Architecture

St John the Divine – A Building and a Gospel

 

 

In the summer of 1974, I left my Massachusetts prep school as one of the few graduates not intending to go on to college. I moved to Manhattan in a youthfully naive venture to try and replicate an aspect of the life of my hero, Frank Lloyd Wright. I wanted to follow his career path of eventually obtaining architectural licensing through practicing in the field, something that was and may still be possible.

Unfortunately, as a career move this was at an improvident time, largely due to what was then called “the oil crisis,” and its effect upon the economy. No architectural office was hiring beginning draftsmen, and some were taking on licensed architects to do the kind of basic drafting work for which I wanted to be hired. The former Frank Lloyd Wright associate, Edgar Tafel, was most gracious in allowing me to come to his New York City office for an interview and then by how he tolerantly responded to my youthful exuberance and evident lack of preparedness for the work. Philip Johnson was less patient with me. When I managed somehow to reach him by phone, he said, “Look – I don’t do the hiring around here. Talk to my associate!”

I had found a room a block and a half from the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, which was a prominent local landmark and soon became a welcome place to visit. Only years later did I discover that the house in which I had been able to rent my room, the former Alpha Delta Phi fraternity house, on 114th St, opposite the Columbia University Library, was where Thomas Merton had lived when he was a student there.

I would walk over to St. John’s, an alluring place to stop and rest. Now, at this point in my life, I would say it was ‘to pray.’ But I would not have said that then. Yet, as one beautiful phrase in The Book of Common Prayer Catechism puts it, “Prayer is responding to God.” Those are profound words. If taken seriously, we can recognize how many, many people in this world ‘respond to God,’ quite spontaneously and quite naturally – and aside from doctrine or ritual.

The magnificent space and architectural achievement of the unfinished cathedral of St. John the Divine was a profoundly converting space for me, in ways I did not realize then, and in ways that would not really make sense to me until much later.

Drawn to this place, absorbed with my intuitions about its architecture, and visiting frequently with inquiries, I volunteered to become a docent, a kind of tour guide for visitors before places like this cathedral became commercially oriented, leading to the charging of fees and the like. In the process of my time as a guide, I learned many arcane and obscure things, among them the size and height of the granite columns surrounding the main altar (54’ tall, 6’ in diameter); the number and architecturally significant variations among the chapels adjacent to the ambulatory surrounding the apse that encloses the high altar; as well as significant features of other side chapels in addition to the crypt.

If you had asked me then about the nature of my interest in that building, I would have said it was purely of architectural significance. Ask me now and I will tell you that I was seeking a closer experience of what St John the Divine shares with us in his Gospel. I was – as we say in a paradoxical way – unconsciously looking for God. But what I was really looking for, as we all do, is the experience of being found… and of feeling found, by God.

I think it is also providential that my year in New York, and the brief time I served as an occasional volunteer guide at the Cathedral, was when Canon Edward West was Sub-Dean, and Madeleine L’Engle was officially the cathedral librarian. I may have had only passing contact with either of them, but both were exemplars of how the arts may draw people into a more direct experience of what our Christian faith is all about. The Cathedral of St. John the Divine has represented this vision and value for decades.

Where St. John the Divine as a building nurtured my nascent spiritual awareness, the Gospel given to us through St. John the Divine, and the hymn-poems in his Revelation, have been for me a key, a doorway, and a beckoning gateway into a greater fullness of life.

 

The Architecture of Sacre Coeur in Paris

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This past weekend, we had the opportunity to watch the men’s and women’s Olympic long distance cycling events, involving 80-90 riders. After multiple hours, these races took them from outside of Paris back into the city. The telecasts of the races highlighted the latter segments, which included the challenging ascents to Montmartre, as the participants sped their way through and past the large crowds gathered on the hillside surrounding the church of Sacre Coeur. As they did, race commentators noted that the church is said to be Paris’s second-most visited tourist site after the Eiffel Tower.

With its soaring lines and its location on one of the tallest elevations in Paris, along with its stone surfaces, Sacre Coeur may remind us of some medieval European cathedrals. Despite its historic appearance it is a relatively modern building. Construction began in 1875, and concluded in 1914. What first strikes many viewers is the building’s structural emphasis upon height, reminiscent of Gothic predecessors, which is accentuated by its notably elongated or stretched rather than hemispherical domes (as is evident in the drawing above).

What is unique about this building is its homage to the Greek Cross plan, including its Romanesque arches. These features recall the general design of Constantinople’s great church, Hagia Sophia, and the common pattern for Islamic mosque architecture subsequently derived from it. Sacre Coeur’s Greek Cross plan is also reminiscent of Venice’s medieval basilica of San Marco. Roughly contemporary with Sacre Coeur, is H.H. Richardson’s evocative Trinity Church in Boston (1872). Like Trinity Church, Sacre Coeur’s design has been described as neo-Byzantine (as well as Romanesque), and the label fits specifically in connection with the historical precedents of Christian and Islamic origin just mentioned. Sacre Coeur’s design-dependence upon this history is most evident by studying the drawing provided below.

The above rendering of the floor plan of Sacre Coeur is vital for appreciating how this church building is as characteristic of the Christian East as it is of the West. The key point to observe involves the inner four columns that support the large central dome, and the four smaller domes on the peripheral corners that encompass the central square. These smaller domes as well as the huge principal one are suggested in the floor plan by the patterns of concentric circles adjacent to the four columns.

Between the domed spaces we find four rectangular areas of space that parallel one another in size, forming the arms of the Greek Cross. Like mosques geographically oriented along an axis directed toward Mecca, Christian churches traditionally are oriented with the altar on the eastern or sunrise side of the building, in honor of the Resurrection. Yet, due to the chosen site for a new church, the structure might have its chancel and altar on the north side of the building, as is the case with Sacre Coeur.

The apse, or altar area of Sacre Coeur is indicated in the above drawing by the Latin cross-shaped floor pattern. It is mirrored in length by the entrance portico, shown in the lower portion of the drawing. The semi-circular chapels surrounding the apse and its altar reflect an homage to Western and Latin medieval Gothic precedents. In Western, Gothic-inspired church architecture, the placement of these chapels is thought to represent the thorn of crowns placed on Christ’s head.

The choir or chancel at the liturgical ‘east’ side of the church

The remarkable ceiling mosaic over the choir

Another distinctively ‘Eastern’ feature of this building is its adornment with mosaics, and principally by the vast mosaic covering the ceiling over the chancel and choir, above the main altar. Designed by the noted painter, Luc-Olivier Merson, whose Annunciation painting I have previously featured, the mosaic is composed of some 25,000 ceramic tiles, many of which are gilded. With this church dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, it is not surprising to see the Lord depicted with outstretched arms and the golden namesake of the building emblazoned on his chest. Yet, even with this distinctively Western motif, the mosaic recalls the frequent choice in the East to portray Christ the Pantocrator, or the Almighty, in a mosaic or painting on the surface of a principal dome or semi-dome in a church.

I admit to this. Sacre Coeur in Paris has in the past looked to me like a Disney park caricature of a grand, historically classic, stone church. Having studied the plan and its design with more attention, as well as learning more about the original architect and about many of its details, I have a heightened appreciation for this remarkable and liturgically conducive building.

 

Finding Beauty in the Most Unexpected Places

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Actor Koji Yakusho portraying Hirayama looking upwards, in the film Perfect Days

 

An improbable premise underlies the remarkable film, Perfect Days, and it is displayed in two principal ways. A Tokyo public toilet cleaner has a positive attitude, even a cheerful spirit, as he approaches his daily routine of attending to places where other people leave their waste. And yet, the primary places where this man is lucky to work are the architecturally significant public toilets commissioned and built for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. The film portrays these places well. Some have suggested that the architectural features of these structures may have inspired the movie’s production. Nevertheless, the film is centered upon one man’s approach to how he lives every day.

He is a man about whom we know only his surname, and we learn more about his daily routine than we do about his inner life. The latter, his interests and perhaps aspirations, are suggested by the books he reads and the music to which he listens while driving. Many scenes depict him at his work. But the film does this in ways that do not romanticize his occupation, while he is shown cleaning and polishing toilet bowls and seats, as well as sinks and other aspects of plumbing. The film skillfully negotiates the ambiguous terrain lying between a heroic portrayal of an apparently righteous man, and a sentimental celebration of an unreal figure.

A montage of some of the public toilets featured in Perfect Days

The approach to life epitomized by Hirayama in the film is one of contentment. He models someone who accepts the limitations presented by the contexts in which many of us live, and he displays an openness to unexpected moments of discovered and quiet beauty. The film is not overtly spiritual. Yet, these qualities may represent – to some Western viewers like me – compelling reflections of Japanese culture as it has been shaped by Buddhism.

Hirayama at work on a hobby, Bonsai

In addition to the overt paradoxes at the heart of the film – a happy toilet cleaner and beautiful public toilets – the film subtly presents other aspects of Japanese society that Western visitors might notice. In what may surprise many who are not of Japanese heritage, regarding a very private culture where people typically meet one another in commercial establishments rather than in personal dwelling places, public baths with full nudity are common. I experienced occasional visits to public baths in my youth, growing up in Japan.

Hirayama in the neighborhood bath house

And within the context of this very private culture, some Tokyo public restrooms were created with transparent glass walls, appearing to risk users to full disclosure (the glass walls magically become opaque when the doors are locked).

Three motifs or tropes in the film are memorable. Hirayama is portrayed as always looking up to the sky when emerging from his home in the morning on his way to work, and is also seen gazing upwards (as in the photo at the top of this post). This suggests that he unconsciously senses a connection with something bigger than himself, and this may be the source of his frequently displayed habit of smiling at others.

Another motif, surely related to the first, is the employment of black and white sequences that portray flickering images, usually of dappled sunlight glimpsed through tree limbs, which Hirayama captures with his old-fashioned film camera. Most often, he seems to take these photos during his lunch breaks in a local park. In relation to these images, the movie highlights the Japanese word, and concept, of komorebi, which in a single word expresses the idea of sunshine filtering through the leaves of trees overhead.

The third is the employment by the movie makers of the Sumida River in Tokyo, long celebrated in Japanese art, over which we see Hirayama cross while walking, driving, or biking. The river appears to symbolize a form of divide between the part of the city where his small apartment is located, and the more elegant commercial district where he usually works.

My favorite image of Tokyo’s Sumida River in art, a woodblock print by Kobayashi, Kiyochika ({1847-1915} name in traditional Japanese order)

These juxtapositions in Perfect Days of contrasting details, color versus black and white, and interior privacy and public life, along with the harmony in which they are presented, distinguish this film. To me, it is remarkable that this movie was made by a Western filmmaker, regardless of the assistance provided by Japanese colleagues. A studied sensitivity to what I know about Japanese culture is evident in the film’s portrayal of this fictional character in improbable circumstances, as it invites us to discover – along with Hirayama – beauty in the most unexpected places.

Hirayama, gazing upwards, holding his old-fashioned film camera

 

Chora Church: A Byzantine Treasure

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Dome over the Side Church (or parecclesion), Chora Church

 

We missed being able to visit this remarkable place by a day! Sadly, after staying in Istanbul for four nights, the historic Chora Church that had undergone four years of renovation would not reopen until the day after our departure.

Dating back to the time of Constantine in the early fourth-century, the Chora Church was built as part of a monastary outside the walls that were constructed when Constantinople became the new capitol of the Roman Empire in 330 A.D. Its rural location led to its formal title, Church of the Holy Savior in the Country (or Chorai, in Greek).

Interior of the original central nave (naos) in use as a mosque, with Christian mosaics and frescoes covered over

Chora, like the later Hagia Sophia, has over its history served as a church, a mosque, a museum, and now once again as a mosque. As I have noted in prior posts, the fact that buildings like Hagia Sophia and Chora have been able to transition from church to mosque without significant structural change helps us perceive how what became normative in mosque architecture had its origins in churches from the early Christian, pre-Islamic era. As a precursor to Hagia Sophia, the original walls of Chora may provide one of the earliest examples of what would develop into the cruciform plan for churches, a design pattern that became predominant in the Christian East. This approach to design for worship spaces is centered on a square, covered by a dome, a departure from the early rectangular basilica plan favored in the western Roman region.

Floor plan of the Chora Church

In the floor plan above, note the subtle Greek Cross pattern of the central nave (or naos) below the large dome. As this plan indicates, the original, late Classical period Chora was significantly expanded during the Byzantine period, between the 11th century and the 14th century.

Section drawings of Chora Church showing the location of some murals and frescoes

In addition to its cruciform plan, and the church’s great antiquity, another feature that distinguishes Chora is its impressive collection of well-preserved Byzantine mosaics and frescoes, largely from the early fourteenth-century.

Visitors to Chora admiring the murals in the Byzantine-added “side church”

The bulk of the surviving mosaics and frescoes are located primarily in the side church (or parecclesion). This may be due to the central nave or naos having been used for Islamic worship during a significant portion of the building’s history. One of the many beautiful frescoes depicts a common theme found in works of art from the Christian East, that of the Harrowing of Hell. Images based on this theme depict the Christian belief concerning the first saving actions of the Risen Christ: pulling Adam and Eve out of their tombs and the clutches of the underworld (image below).

A fresco in the Side Church – Anastasis (or Resurrection): The Harrowing of Hell

A beautiful example of the Chora mosaics depicting Joseph and Mary’s enrollment for taxation in Bethlehem

Interior view of the side church

Like the later Hagia Sophia, Chora Church – for a time as a museum and now a mosque – still serves as an edifying spiritual place for Christians and people of other faiths to visit. For Orthodox Christians in the East, Chora’s numerous mosaics and frescoes provide multiple opportunities to (re)engage with biblical stories and with articles of faith in a way that the contemporaneous art in the much larger Arena (or Scrovegni) Chapel in Padua, Italy, provides enrichment for Western, Latin, Christians.

Exterior view of the southeast corner of Chora Church (note the later addition of a ‘flying buttress’)

A 1903 photograph of the west entrance to Chora in the late Ottoman period

 

Geoffrey Jellicoe: Finding and Creating Beauty in the World

Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe at his London home shortly before his 90th birthday

 

Discerning beauty always presents an opportunity to experience joy. As many find, though, creating representations of beauty, as a chosen task, can be difficult.

Alive in my memory are images of areas of New York City and decaying areas of urban New England, during my high school years in the early 1970’s. I remember asking myself, as an aspiring architect and artist, how might I meet the challenge of creating examples of beauty in the world as we presently find it? Well, after some years, I discovered the life and work of Geoffrey Jellicoe, which provide an example of one way of answering questions that stay with me.

Late in his life, at a time when many seek the solace of retirement from actively pursuing such questions, Geoffrey Jellicoe took on a significant challenge. How might 150 acres of a seemingly forlorn stretch of a barrier island, adjacent to an urban area that has long surrendered to the declining effects of industrialization, be redeemed and transformed into a place for renewal by a humanistic vision of what might yet be?

Jellicoe, at the age of 80, and to the surprise of some, accepted the opportunity to submit a proposal for what might become the Moody Gardens. In the process, he embraced the idea of working with a hundred-plus acres of neglected sea marsh and dune land on Galveston Island. This site even included a need to take into account an existing but under-used local airport. Nevertheless, the esteemed landscape architect, Jellicoe, envisioned a large facility centered on the nurture of human flourishing by designing what he hoped would become a significant botanical garden. Its plan would be dedicated to re-creating documented historic human efforts to re-shape areas of the world through the practices of horticulture and landscape architecture.

The Texas-based Moody Foundation, a philanthropic organization committed to education, health, and community development, found in Jellicoe the person they believed was best equipped to provide a master plan for what might become Moody Gardens, in the vicinity of Houston. And he brought to this challenge a lifetime of learning and accomplished work, which fitted him well to address this auspicious opportunity.

Encountering Moody Gardens as it has come to be, a vibrant, attractive, and an apparently successful facility, we may be mislead about Jellicoe’s orginal concept for the project. In presenting itself now as a tourist destination with resort-like amenities, Jellicoe’s early proposals for the Gardens seem fanciful if not also highly visionary. Yet, there may be significant things we can learn from his initial plans, and the concepts he sought to embody in his hoped-for realization of the project.

I can suggest a few of these potential learnings by posing some rhetorical questions – questions that I hope to address in future posts.

  • What is ‘our human nature,’ that we hope or believe we all share? What environments are most suited for nurturing the flourishing of our human nature?
  • What is Nature, and what humanly-created environments are most true to Nature? What things or places do we consider to be ‘natural’?
  • Why does it require human effort, financial capital, and institutional resources to facilitate, maintain, and preserve ‘natural’ environments? (Consider here the scope of the funding for the National Park Service, and the United States Forest Service.)
  • And, why is concern about the natural world- the ‘environment’ – properly a matter for serious theological reflection, and one especially related to our regard for Beauty? Why do our concerns about the natural world have theological significance?

Geoffrey Jellicoe at work in his garden

Hagia Sophia’s Wondrous Dome
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Note the triangular semi-spherical panels (with angel images) on either side of the central arch

 

The dome over the center of Hagia Sophia has since its construction been an object of fascination, as much for its design as for its size. To stand within the space it covers is awe-inspiring. Though not unprecedented in form, the support structure for this massive dome sets the building apart. The architectural challenge the church’s designers overcame arose from a desire to set a circular dome over a square structure, especially if and when the walls of that structure would feature sizable arches.

In a traditional four-cornered room, and one in which arches (spanning the side walls) converge at the corners, a vertical line from floor to ceiling defines the juncture point of any two walls. A circular dome set on top of such a four-cornered structure would rest upon the walls, but upon the walls’ center points, above the arches. Most likely resting, therefore, upon the weakest points of those arched walls. Yet, the dome would not receive direct support at the building’s corners, usually the building’s strongest points, because the perimeter of the dome’s base would sit away from the square corners.

The genius of Hagia Sophia’s immense dome was the incorporation of what are formally termed “pendentives.” This architectural feature can be seen in the photo at the top, in the triangle-shaped, semi-spherical corner panels that allow the four corner columns to support the essential load-bearing portions of the dome’s base. It is illustrated in the diagram below (with the letter “a” representing the pendentives).

An illustration of a dome resting above pedentives

Readers of my prior post, upon the Greek Cross plan for Hagia Sophia, will observe how this mosque-cathedral has a basilica or rectangular shape at the upper level, while yet featuring a Greek Cross-shaped floor plan (see below). This is due the absence of half or semi-domes extending from the north and south sides of the building as they observably do on both the west and east ends.

Hagia Sophia floor plan, showing semi-domes (indicated by dotted lines) over the east and west ends of the Greek Cross floor plan, on either side of the central dome
Instead of the presence of half or semi-domes below the great arches on the upper level of the north and south sides of Hagia Sophia we find what are called “tympanaum.” These are wall screens that are punctuated by windows (see below).
A view of the tympanaum (or wall screen) below the dome on the south side of Hagia Sophia’s prayer space
Subsequent mosque designs, such as the breathtaking Süleymaniye Mosque in Istanbul (see below), took the same design concept forward while emphasizing the overall square shape of the Greek Cross.

These are some of the ways in which Hagia Sophia’s design set the stage for later mosque architecture. Later mosque plans tended to incorporate half or semi-domes on all four sides of the central, full-dome covered portion of the prayer space. In turn, these plans, as well as those of their predecessors, continue to influence the design of Christian churches in ways that can enhance the whole congregation’s participation in liturgy. (For more on this point, please see my prior post, “The Beauty of Hagia Sophia, and the Greek Cross”).

The Beauty of Hagia Sophia, and the Greek Cross

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Hagia Sophia (late 19th century photo), showing a later-added (and no-longer-extant) marble paneled exterior

 

The first great church in Christendom, and the largest for a thousand years, was the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. Many people think of this building as a mosque, the role in which it served from the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453 until it became a museum in 1935. The addition of minarets reinforces this historic identification of the building with Islam, and those tower-like structures once again serve (since 2020) as a means to broadcast the daily multiple summons to Muslims to attend the designated times of prayer.

This stunning building’s historical association with two of the worlds most prominent monotheistic religions has given rise to a paradox. The architectural form many of us readily associate with Islamic mosques, epitomized by present-day Hagia Sophia, is a form derived from a Christian house of worship. Most mosques, including those recently built around the world, have a structure reminiscent of this building, constructed under the reign of Justinian as the principal Christian cathedral of the late Roman or Byzantie empire, between 532 and 537 A.D.

Hagia Sophia as it sits today in modern Istanbul

The earliest Christian gathering places, before Christianity was officially recognized in the Roman Empire, were often in synagogues or in private homes as well as in safe outdoor places. Once Christians could build and maintain churches without interference, a common stylistic choice was to adopt the Roman basilica style of building, long used in Roman cities as locations for offices, courts, and for other public and business functions. They were usually designed with a rectagular floor plan, containing a central nave, accompanied by side aisles that were separated by columns supporting the central ceiling and roof.

Roof coverings over the side aisles were built at a lower height, allowing for clerestory windows in the nave above them, illuminating the central area. At one end was an apse, covered by a half or semi-dome. At the center of the apse was a dais where in Roman buildings magistrates sat, and which in later churches provided seating for the clergy.

Longitudinal plan for the Basilica of Maxentius and Constantine, Rome

Noticing how the above described spatial arrangement continues to be evident in modern churches helps us appreciate the significance of Justinian’s innovative plan for the Hagia Sophia. For the longitudinal Roman-derived spatial arrangement, evident in the basilica plan above, led in the West to the the placement of altars as well as the clergy attending them at one end of the building. Over time, these longitudinal basilica plans influenced Western medieval architects to design Gothic churches and cathedrals based loosely on the Latin cross, where the longitudinal length of the nave replicates the tall upright base of the cross, upholding the horizontal arms.

A common floor plan for Western, Latin, longitudinal church design (entrance at the west end; altar placed in the apse at the east end; nave is shaded)

By contrast, Justinian’s Hagia Sophia plan, widely influential in the Christian East, and subsequently adopted in Islamic architecture for mosques, is based on what is commonly called the Greek cross, where each of the four ‘arms’ of the cross are of equal length. Plans based upon the Greek Cross therefore lend themselves a to placement within a square and or a circle, rather than within a rectangle. They also provide scope for the placement of a large dome over the central and main part of the building.

Plan of Hagia Sophia (with an apse, but with a spatial arrangement based upon an equal-armed cross)

The effect of this Greek Cross-based development in church architecture has a symbolic significance in the liturgical use of buildings based upon it. The altar, even if placed near to one end of the building, sits more closely toward the center of the structure and within the resulting worship space. To be sure, the liturgical use of such church buildings in earlier centuries, and the theological views of those who worshipped in them, often implied hierarchical understandings of church membership, something common in the Latin West, as well. [Imagine what was subtly – if not intentionally – communicated when clergy were observed sitting in the places associated in the prior realm with public officials and the exercise of their offices.]

Yet, it is interesting to observe how a preference for Greek Cross (or circular) shaped building plans has received increased attention in modern liturgical renewal. This is because liturgical spaces based on such plans lend themselves more readily to a revived understanding of the Eucharist as an activity of the whole church, and not just of some who are designated if not also elevated to lead it, and provide its benefits.

 

In a subsequent post I will reflect on some further architectural features of Hagia Sophia and of designs based upon it.

 

The Mystic Rumi’s Burial Place
The burial place of the mystical Sufi poet, Rumi, in Konya, Turkey

Here are some photos from a recent visit to the mausoleum of the mystic Sufi poet, known in the West as Rumi. It is a very holy place for many who visit there.

The honorary coffin cover, sitting far above the entombed remains of the mystic Rumi
A Persian style multi-faceted dome in the same building
An interior view showing some of the remarkable calligraphy on the wall surfaces
A broader interior view
An original 13th century silver door
A replica small space in the courtyard adjacent to the mausoleum

Helen Nearing and Beautiful Stone Walls

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With the visionary but also impractical exuberance of youth, I graduated from high school imagining I would build my own house somewhere in New England. My design ideas were shaped by Frank Lloyd Wright while my notion of ‘responsible living’ was largely influenced by Henry David Thoreau as well as Helen and Scott Nearing. While already loving Wright’s architecture, my high school English teacher, Nick Fleck, opened a compelling new world for me through reading and learning about Thoreau and the Nearings. I identified with these mentors and the values they shared regarding building homes for themselves, and of living in harmony with the land.

Through books and articles, I then discovered an unexpected complementarity between the Nearings’ approach to home building in Vermont and Maine, and Frank Lloyd Wright’s method of construction at Taliesin West in Arizona. In what some call slipform masonary construction, builders first erect wooden forms. Between them, stones and cement are poured and allowed to set, creating walls and support pillars for the resulting structures. This method allows for considerable design flexibility while also being very economical, especially when field stone is readily available.

The Nearing’s stone house in Vermont

With the Nearings, the results reflected European and early American traditional influences in their desire to achieve an economical simplicity that was harmonious with the terrain upon which it was situated. For Wright, the plasticity of the method allowed for the creation of non-traditional walls and roof supports of varying angles and sizes. Just as concerned as the Nearings with what he called “an organic architecture” accessible to the common person, FLW – like them – sought to create a home and work environment rooted within a site while employing locally or regionally found materials when feasible. Whether or not the Nearings ever met Wright, they were clearly kindred spirits. In their most well-known book, Living the Good Life, they quote Wright in the chapter relating their stated “principles of architecture.”

Helen Nearing (facing viewer) in the gardens outside the later ‘home made of stone’ in Maine

Drawing from FLW’s writing, the Nearings articulated four general rules that should bear upon the design of domestic architecture. “Form and function should unite in the structure…; buildings should be adapted to their environments…; local materials are better adapted than any other…; {and} the style of a domestic establishment should express the {residents} and be an expression of themselves…” Clearly, the Nearings were more successful honoring that fourth principle than Wright generally was with respect to the wishes and temperament of his clients!

Helen and Scott Nearing identified several reasons for their choice to build their homes and outbuildings with stone. Stone buildings look natural in their setting; these found materials provide a variety of muted but attractive colors; sturctures made of stone are durable, practical, and economical to maintain; and buildings of this kind are less vulnerable to fire, while retaining coolness in the summer and warmth during the winter. For the Nearings, a decision to benefit from all these advantages of working with local stone was made more easy by their desire and willingness to build the structures themselves, thereby saving the financial cost of labor along with a reduction in the cost of materials.

Scott and Helen Nearing at work on a wall

Given their preference for this building material, the Nearings shared an advantage also enjoyed by Wright in Arizona – plentiful local stone with which to work. Many New England fields and forests are strewn with pieces of rock. People in Louisiana who enjoy landscaping, wish they could take for granted finding stone in such abundance. By contrast, the Vermont homesteader wishing to put up some simple but immensely practical buildings, from tool sheds to houses, can begin with a wheel barrow and a pair of gloves. Two other items are needed: cement mix in adequate quantities, and wooden forms within which the walls are to be fashioned. Happy to work without mechanized tools, the Nearings used a wheelbarrow to gather the stone, mix the cement, and transport both to where they were needed.

Two photos of Taliesin apprentices at work building slipform walls

Another point of continuity between the Nearings’ and Wright in their approach to how we might best live was the way in which they attracted large numbers of young visitors and students. With both FLW and the Nearings, those who came and stayed sought to learn about the life and work of their mentors not merely in a intellectual way, but share in it holistically. The Nearings and Wright, in their different spheres of concern, nurtured communities of fellowship and learning. This helped them influence generations of young people who, led by the example of their teachers, lived into a deepened appreciation for significant principles to which one might commit a life.

The finished result of slipform construction at Taliesin West

Helen Nearing in front of a wall she built with Scott

 

For more about Nick Fleck and his influence upon me and many others, please see my prior post, “The Beauty of Asking ‘Why?’” Helen and Scott Nearing’s farm in Maine is preserved as a living legacy, and is maintained as The Good Life Center (https://goodlife.org/about/).

Here is a link to my earlier post featuring some house design ideas I imagined building for myself, “The Beauty of FL Wright’s Influence” (https://towardbeauty.org/2023/02/15/the-beauty-of-fl-wrights-influence/).

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The Beauty of Asking “Why?”

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Back cover photo from Natural Sustenance: Selected Poems, by Nick Fleck

 

“Why?” It all started in a seemingly innocuous way. “What do you want from this course,” he asked. A brave one among us ventured the answer that some of us were thinking, but were not honest enough to say: “an ‘A’.” Our English teacher, Nick Fleck, responded to my classmate in a neutral way, with a further question, “Why?” Our fellow aspirant to higher grades began to offer pretty typical answers, unoriginal and unsurprising. “I want a high GPA. (Why?)… I want to get into a good college. (Why?)… I want to get into a ranked law school. (Why?)… I want a good job at a high powered law firm. (Why?)…”

Gradually the pauses before our classmate’s answers became longer. And while his responses still sounded plausible, they seemed less and less assured. That first class session set the tone for the rest of term, as over time Nick prodded all of us to articulate answers to questions like these. And nudged us toward answers that were more and more our own, and less dependent on our peers, our parents’ expectations, and our perceptions of the uncertain world outside our rural New England prep school.

Why? The question at first provides an invitation to share acquired knowledge, display settled opinions, and voice aspirations. But the question can also be unsettling, especially when we begin to run out of platitudes and ‘safe’ answers that don’t require self examination or being open to adopt a different perspective.

I can’t fully explain why, out of a class of some 350 or so fellow graduates, I was one of only 3 or 4 who did not go directly on to college. But Nick Fleck’s persistence in challenging us to think for ourselves played a big part in it. Temperamentally, I was and am a self-learner, which disposed me toward pursuing that risky path (“…in a blind career…,” as in a line from a poem Nick had us read). Naive self-confidence also bolstered my willingness to undertake a journey on what appeared to be a largely untested road. I wanted to be an architect and to make art, and those whom I most admired had embarked upon their careers in earlier times by this same route through apprenticeship and self-study.

Having been so consistently asked why, I made the question my own and began asking it in a self-referential way. Why did I want so strongly to embrace and try to create what was beautiful? Why was this important to me… and to others apparently walking the same path? Why was I then beginning to wonder whether this was good and, if so, to what end? And why then was I going on to ponder what was good for its own sake as compared to things of passing significance?

Within a year, after living in New York City seeking non-existent apprentice drafting positions during the ‘oil crisis,’ I returned hesitantly to formal schooling. My college art studies were interrupted by another sideline, driving a forklift in a warehouse freezer for six months as a Teamster. Then, surely to my parents’ relief, asking why led me on a more traditional path, from art history to classics and medieval studies, during which I experienced an unanticipated spiritual conversion. All the while I was living with the same question: why?

Nick Fleck was not a religious man in any sense that I could discern, though he was clearly attuned to the ethical principles exemplified in Thoreau’s writing, and latent in poems he would have us read. I think it greatly surprised him when, returning for our 25th reunion, I gave him credit for setting me on the path that led to my conversion, ordination, theological studies, seminary teaching, and parochial work – experiences not readily familiar to him. But he was the one who persistently asked why, and who invited us to own the question for ourselves.

This week I realize that Nick’s great question was at the heart of the Disciples’ questions when Jesus predicted his forthcoming suffering and death. Nick’s question is simple, and perfect for Lenten reflection.

 

I was happy to see an article in the Greenfield Recorder noting how Nick Fleck had founded the Northfield (Mass.) Bird Club and was still active in leading bird walks. I trust that he continues to write and share his poetry, and help open new worlds to young persons. He helped us to discover the power latent in the word, “why,” especially when posed as a question.

The recent movie, The Holdovers, was partly filmed at my school, Northfield Mt. Hermon, and is set in exactly the time period I was there. During those years, I was in the chapel depicted within the movie a couple of times each week for required assembly gatherings. Seeing my school again during my 50th graduation anniversary year has obviously brought back memories.

A recent gathering in Northfield Mt. Hermon’s Memorial Chapel.

 

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