The Work of Dwight James Baum by Acanthus Press LLC

T HE A MERICAN A RCHITECT

SERIES

THE WORK OF

DWIGHT JAMES BAUM

With a new introduction by

R ONALD M C C ARTY Edited by

W ILLIAM M O RRISON

ACANTHUS PRESS NEW YORK : 2008

Acanthus Press, LLC 54 West 21st Street New York, New York 10010 www.acanthuspress.com

Copyright © 2008, Acanthus Press LLC Every reasonable attempt has been made to identify the owners of copyright. Errors of omission will be corrected in subsequent printings of this work. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in any part (except by reviewers for the public press) without written permission from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Dwight James Baum / edited by William Morrison ; introduction by Ronald McCarty. p. cm. — (The American architect series) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-0-926494-48-0 (alk. paper) 1. Baum, Dwight James, 1886-1939—Themes, motives—Catalogs. 2. Architecture, Domestic—United States—Catalogs. I. Baum, Dwight James, 1886-1939. II. Morrison, William (William Alan) NA737.B3A4 2008 720.92—dc22 2007044449

F R O N T I S P I E C E : Dwight James Baum at “Fairholme,” Newport, Rhode Island (Courtesy Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Gottscho-Schleisner Collection)

Printed in China

PUBLISHER’S NOTE The elegant monograph, The Work of Dwight James Baum, was originally published in 1927, with an introduction by architect Matlack Price and a preface by architect Harvey Wiley Corbett. The book is essentially a photographic portfolio of the early 20th century American architect’s domestic projects, from the largest estates to his smaller development houses. In his essay, Corbett wrote, “The best of his achievements in any single style is equal to the best from the pencil of the specialists. Architecturally Mr. Baum is no ordinary fiddler, but a virtuoso in his own right.” As Baum’s practice continued to flourish in the years following the publication of the monograph, this first edition could not have included many of the great and diverse range of works completed by him from 1927 until the time of his death in 1939. This new Acanthus volume showcases, for the first time, work from the entire career of the prolific Dwight James Baum.

This revised and expanded edition of The Work of Dwight James Baum would not have been possible without the scholarly contributions and generous help and support from the following people and institutions: Nicolette Dobrowolski, Reference and Access Services Librarian, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Library; Robert Raynor, author of “Architect: Dwight James Baum, 1886–1939” (master’s thesis); Ann Lindell, Head, Architecture & Fine Arts Library, University of Florida; Ronald McCarty, Curator, John & Mable Ringling Museum of Art and Keeper, Ca’ d’Zan; Dave Baber, General Manager, Sarasota County History Center; Paul F. Miller, Curator, The Preservation Society of Newport County; William Morrison; Schmuel Wasserstein.

C ONTENTS

Publisher’s Note ~ 5 Introduction ~ 9 Preface from the 1927 edition ~ 15

MEDITERRANEAN TYPES “CA’ D’ZAN,” JOHN AND MABLE RINGLING

RESIDENCE ,

Sarasota, Florida ~ 20

ANTHONY CAMPAGNA, Riverdale, Bronx, New York ~ 32 THE

HONORABLE NASH ROCKWOOD, Riverdale, Bronx, New York ~ 40 MRS. BENJAMIN E. CHASE, Syracuse, New York ~ 42 ELISA T. GALBAN, Fieldston, Bronx, New York ~ 44 DALTON E. PERPER, Fieldston, Bronx, New York ~ 46 MRS. F. W. BEST, SPUYTEN DUYVIL, Bronx, New York ~ 48 H. L. TAYLOR, Fieldston, Bronx, New York ~ 50 DR. WILLIAM R. WILLIAMS, Fieldston, Bronx, New York ~ 52

WILLIAM K. HOAGLAND, Pelham Manor, Bronx, New York ~ 53

ENGLISH TYPES “LAWRIDGE,” THE ESTATE

ROBERT LAW JR., Port Chester, New York ~ 56

POWEL CROSLEY JR., Cincinnati, Ohio ~ 74 “WILDFLOWER,” ESTATE

ARTHUR HAMMERSTEIN, Whitestone, Queens, New York ~ 80

“FAIRHOLME,” THE HOUSE “PIPPA PASSES,” THE HOUSE

CONTESSA VILLA, Newport, Rhode Island ~ 89

GEORGE MATTHEW ADAMS, Riverdale, Bronx, New York ~ 92 “K–HOUSE” ~ 93

GEORGIAN TYPES WILLIAM P. HOFFMAN, Fieldston, Bronx, New York ~ 96 HENRY NATSCH FURNALD, Fieldston, Bronx, New York ~ 105 S. C. ALLYN, Dayton, Ohio ~ 110 THE

HONORABLE ERNEST E. ROGERS, New London, Connecticut ~ 112 ROBERT FEIN, Riverdale, Bronx, New York ~ 114 MAURICE A. SHEA, Fieldston, Bronx, New York ~ 115 MRS. JOHN H. ISELIN, Riverdale, Bronx, New York ~ 116 ROBERT C. FLACK, Yonkers, New York ~ 118 WILLIAM HANNIG, Fieldston, Bronx, New York ~ 120 JOHN C. VON GLAHN, Brooklyn, New York ~ 122 CLAYTON SEDGWICK COOPER, New York, New York ~ 124 MRS. FAYETTE BAUM, Syracuse, New York ~ 126

COLONIAL TYPES F RANK A. SULLIVAN, Westerly, Rhode Island ~ 130 B. O. TEKERIAN, Maplewood, New Jersey ~ 133 JOHN J. SERRELL, Elizabeth, New Jersey ~ 136 O. L. SCHWENCKE JR., Bay Shore, Queens, New York ~ 138 R. E. LEWIS, Hartsdale, New York ~ 140 “SUNNYBANK,” THE HOUSE

DWIGHT JAMES BAUM, Riverdale, Bronx, New York ~ 142

F RANK M. SIMPSON, Little Falls, New York ~ 145 MALCOLM STEVENSON, Westbury, New York ~ 146 DR. L. DUNCAN BULKLEY, Fieldston, Bronx, New York ~ 147 WALTER BARRETT, Tampa, Florida ~ 150 ESTATE RESIDENCE

EUGENE D. STOCKER, Richfield Springs, New York ~ 152

ESTATE

CLEVELAND H. DODGE, Riverdale, Bronx, New York ~ 154

PERCIVAL WILDS, Fieldston, Bronx, New York ~ 156 W. R. SKILLMAN, Bronx, New York ~ 158 EDWARD R. SCHELL, Fieldston, Bronx, New York ~ 159 WILLIAM A. ZINK, Summit, New Jersey ~ 160

DUTCH COLONIAL TYPES A. DEGENER, Fieldston, Bronx, New York ~ 162 MRS. GEORGE T. MCQUADE, Freeport, New York ~ 164 BENJAMIN L. WINCHELL, Fieldston, Bronx, New York ~ 166 THOMAS A. BUCKNER JR., Riverdale, Bronx, New York ~ 172 I. E. HUTTON, Ridgewood, New Jersey ~ 174 CHARLES C. MULLALY, Philipse Manor, New York ~ 175 PROFESSOR N. L. ENGLEHARDT, Fieldston, Bronx, New York ~ 176 MRS. J. WILBUR CHAPMAN, Fieldston, Bronx, New York ~ 178 EDWARD D. WINSLOW, Fieldston, Bronx, New York (Upper half) ~ 177 ALBERT C. SCHWAB, Fieldston, Bronx, New York (Lower half) ~ 177

MISCELLANEOUS WORKS BEN RILEY'S ARROWHEAD INN, Riverdale, Bronx, New York ~ 182 EL VERNONA HOTEL, Sarasota, Florida ~ 186 SARASOTA COUNTY COURTHOUSE, Sarasota, Florida ~ 190 OWEN BURNS REALTY COMPANY–DWIGHT JAMES BAUM’S OFFICE, Sarasota, Florida ~ 194 BROADWAY APARTMENTS, Sarasota, Florida ~ 195 RIVERDALE COUNTRY CLUB, Riverdale, Bronx, New York ~ 196 ESTATE OFFICE

RICHARD ROWLAND, Rye, New York ~ 198

DWIGHT JAMES BAUM, Riverdale, Bronx, New York ~ 202

APARTMENT BULDING, New York, New York ~ 205 WEST SIDE YMCA, New York, New York ~ 206 STOUFFER’S RESTAURANT, New York, New York ~ 210 SARATOGA SPA STATE PARK, RECREATION GROUP, Saratoga Springs, New York ~ 212 CHRIST CHURCH PARISH HOUSE, Riverdale, Bronx, New York ~ 213 GOOD HOUSEKEEPING PAVILION, Chicago, Illinois ~ 214 1939 WORLD’S FAIR, New York, New York ~ 215 MISCELLANEOUS SKETCHES ~ 218 CHARCOAL STUDIES ~ 220 Catalog of Works ~ 221 Bibliography ~ 227 Illustration Credits ~ 230

INTRODUCTION

N 1923 the Architectural League of New York awarded its Gold Medal to Dwight James Baum. Aged 37 and practicing independently for a mere eight years, Baum was the youngest architect ever to receive this coveted honor. Nine years later in 1932, the American Institute of Architects similarly honored Baum for designing the best two-story house erected in the United States between 1926 and 1930. These were singular distinctions for any architect, but all the more so when awarded to the Upstate New York son of a shoe salesman and descendant of generations of Mohawk Valley farmers. A product of neither the most prestigious of the nation’s architectural schools nor a member of the elite brotherhood of the vaunted Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Baum began independent practice as an architect wholly bereft of the academic, familial, and social connections that provided the client list for so many of his young architectural contemporaries. Yet after less than a decade he had attained wide recognition as a master of the suburban country house. Seldom called upon to undertake the mammoth palazzi or lordly mansions characteristic of the Great House era, he attracted clients who tended to be self-made, middle-class business executives and working professionals who had achieved new levels of stature and affluence in the boom years of the 1920s by dint of hard work and unflagging dedication. People, in short, much like Baum himself.

Producing scores of residential designs uniformly distinguished by their “refinement and good taste,” Baum was devoted to architecture. He served for many years as architectural editor for Good Housekeeping magazine, championing his belief in good residential planning and design to a massmarket readership. A fellow of the American Institute of Architects, he spent long hours on a host of committees and architectural juries. “A leading citizen” of his home community of Riverdale, he lent “himself generously to every forward development” and the cause of civic advancement. Both an accomplished architect and brilliant salesman, Baum was the embodiment of Jazz Age America’s “bright young man.” Dwight James Baum was born June 24, 1886, at the family farm outside the town of Little Falls, Herkimer County, New York. The son of Mr. and Mrs. Fayette Baum, he came from a family that was of Dutch colonial origin, tracing their roots in New York back to 1662. His early education took place in the Little Falls public schools, but around 1900, when he was in his early teens, his family moved to Syracuse, New York, where he completed high school and entered the architecture program at Syracuse University in 1905. It is unclear what influences may have initially attracted Baum to a career as an architect. His father worked as a salesman in Syracuse, first in a shoe store and later for a firm that manufactured lubricating oil. Baum’s grandfather, however, to

INTRODUCTION

House of Edward C. Delafield, Fieldston Hill, Bronx, New York

whom he was particularly close, had a keen interest in the restoration and remodeling of rural farm structures and may well have provided the younger Baum’s first exposure to the building arts. Working his way through college by selling display advertising on desk blotters, Baum graduated from Syracuse University in 1909, winning an architectural fellowship and membership in Tau Sigma Delta, the architectural honorary fraternity. In January 1912 he married Katherine Crouse and shortly thereafter moved to New York City, where they leased an apartment on upper Riverside Drive. After brief stints of employment with the architectural firms Boring & Tilton and Kirby, Petit & Green, Baum joined the office of Frank M. Andrews & Company, an architect-developer of urban hotels. During the two years he spent with the Andrews firm, Baum was involved with projects such as Herald Square’s McAlpin Hotel and the Taft Hotel in New Haven, Connecticut.

Eager to escape the constraints of apartment living, Baum and his wife took an extensive tour of the recently commenced residential community of Fieldston, under the personal direction of its founder and developer, Edward Delafield. Begun in 1910 on the rolling hills of the Delafield family’s large West Bronx estate, Fieldston was similar to communities such as the Sage Foundation’s Forest Hills Gardens in Queens, the Woodward family’s development of Chestnut Hill in Philadelphia, and Mariemont of the Emery family in Cincinnati. In these communities, lot size, house design, and community planning were dictated by a series of covenants and deed restrictions established and enforced by the development’s sponsor. Unlike them, however, Fieldston allowed no commercial buildings, apartment complexes, or connected multifamily dwellings. Nor did it contemplate any mingling of economic classes, intending its generously sized lots on rambling suburban lanes

INTRODUCTION

exclusively for those who had achieved a comfortable level of affluence. Impressed with the Fieldston development, Baum built the first of his residential designs, a small house in the Dutch Colonial style, for himself and his family in 1913. Two years later, he established independent practice as an architect in this house. In 1916 Delafield commissioned him to undertake extensive alterations to the Delafield family mansion, and that same year witnessed Baum’s move to quarters in the Fieldston development’s sales offices. For his growing family, Baum also tackled the design of a larger house, Sunnybank, at 5001 Goodrich Avenue. Clearly blessed with the imprimatur and approbation of the community’s founder, Baum would create some 140 residences between 1914 and 1939 at Fieldston and the adjacent community of Riverdale in a remarkably versatile repertoire of Dutch, Georgian, Colonial, English Tudor, and Mediterranean styles. Though small in size, Baum’s designs were uniformly distinguished by their expert handling of mass and scale, impeccable craftsmanship and fine detailing, and integration of every imaginable modern convenience in an increasingly servant-less age. As architectural writer and critic Matlack Price observed in the 1927 monograph on Baum’s work, “With houses of moderate size the architect is constantly called upon to achieve the greatest possible effect with the greatest economy of means.” Baum’s informal alliance with Delafield in essence led to his becoming an architect-developer, combining the roles of designer and real estate entrepreneur. With his work in Florida during the mid-1920s, he would continue this arrangement with John Ringling and builder Owen Burns. Entering the profession during what was already the twilight of the Great House era, Baum received relatively few large commissions. The federal income tax, post–World War immigration restrictions, and skyrocketing costs of land and construction greatly reduced the number of grand

residential establishments. Nevertheless, when presented with such an opportunity, Baum would prove more than worthy to the challenge. At Port Chester, New York, he fashioned Lawridge, a great asymmetrical Tudor manor for attorney Robert Law Jr., replete with carved-stone medieval battlements, decorated chimney flues; two-story, mullioned stained-glass bay windows; and, on the interiors, a wealth of elaborately carved woodwork and paneling. Less overtly historicist and more typical of Baum’s characteristic restraint and simplicity was Arthur Hammerstein’s “Wildflower” on the shores of Long Island Sound at Whitestone, Queens. Here the architect created symmetrically balanced treatments of a separate house and garage connected by an open arcade, its Tudor elements reduced to the use of tapestry brickwork and touches of half-timbering. Later, as Baum’s practice expanded into suburban New Jersey, Connecticut, Westchester County, and Long Island, he would apply a similarly restrained coherence to residences in the Georgian and Mediterranean modes. In 1929, on a dramatic site in Riverdale overlooking the Hudson and New Jersey Palisades, Baum created a great Italian padrone’s villa for millionaire builder Anthony Campagna. With stuccoed walls, a red barrel-tile roof, a stately arched entrance porch, and a dramatic three-story stair tower, the Campagna house is approached by a treelined drive ending in a circular entrance court with central fountain. On its rear side, a triple-arched open loggia leads to a terrace and paired stairways accessing a formal Italian garden with reflecting pool. The house’s interiors were equally well appointed, sporting richly colored coffered ceilings and a host of ornamental marble carvings. Yet, for all its stately grandeur, the Campagna house seems modest and demure when compared to Ca’ d’Zan, the Sarasota, Florida, residence Baum designed for Ringling Brothers–Barnum & Bailey Circus owner John Ringling.

INTRODUCTION

A highly romantic interpretation of an ancient Venetian palazzo, Ca’ d’Zan, on the edge of Sarasota Bay, presented Baum with his most colorful and exacting clients. Traveling to Venice in 1924 with John and Mable Ringling prior to beginning work on the mansion, the architect realized that Mrs. Ringling’s artistic tastes and years spent researching exotic marbles, glass, and specific wall treatments would define the project’s scope and design. On her instruction, he created numerous architectural renderings documenting her favorite Venetian Gothic forms. Through countless, sometimes heated, discussions with his clients, Baum was able to coax John Ringling into abandoning a scheme for reproducing an exact replica of Stanford White’s Madison Square Garden tower on the entrance facade to Ca’ d’Zan, but failed to dissuade Mrs. Ringling from her determination to enclose the two-story bayside loggia, inspired by the Doges’ Palace at Venice, with multitinted, handblown Venetian glass. The commission included a gatehouse created to match the mansion, plus clay tennis courts, a marble swimming pool, and an 8,000-square-foot marble terrace for outdoor entertaining. The elaborate walnut walls the Ringlings purchased for their formal dining room were from an earlier Gilded Age mansion, and the walls, windows, and bar for the gentlemen’s taproom came from the famous Cicardi Restaurant in St. Louis, Missouri. Antique architectural elements installed as interior decorative features were shipped from Venice by the ton, as were exterior sculptures that enhanced the landscaping. The house was completed in October 1925 at a final cost of $1.5 million, with a commission to the architect estimated at $50,000. Mable Ringling demanded so many changes during the construction that Baum adjusted his usual percentage-fee structure to one based on time and materials, so that he would not lose money on the project. Ca’ d’Zan, or “House of John” in Venetian patois, dominates a 1,000-foot waterfront, standing

81 feet tall and 200 feet wide, with an interior space of 36,000 square feet. The magnificent Venetian Gothic-style architecture incorporates designs from some of the most famous of Venice’s 13th-, 14th-, and 15th-century buildings, with many elements taken from the Ca’ d’Oro, such as the Gothic quatrefoils, finials, and bosses flanking Gothic arches. All the terra-cotta balconies were recreations of Palazzo Contarini-Fasan displaying corollas in a reticulated pinwheel pattern supported by massive glazed brackets. The decorative details of the front door were taken from Palazzo Franchetti, and numerous marble inserts were copied from the Palazzo Dario. The Giralda Tower of Seville, Spain, provided the inspiration for the belvedere, which is clad in glazed tiles in a diaper pattern matching that of the Doges’ Palace. The O. W. Ketcham Terra Cotta Works of Crum Lynne, Pennsylvania, created the striking glazed and unglazed terracotta that decorates Ca’ d’Zan’s exterior. Whimsical designs of flora and fauna were chosen as a theme, and tiles depicted cornucopias as well as colorful baskets of flowers, vines, tulips, and orchids. John Ringling even embedded decorative Masonic symbols throughout the mansion, representing the secret society to which he and his brothers belonged. Within the house, New York artist Willy Pogany created two dramatic ceiling murals: the Ballroom’s Dancers of Nations and the Game Room’s Carnevale in Venezia. Painter Robert Webb Jr. was commissioned to decorate the other ceilings and doors throughout Ca’ d’Zan. Following Mable Ringling’s death in 1929 and her husband’s seven years later, Ca’ d’Zan and the Ringling’s art collection were willed to the state of Florida. If John Ringling sometimes proved a difficult client for Baum, he was also a most remunerative one. Partnering with Ringling and Ca’ d’Zan’s builder, Owen Burns, Baum opened a Florida office, which produced several Mediterranean-style villas for Ringling’s major land developments on the

INTRODUCTION

John Ringling at the Formal Entrance to Ca’d’Zan

Sarasota Keys. Ringling was also the owner of Sarasota’s El Vernona Hotel (1926) and the Burns Realty Company Building (1925), where Baum’s firm maintained its offices. Ringling’s wide influence in Sarasota also led to commissions for Baum for the Sarasota Times Building (1926), the Broadway and Pineapple Apartment Houses (both 1926), the Sarasota County Court House (1927), and the First Presbyterian Church. Additional projects for an Athletic Club and YMCA building were on the boards in Baum’s office when the 1926 hurricane brought an end to the Florida real estate boom. Outside of Fieldston and Riverdale, Sarasota has the largest concentration of buildings designed by Dwight James Baum. As Baum’s skills as a designer of houses gained greater acclaim and recognition, residential commissions came to his Fieldston office from clients far removed from New York City, notably, a

handsome Greek Revival residence at Syracuse, New York, for W. L. Sporborg and a sprawling Tudor-Jacobean mansion at Cincinnati, Ohio, for radio manufacturer and Cincinnati Reds baseball team owner Powel Crosley Jr. In the early 1930s, Baum undertook the exterior restoration and extensive interior alteration of the 1772 William Gibbes house on the South Battery in Charleston, South Carolina, for its new owner, Mrs. Washington A. Roebling. Baum’s work on the Gibbes house also included the alteration of its former stable and slave quarters into a garage and service building. More extensive was the architect’s complete remodeling of Fairholme, the muscular Victorian Fairman Rogers villa at Newport, Rhode Island, designed in 1875 by Philadelphia architect Frank Furness. For client Count Alphonso P. Villa, Baum refashioned the house and its many additions into an angular mélange of Tudor-Elizabethan and English

INTRODUCTION

Renaissance styles. Somewhat incongruously, the interiors of Fairholme are predominantly Georgian and 18th-century French to harmonize with the Villas’ extensive collection of period furniture. Thoroughly and appropriately medieval, however, was the 1932 Hall of Armor that Baum added to Riverdale’s Wave Hill for its owners, Mr. and Mrs. Batsford Dean. Beginning in the early 1920s, Baum began to supplement his prodigious domestic work with commissions of a more institutional and commercial nature. These started with a combination clubhouse and community meeting hall in the architect’s familiar Dutch Colonial mode for the Riverdale Country Club and also included a series of Georgian-flavored restaurant interiors for the Stouffer’s chain at 538 Fifth Avenue and 100 East 42nd Street; the expansive, Italo-Mediterranean Arrowhead Inn at Riverdale for restaurateur Ben C. Riley; and a firehouse that served both the Riverdale and Fieldston communities. The latter half of the decade saw Baum collaborating with architect John Russell Pope on campus plans for Syracuse University and for Hartwick College in Oneonta, New York. Although neither of these plans was implemented, Baum did receive a number of commissions from his alma mater, including Hendricks Chapel, the School of Medicine and Memorial Hospital, and the Maxwell Hall of Citizenship. Other institutional buildings include works at Clarkson and Wells College in New York, Middlebury College in Vermont, and the Little Falls Hospital in his birthplace. Perhaps Baum’s finest architectural achievement in the nonresidential field was the West Side YMCA building on Manhattan’s West 63rd Street, completed in 1930, a massive, 16-story, throughblock structure housing three gymnasiums, two swimming pools, handball courts, clubrooms, and an auditorium, plus dormitory quarters for 600.

Baum cleverly disguised the building’s great bulk, clad in light-toned buff brick and varicolored terracotta, through an almost sculptural use of setbacks at varying heights, causing it to appear from the street as a series of individual, slender towers clustered around a central, eight-sided campanile. Gracefully evocative Lombard Romanesque and Gothic detailing further enhanced the West Side Y’s unexpected aura of charm and romance. Like many of his architectural contemporaries during the lean years of the 1930s, Baum pursued commissions for public works from local and national government, collaborating with Edward Knowles on the United States Post Office and the Federal Building at Flushing, New York, and working on his own to design a pair of public swimming pools, one at Tompkinsville on Staten Island, the other at Saratoga Springs, New York, where, incidentally, he also drew the plans for a spring-water bottling plant. Baum’s long service as architectural writer and editor for Good Housekeeping resulted in another interesting phase in his architectural career, the design of model houses as exhibits at the 1933 Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago and the New York World’s Fair of 1939–40. Here he experimented with a new and unfamiliar style, the streamlined classicism of the depression-era Art Moderne, yet he again endowed these ephemeral structures with his characteristic refinement and good taste. At the New York fair, Baum also served as architect for the Home Furnishings and YMCA pavilions. On December 13, 1939, as he was rushing down West 45th Street to catch a bus home to Fieldston, Dwight James Baum suffered a massive heart attack and died almost immediately. Aged 53, he had been a practicing architect for a mere 25 years. — RONALD MCCARTY Keeper of Ca’ d’Zan

P REFACE (from the 1927 monograph)

HERE is a familiar old proverb to the effect that “The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.” But when the homely implements that make language so picturesque are out of date, proverbs must be revised. Cradles are gone (they’re not good for the baby), so we might change it to read, “The roof that shelters the child saves the nation.” In this megalomania of commercialism, with our eyes crossed between dodging the street traffic below and trying to get a glimpse of a skyscraper above, we are sometimes inclined to forget that there is such a thing as a house. Yet in the home all worth-while culture, taste, and artistic appreciation has its inception. Hence the domestic architect is in a way your most important artist. By his influence over the budding taste of youth, he helps determine architectural excellence in other fields. If his vision is broad, his influence will be far-reaching. That is the point. He must have a broad appreciation of many manners. Almost any old fiddler can play one tune well if he plays it often enough, but it takes a virtuoso to play a Beethoven concerto, a Grieg sonata, and a sentimental ballad by Irving Berlin all in the same evening. The same is true of all the arts, painting, poetry, literature, the drama. Many a painter by choosing some favorite theme such as “October Hills,” and sticking to his guns, has supported a wife and family in comfort and had chicken twice a week for a lifetime. There are

dozens of novelists and playwrights who have wrought their life’s work around one plot. Architecture is no exception. Looking back over the past generation, you can count on the fingers of one hand the architects who have been masters of more than one style. The reason is not far to seek, and, let it be said, it is not all the architect’s fault. He may have studied conscientiously to perfect his knowledge of Tudor, and when his first houses are finished, every prospective builder who sees them expects Tudor from him. With the demand for Tudor ringing monotonously in his ears, it is small wonder that, no matter what ambitions he may have for other styles, he finally capitulates to the popular demand, and Tudor it is for the rest of his life. It is only the exceptional architect who has the force of will and the adventurous spirit to roam through all styles and all periods and make himself master of them all. And it seems to me that this is the signal achievement of Dwight James Baum in the realm of domestic architecture. He has had the spirit and the gusto to tackle Colonial, Georgian, Italian, Tudor, etc., and to emerge in every case with banners flying. The best of his achievements in any single style is equal to the best from the pencil of the specialists. Architecturally Mr. Baum is no ordinary fiddler, but a virtuoso in his own right. H ARVEY W ILEY C ORBETT (C. 1927)

THE WORK OF DWIGHT JAMES BAUM

Aerial View

Architectural Rendering by Earl Purdy