In Blake Alexander’s collection I recently came across this cookbook, titled Texas Cooking Under Six Flags. It was written by members of the Holy Cross Episcopal Church in Blake’s hometown, Paris, Texas. These kinds of cookbooks were common during that time as a way for members of a community – in this instance a church – to share their favorite recipes. We can see here that they also shared their personalities. I’ve included some of my favorite images from the cookbook. The illustrations all seem to have been done by Lorene Rutherford, likely a congregant of the Holy Cross Episcopal Church. I hope you’ll enjoy looking at these as much as I did!
The Visual Resources Collection (VRC), part of the School of Architecture at The University of Texas at Austin, recently opened their new exhibit “Visual Transpositions: A Photographic Dialog Between Austin Past and Present.” The exhibit contains images that explore Austin’s Congress Avenue. Images taken by current VRC staff are exhibited beside images from the 1950’s and 1960’s. The mid-century images were done by Blake Alexander and Marian Davis, School of Architecture and Fine Arts faculty, respectively. In a striking reversal of expectations, the modern images are black and white while the older images are in color. The images are not meant to be a direct comparison of then-and-now, but rather they explore the feeling of Congress Avenue then, and “its environs as they stand today.”
Congress Avenue, Austin, TX. June Jung, 2013.
The VRC is located in Sutton Hall Room 3.128, and contains a variety of collections and equipment available to School of Architecture students. The exhibit can be seen through August 16th, 2013, between the hours of 8am and 5pm Monday through Friday. For more information, visit the VRC’s exhibits page.
We learned this morning of the death of Austin benefactor Mary Margaret Farabee. Mrs. Farabee was active in many philanthropic, cultural, and educational initiatives throughout her life. She had a particular impact on the Austin historic preservation community and worked on the preservation of a number of significant structures. She collaborated with Blake Alexander through the years, and she was also involved in the establishment of the Charles Moore House. All those who knew her will miss her, and she will be remembered as a champion of arts, architecture, and history in Austin. For more information about her life and work, visit the Austin American Statesman.
Mary Margaret Farabee, by Ray Barrera. Courtesy of the Austin American Statesman. http://www.statesman.com/photo/news/local/mary-margaret-farabee/ppchC/
I wrote a few weeks ago about Blake Alexander, the man whose manuscript collection I am processing. I want to spend a few minutes today telling you about his collection. As I previously mentioned, Blake was a professor in the School of Architecture for over 40 years. As you can imagine, he not only taught courses, but he was involved in a number of University and School of Architecture committees, groups, and organizations through the years. In addition to his time at the University, he also had an active professional career, dealing with architectural history and historic preservation in Austin, in the greater Texas region, and throughout the United States.
The materials in Blake’s collection came to the Archive in various donations over the course of twenty years. The first donations came in the 1990’s when Blake retired from teaching. He stayed active professionally and in the University community, and continued to create and collect materials. As he entered the later years of his life, he left his home where he had lived for over thirty years and moved into an active retirement community. That brought with it a donation of items to the Archive. And finally at his death in 2011 the Archive received the remainder of his papers. Throughout this time the Archive’s Curator, Beth Dodd, worked with Blake to understand the materials he had, and make sure that we knew as much about them so that when the time came to process them we could make them available to researchers in the best way possible.
So what exactly do you do with scores of bankers boxes filled with papers representing a lifetime of work?
Blake Alexander Collection in process
I first started with understanding as much as I could about Blake and his work. I read books which he published, researched the history of the School of Architecture where he spent so much of his time, and worked to enhance my understanding of architectural history and historic preservation. I was lucky to be assisted in that endeavor by people who knew and worked with him. Then I spent time looking through the materials to see what stood out to me. I identified some main themes (or, series, which is what we call big groupings of materials that were created from the same activity). After that, I began to see, within the series, different sub-series and groupings relating to specific work or projects. This is what we call arrangement. And this arrangement evolved, and continues to evolve. I’ve listed below the arrangement as it stands now. But stay tuned, because by the time this project is finished in May, you will very likely see some changes. Our goal in arrangement is to keep the items as close as possible to the way that Blake had them, while making them accessible and useful for researchers. I think we have achieved that with this collection.
Personal Papers – As you can imagine, these are things relating to Blake’s personal life. We don’t have a lot of materials of this type, but things we do have pertain mainly to Blake’s own time as a student at The University of Texas at Austin.
Professional Papers – This series consists mostly of items that Blake created on a professional level, but that were not a direct result of his time working as a faculty member in the School of Architecture. Blake served on a number of professional associations, community organizations, and local government advisory committees. He also wrote and published extensively. All of these activities are represented here.
Faculty Papers – At first glance this seems straightforward. But the things that Blake did in his professional career and in his academic career often overlap. Every attempt was made to make things in this series very clearly relate to his time at the University. This series will be particularly helpful to people researching the creation of programs and curriculum in the School of Architecture, as Blake pioneered its architectural history and historic preservation programs.
Research and Reference Files – Blake collected materials to support his teaching, research, writing, and professional work. Because his interests overlapped, it is often impossible to distinguish what he used a particular news clipping, article, or brochure for. Because of this we have separated these research and reference files into their own series.
Travel – Blake traveled extensively. This travel was sometimes personal in nature, when Blake often traveled with friends. However he also collected information about buildings and sites he saw when traveling and used these in his teaching and writing. Again, these materials supported a variety of pursuits, so they are separated into their own series.
Postcards – This series is in many ways similar to both Research and Reference Files and Travel, but it is distinct because the collection of postcards – numbering around 6,500 – includes postcards that Blake obtained from his colleagues Marian Davis and Edward Maverick. They are a mix of postcards originating as correspondence (with writing and postal cancellations), and blank postcards, which we believe, were retained for their informational value.
Slides – In an era before computer presentation tools like digital photographs and Power Point, educators and professionals alike used photographic slides to share images of buildings, sites, and projects. This series has over 3,000 slides, some of which were scanned for Texas Architecture: A Visual History.
For the past five months I have been processing the Blake Alexander collection at the Alexander Architectural Archive. The collection belonged to Drury Blakeley Alexander, an ardent supporter of the Architecture and Planning Library, the namesake of its Archive, and an architecture professor and architectural historian. I’m writing today to tell you a little more about Blake.
Blake was born in Paris, Texas on February 4th, 1924. His mother was Katherine and his father Drury Blakeley. The world that Blake was born into in Paris was one of architectural growth and change. The city suffered a devastating fire in 1916, so when Blake and his brother John were growing up in the 1920’s, there was an incredible amount of re-building happening all around them. This, coupled with the significant examples of nineteenth century architecture which did survive, caused Blake to develop a deep appreciation for architecture, its history, and the way that it is influenced by and influences the places in which it exists.
After a stint at Paris Junior College, Blake made his way to the University of Texas in 1942 to study architecture, but was called away to serve in the United States Army. When he returned to the University in 1946 he had a taste of Europe and his path as an architectural historian was settled. He received his Bachelor of Architecture in 1950. At the time the study of architectural history was based in art history, and Blake sought out the guidance and advice of a young and vibrant art historian named Marian Davis. Blake and Marian began what would become a life-long friendship. She encouraged Blake to return to class, and he received his Bachelor of Science in Art. After that, he went on to Columbia University where he earned his Master of Arts in Art History in 1953.
It was only natural that Blake would be drawn back to the University of Texas. He spent time in Austin as a youngster, staying with family members who had a home on Wichita Avenue, before the 40 Acres’ inevitable growth had enveloped it. His grandfather’s sister, Ada Stone, was married to H.Y. Benedict, an early University president. And in his memoir, Oral Memoirs of Drury Blakeley Alexander, he said, “in Paris, of course, it was just the University” (28). So after a year teaching at Kansas State University, he came back to teach at his alma mater.
Blake’s professional career includes numerous achievements, which I will cover in another post. He passed away on December 11th, 2011. Later the following spring his friends and colleagues convened to remember the man’s illustrious career and life. I never had the opportunity to meet Blake, but I feel like I’ve gotten to know him a bit these past five months. His collection speaks to the fact that he was a constant professional, always a gentleman, and appreciated a good joke. His commitment to the education of architecture students at The University of Texas at Austin was never in question. He supported the library and developed the collections which would become the Archive which would bear his name. And to ensure that these materials would remain accessible, and the collections remain vibrant and relevant, he left as a final legacy a significant financial gift. The Blake Alexander Architectural Library Endowment will fund the purchase and maintenance of materials for generations of architecture students, and for that we are most thankful to Blake.
Come back for more updates about Blake’s collection, to be posted soon.
The Library of Drury Blakely Alexander is a collection of architectural books assembled by Drury Blakely Alexander (1924-2011), or Blake (as he preferred to be called), over the course of his celebrated teaching career. Professor Alexander was both an alumnus of, and a distinguished professor in, the University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture from 1955 to 1994. During his time at the University of Texas at Austin, he also laid the foundations for the school’s nationally important collection of architectural drawings, photographs, papers, and other ephemera that since 1997 has been known as the Alexander Architectural Archive. His library, which encompasses over 6,000 volumes, represents just one part of a generous bequest made by Professor Alexander to the University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture.
Since early this summer, I have been processing books and adding provenance notes to the many titles in Blake’s library. Professor Alexander’s primary interest was in making his books available to scholars and students, so this is being done to enable greater access to his extensive collection. Each week this blog will highlight one of the unique, beautiful, or interesting titles that have piqued my interest as I have sorted through the Library of Drury Blakely Alexander. Stay tuned!
Last week, the Alexander Architectural Archive celebrated the first few days of the Fall 2012 semester with an open house featuring drawings and other realia from the Charles W. Moore Archives. Moore’s professional archives reflect the architect’s esoteric approach to design represented in the many playful adaptations of familiar architectural tropes featured at the open house.
For more on Moore and his archives, contact the AAA.
When: Aug. 29- Aug. 31 – 9am to Noon & 1pm to 4pm Where:Alexander Architectural Archive (basement of Battle Hall)
Saint Matthews Church, Los Angeles, CA.
While searching for Ayres & Ayres, Architects volumes, I came across this issue of Atlantic Terra Cotta, a trade publication illustrating historical and contemporary terra cotta use, typically in Europe, and featuring buildings employing materials garnered from Atlantic Terra Cotta. The fifth volume highlights Bologna’s Chiesa del Corpus Domini, a renaissance church erected in 1456 and remodeled extensively in 1481 utilizing terra cotta to express various architectural details including the church’s entrance. But that is not what interested me most about this specific issue. While the building was beautiful and its cultural and design history intriguing, it was the issue’s insert that captured my attention.
As I opened the issue and was once again frustrated when I failed to locate the signature Ayres & Ayres stamp, I noticed a familiar building–UT’s very own Battle Hall. A scant decade after its original construction, Battle Hall’s inimitable terra cotta features earned the building a spot in Atlantic Terra Cotta’s advertising portfolio. The simple spread–a single black-and-white photo, pithy headline (“Adding Charm to Dignity”) and three sentence blurb–celebrate the material as a contrasting affectation, enlivening Cass Gilbert’s “severely plain design” for the University’s original library. The narrative here is striking. By coupling the rhetoric of dignity with charm, Atlantic Terra Cotta establishes itself within an emergent modernist idiom rendering the idiom itself accessible while preserving the relevance of a material oft employed for additive components–a discreet message that trades editorial for future profit.
For more on the Atlantic Terra Cotta Company, check out this Alexander Architectural Archive finding aid.
The Martin S. Kermacy Collection is a collection of architectural books assembled by Martin S. Kermacy (1915-2007), a distinguished professor in the University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture from 1947 to 1983. The collection, which encompasses 464 volumes, was accessioned in 1998 along with the architectural drawings (prints), photographs, slides, maps, and art currently housed in the Alexander Architectural Archives. Although the primary focus of the Martin S. Kermacy Collection is the Austrian Secession, it also contains rare and important imprints on artists and architects from around the world.
I have spent the past school year continuing a project, first begun by Alana Verminski in the spring of 2011, to add provenance notes to all of the titles in the collection. This was done in order to enable greater access to the Martin S. Kermacy Collection and enhance awareness of Professor Kermacy’s generous gift to the University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture. Although this type of cataloging could quickly become tedious, I was never bored because the books in the collection are so remarkable. Each week this blog will spotlight one of the rare, important, beautiful, or simply interesting treasures I found in the Martin S. Kermacy Collection. Stay tuned!
Blog from the University of Texas Architecture and Planning Library
