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Louis Kahn's life after death
Louis Kahn's last masterpiece
Patrick D. Hazard
On the saddest St. Patrick's Day in American history in 1974, one of the 20th Century's greatest architects died of a heart attack in the men's room in New York's Penn Station. Because Louis Kahn had crossed out his address on his passport, it took authorities three days to identify him. He was returning to his Philadelphia home from Dhaka, where he had just finished Bangladesh's National Assembly building. In his luggage were his drawings for the projected Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park on New York's former Welfare Island, in the East River.
Alas, Kahn was deeply in debt. And New York City in 1974 was in the midst of a fiscal crisis. So it took 40 years and much maneuvering to fulfill his promise— courtesy of the former U.S. diplomat William vanden Heuvel, himself the son of a poor couple in Rochester (his mother ran a boarding house and father a factory worker). Vanden Heuvel's subsequent effort to raise the $53 million for the park was a labor of love.
So beginning October 24 you'll finally be able to visit Louis Kahn's last masterpiece: the four-acre Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park, with the prospect of the Statue of Liberty in full view.
A different room every second
It's pure Kahn, his only building in New York City. (Construction was supervised by the Philadelphia firm of Mitchell/Giurgola). Kahn ruminated about architecture as the creation of "noble spaces." Here, according to Michael Kimmelman in the New York Times, he reveled in the "endlessly changing qualities of natural light, in which a room is a different room every second of the day."
This park's "room" contains inch-wide gaps between 36-ton North Carolina granite blocks. Only the sides of the blocks inside the gaps are polished, so as to create shiny, reflective slits that amplify narrow views through them. A bust of FDR by Jo Davidson sits on a freestanding wall. A conservancy is expected to maintain the park, which will become a state park.
Challenge for scientists
Kahn has been a cultural hero of mine ever since I interviewed him in 1959 in my WFIL-TV "University of the Air" series on "Man-made Landscapes." He was eager then to explain his dream: that his design of the library for the Salk Center for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, would force scientists and humanists to communicate with each other— so eager, in fact, that he stood up to show me more closely his maquette, in the process of which he took himself beyond camera range.
Some years later, when I finally visited the Salk, I stopped the first local with a white jacket to ask, "Did Kahn's dream of science/humanities discourse prove true?"
"Only until Jacob Bronowski died," he sadly reported. Bronowski was that British mathematical genius whose love for William Blake's poetry inspired the BBC to bully him into hosting its memorable series on "The Ascent of Man."
Closet integrationist
You can imagine my thrill in 2006 to learn, at the Golden Jubilee of Greenbelt Knoll, that Kahn had secretly designed the 19 homes, Philadelphia's first experiment in racially integrated housing. You see, the unprepossessing Louie had an irresistible thing about projects he couldn't resist. He worked under the table to finance his multiple liaisons.
I was astonished to learn recently that Kahn was born in Estonia as Itze-Leib Schmuilowsky. His father emigrated to Philadelphia to avoid Russian military service. They anglicized their names in 1915 after becoming American citizens. Kahn's formidable protégé Ricky Wurman, who possessed the self-promotional skills that Kahn lacked, sweet-talked the Philadelphia school system into an architectural curriculum. That great idea subsequently fizzled.
It's time to retrieve that common ideal. Begin it with his son Nathaniel Kahn's marvelous film, My Architect: A Son's Story, about his gifted, quirky father.
And don't forget to visit Four Freedoms Park. It's not easy to reach— little mass transit to the island exists as yet (the tram at East 59th Street is your best bet). But considering what it took to create the park, the journey is well worth the effort.
Alas, Kahn was deeply in debt. And New York City in 1974 was in the midst of a fiscal crisis. So it took 40 years and much maneuvering to fulfill his promise— courtesy of the former U.S. diplomat William vanden Heuvel, himself the son of a poor couple in Rochester (his mother ran a boarding house and father a factory worker). Vanden Heuvel's subsequent effort to raise the $53 million for the park was a labor of love.
So beginning October 24 you'll finally be able to visit Louis Kahn's last masterpiece: the four-acre Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park, with the prospect of the Statue of Liberty in full view.
A different room every second
It's pure Kahn, his only building in New York City. (Construction was supervised by the Philadelphia firm of Mitchell/Giurgola). Kahn ruminated about architecture as the creation of "noble spaces." Here, according to Michael Kimmelman in the New York Times, he reveled in the "endlessly changing qualities of natural light, in which a room is a different room every second of the day."
This park's "room" contains inch-wide gaps between 36-ton North Carolina granite blocks. Only the sides of the blocks inside the gaps are polished, so as to create shiny, reflective slits that amplify narrow views through them. A bust of FDR by Jo Davidson sits on a freestanding wall. A conservancy is expected to maintain the park, which will become a state park.
Challenge for scientists
Kahn has been a cultural hero of mine ever since I interviewed him in 1959 in my WFIL-TV "University of the Air" series on "Man-made Landscapes." He was eager then to explain his dream: that his design of the library for the Salk Center for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, would force scientists and humanists to communicate with each other— so eager, in fact, that he stood up to show me more closely his maquette, in the process of which he took himself beyond camera range.
Some years later, when I finally visited the Salk, I stopped the first local with a white jacket to ask, "Did Kahn's dream of science/humanities discourse prove true?"
"Only until Jacob Bronowski died," he sadly reported. Bronowski was that British mathematical genius whose love for William Blake's poetry inspired the BBC to bully him into hosting its memorable series on "The Ascent of Man."
Closet integrationist
You can imagine my thrill in 2006 to learn, at the Golden Jubilee of Greenbelt Knoll, that Kahn had secretly designed the 19 homes, Philadelphia's first experiment in racially integrated housing. You see, the unprepossessing Louie had an irresistible thing about projects he couldn't resist. He worked under the table to finance his multiple liaisons.
I was astonished to learn recently that Kahn was born in Estonia as Itze-Leib Schmuilowsky. His father emigrated to Philadelphia to avoid Russian military service. They anglicized their names in 1915 after becoming American citizens. Kahn's formidable protégé Ricky Wurman, who possessed the self-promotional skills that Kahn lacked, sweet-talked the Philadelphia school system into an architectural curriculum. That great idea subsequently fizzled.
It's time to retrieve that common ideal. Begin it with his son Nathaniel Kahn's marvelous film, My Architect: A Son's Story, about his gifted, quirky father.
And don't forget to visit Four Freedoms Park. It's not easy to reach— little mass transit to the island exists as yet (the tram at East 59th Street is your best bet). But considering what it took to create the park, the journey is well worth the effort.
What, When, Where
Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park. Roosevelt Island, New York City. www.fdrfourfreedomspark.org.
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