the 1940s. The new St Clara The parish grew rapidly and, in 1916, it purchased an additional lot of 100 x 165 feet to the south of the school, while a small red-brick house, built on the lot, served as a rectory until the end of 1940s.15 The lot also provided enough land for the school playground. By the early 1920s, it was clear that the 1896 church building could no longer accommodate the increased number of parishioners. In 1923, the archbishop of Chicago, George Cardinal Mundelein, gave permission for a new, larger church to be built.16 To design the new building, the committee selected the renowned church architect, Henry J. Schlacks (1867–1938), who shared German origins with many of St Clara’s parishioners and its pastor. On 18 August 1923, the ground was broken. Later that year, on 14 October, in a lavish ceremony attended by 20,000 people including William E. Dever, the mayor of Chicago, the Most Rev. Edward F. Hoban, Auxiliary Bishop of Chicago, laid the cornerstone of the new church.17 The first Mass in the newly built St Clara was celebrated on Christmas day of 1924. St Clara is a basilica-plan rectangular structure in the Renaissance Revival style with the 60-feet-high façade facing Woodlawn Avenue (Figure 11.1). The bell tower of approximately 120 feet is located at the north-west corner of the building. The exterior is clad in Indiana limestone and ornamented with a variety of balustrades, openings and Doric, Ionic and Corinthian pilasters. The interior’s large nave was originally wood-paneled with Circassian walnut and had a slightly arched, coffered white plaster ceiling that was richly decorated with gold.18 The pews were of the same brown wood finish. The interior’s color scheme of browns and whites continued in the floor tiles, suggesting the colors of the habits of the Calced Carmelites, who oversaw the parish at the time.19 The high altar of Sienna marble, topped with a large Carrara marble statue of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, was 40-feet high (Figure 11.2). The new St Clara had a seating capacity of 1,200. Unlike some of other church interiors designed by Schlacks, St Clara’s exhibited a restrained color scheme of browns, whites and golds. The same restrained version of Renaissance style is evident in the surviving exterior of the church. Although acknowledged by architectural historians20 as a revival-style church,

Chicago’s Woodlawn neighbourhood 201

Figure 11.1 St Gelasius (formerly St Clara), now the Shrine of Christ the King, by Henry J. Schlacks, as seen in 2013 Photography by the author

St Clara’s style may well be reconsidered within a context of the international ecclesiastical architecture of the 1920s and 1930s. St Clara’s classical and monumental façade of columns and arches maybe interpreted as cultural echoes of the same reuse of the Renaissance and Baroque vocabularies seen in the 1920s–1930s works by the Italian architects such as Armando Brasini, Marcello Piacentini and Arnaldo Foschini.21 The fact that Henry J. Schlacks, an architect known for his mastery in designing Gothic Revival churches, used the Renaissance Revival style in St Clara is worth noting. He used it earlier in designing the church of St Ignatius, built in Rogers Park neighbourhood on the North Side of Chicago in 1917 for the Jesuits.22 And, a few years later in 1920, Schlacks completed the church of St John of God in the neighbourhood of Sherman Park, also on the South Side of Chicago.23

202  Anatole Upart

Figure 11.2 St Clara’s interior in 1948. The high altar is seen against the walnutpaneled walls. Two side altars are those of Our Lady of Mount Carmel (left) and of St Thérèse of Child Jesus (right), with its elaborate hanging light fixtures Published with permission from the Shrine of Christ the King Parish Archives

The similarity of style and austere look of the exteriors of these particular three churches by Schlacks has been noted before.24 Although it is outside of the scope of this chapter, the working relationship of the architect and the archbishop of Chicago at the time, George Cardinal Mundelein, is worth exploring, as it likely had some influence on the stylistic choices made in the design of the three aforementioned churches.25 St Clara, being the later of the three, appears almost as a synthesis of St Ignatius and St John of God: Schlacks retained the segmental pediment and the simplicity of the former’s exterior, but reduced the number of columns from six to four and made them engaged; he also reduced the number of towers from two, found in the latter, to only one in St Clara, and further simplified the segmental pediment St John of God had. This fine-tuning of the details resulted in clarity of lines and stronger mass for St Clara – the design was definitely a success for the architect who already comfortably functioned within the diverse language of Romanesque and Gothic Revival styles. The success of the project also reflected the growing strength of Chicago’s South Side Catholicism.

Chicago’s Woodlawn neighbourhood 203 Two years after its construction, in June 1926, St Clara was indeed thrown in the midst of international ecclesiastical prominence when, as the National Shrine of the newly canonized St Thérèse of Lisieux, it was visited by hundreds of clergy who were attending the Twenty-Eighth International Eucharistic Congress held in Chicago.26 The church’s esteemed visitors at that time included the papal legate Giovanni Vincenzo Cardinal Bonzano, Cardinal O’Donnell of Ireland, Cardinal Faulhaber of Munich, Cardinal Dubois of Paris and many other Catholic hierarchs. I suspect that the monumentality and simplicity of Schlack’s use of the Renaissance architectural vocabulary would have appealed to many of the Congress’s attendees. To their eyes, the ecclesiastical architectural developments both in Rome and Chicago would have appeared correlative. Fr Lawrence Diether’s importance within the Carmelite Order grew proportionate to his accomplishments as a pastor, an organizer and an educator. In 1924, Fr Diether was elected the Provincial of the Carmelites’ Province of the Most Pure Heart in North America. He was re-elected in 1927, 1930 and 1933.27 With the move of Provincial headquarters to St Clara, Carmelite Order had firmly established its paramount presence in the spiritual and educational lives of Woodlawn’s Catholics: two of the three parishes, a college/high school and partnership with two other schools – all were overseen by the Carmelites in the neighbourhood. Another major change to the built fabric of the St Clara parish happened by the end of the 1940s as Woodlawn was rapidly reaching the new height of its population growth (in 1960 it would top 80,000 residents). The order and the parish council agreed to demolish the old 1896 building of St Clara and build a new, larger rectory/priory in its lot to accommodate the number of clergy serving the parish. In 1948, the ground was cleared and the construction, led by Rymont Co., began.28 The priory was finished by Easter of 1950.29 The demographic and racial changes that the neighbourhood underwent in the 1950s and ’60s also affected local Catholic parishes. In 1969, the archdiocese of Chicago merged the two Carmelite parishes of Woodlawn: the parish of St Cyril (on the east part of Woodlawn) was united with St Clara.30 By this point, the white segment of Woodlawn’s population was barely at 10 per cent.31 In April of 1976, a fire destroyed most of the rich interior of St Clara’s sanctuary including substantial portions of its walnut walls and plaster ceiling.32 Photographs taken of the cleaning operation following the fire as well as the photographs of the graduating students from parish school suggest that by mid-1970s the parish was still mixed but mostly African American. The newly restored church was rededicated on 5 October 1980 by the archbishop of Chicago, Cardinal Cody. The photograph of the dedication Mass showed the repainted exterior (with capitols, pilasters and entablature painted greenish grey and the rest in warm light beige), with a large rectangular wall completely closing off the traditional sanctuary (Figure 11.3). The white rectangle had, on its left side, an opening

204  Anatole Upart

Figure 11.3 The Mass of dedication of St Gelasius church, presided by Cardinal Cody, the Archbishop of Chicago, 5 October 1980. The Mass is celebrated at the new table altar, facing the congregation. Behind the cardinal one can see the white separation wall and the opening. The walls of the old interior are noticeably painted over, and one of the new pendant lights is seen at the top corner of the photo Published with permission from the Shrine of Christ the King Parish Archives

of about 20 inches that started from the bottom and terminated below the top edge of the rectangular separation. The new table altar and the chairs were at the centre, in front of the rectangular wall. New, simpler light pendants had supplanted the old chandeliers. The photographs captured seemingly an unfinished attempt at a radical redesign of the interior envisioned by architects in the aftermath of the fire and of the Second Vatican Council (Figure 11.4). The overall effect was in stark contrast to the original interior of St Clara. St Gelasius In 1990, the consolidated St Clara/St Cyril was merged yet again, this time with its neighbour to the west – Holy Cross parish.33 The consolidated parish of St Clara/St Cyril/Holy Cross was renamed St Gelasius. By the time St Gelasius celebrated its tenth anniversary in 2000 in the presence of Most Rev. Joseph Perry, auxiliary bishop of Chicago, it was a fully African American parish with 300 parishioners. The 1980s starkly minimalist renovation of the interior of the church was augmented with an introduction of plants in planters and strips of colored fabric hanging from the white rectangular

Chicago’s Woodlawn neighbourhood 205

Figure 11.4 Proposed redesign of St Clara – St Cyril interior, 1978. From the Fourth Annual Awards Dinner Invitation, 3 November 1978 Published with permission from the Shrine of Christ the King Parish Archives

wall. Judging by the photographs from the time, the only parts of the original St Clara interior that remained intact were eight large stained glass windows.34 Within two years, the archdiocese had closed the parish altogether because of declining membership and lack of funds. By the time of closure, the appearance of the area was radically different from the time of its economic zenith of the ’40s and ’50s. The Wedgewood Hotel, the six different churches within a block radius and the numerous businesses along the 63rd Street were all demolished in 1988. The very skyline of Woodlawn was now considerably different: gone were the previously dominant silhouettes of the tall hotels, church towers and spires, larger residential buildings and the elevated train tracks along 63rd Street. The typical Woodlawn block now had barely a dozen houses still standing among empty lots.35 Unsuccessful efforts to sell the building of St Gelasius led the archdiocese to apply for a permit to demolish the structure. Diverse groups of local residents, concerned outsiders and architectural reservationists rallied the neighbourhood of Woodlawn.36 News reports were numerous, and public outcry led the mayor of Chicago, Richard M. Daley, to demand that the church be given a landmark status in an expedited way, or be saved through other legal means.

206  Anatole Upart This raised a number of concerns, not the least of which was the constitutionality of such actions.37 The city’s ordinance contained an amendment that exempted houses of worship from the landmark status. The city officials and lawyers argued that since the archdiocese already closed the parish and vacated the building, St Gelasius was effectively no longer a house of worship but simply an empty building albeit with a historical significance.38 The Landmark Commission prepared the report and the church building was designated a landmark, thus tying the hands of the archdiocese and stopping the planned demolition. Shrine of Christ the king At precisely this time, the archbishop of Chicago, Francis Cardinal George, had found a solution to the Gordian knot that St Gelasius’s had long represented. The Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest was looking for a church building in the Chicagoland area as their new US headquarters. The Institute, founded in Africa and headquartered in Gricigliano, outside of Florence, Italy, already operated several churches in Europe, Africa and the United States, and saw the acquisition of St Gelasius as an opportunity to move its US base from Wausau, Wisconsin, to a more central location. The abandoned St Gelasius was readily accepted by the vice-general of the Institute, Msgr. R. Michael Schmitz. The church was designated an oratory of the Institute, with the name of the Shrine of Christ the King on 23 June 2006.39 The Institute’s stated charism is the reverent and solemn celebration of the Roman Rite according to the 1962 Missal. Thus, also known as the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite or Traditional Latin Mass, only the Tridentine Mass is celebrated inside the Shrine. The limited availability of this ancient form of Roman Rite (universally reformed into a new form in 1969–1970), with its use Gregorian chant, classical music, Latin language, incense and a complex ritual, created a situation where Catholics desiring to attend Tridentine Mass would travel long distances to do just that. Over its 80 years of existence, St Clara/St Gelasius’s building went through several changes – those that affected its interior more than its exterior. The original brown-and-white Carmelite scheme, destroyed in the fire of 1976, was ‘updated’ with a post-Vatican II brand of modernism. The renovation offered both an opportunity to embrace the changes that occurred throughout the Catholic Church in the wake of the Second Vatican Council and to remodel the damaged space. The minimal style of the renovation had also, I believe, reflected the desires to accomplish this dual task with minimal financial stress to the parish.40 The walls of walnut, burnt by the fire, were painted with greenish grey and beige to hide the damage. Upon the Institute’s acquisition of the structure in 2003, the white separation wall built in 1980 has been removed, as were the modern light pendants. In the absence of the original high altar, a new altar with a crowned statue of Child

Chicago’s Woodlawn neighbourhood 207 Jesus and a trompe-l’oeil ‘high altar’ painted on a panel were installed. Long strips of red fabric adorn pilasters and a similar red fabric is used for largescale separation curtains (Figure 11.5). However, these changes are only temporary because a goal of the future permanent restoration (according to a design by Abbe Alexander Willweber and plans by Architect William C. Heyer) is a church with a white-gold interior, inspired by Palladio’s Santissimo Redentore. Although Schlacks’s exterior remains unchanged in contrast to the dramatic and traumatic changes of the blocks around the Shrine, the interior alterations reflect the successive changes of the neighbourhood outside the Shrine’s walls: the growth of the community, its decline, attempts at revival, renovations and the current restoration. Another major change to the functioning of St Clara’s interior space is the Institute’s adaptation of what was originally a parish church to the needs of a society of apostolic life, similar to the Oratorians and Sulpicians. Because of the requirement to recite the Divine Office daily,41 members of the Institute placed kneelers and pews in two rows opposite each other in the chancel area of the church.42 Because the depth of the chancel area was never intended to accommodate such a function, the renovation plan specified increasing the depth of chancel by curving it out into the area of the nave and rebuilding a permanent communion rail that has been missing since 1980 (Figure 11.6).

Figure 11.5 Interior of the Shrine during a Nuptial High Mass in 2012. Large red curtains are used to partially cover the openings of the two sacristies on left and right Photography by Billy Buck, (c) 2012

Drawing by the author

Figure 11.6 A simplified floor plan of the Shrine of Christ the King (formerly St Clara), showing the current (2013) position of the pews, altars and curtains

Chicago’s Woodlawn neighbourhood 209 While during the 1970s–1990s, demographic and social changes in Woodlawn almost resulted in the total withdrawal of the Catholic Church from the area (with the exception of the Carmelite-run Mount Carmel High School), the possibilities of revival and growth had drawn another religious society to the same dilapidated area in early 2000s. When the Shrine reopened in 2005, there were at first only two people attending a Sunday Mass. Five-and-a-half years ago, that number had increased to 70–100 people in regular attendance.43 Now, in 2013, 200 faithful at a Sunday Mass is a usual number. With the closure of St Gelasius in 2002, for three years until the reopening of the Shrine, there was no functioning Catholic Church in the neighbourhood. The Shrine of Christ the King remains the only Catholic Church open to the public in Woodlawn44 – a rather stunning development from the glorious days of Carmelite religious and educational network in the area. The Shrine also provides an example of a successful historic preservation through introducing a particular liturgical use as opposed to re-use as cultural venues or residential development. Had Archdiocese of Chicago proceeded with the planned demolition of St Gelasius, Catholic Church would have completely withdrawn from Woodlawn, having abandoned an existing ‘footing’ to which it could return one day. Again, the example of the Shrine shows that demographic changes in an area and expenditures for the upkeep and renovation may not be fully sufficient categories in making informed decisions on the part of Catholic dioceses. Various religious orders appear to be willing to step in and revive struggling parishes and structures that are no longer sustainable by the diocese funding. Woodlawn neighbourhood’s checkered past of the growth, decline and revival presents a wonderful opportunity for a case study of the effects of religious institutions on the communities around them as well as of the reverse effects of the communities on developments of the institutions within them. In other words, this study was an occasion to consider the religious communities as entities not that separate from the wider communities they existed in. While this chapter addressed only a few aspects of the relationship of religious communities and urban neighbourhoods, some causal, some correlative, it was as an invitation to a deeper study of built environment on the South Side of Chicago and the Catholic institutional influence on its development.

Notes 1 This research would not be possible without the advice, support and encouragement from the following individuals: Prof Robert Bruegmann of the University of Illinois at Chicago, Mr. Matt Crawford of the Landmarks Division of the City of Chicago, Rev. Canon Matthew Talarico and Rev. Canon Michael Stein, both of the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest. I am thankful to the staff of the Ryerson & Burnham Libraries of the Art Institute of Chicago, of the Archives of the Archdiocese of Chicago and of the Shrine of Christ the King. I am, as always, thankful to my wife, April Dauscha-Upart, and to my kids, Bart, Veronika and Perpetua for readily partaking in my architectural adventures.

210  Anatole Upart 2 The exact boundaries of the neighbourhood are as follows: south of 60th, west of Stony Island, east of Park Avenue (now Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.) and north of the diagonal of railway track and South Chicago Avenue west of Cottage Grove, forming a triangle, and then up to the northern edge of the Oakwood Cemetery at Cottage Grove and 67th. 3 For a quick and general outline of the history of the neighbourhood, please, see Amanda Seligman. ‘Woodlawn,’ The Encyclopedia of Chicago. Edited by James R. Grossman, Ann Durkin Keating, Janice L. Reiff. Cartographic editor Michael P. Conzen. (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2004), p. 886. 4 In the early 1890s, the south side of Chicago had two German Catholic churches. St George (on Wentworth Avenue and 39th street) and St Martin (on Princeton avenue and 59th Street). 5 Chicago, as well as other American cities, witnessed a phenomenon of the new faith communities initially setting up locations in the rented stores and, later, with the enough funds collected, building proper religious structures. The storefront churches are now commonly associated with the smaller evangelical groups in the black and Latino urban neighbourhoods, but in the American cities of the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, it was already a usual practice of the Catholic and Orthodox European immigrants to rent a store first, set up the regular services inside the rental property, and build a larger parish later. 6 ‘With Solemn Rites,’ Chicago Daily Tribune (1872–1922), 28 April 1895; ProGuest Historical Newspapers Chicago Tribune (1849–1987), p. 29. 7 Emma Franziska (Mother Alexia) Hoell, Paulina (Mother Alfons) Schmid and Helena (Sister Clara) Seiter, all originally nuns from Schwarzach, Germany, established a Franciscan religious community in Wisconsin in 1874 that became known in US by the name ‘School Sister of St. Francis.’ In Germany, they are known as Franziskanerinnen von Erlenbad. 8 Fr Schikowski and his assistant, Fr Francis Epstein, lived in that house. 9 Parish records at the Archdiocese of Chicago Archives. 10 St. Clara’s Golden Jubilee Celebration: 1894–1944 (Chicago: St Clara Catholic Church), p. 7. 11 Rev. Andrew L. Weldon, O. Carm., ‘Obituary of the Very Rev. Lawrence C. Diether, O. Carm.’ The Sword, January 1937. 12 This process reflected the attempts to bring uniformity to American Catholicism, presenting it not as an amalgam of the immigrants from Italy, Ireland, Germany, etc., but rather as a Catholic Church composed of loyal Americans. 13 Originally, and just for one year, the location of the National Shrine to St Therese was in the neighbouring St Cyril Carmelite Church. 14 St. Clara’s Golden Jubilee Celebration: 1894–1944 (Chicago: St Clara Catholic Church), p. 9. 15 Ibid., p. 9. 16 The announcement of the church construction appeared in newspapers concurrently with an announcement of the construction of a large high-rise hotel opposite the new St. Clara. It was located on the triangular lot, at the corner of Minerva and Woodlawn. The Wedgewood Hotel was 142.17 feet high, had 12 floors with the exterior of red brick, limestone and was built in the Beaux-Art style by the architect Lewis E. Russel. This hotel was a project of two brothers, John Hayes Jr. and Frank Hayes. The former was also one of the trusties and parishioners at St. Clara across the street. The simultaneous development of several large-scale properties in the middle of Woodlawn shows how different the dynamics of Woodlawn were 70 years ago. 17 St. Clara’s Golden Jubilee Celebration (Chicago: St. Clara Catholic Church), p. 9.

Chicago’s Woodlawn neighbourhood 211 18 Commission on Chicago Landmarks. St. Gelasius Church: 6401–09 S. Woodlawn Ave. (Chicago: Commission on Chicago Landmarks, 2003), p. 5. 19 St. Clara’s Golden Jubilee Celebration: 1894–1944 (Chicago: St. Clara Catholic Church), p. 11. 20 Commission on Chicago Landmarks. St. Gelasius Church: 6401–09 S. Woodlawn Ave. (Chicago: Commission on Chicago Landmarks, 2003), introduction. 21 I am referring here to the works both built and unrealized. The important examples of the Renaissance and Baroque Revival ecclesiastical architecture continued to be built after the Second World War in Italy. For instance, the very ‘Baroque’ yet ‘modern’ church of Sant Eugenio, built by Enrico Pietro Galeazzi e Mario Redini in 1942–51 is an example of such a usage of revival style that I find similar to what Schlacks was doing with St Clara in 1920s. 22 Denis R. McNamara. Heavenly City: The Architectural Tradition of Catholic Chicago. (Archdiocese of Chicago: Liturgy Training Publications, 2005), p. 17. St Ignatius is located on 6559 North Glenwood Avenue. 23 The church of St. John of God is located on 1234 West 52nd Street. It is now in ruins having been closed by the archdiocese in 1992. Its façade and towers, so similar to the later St Clara, were stripped and reassembled as part of the Catholic Church of St. Raphael in Old Mill Creek, Illinois, near the border with Wisconsin. 24 McNamara. Heavenly City, p. 17 25 George Cardinal Mundelein (1872–1939) has been the archbishop of Chicago from 1916 until his death in 1939. He was made a cardinal by Pope Pius XI, in 1924. 26 Rev. Andrew L. Weldon, O. Carm., ‘Obituary of the Very Rev. Lawrence C. Diether, O. Carm.’ The Sword, January 1937. 27 Ibid. 28 This building project had cost the parish $310, 609.88 of which $134,138,28 was paid to Rymont Co. Most of the money was borrowed and was owed to the archdiocese. I have not found the information in regard to the repayment of that sum. 29 The rectory/priory is still standing and is functioning as the US Provincial Headquarters for the Institute of Christ the King. The building is not part of the landmark. 30 By 1990s, the actual building of St Cyril as well as that of the old St Cyril High School were demolished to make space for a larger parking lot of Mount Carmel High School, located to the south west of St Cyril. 31 The history of racial relations in Woodlawn has been discussed previously and are rather well known: the prominence and influence of Saul David Alinsky on community organizing, and the history of the Woodlawn Organization (TWO). These topics are outside of the scope of this study. However, I would like to point out that an important figure in civil rights movement and an important member of TWO, Fr. Tracy O’Sullivan, O. Carm., was a priest that served in St Clara since 1964 and later at St Cyril. He served as a pastor of St Clara in 1884–1989. His small publication, ‘The Mt. Carmel Apartments: A Story of the Weeds and the Wheat,’ The Sword, vol. 72, numbers 2 (2012), pp. 75–97 retells some of the complexity of the volatile racial relations and politics in the neighbourhood during his stay there. 32 Commission on Chicago Landmarks. St. Gelasius Church: 6401–09 S. Woodlawn Ave. (Chicago: Commission on Chicago Landmarks, 2003), p. 15. 33 Holy Cross Church was closed, its building and school sold to a Protestant congregation. 34 The stained glass windows were removed for safety after the archdiocese closed the parish. The present whereabouts of the stained glass windows is unknown to the author.

212  Anatole Upart 35 As opposed to the Chicago block with three dozen houses on average. Even now, the church building looks more monumental than ever in its history due to the empty lots to the north and west of it. 36 Two of the more vocal groups were Preservation Chicago and the Woodlawn Coalition to Save St. Gelasius. 37 David Mendell, ‘The City moves to protect doomed St. Gelasius.‘ The Chicago Tribune (3 September 2003). 38 Ibid. 39 The oratory status allows the new Shrine to function outside the strict territorial boundaries of previous St. Clara. 40 See Matt Crawford. New Worship and Old Church Interiors: The Experience of the Roman Catholic Church after Vatican II. M.A. Thesis (School of the Art Institute, 2002). 41 An official set of prayers in the Roman Catholic Church that are prescribed to be recited daily (and at specific canonical hours) by the clergy and religious institutes. 42 St Clara’s Priory contains an original chapel designed specifically for Carmelites’ daily communal recitation of the Divine Office. The chapel was redecorated by the Institute and is being regularly used for its intended purpose. It has a high altar under an original wooden canopy, and three rows of pews with kneelers on both sides, facing each other. 43 My interview with Rev. Canon Matthew Talarico, vice-rector of the Shrine of Christ the King, the vice-provincial of the US Province of the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest. 44 Although the Carmelites that run Mount Carmel High School celebrate Masses for students in the school gym, and used to celebrate them in the school’s chapel, those Masses are intended for the student body and the faculty of the school, rather than the local population. Thus the Shrine run by the Institute of Christ the King remains the only religious public space functioning similarly to a parish.

12 Nuns in the suburb The Berlaymont institute in Waterloo by Groupe Structures (1962) Sven Sterken The Institut des Dames de Berlaymont is one of the oldest and most prestigious boarding schools in Brussels, originally attracting girls from the noble and higher classes. During its 400-year history, the school relocated no less than four times within what was then the urban outskirts. The most recent transfer occurred in 1962 when the community moved into a vast new campus in Waterloo. This chapter explores this last relocation of the Berlaymont institute, which happened at a moment when fundamental changes occurred within the field of education, religion and architectural culture in Belgium. We will show how the move to Waterloo and the choice for a radically modern architectural concept formed part of a deliberate strategy by the nuns to secure the position of their institute within the rapidly changing social and cultural climate in the aftermath of the 1958 World Fair. Whereas from a stylistic and typological point of view, the new buildings suggested a clean break with the past, we will argue that they constituted in fact a logical step in an ongoing process of relocation and design geared at maximizing the community’s autonomy vis-à-vis the urban society it relied on.

A nomadic history The Berlaymont convent school was founded in 1625 by Marguerite de Lalaing (1574–1650), the wife of count Florent de Berlaymont, a member of the household of Archduke Albert VII of Austria and Infanta Isabella.1 Brussels was a bustling political and diplomatic centre then: as the capital of the Spanish Netherlands, it counted over 60,000 inhabitants and the city’s economy, industry and arts flourished. Education remained weak, however, for men and women alike, as did social care in general.2 Even among the upper classes, the schooling of girls was generally limited to the skills they picked up from their own mothers. The Countess of Berlaymont therefore set out to found a school especially catering to the daughters of respectable noble and middle-class families, teaching them ‘everything touching on religion and moral matters, as well as the vital manual skills of a good housewife.’3 To run the school, she founded an order of Augustinian nuns. Its constitutions were based on the central principles of the Rule of St Augustine:

214  Sven Sterken poverty, chastity and obedience.4 After Pope Urban VIII gave his blessing on 10 August 1626, the first nuns established themselves in the former town mansion of Marguerite de Lalaing. Positioned next to St Michael’s Cathedral, its vast garden was bordered with remnants of the abandoned first city wall.5 To profess, novices had to prove noble descent up to at least three generations; girls from respectable but not noble backgrounds could only become schoolmistresses. Despite repeated financial difficulties, the convent school soon flourished and gained great prestige. Prosperity came to a halt in the eighteenth century, however, when Belgium came under Austrian rule. Under the pretext that accession to religious life should be free, the new rulers decreed that monastic orders were no longer allowed to accept dowries, benefactions or bequests, thus depriving them of their principal sources of income. This was only a prelude, however, to the total secularization imposed by the French rulers after their conquest of the Southern Provinces in 1794. The law now forbid religious orders and sold their possessions as national property. The Berlaymont community was thus forced in exile and left for Germany; its monastery was sold and demolished in 1796.6 In 1802, under Napoleon, Catholicism was restored as part of the Concordat with Pope Pius VII, allowing 16 of the remaining sisters to set up quarters in a former convent of Minime friars in the south of the city centre. To this effect, the Prince de Merode, proprietor of the adjacent land, gave a large part of his garden on loan. After the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, the Southern Provinces passed into other hands once again, becoming part now of the Dutch Kingdom under Willem I. In an attempt to further diminish Catholic influence on society, a diploma was now required for all those involved in teaching – a fact which explains why it took until 1817 before the Berlaymont nuns were able to reopen their boarding school. To accommodate the increasing number of pupils, the premises were repeatedly extended, culminating in the construction of a new chapel in 1848. The prestige gained by the institute at that time can be derived from the fact that this chapel was designed for free by Alphonse Balat, King Leopold II’s favourite architect, and consecrated by the archbishop in person.7 Shortly after, however, the community learned that soon construction would start of the megalomaniac Law Courts by Jozef Poelaert.8 As the immense square in front of it would cut off a large part of the convent garden, the community decided to move as it was feared that many parents would object to raising their children in such a densely built-up environment. This time, the community settled at the then furthest extremity of town – namely, the end of the recently laid-out rue de la Loi, the backbone of the new Leopold Quarter. This area would soon become the most fashionable district in town, housing the nation’s financial and political elite.9 Thanks to a nephew of the then prioress, a wealthy industrialist from Ghent, the nuns were able to acquire a large plot of land that occupied almost the entire building block seized between the rue de la Loi and the boulevard

Nuns in the suburb 215 Charlemagne.10 In the course of the following years, a whole series of new buildings were realized, following a scheme said to have been designed by Balat.11 To finance this undertaking, the nuns successfully activated their network in the haute bourgeoisie. Two well-to-do widows donated, for example, a large part of their inheritance in exchange of an annual allowance.12 When in 1874 the chapel was finally inaugurated, the institute occupied two parallel wings of approximately 100-meters long (Figure 12.1). Designed in the then fashionable neo-classicist style, the imposing building expressed order and rigour in every sense. It formed, so to speak, a city of its own, including a great number of class rooms, dormitories, playgrounds, sports facilities, quarters for the nuns, two chapels (for public and private use) and a landscaped park. This expansion derives from the fact that the move to the rue de la Loi was taken as an opportunity to enlarge the activities. On the demand of the parents, for example, non-boarders were now also admitted, and a free day school for the poor was opened on the rue d’Archimède – a socially and spatially isolated unit, that is. This entire world of preaching, teaching and cohabitation were hidden from view, as the entire property was surrounded by a huge masonry wall. With 60 nuns, the Berlaymont congregation was now one of the largest and most notorious of its kind in Belgium.13

Figure 12.1 The Berlaymont Monastery along the rue de la Loi in Brussels. Postcard, early twentieth century Source: Archives of the Congrégation de Notre-Dame, Belgian chapter, Waterloo. Reproduced with permission

216  Sven Sterken

Exodus to Waterloo In the early 1950s, the ill-adapted nature of the buildings at the rue de la Loi became all too obvious. As the number of pupils continued to increase, classrooms had to be installed in every nook and cranny of the building.14 Legislation with regard to education was also constantly evolving, necessitating additional space and amenities to accommodate new types of courses.15 Costs for maintenance and heating also increased every year, causing the community to run up debts and face substantial financial difficulties. The level of comfort was also far behind what most of the pupils were used to at home; the dormitories, for example, had no hot water or central heating. Whereas until this point, the institute had been self-sufficient thanks to (hefty) tuition fees, donations and capital brought in by the novices, the Berlaymont community now decided to apply for government aid. This was not self-evident as the question whether private schools (and notably Catholic convent schools) should be entitled to state subventions had formed a divisive element in Belgian politics ever since the nation’s independence in 1830. It culminated in the two episodes of the so-called School Struggle (Guerre scolaire) in 1878−84 and 1950−58. When after the 1954 elections, a liberal-socialist government came into power, it ceased financial support to denominational education in an attempt to break Catholic supremacy in this field. The subsequent massive protest campaigns, largely supported by the Belgian clergy, helped the Christian-Democrat Party to triumph again in the 1958 polls. While the principle of state subventions for denominational education was restored, the government reinforced its grip on education by linking subventions to, for example, additional diploma requirements for teachers, the proportional increase of lay staff and strict criteria related to the school buildings in terms of hygiene and comfort. In the meantime, the Leopold quarter had undergone a rapid transformation: the rue de la Loi had become the most important thoroughfare for cars entering the city while its attraction as the preferred place of residence for the well-to-do had been taken over by the green areas in the south-west of Brussels such as Uccle and Woluwe. The vacant nineteenth-century mansions were bought up by banks and insurance companies for conversion into office space – a phenomenon that was boosted by the growing administration of the newborn European Economic Community (EEC), the principal tenant in the area. After rumour spread that the Belgian government – anxious to safeguard the chances of Brussels to become the future European capital – was planning to centralize the EEC’s administration into a single state-of-the art office building, the Berlaymont community became besieged by investors offering their services in realizing its property assets.16 Pressed by the parents’ concerns for the safety and health of their children just like 100 years before, the Berlaymont community’s leadership understood that it was time to move once again. Given the fact that the number of pupils increased at a lesser pace than in similar institutions across Brussels,

Nuns in the suburb 217 it seemed wise to follow the general demographic trend and capitalize on the shortage of Catholic schools in the suburban areas. After all, wasn’t it quite odd to be in financial trouble while sitting on the most expensive land in the capital? But where could they move? As sufficiently large plots of building land within the Brussels agglomeration were either unaffordable or threatened by rapid urbanization, the nuns considered looking beyond the capital’s borders – thus leaving their historical habitat. One element was decisive here – namely, the establishment, between 1952 and 1963, of the linguistic frontier which divided Belgium into four language spheres: Dutch in Flanders, French in Wallonia, German in some eastern parts and a bilingual regime (Dutch and French) in the Brussels agglomeration – itself surrounded by Flemish territory as the language boundary ran south of the capital. Clinging to its Francophone identity, the closest the Berlaymont community could get to the capital was Ohain (now part of the municipality of Lasne). Its open, green spaces held the promise of a new pedagogical approach closer to nature while the high social profile of its population seemed the right environment for recruiting new pupils. Finally, the presence, in neighbouring Braine l’Alleud, of the famed Cardinal Mercier boys’ boarding school constituted an additional asset as both institutions catered for the same niche. Finally, in April 1959, an option on the property at the rue de la Loi was granted to the contractor and property developer François & Fils. In the meantime, however, the Belgian government also had its eye on the plot. As it was short of cash and therefore unable to bid against the developer, the Belgian state proposed an exchange of the Berlaymont property against a 26-hectare site around the château Tuck in Argenteuil (municipality of Waterloo), a ceremonial residence for state guests, on top of a cash payment. Partially tax exempt, the latter deal offered a significant net gain, so the nuns settled an agreement with the Belgian State stipulating that it would cede one-third of the property upon signing and the rest within three years. The transaction could not be concluded, however. At the same moment, the former Belgian king, Leopold III, having to leave the Royal Palace in Laeken after the marriage of his son in 1960, claimed the Argenteuil property as his new place of residence.17 Once again, the Belgian nobility came to the rescue of the Berlaymont community as Count Ludovic de Meeus d’Argenteuil put 20 hectares of his adjacent land up for sale at a concessionary rate. With that resolved, it appeared that the trajectory of the planned Ring Road around Brussels ran alongside the nuns’ property and threatened to cut off the new premises. After lengthy negotiations, the Belgian state reluctantly agreed to construct an access bridge at its own expense. All this explains why it took until 25 May 1960 before the deed of sale was executed. Now the matter of finding an architect capable of designing and executing such a substantial project in only three years’ time received full priority. In their search, the nuns were helped by canon François Houtart, director of the Centre de Recherches Socio-Religieuses de Bruxelles (Centre

218  Sven Sterken for Socio-religious Studies), a consulting body financed by the Belgian episcopate that advised on the planning of Catholic infrastructure such as churches, hospitals and schools. He pushed the nuns to capitalize on the modernist fashion engendered by the 1958 World Fair and realize a modern structure incorporating the latest advances in building technology.18 It is significant in this respect that the nuns dismissed their regular architect and opted for a young and ambitious firm by the name of Groupe Structures.19 Introducing innovative planning principles and experimental construction techniques imported from the United States, it substituted the prevailing notion of architecture as the product of artistic creativity and individual expression for a well-planned, collaborative effort, based on economical reasoning and careful planning. This pragmatic attitude was the clue to the firm’s rise in the 1960s, when it became the preferred designer of the political and financial establishment in Brussels and grew into the largest architectural firm in the country. A decisive element in commissioning Groupe Structures, however, might well have been the fact that one of the firm’s founding partners, Jacques Boseret-Mali, was a cousin of the then prioress (Figure 12.2). A devout Catholic himself, he had already designed a series of churches – the most accomplished of which was the chapel for the Regina Pacis convent in Schoten (1959–61).20 Boseret’s reputation in the Catholic milieu can also be derived from his participation in the design of the Vatican pavilion (Civitas Dei) at the 1958 World Fair in Brussels. Originally, the new Berlaymont premises were conceived as the sum of five functionally independent parts, with the advantage that all could be realized simultaneously, each according to the most appropriate structural principle. The school proper contained over 50 classrooms of various sizes, organized in a lattice-like structure. It was divided in four independent sections, each with its proper multifunctional spaces: a primary school, two different types of secondary education (humanités anciennes, based on the study of Latin and Greek, preparing for university education, and humanités modernes, based on modern languages and mathematics) and the so-called école moyenne, a three-year study programme preparing pupils for routine jobs in administration and commerce. Here prefabricated steel frames were used, filled in with Ytong blocks (autoclaved aerated concrete) – a new building material which had become available just recently on the Belgian market. To the south, a spinning-wheel configuration comprised those parts of the programme that dealt with large volumes of pupils and goods: a refectory for 500 with a large soup kitchen, a large library, a reading room and three assembly halls (not realized). The concrete structure, steel roofs and separate underground service entrance emphasized the almost industrial character of a boarding school of this scale. The dormitories (totalling 180 individual rooms) were stacked on top of these volumes on both sides of a central tower containing vertical circulation, recreational spaces and study halls. Here the architectural expression derived from the rhythm of

Nuns in the suburb 219

Figure 12.2 Jacques Boseret-Mali and Sister Françoise Hanquet on the construction site at Argenteuil, c. 1961 Photograph © Charles Boseret. Used with permission

the concrete columns and the curtain wall, while the grey-white tones of the concrete cladding distinguished this part from the reddish brick tones in the rest of the complex. More towards the forest and somewhat hidden from view lay the convent, the concept of which was similar to that of the school building: communal spaces (chapter, refectory and recreation room) grouped around a patio and private rooms stacked in a separate three-storey building. Finally, several playgrounds and a sports hall were provided for physical exercise. All this was designed and planned at a break-neck speed: within a month from acquiring the building land, the nuns approved a sketch plan, while

220  Sven Sterken the building permit was delivered on 29 July 1960. The foundation stone, blessed by Pope John XXIII, was laid on 7 October 1961 in the presence of Princess Marie-Christine and a wide array of dignitaries. Day by day one year later, Monsignor Goossens ceremoniously consecrated the school buildings in the presence of 4,000 (!) guests.

Transfer as opportunity In its 1961 tri-annual report, the Berlaymont community noted that it endeavoured ‘to create a spirit and a zest in order for the transfer to Waterloo to become an opportunity for pedagogic renewal, monastic revival and a greater openness towards the appeals of the Church.’21 We can derive from this that in the eyes of the nuns, the move to Argenteuil was more than just an infrastructural adjustment but an occasion to reconsider the cornerstones of their identity – namely, education and contemplation – in a rapidly modernizing world. The new building was to become an instrument and a symbol of this rejuvenation. We can wonder now to what extent the new buildings effectively supported these ambitions. The prevailing discourse on school architecture, then, was perhaps best synthesized by the Swiss architect Alfred Roth in his widely distributed book La Nouvelle École/The New School.22 Roth pleaded for a holistic approach, considering the child’s intellectual capacities as only one aspect of its personality next to its physical and psychological well-being. To this end, the school building must first and foremost constitute a welcoming and stimulating environment. Doing away with the central-corridor school, the typical nineteenth-century expression of uniformity and rigour, Roth proposed clustering the classrooms according to age, in groups of no more than four. Further, school buildings (at least for the youngest) should ideally be organized on one level only as to enable a direct visual and physical contact with the green surroundings – an idea which reveals how Roth considered the suburb as the natural habitat of the new school. In such a concept, closed staircases and long hallways – proverbial spaces of discipline – became redundant, a fact which also allowed to save on the foundations. One of the best instances of such a pavilion-type school in the post-war period was the Munkegård Elementary school nearby Copenhagen by Arne Jacobsen (1956). (Figure 12.3) Although quite a large building with a capacity of over 850, it had in no way the look and feel of a big institution. To this end, the school’s layout derived from multiplying a basic module (two paired classrooms and a common courtyard) within an orthogonal matrix. Designed with great care and with a child’s worldview in mind, the classrooms were entirely glazed on the side of the courtyard so as to allow light to penetrate deeply into the space in the dark seasons and make it possible to teach in the open, weather permitting. Further, the school featured an extensive array of rooms dedicated to cooking, physical education, drawing and so forth. Thus Munkegård reflected a new pedagogical approach based not so much on

© Danish National Art Library, Collection of Architectural Drawings. Used with permission

Figure 12.3 Arne Jacobsen, Munkegård School, general plan, ca 1956

222  Sven Sterken authority and discipline, but on the stimulation of playfulness and creativity. Its basic unit was the classroom, conceived as a place of self-fulfilment for the child. Jacobsen’s typological experiment was published in numerous architecture magazines, including Belgian ones.23 Its concept undoubtedly also influenced Boseret when designing the new Berlaymont school. The parallel with Munkegård was especially striking in the first sketch plan dated June 1960. (Figure 12.4) It featured two north-south corridors with offices (headmistress, teachers’ room, etc.) and three east-west arrays of south-facing classrooms. Coupled in twins, the latter shared a courtyard and had each their own cloakroom and sanitary. To the north was a slightly monumentalized entrance hall, providing access to the different sections within the school. In the final version, the layout of the plan was more compact as not only the large entrance hall was dropped but also one of the north-south circulation axes. The scheme was now of an almost diagrammatic clarity, spatially articulating the three sections within the institute (the fourth one – namely, the école moyenne – having been abandoned in the meantime because of a lack of students), each with its own entrance at the eastern extremity of the array of classrooms. (Figure 12.5) Just like the classroom and the playground define the school as a building type, the chapel and the individual cell define the architectural identity of a monastery. In the new Berlaymont convent, the preponderant place of the chapel in the daily routines of nuns and pupils was affirmatively expressed as the connecting element between school and the monastery. Originally designed according to a circular plan, it formed a separate volume that contrasted markedly with the orthogonal rigidity of the rest of the scheme. In a later stage, this geometry was discarded in favour of a simpler and more economical cross-shaped plan. One fundamental characteristic remained, nevertheless – namely, the central position of the altar on the tangent plane between the outer world and the secluded space of the convent (Figure 12.6). The design of the cells, then, complied simply with the original Berlaymont constitutions, stating that the nun’s cell be a sanctuary just as much as the convent chapel, albeit for individual worship and meditation rather than communal prayer. Thus ‘the cell must be a place of rest, a peaceful retreat where the religious soul prays, works and engages in study, under God’s eyes.’24 To this effect, its equipment was confined to no more than a built-in cupboard, a wash basin, a bed, a table and a large window providing ample light, air and contact with the surrounding woods. To appreciate the progressive aspect of the new Berlaymont complex fully, we must also look at those aspects that physically and psychologically materialized the separation between the religious community and the secular world such as the principle of enclosure.25 In its original Tridentine form, this principle aimed at preventing any physical and visual contact with the exterior world; to this effect, the parlours featured iron bars and opaque curtains, while huge walls surrounded the property. Permission to leave was usually granted only for medical reasons. For nuns engaged in

Source: Archives of the Congrégation de Notre-Dame, Belgian chapter, Waterloo. Reproduced with permission

Figure 12.4 Groupe Structures, Berlaymont monastery and school. First sketch project, June 1960

Figure 12.5 Arial photograph of the new Berlaymont Institute just after completion Source: Collection José Larose. Used with permission

Figure 12.6 Berlaymont monastery and school, interior view of the chapel Photograph © Charles Boseret. Used with permission

Nuns in the suburb 225 apostolic activities such as health care and education, the balance between enclosure and apostolate became increasingly difficult in the twentieth century, since the growing professionalization of their discipline required more and more contact with outsiders. This contradiction formed the point of departure for the Belgian Cardinal (and later archbishop) Suenens’s hugely influential book The Nun in the World (1962), which was internationally acclaimed as a manifesto for a fundamental rejuvenation of monasticism and the emancipation of women religious in particular. Apart from dismissing old-fashioned religious habits and pleading for more democracy in community governance, Suenens also pleaded for a less rigid application of the principle of enclosure, stating, ‘For active congregations the separation is an attitude of mind rather than a matter of walls and grilles.’26 Although the liberalizing of monastic life would only become officially endorsed after Vatican II (namely, in the papal directive Perfectae Caritatis, 1966), the spirit of renewal clearly influenced the design of the new Berlaymont monastery. In the chapel, for example, the choir sisters were now facing the faithful (rather than being visually separated from them) while the design of the parlours allowed for more informal encounter with relatives without bars or curtains. Finally, contrary to the rue de la Loi, at Argenteuil, the boundaries of the convent property were not walled off, suggesting that being separate from the world did not necessarily mean to be isolated from it. As contemporary reports reveal, the nuns’ move was seen as a deed of great courage and providence. The architectural periodical La Maison, for example, lauded the swiftness of the whole operation, its constructive rationality and the community’s intention to accommodate groups during the school holidays. It concluded that ‘benefiting from twenty hectares of park land, easy parking facilities and such extraordinary surroundings, Berlaymont may well become an additional place of encounter and exchange now that Brussels becomes the capital of Europe.’27 The newspaper Le Soir commented: ‘Today, the Berlaymont sisters are getting ready for a new move on the long term. They will have a domain ten times as vast. They will be spared the polluted air and the hustle and bustle of the street.’28 Finally, one prominent member of the parents’ association congratulated the prioress but not without pathos: How much air, how much light, how much sun and space in this new group of buildings, and what an openness of mind, what a largemindedness from the part of its creators! (. . .) But it has been all too much passed under silence that it was you who have inspired its genesis and that these buildings only receive a life and soul through your ideas and instruction.29 In spite of these laudations, it quickly became clear that the new buildings would only temporarily relieve the nuns from the sorrows that had

226  Sven Sterken caused them to move. In the first place, the community’s financial difficulties became only worse as the sale of the old convent did not compensate for the cost of the new campus. Once again, however, the Berlaymont community was saved by its embedding within the Belgian establishment: through the intermediary of the then governor of the National Bank of Belgium, Cecil de Strycker, a committee of 20 personalities was established that stood surety for a substantial loan at a very favourable interest.30 Further, Groupe Structures’s pursuit of maximum economy during design and construction proved problematic in the long term; the flat roofs were leaking while the cost related to heating such a vast building weighed heavily on the community’s budget. The recurrent lack of space remained an issue too, especially after the school had followed the trend towards mixed education; by 1987, the institute’s population had increased with 50 per cent. As a remedy, the chapel was deconsecrated and its mezzanine level divided into two classrooms. A more intimate school chapel was installed in the shorter leg, while the remaining space was put to use as a recreational area. The altar podium was kept, however, and now serves as a stage for informal table football competitions during the intervals. Finally, the issues related to noise, air pollution and safety also seemed cyclic in nature: today, at rush hour, the school’s only road access is jammed with cars and coaches, while the congested Brussels Ring Road, constructed shortly after completion of the new monastery, allegedly forms no less a source of noise and pollution than the rue de la Loi.

Expansion, isolation, separation Commenting on the Berlaymont’s successive transfers, Sister Marie-Christine Hachez, a former prioress, noted in 1987, This adventure is linked with the Church’s history, with our national history as well as with the history of Europe. It is a living history, a chain, the links of which are joined by an allegiance to pursue the ideal of Christian life and missionary work amongst the youth [. . .]. Each transfer is a re-installation, a fresh start, a calling to question one’s attitude to life and the way how one responds to an apostolic vocation.31 Although such words may seem a little high flown, studying the case of the Berlaymont monastery indeed offers a crash course in the coming about of Belgian identity and the current state of its capital. Whereas its foundation coincided with the Counter Reformation and the early days of Brussels as a capital city, the community’s expulsion in the aftermath of the French Revolution announced a series of attempts to limit the impact of Catholicism on Belgian society that would last until the mid-twentieth century. The successive erasures of the convent buildings indicated another pattern – namely, the radical transformation of Brussels from a medieval town into the capital

Nuns in the suburb 227 of an ambitious industrial nation. In turn, the move to Waterloo coincided with the establishment of the language border, the massive exodus to the suburbs, a progressive religious climate in the run-up to Vatican II and the boom of the educational sector because of its democratization. On a more general plane, the Berlaymont case gives insight in how in the modern times, a cloistered teaching order dealt with the duality inherent to its own concept – namely, to pursue a pure Christian life and carry out missionary work. Whereas monasticism requires retreat, contemplation and isolation, apostolicism follows a contrasting logic of expansion, proximity and growth (in both territorial and numerical terms). In recruiting pupils among the urban elite and calling upon the Brussels haute bourgeoisie in dealing with financial, technical and legal affairs, it was imperative for the Berlaymont community to be established close to the city. This dependency on the urban society for its subsistence and development imposed other modalities than the isolationist or autarkist ideals of monastic life. It is precisely in this context that the processes of relocation and design described earlier receive their full meaning. Continuously altered, modified and extended, for the nuns, the monastery and school buildings were in the first place a flexible instrument in the service of their apostolate. The huge walls at the rue de la Loi or the open green spaces in Waterloo introduced a net boundary between the urban and the monastic spheres, colliding only in the main chapel during Sunday services or at the school gates. With this ideal in mind – namely, the religious institute as a natural enclave in the service of spiritual and physical well-being, contemplation and education – it is no coincidence that the nuns moved each time to the then periphery of town. Economic and pragmatic considerations aside, it was an attempt to benefit from the best of two worlds. As the intersecting plane between city and countryside, the terrains alongside the newly laid out rue de la Loi or the vast open spaces in Waterloo allowed to reconcile the seemingly contradictory imperatives of proximity and isolation imposed by their double vocation. Thus, apart from the external, historical forces that may have initiated each of the transfers discussed earlier, the successive moves of the Berlaymont community can as well be regarded as many phases in a permanent negotiating of maximum autonomy vis-à-vis the urban society. This ideal of self-governance would soon come to an end, nevertheless. The decrease in the number of novices and the need for better guidance of them, combined with the ageing of its members, forced the community in 1939 to merge with the Congrégation de Notre Dame de Jupille, whose constitutions were of a kindred nature.32 This consolidation was taken a step further in 1963 when a contingent of Jupille sisters moved to Argenteuil. Responding to the call for renewal issued by Cardinal Suenens, a group of younger nuns set out to rethink their apostolate by collaborating more closely with parents and lay teachers, while some even moved out of the convent and went to live in a rental house in Waterloo. Faced with the increasing complexity of running an institute of this scale, the nuns

228  Sven Sterken carried over the managerial responsibilities to a non-profit association in the course of the 1970s – a first step towards the final dissociation between the religious community and the product of their apostolate. Finally, in 2008, after almost 50 years, the remaining 15 nuns returned to Brussels, renting a floor in a day-care centre. Quite ironically, in early 2013, their convent was demolished to make place for a home for the elderly. However, rather than the final stages in a historical evolution, these events can also be interpreted as natural steps in the eternal cycle of relocation and renewal sketched earlier, since even in the absence of the nuns, the current flourishing of the Berlaymont school proves that their apostolic spirit is still very much alive.

Notes 1 On the history of the Berlaymont monastery, see J. Schyrgens, Berlaymont. Le Cloistre de la Reyne de tous les Saincts (Brussels: Dewit, 1928). The research for this chapter was carried out in the following archives: archives of the Congregation de Notre-Dame, Belgian chapter, Waterloo (hereafter AMB); Archives of the Centre scolaire de Berlaymont, Waterloo; Berlaymont files at the Archives of the City of Brussels, Brussels (hereafter AVB); archives of the Archdiocese MechlinBrussels, Mechlin; and archives of the municipality of Waterloo, Waterloo. I am grateful to the following people for their help in different stages of my research: Sister Edith Pirard CND, prioress of the Congrégation de Notre-Dame in Belgium; her secretary Mme Dominique De Smet; sisters Hélène-Marie, WivineMarie and Christiane-Marie; Mr Christian Moulaert,;Mr Jean-Pierre Dhanis; Mr Vincent Bouquelle; Mr Charles Gielen; and Mr Cédric Cornez. Interviews with Mme Brouhns, former pupil, teacher and director and Mr José Larose, project architect at Groupe Structures, have provided valuable insights. I am also grateful to Marie-Christine and Charles Boseret for putting at my disposal their late father’s private archives. Thanks also to Vlad Ionescu for his useful comments in composing the conclusion of this chapter. 2 A. Uyttebrouck, ‘Bruxelles, centre d’enseignement’, in J. Stengers ed., Bruxelles, croissance d’une capitale (Antwerp: Marcatorfonds, 1979), pp. 347–59. 3 T. Demey, Brussels, Capital of Europe (Brussels: Badeau, 2007), p. 226. 4 D.-O. Hurel (ed.), Guide pour l’histoire des ordres et des congrégations religieuses. France, XVIe – XX siècles, Brepols, 2001, pp. 112–14; A. Gerhards, Dictionnaire des ordres religieux (Paris: Fayard, 1998), pp. 137–9. 5 A. Henne and A. Wouters, Histoire de la ville de Bruxelles (Brussels, 1845 (reprinted 1968)), ill. 1160–68; Schyrgens, Berlaymont, pp. 79–82 and p. 272; ‘Les trois couvents de la Banque Nationale de Belgique’, BNB 8 (1962), pp. 6−33. 6 Schyrgens, Berlaymont, pp. 161–216. 7 Annales Berlaymont (hereafter AnB), 9G 22 (AVB). 8 AnB 9G22. 9 F. Leroy, ‘Quand l’aristocratie et la grande bourgeoisie habitaient le quartier Léopold’, Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire 88:2 (2010), pp. 519−40. 10 AnB 9G22. 11 AnB 9G22. So far, we have been unable to find archival material permitting to assess Balat’s precise involvement in the design of the third Berlaymont monastery. 12 AnB 9G22. 13 M. Paret, P. Wynants, ‘La nobles belge dans les orders religieux et les congregations 1801–1960’, Revue d’histoire belge contemporaine, 33:3–4 (2000), p. 507.

Nuns in the suburb 229 14 A note entitled ‘Monastère de Berlaymont. Nombre des élèves du Pensionat et de l’Externat’ (AMB) gives the following figures: 1947–48: 353 in total (of which 82 pensionaires); 1955–56: 356 in total (67 of which pensionnaires). Compare this to pre-war situation: 1937–38: 272; 1939–40: 298. 15 I. Jacobs, ‘L’institut de Berlaymont; un établissement d’enseignement moyen libre pour jeunes filles à Bruxelles, 1945–1962’ (Masters Dissertation, Université Catholique de Louvain, 1990). 16 The different arguments pro and contra moving are enumerated in the minutes of the general chapter of 3 February 1957 (AVB). On 24 February 1958, the nuns unanimously accepted the proposition made by the property developer François et Fils (AnB 9G22, AVB 2H 3). In a letter to the parents, dated 14 May 1959, the sale of the property was publicly confirmed. 17 E. Meeuwissen, ‘D’un château à l’autre en Argenteuil’, Brabant Tourisme 4 (1992), pp. 23−8. 18 Note entitled ‘Chronologie transfer‘, 21 March 1957 (AMB). 19 Groupe Structures was founded in 1949 by Raymond Stenier (°1921), Louis Van Hove (1920–2010), Jacques Boseret-Mali (1917–2003) and Jacques Vandermeeren (1920–2004). See S. Sterken, ‘Architecture and the Ideology of Productivity. Four Public Housing Projects by Groupe Structures in Brussels (1950–65)‘, Footprint 5:2 (2012), pp. 25–40. 20 La Maison 22:6 (1966), pp. 173–75; Architecture 15:71–72 (1966), pp. 406–7. 21 Original text: ‘Notre but est de créer un esprit et donner un élan pour que le transfert soit réellement une occasion de renouveau monastique, de renouveau pédagogique, et d’ouverture aux appels de l’Eglise.’ Source: ‘Rapport du triennat, 1961’ (AMB). 22 A. Roth, The New Schoolhouse/Das neue Schulhaus/La nouvelle école (Zurich: Girsberger, 1950). 23 Architecture d’Aujourd’hui 25:54 (1954), pp. 12–14; La Maison, 13:2 (1957), pp. 40–4; Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, 28:72 (1957), pp. 64–9. 24 Schyrgens, Berlaymont, p. 64. 25 M. Dortel-Clodaut, ‘La clôture des moniales. Des origines au code de droit canonique’, in C. Friedlander, ed., La Clôture des moniales. Trente ans d’expectative (Namur: Vie Consacrée, 1997), pp. 65−79. 26 L.-J. Cardinal Suenens, The Nun in the World: New Dimensions in the Modern Apostolate (Westminster: Newman Press, 1963), p. 125. For comments, see A. McCormack, ‘The Nun in the World’, The Furrow 14:12 (1963), pp. 744−50. 27 Original text: ‘Jouissant d’un parc de 20 ha, de parking facile, le cadre, Berlaymont-Argenteuil pourra devenir un lieu d‘échange et de rencontre supplémentaire à l‘heure de Bruxelles, capitale de l‘Europe.’ Source: La Maison 22:6 (1966), pp. 167−72, on p. 172. Translated by the author. 28 Original text: ‘Aujourd‘hui, les dames de Berlaymont se préparent à un nouveau déménagement à longue échéance. Elles auront un domaine dix fois plus étendu. L’air pollué et le fracas de la rue leur seront épargnés.’ Source: Le Soir, 23 July 1959. Translated by the author. 29 Original text: ‘Que d’air, que de lumière, que du soleil, que d’espace dans ce nouveau complexe, mais aussi quelle ouverture d’esprit, quelle largeur de vue chez ses créateurs! (. . .) Mais il a été trop sous-entendu et un peu trop caché que vous aviez inspiré la conception et que ces bâtiments allaient recevoir une âme et vivre selon votre pensée et votre enseignement.’ Source: Letter by Nicolas Voskressenky, counsellor at the Home Office and member of the Parents’ council to the Berlaymont Prioress, 18 January 1962 (AVB). Translated by the author.

230  Sven Sterken 0 Note ‘merci Mr. De Strycker’, undated manuscript, 2p. (AMB). 3 31 Original text: ‘Cette aventure est liée à l’histoire de l’Eglise, à notre histoire nationale, et à l’histoire européenne. C’est une histoire vivante, une chaîne dont les maillons sont reliés par la même fidélité à un idéal de vie chrétienne et d’apostolat auprès de la jeunesse. (. . .) Chaque transfert est une désinstallation, un nouveau départ qui interpelle et remet en question le style de vie et la manière dont on répond à une vocation apostolique.’ Note by Sister Marie-Christine Hachez, 22 September 1987 (AMB). Translated by the author. 32 Mère Marie-Cécile du Christ, Mère Marie de l’Esprit Saint, Prévôte de Berlaymont 1868–1943 (Tournai: Casterman, 1948).

Index

Alberione, Father James 135 Albert VII of Austria (Archduke) 213 Alemán, Miguel 141 Ambazz, Emilio 152 Anglican 107 – 22 Anne of Christ (Sister) 125 Arab-Israeli conflicts 195 Arcosanti 71, 72, 74, 75 – 87 Argenteuil 12, 217, 219 – 20, 225 Arizona 7, 71 – 80 Asceticism 41, 43, 44, 75, 107, 118, 121, 133 Ávila Camacho, Manuel 141 Aztec mythology 144 de Balaguer, Jose Maria Escrivá 40 Balaguer, Victor 52 – 8, 67 Balat, Alphonse 214 Barbier, Julien 18, 19, 22, 25 Barragán, Luis 6, 8, 139, 142, 148 – 50 Beaux-Arts style 97, 99, 178, 185 Benedictines 1, 49, 64, 92, 97, 99, 123, 132, 134 Benson, Fr Richard Meux 108, 109, 111, 112, 114, 115, 118, 119 Benton, New York State 173 Berlaymont: congregation 214 – 17, 220, 226 – 7; Florent de 213; Institut des Dames de 9, 213, 224; Monastery 11 – 12, 217, 223, 225, 226; school 222, 228 Binder Johnson, Hildegard 161, 163 Bodley, George Frederick 8, 107 – 21 Bonzano (Cardinal) 203 Book of Revelation 165 Borgerding, Henry 92, 93 Boseret-Mali, Jacques 12, 218 – 19 Bosschaerts, Dom Constantine 134 Braine l’Alleud 217

Brasini, Armando 201 Brussels 9, 213, 215 – 18, 225 – 8 Bustamante, José and Luis 142 Calzada de Madereros 142 Capuchins 145 Cardinal Mercier School 217 Carmelites: Calced branch 199 – 200; nuns 9, 6, 8, 15 – 16, 20, 22, 25, 123 – 5, 127, 129 – 30, 134; Rule 133, 136 Catalonia 49, 52, 54, 57, 58, 61, 63 – 8 Catholic Herald 134 Centre de Recherches Socio-Religieuses de Bruxelles 217 de Chardin, Teilhard 11, 70 – 81 château Tuck 217 Chicago 9, 10, 11, 102 – 3, 198 – 209 Chipiez, Charles 191 Choisy, Auguste 185 Christian Democrat Party 216 Church of Our Lady of the Assumption and St  Thérèse 123 – 5, 128 – 32, 135 – 7 Church of the Divine Master, Alba 135 Civitas Dei 218 Clark, Sarah 166 Cleveland, Horace 163 Cody, Cardinal (Archbishop of Chicago) 11, 203 – 4 Collegeville, Minnesota 2, 93, 97 Colonial Revival (architectural style) 92 Congrégation de Notre Dame de Jupille 227 Connecticut Courthouse, New Haven 159 Continental Congress (second) 160 – 1 Cordonnier, Louis-Marie 15, 16, 20 – 5 Cret, Paul 182

232 Index Daley, Richard M. 205 d’Argenteuil, Ludovic de Meeus 217 Dawes, Mother Michael 125 del Moral, Enrique 145 Dever, William E. 200 Díaz, Porfirio 139 Díaz Morales, Ignacio 141, 146 Diether, Fr Lawrence C. 199, 203 DOCOMOMO 9 Doherty, James 165 d’Ors, Eugeni 34 – 5 Dubois (Cardinal) 203 Edwards, I.E.S. 191 Egyptian 186; hieroglyphics 178; temples 191 El Eco 148 Eliade, Mircea 165 El Pedregal gardens 142 – 3 European Economic Community (EEC) 216 Ezekiel’s Temple 178, 186, 190 – 1 Faulhaber (Cardinal) 203 Feehan, Archbishop Patrick A. 199 Fielden Clegg Bradley Studios 123 Finger Lakes region, New York State 159 Finkelstein, Louis 188 Fisac, Miguel 31, 33, 40, 42 Flanders 217 Foschini, Arnaldo 201 Foucault, Michel 171 France 10, 15, 18, 21 Franco 7, 30 Francois et Fils 217 Franquismo 30, 33, 34, 36, 40, 41, 45 Gaos, José 151 Garden of Eden 165, 178, 191, 194 George, Cardinal Francis 206 Germany 22, 38, 214 Ghent 214 Goeritz, Mathias 141 – 2, 144, 148 González Luna, Efraín 140 Goodspeed, Lucinda 166 Goossens (Monsignor) 220 Gorham, Nathaniel 161 Gothic Revival 4, 15, 92, 107 – 11, 121, 201, 202 Gricigliano, Italy 206 Grosz, Elizabeth 171 – 2

Groupe Structures 12, 213, 218, 223, 226 Guadalajara, Jalisco 140 Guerre scolaire 216 Hachez, Sister Marie-Christine 226 Hackner, Egid 92, 93, 95, 97 Harrison, Governor William Henry 165 Hartwell, Moses 166 Harvey, David 170 Hathaway, Thomas 166, 172 Heidegger, Martin 160 Hendricks, Rose 199 Hoban, Most Rev. Edward F. 200 Holy Cross Catholic Church, Chicago 199 Hugo, Victor 52 Hurtt, Steven 160 Hurva Memorial Plaza 185 Hurva Synagogue, Jerusalem 9, 10, 11, 177 – 9, 181, 183 – 6, 188, 190, 193, 195 – 6 i Cadafalch, Puig 63 – 7 Indiana 165; Limestone 200; Notre Dame University 98 Infanta Isabella 213 The Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest 206 International Eucharistic Congress (28th) 203 International Style 141, 177 – 9, 182 Israel 9, 177 – 9, 194; ‘children of Israel’ 194; Israeli press 193; Tribes of 188, 190 Israel, Mikveh 185, 194 Jackson Park, Chicago 198 Jacobsen, Arne 12, 220 – 1 Jefferson, Thomas 9, 159 – 60, 163 Jeffersonville 10, 163 – 5, 173 Jerusalem: city 3, 10, 11; religious community 9, 10, 159 – 63, 165 – 73 Jesuits 217 Jewish Martyr’s Memorial, New York 191 Jones, David 130 Kabbalistic iconography 194 Karnak 11, 191 – 8 Kentucky 165 Khan, Louis I. 9, 10 – 11, 177, 180 – 1, 183 – 4, 186, 192 – 3, 195

Index  233 Kimbark Avenue, Chicago 199 The Knesset 182 Kollek, Teddy (Mayor) 179 Kotel 178 – 9, 195 Lake Ontario 161 de Lalaing, Marguerite 213 – 14 The Landmark Commission 206 The Land Ordinance (1785) 160 – 1 La Nouvelle École/The New School 220 L’Art Sacre 3, 38 Le Corbusier 3, 4, 187, 195 Leopold: II 214; III 217; Quarter 214, 216 Lisieux 16, 17, 21 Lobell, John 177 Louisiana 165 Lutheran 91, 92 Lutyens, Edwin 132 Lynch, Kevin 179 Madonna of Montserrat 50, 59, 63, 67 Maria Laach Abbey 38 Marie-Christine: Princess 220; Sister 226 Martin, Céline (Geneviève de la Sainte-Face) 17 Martin, Pauline (Agnès de Jésus) 16 – 18 Massachusetts 112, 159 de Merode (Prince) 214 Messianic: age 188, 190; nationalism 32 Metz, Christian 173 Mexican Baroque 149 Mexico 139 – 40, 144 – 6, 148, 150 – 2; Mexico City 10, 140 – 2, 146, 148, 149 – 50 Minime Friars 214 Missal (1962) 206 Mississippi 165 Modern Movement 1, 134 Montserrat 49 – 69 Morales, Ignasi de Sola 30, 31, 33 – 4, 45 Morphology 38, 42, 43 Mount Carmel High School 199, 209 Movimiento de Arte Sacro 31 Mundelein, Cardinal George 200, 202 Munkegård Elementary School 220 Museum of Modern Art, New York 70, 152 Napoleon 42, 50, 53, 67, 214 National Catholicism 32, 34

National Socialism 32, 144 ‘New Light’ Baptists 159 New Milford, Connecticut 166 New Orleans 165 New York City 97, 98 Nichol’s Corners (Milo Center) 163 O’Donnell (Cardinal) 203 Oglethorpe, Gen. James E. 167 O’Gorman, Edmundo 151 O’Gorman, Juan 143 – 4, 145 Ohain, Belgium 217 Ohio 92, 165, 167 de Oiza, Javier Saenz 7, 30 Olivetan Benedictines 134 Opus Dei 40, 41, 42, 44, 45 Oratorians 207 Orozco, Jose Clemente 140 Ortega y Gasset, Jose 150 Oxford, England 107 – 22 Palladio, Andrea 185 Pani, Mario 145 The Pantheon 183 Partido de Acción National (National Action Party) 140 Party of the Mexican Revolution to Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) 141 Pathé News 127 Pelletier, Mother Mary Euphrasia 134 Pennsylvania 92, 159, 161 Perfectae Caritatis 225 Perrot, Georges 191 Perry, Most Rev. Joseph 204 Petit, Bishop John 125 Phelps, Oliver 161 Piacentini, Marcello 201 pilgrimage 6, 15 – 22, 30, 57, 58 Pious Disciples of the Divine Master 135 Poelaert, Jozef 214 poetics of technology 30, 34, 45 Polemic Temple of Horus, Edfu 193 Pollen, Francis 125, 136 Pope John XXIII 220 Pope Pius VII 214 Pope Pius XI 24, 36, 214 Pope Urban VIII 214 Potter, New York State 189 Powers, Alan 132, 135 Presteigne, Wales 125 Prieto Lopez, El Pedregal 142 – 3

234 Index Pritzker Prize 152 Publick Universal Friend 159, 167, 171 – 3 Puritans 167 Pyramid of Cheops 193 Quakers 167, 172 Quigley (Archbishop of Chicago) 199 Rapp, Georg 173 Reactionary Modernism 41 Reform Movement 38 Renaissance Revival style 64, 200 – 1 Rhode Island 159, 166 Richmond, Virginia 163, 165 Rivera, Diego 140, 144 Robinson, Benedict 172 Rock Island, Illinois 91, 93 Rodd, Lord Rennell of 127 Rogers Park, Chicago 201 Roman Catholic 2, 7, 10, 11, 40, 111 Romanesque Revival 15, 22, 43, 55, 57, 59, 63, 66, 92, 97, 201 Romano-Byzantine 15, 22, 24 Roman Rite 206 Romanticism 52 Romero, Fernando 146 Ronchamp (chapel at) 195 Roth, Alfred 220 Ruskin, John 185 Rymont Co. 203 Saavedra, Gustavo 145 St Augustine, Rule of 213 St Benedict Convent, St Joseph’s, Minnesota 91, 92, 93, 99, 102 St Clara, Catholic Church of, Chicago 11, 198 – 208 St Cyril: Carmelite High School 199; parish of 203 St Euphrasia of Constantinople 134 St Francis of Assisi 145, 152 St Gelasius, Catholic Church of, Chicago 9, 198, 201, 204 – 6, 209 St George Methodist Episcopal Church, Philadelphia 159 St Ignatius, Church of, Chicago 201 – 2 St John of God, Church of, Chicago 201 – 2 St Michael’s Cathedral, Brussels 214 St Thérèse de Lisieux 15, 16, 18, 19, 21, 24

St Thérèse of Lisieux 7, 15 – 21, 23 – 5, 199, 203 Salas Portugal, Armando 142, 148 – 50 Salomon, Yaacov 178 San Damiano Church, Assisi 145 San Idelfonso, Jesuit College of, Mexico City 140 Santa Maria of Tonatzintla, Cholula 150 Santissimo Redentore, Venice 207 Sartoris, Alberto 37 Scherbauer, Mother Willabalda 100 Schikowski, Fr Francis 199 Schlacks, Henry J. 11, 198, 200 – 1 Schmitz, Msgr. R. Michael 206 The School Sisters of St Francis 199 Scully, Vincent 178 Second Vatican Council 9, 123, 132, 133, 204, 206, 227 Secularization 30, 36, 39, 140, 214 Seneca Nation 166, 172 Senusert I 191 Shrine of Christ the King, Chicago 11, 201, 206, 208 – 9 Sidmouth, Lady Thérèse 125, 136 Sisters of the Good Shepherd 134 Society of St John the Evangelist 8, 107 – 21 Soleri, Paolo 71 – 7, 80 – 6 South Kingston, Rhode Island 166 Spain 7, 30 – 48, 49 – 67 Spanish Civil War 64, 67 Stanbrook Abbey, Yorkshire 123 Stauduhar, George P. 91 – 3, 97 – 100, 103, 104 Stiles, Ezra 159 de Strycker, Cecil 226 Styer, Anna 166 Suenens (Cardinal) 225, 227 Sulpicians 207 Tabernacle 186 – 8, 190 Tacubaya, Mexico City 142 – 4 Temple Mount, Jerusalem 178 – 9 Temple of Abu Simbel 193 Temple of Ammon: Karnak 11, 192, 193; Luxor 193 Temple of Chephren, Giza 194 Temple of Herod 177, 178, 186, 188, 190 Temple of Solomon 177, 186 – 8, 190 – 1 Tigerman, Stanley 191

Index  235 Tlalpan 145; Monastery of Las Capuchinas Sacramentarias del Purísimo Corazón de María 10, 8, 139, 145, 146 – 50, 152, 153 Traditional Latin Mass 206 Treaty of Canandaigua 160 Tridentine rite 198, 206 Turin Shroud 52 Tyng, Alexandra 183 Uccle, Brussels 216 University City of Chicago 209 University of Virginia 163 US Rectangular Land Survey 161 Vasconcelos 145 Vatican II see Second Vatican Council Velazco, Juan Martínes 145 Vic Group 55 – 8, 61, 66 Vidler, Anthony 170 Villagrán Garcia, José 143 Villalpanda, Juan Bautista 191 Vincenzo, Giovanni 203 Viollet-le-Duc, Eugène 185 Vita et Pax, Cockfosters 134 Vitruvius 185 de Volney (Comte) 163

Wagener, Anna 166 Wallis Budge, E. A. 191 Wallonia 217 Waterloo, Belgium 9, 213, 216 – 17, 223, 227 Wausau, Wisconsin 206 Wedgewood Hotel, Chicago 205 West Malling Abbey 1, 11 Wigley, Mark 166 Wilkinson, Jemima 8, 159, 166, 171 Willem I 214 William C. Heyer 207 Willweber, Abbe Alexander 207 Wittkower, Rudolf 187 Woluwe, Brussels 216 Wood, John 191 Woodlawn Avenue, Chicago 198 – 200 World’s Fair: Brussels 9, 213, 218; Chicago 9, 198 Worth Abbey (Church of Our Lady, Help of Christians) 132 Wren, Christopher 92 Ytong blocks 218 The Zohar 194