1950s Architecture

1950s ARCHITECTURE

American Dominance

In the 1950s America exerted an enormous influence on world architectural design, not only because of the volume of work being done but also because the most exciting new forms were being conceived and executed in the United States. Wealthy clients and the large number of emigrants from throughout the world made the United States the undisputed center of architectural innovation.

Great Architects

With a few exceptions (Le Corbusier in France, Yoshimura in Japan, and Oscar Niemeyer in Brazil), architects everywhere found themselves copying American trends rather than originating their own. Great architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Eero Saarinen, Philip Johnson, and Edward Durrell Stone were all at work in 1950s America—and the quality and amount of their output were staggering. The trend was unabashedly modern, although by the late 1950s more ornamentation and exuberance were creeping in—the first stirrings of the postmodern era of architecture.

Frank Lloyd Wright

Experts believe the greatest lasting influence on architecture in the 1950s and 1960s was that of Wright and Mies van der Rohe. Already an old man in 1950 (he died at age eighty-nine in 1959), Wright continued to design astonishing buildings throughout the decade. His Price Tower (1953-1956) in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, was an imaginative variation on the high-rise housing structure. His Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (1956-1959) in New York was a free-form structure in an urban context, and it was extremely controversial. Wright also designed several fascinating religious buildings near the end of his life, including the Unitarian Church (completed after his death in 1965) in Madison, Wisconsin, and the Orthodox Church (1961) near Milwaukee. Wright's stunning originality made him suspect to modern purists, who wanted everything simple, stark, and similar. But Wright's legacy endures. The fact that American architecture was so influential in the 1950s— and throughout the twentieth century—is due in large measure to the contributions of Wright.

Mies van der Rohe

Mies van der Rohe's influence came through his architectural designs and also through his teaching position at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, where he influenced countless aspiring architects. Among his buildings is the entire campus complex of the Illinois Institute of Technology, done between 1938 and 1955. Disciples of Mies van der Rohe were everywhere in 1950s America. They designed unadorned glass-and-steel buildings (with concrete slabs creating the ceilings and floors) for large corporations across the country—though not usually with the flair of their master. The architects of the firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill were some of the better-known disciples of Mies van der Rohe. In designing buildings that were impersonal in appearance, they worked in anti-individualistic committees—or "teams"—that had little to no direct contact with a client. The company's 1952 Lever House in New York was a good example of this impersonal, anonymous architecture.

1950s High Spirits

By the mid to late 1950s some other American architects besides Wright were using flamboyant forms and decorations in their buildings. Morris Lapidus's flashy Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach had a sweeping, arc-shaped facade that was "blatantly hedonistic," according to author Horn. Some of John Lautner's 1950s houses look like flying saucers—objects of much interest at the time. Stone's United States Pavilion at the 1958 Brussels World's Fair also was flying saucer shaped. Lautner's Amphitheater House in Los Angeles had exterior walls that could be swung open like doors "so that its inhabitants could take fullest advantage of the view." By the end of the 1950s the stark modern designs were being phased out, and postmodern ornamentation was "in."

Sources:

Richard Horn, Fifties Style, Then and Now (New York: Beech Tree, 1985);

Udo Kultermann, Architecture in the 20th Century (New York: Rein-hold, 1993);

Tom Wolfe, From Bauhaus to Our House (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1981).