MargaretMailePetty_MAThesis_Kelly

Richard Kelly,

Defining American Architectural Lighting Design:

From Johnson’s Glass House to Seagram’s Glass Box (1948-1958)

Margaret Maile Master’s Thesis: Spring 2002

The Bard Graduate Center 38 West 86th Street

New York, New York 10024

Lighting is such a large part of the visual arts—architecture, most of all—that I’m

sure the best we can do today will be inadequate tomorrow. I can logically

project a great many techniques in lighting to improve people’s lives or to make a

house more beautiful, but it’s all theory until we have the record of experience,

which we are only beginning to write.1

—Richard Kelly, 1958

Introduction

Richard Kelly devoted his entire life to the promotion of light as an elemental

property of architecture. For Kelly, light was more than functional illumination or

decorative embellishment. He held that light was the key mode through which one

understands and experiences the built environment. While his career as a designer of

architectural lighting was prolific in scope and unparalleled in impact, Richard Kelly

remains largely unrecognized within the academic community and little or no discussion

of his contributions to many iconic projects can be found in the scholarly record. The

reasons for Kelly’s historical exile are many-fold and range from the problematic nature

of discussing the immateriality of light to imbedded biases within the academic

disciplines of architectural history and design history. Traditionally, important

architectural works have been presented as the end product of the strivings and genius of

the architect, rather than as a result of the collaborative efforts of many talented

individuals. This approach negates the contribution and impact of many significant

designers and artists.

A leading force in American architectural lighting design, Kelly was instrumental

in defining the discipline as a distinct and essential part of any architectural program.

During the course of his career Kelly worked with some of the most important architects

and designers of the twentieth century including Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Philip

Johnson, Eero Saarinen, Louis Kahn, Eliot Noyes, Richard Neutra, Gordon Bunshaft,

Alexander Girard, Henry Dreyfuss, and Florence Knoll. In addition to his physical,

visual, and aesthetic contribution to the modern built environment, Kelly’s profound

legacy was transmitted to the following generation of architectural lighting designers

through his secondary career as a teacher and writer. As a guest speaker and visiting

professor at numerous institutions including Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Cornell, Rhode

Island School of Design, and Illinois Institute of Technology, Kelly largely established

and defined the vocabulary for the nascent discipline of lighting design.

Other than the occasional shared credit line, Richard Kelly remains absent from

the historical record. Of his hundreds of projects, there is not a single scholarly

examination of Kelly’s contribution to twentieth century architecture. While this thesis

can by no means serve as a definitive study of Kelly’s career and impact, it will suggest

the important contribution that he made to Modern architecture and aesthetics. Through a

close examination of several pivotal projects, Kelly’s role in defining the “look” of

American International Style architecture will be acknowledged. Beginning with Philip

Johnson’s Glass House (1948-50) and continuing with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s

projects, 860-880 Lake Shore Drive (1948-51) and the Seagram Building (1954-8), this

thesis will contextualize Richard Kelly’s involvement in the realization and

implementation of the aesthetic goals of the International Style. Both Mies and Johnson

were key individuals in the popularizing of the International Style in America, which was

first introduced in an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in the early 1930s. This

architectural movement largely defined what would be considered modern architecture

throughout the first three-quarters of the twentieth century.

Kelly’s thorough understanding of the principles of electric light and

architectural materials and methods allowed him to synthesize the two in such a way as to

enhance the Modern built form, both functionally and aesthetically. These ten years,

roughly 1948 to 1958, were watershed years for Modern architecture and accordingly

were significant years in Kelly’s professional development and serve to illustrate the

designer’s important role in this history. The three major projects examined in this study

are definitive of the period and exemplify America’s adoption and invention of Modern

architecture. The use of the glass curtain wall, the glorification of the skeletal structure,

and the abandonment of decorative ornament popularized by architects like Mies and

Johnson created a need for new lighting solutions. Kelly built his career and reputation

meeting these needs and exceeding them with artistry. The following thesis will situate

Richard Kelly within this period of architectural history and will set the groundwork for

further scholarship into the historically invisible profession of architectural lighting

design.

In the Beginning

“The very idea of lighting being just the plotting of electric outlets is so

very depressing that I often tell people that I’m a specialized architect

rather than a lighting designer.”2

–Richard Kelly, 1973

Born in 1910 in Zanesville, Ohio, Richard Kelly spent his formative years in the

relative quiet and comfort of the American Midwest. Family lore has it that the young

Kelly, annoyed with the poor illumination in his mother’s kitchen took an active interest

in lighting and its effect on the environment. The dismal experience of his family’s

kitchen inspired Kelly to explore the manipulation of human perception through the

properties of light.3 In his mid-teens, Kelly began experimenting with some of the

elements of lighting design that would later become part of his signature vocabulary.

Transforming his childhood bedroom into a testing ground for his ideas, Kelly outfitted

his ceiling with tiny lights to appear as a field of stars and spotlighted framed photos of

Hollywood actresses with precisely controlled accent beams. In these years Kelly was

also actively involved in his high school’s theater productions, which allowed him to

further refine his dramatic lighting schemes.4

Skipping his high school commencement in the spring of 1928 to attend a Eugene

O’Neill play on Broadway, Richard Kelly came to New York and never left. Kelly

enrolled at Columbia University and began designing lighting fixtures for a manufacturer

to support himself and his wife financially.5 At Columbia Kelly studied Physics,

Mathematics, and English Literature and joined the theater department, where he worked

on various productions, lighting and designing stage sets. Like many others of this

generation of lighting designers, Kelly’s initial experience was through theatrical lighting

and fixture design, although in later years he would purposely distance himself from this

history.6 In the early 1930s, architectural lighting design was not yet defined as

specialized profession. Kelly would assume this task as his personal mission and would

pursue it for the next forty years.

After graduating from Columbia in 1932, Kelly went to work for Ruth Collins, a

prominent New York interior designer specializing in residential and commercial

projects. Driven by a powerful entrepreneurial instinct, Kelly opened his own lighting

design office in 1935 where he designed and sold lighting fixtures. Never comfortable

with compromise, Kelly found this period frustrating, as he describes:

There weren’t lighting consultants then. Nobody would pay for my ideas,

but they would buy fixtures, so I designed lighting and I designed lighting

fixtures which I made and sold.7

Kelly’s rejection of light as a decorative afterthought, or as an indiscriminate addition to

a preexisting environment began early in his career. In a period where few, if any,

designers thought of light as an integral part of architecture, Kelly tenaciously held that

lighting was more than just fixture design, and necessarily included planning what one

sees and how one sees, as well as and the totality of that experience.8 In an article for

House and Garden in 1946 Kelly wrote:

Today, good lighting is a vital part of good living. It begins, not with the

house, but with all the things that make up your life in the house—reading,

writing, sewing; dining, playing bridge or ping-pong; finding a dress or a

suit in the closet; giving a party where everybody feels wonderful, looks

wonderful. Ideally, lighting grows with the plans of the house right from

the blueprint stage.9

He believed that proper illumination took into account all the elements of life—physical

activities, material objects, built space—and could be designed in such a way as to frame

and encourage the perception of “good living.”10

Working with various architects and designers in the years leading up to World

War II, Kelly found that the stateside adoption of Modern European building idioms and

materials, especially glass, required new lighting equipment not yet available on the

market. Kelly stressed that new equipment alone could not provide the solution to the

challenge Modern architecture presented, but rather that it could provide a means to the

solution. According to Kelly, Modern architecture in America would only be fully

realized, both physically and conceptually, with the careful manipulation of artificial

light, designed in relation to Modern form and with a thorough understanding of the

particular materials used. Kelly wrote:

Light can give architectural delineation to the surfaces of buildings, both

inside and out. The true proportions of structural elements, the

penetrations of windows and doors (details usually lost in careless over-all

floodlighting) can be precisely outlined. To a measurable degree this

deliberate emphasis can inspire both confidence and anticipation. In

business structures or in great public works, its value as institutional

advertising is unquestionable.11

Kelly’s proselytizing of his theories on light and its relation to architectural form and

environment did not always abide well with his clients and the architects with whom he

worked. Often they suggested that if Kelly were himself an architect he would understand

the impossible nature of his lighting schemes. Kelly realized that his lack of architectural

training could become his Achilles’ heel. Later, in an interview for the Saturday Evening

Post Kelly said of this period:

When I landed a sizable contract and suggested such things as the use of

reflected light instead of glaring overhead fixtures, or varying light

intensity according to the hour of the day I got nowhere. The really

ambitious ideas seemed to founder in architects’ offices. They were

impractical, I was told, “for architectural reasons.”12

When classified as four-F and ineligible for service at the outbreak of World War

II, Kelly reevaluated his professional and personal life. The emasculating rejection from

military service combined with the effects of material rations and financial difficulties,

left Kelly with little alternative but to close his recently opened office. Kelly determined

it would be in his best interest to return to school and in 1942 he enrolled in the Yale

University School of Architecture. Kelly believed that after he had earned his own

architectural he would able to assert his design solutions legitimately among architects.

No longer would he have to acquiesce to the role of fixture designer or lighting engineer,

both anathema to the ambitious designer. He would be an architect, not of brick and

mortar, but of light.13

Kelly graduated from Yale in 1944 with a BA in architecture. This was a turning

point for Kelly and dramatically set him apart from his peers in the lighting industry. This

degree allowed Kelly to distance himself from his prior theatrical lighting experience and

to supplant it with technical training and official accreditation. Kelly was one of the first

lighting designers to speak about light as architecture and in architectural terms. With

newfound confidence, Kelly promoted his iconoclasm, writing:

Planned lighting is an art; it is not nature, but the artificial control of

selected natural elements. Light and seeing are inseparable conceptions.

We in fact make what we see by making things visible, and we make them

appear and disappear to suit the nuances of our desires.14

After Yale, Kelly worked for several years as an architectural merchandiser and

presentation planner for the R.H. Macy Company and as a consultant to several

architectural offices and interior designers. Always the insatiable entrepreneur, by 1947

Kelly had established a sufficiently large clientele to allow him to once again open his

own office.15 To ensure that his professional agenda would be clear to all, Kelly printed

his credo on the top of his new letterhead. It defined, in no uncertain terms, that his

business was:

Consultation on planning, design, and specification on any or all elements

affecting the visual environment in architecture and planning, with no

commercial ties to contracting or manufacture.16

Thus began an important chapter in the history of architectural lighting design.

Kelly was one of the first American architectural lighting consultants professionally

trained who aggressively declared autonomy from both fixture manufacturers and

electrical engineering contractors.17 It is important to note that in the late 1940s and early

1950s most major electrical contractors had “in-house” lighting engineers; this system

allowed the client or architect to avoid “paying twice,” first to the engineering firm and

then again to a separate lighting consultant. In addition to these in-house lighting

engineers, Kelly was also competing with individuals coming out of theater lighting

design, who were likewise trying to forge a discipline of lighting design as distinct from

engineering.18

Kelly distinguished himself from his contemporaries with a combination of

practical knowledge, business sense, and understanding of architectural principles and of

the properties and mechanics of electrical illumination. Moreover, Kelly’s unique

philosophical, and almost poetic, approach to the experience of light in the built

environment was unparalleled. His fascination with the emotive qualities of light owed

much to the influence of Stanley McCandless, a well-known theatrical lighting designer,

with whom Kelly studied at Yale. Under the tutelage of McCandless, Kelly began to

formulate his distinctive philosophical approach to light and its effects on human

perception.19

Taking a “method” approach to lighting design, McCandless taught that light

intensity, color, distribution, and control all had a relative effect on sensual perception.20

Furthermore McCandless believed the precise manipulation and combination of these

four elements allowed a designer to determine the emotional experience and

psychological state of an individual within that environment.21 An article Kelly wrote in

1950 shows his assimilation of McCandless’s theories and the beginnings of what would

become his own distinct vocabulary, a pseudo-scientific type of poetry, which he would

use for the rest of his career. In this article Kelly suggests that:

Color in light has profoundly affected whole races of people. The green-

white light of the jungle has given life to legends, as suggested by

Hudson’s Green Mansions. The hot sun of the Côte d’Azur has been a

determining factor in the heavy Mediterranean architecture; similar

considerations dictate the white masonry and small penetrations, resulting

in tiny patches of light, which produce the dim tracery of Oriental

interiors. The long oblique red rays of the Arctic sun have inspired the

energetic boldness of Nordic decoration.22

Kelly further developed his theory of perception, and especially perception of the built

environment mediated through light. He wrote, “architectural design exists only as it is

seen.” According to the designer, in seeing, light translates the physical environment

through the instinctive and creative aspects of the individual’s process of understanding.

While suggesting that simple lighting effects appeal to the instinctual response, Kelly

challenged that the most complex and profound illumination solutions reside in the

creative or intellectual response. Kelly believed that light, as an architectural material of

great emotive potential, could determine the very perception or experience of

architectural proportions:

The rooms of a house can be connected more closely or further separated

by emphasis on similarity or on a change of character; by a succession of

focal points; by a continuous line of emphasis, created by the lighted

corridor, a divided corridor, sweep of wall washed by cool lights; or by

exaggerated attractions at the end of the vistas…the far reaches of a

pleasant room can lead the imagination beyond the ordinary boundaries of

the room…Needless to say focal elements are of first importance in any of

these devices.23

In the next two years Kelly refined and identified these “devices” in his theory of the

three “light energy impacts” that comprise the primary palette of any ideal lighting

scheme. In a lecture entitled “Lighting as an Integral Part of Architecture” delivered at a

joint meeting of the American Institute of Architects, the Society of Industrial Designers,

and the Society of Illuminating Engineers in 1952, Kelly formally introduced his holy

trinity of light: “focal glow,” “ambient luminescence,” and “play of brilliants.”24 In this

manifesto-like narrative, Kelly defined the properties of each element:

Focal glow is the campfire of all time…Focal glow is the follow

spot on the modern stage. It is the pool of light at your favorite reading

chair. It is the shaft of sunshine that warms the end of the valley. It is

candlelight on the face, and a flashlight on the stair.

Focal glow draws attention, pulls together diverse parts, sells

merchandise, separates the important from the unimportant, helps people

see. Focal glow sometimes becomes multiple foci desirably producing a

significant composition of attention. As the number of foci increase to

more and more complex compositions, a pattern results which can

resemble the second basic element of light…

Ambient luminescence is the uninterrupted light of a snowy

morning in the open country. It is foglight at sea in a small boat, it is

twilight haze on a wide river where shore and water and sky are

indistinguishable. It is the before-the-show lighted dome and amphitheatre

of the Hayden Planetarium, the full cyclorama of the open theatre. It is any

art gallery with strip-lighted walls, translucent ceiling, and white floor. It

is also all we know of “indirect” lighting.

Ambient luminescence produces shadowless illumination. It

minimizes form and bulk. It minimizes the importance of all things and

people. It can suggest the freedom of space and can suggest infinity. It is

usually reassuring. It quiets the nerves and is restful.

Play of brilliants is Times Square at night. It is the eighteenth century

ballroom of crystal chandeliers and many candle flames. It is sunlight on a

fountain or a rippling brook. It is a cache of diamonds in an opened cave.

It is the rose window of Chartres. Night automobiles at a busy cloverleaf,

a night city from the air. It is the trees outside your window interlaced

with the beams of spotlights. It is a sparkling cabinet of fine glassware.

Play of brilliants excites the optic nerves, and in turn stimulates the

body and spirit, quickens the appetite, awakens curiosity, sharpens the wit.

It is distracting or entertaining.25

Concluding his theory of the three “light energy impacts” Kelly asserted that, “visual

beauty is perceived by an interplay of all three kinds of light, though one is usually

dominant.” Furthermore, Kelly indicated that the prominent light energy should be

determined after consideration of a number of criteria, including how the space will be

used, for whom the space is intended, and what should be the mood, or personality of the

environment. 26

The last of these objectives, that of mood or ambience was of central importance

to Kelly. He insisted that the general mood or emotional ambiance of an environment

could be dramatically altered by shifting the dominance of one or the other of his three

principles of light. Kelly described one example of this type of psychic manipulation:

Certain human associations values may be agreeably affected by blending

cooler tonalities into the lighting composition. Pools of warm light

(created perhaps by groups of candles or wells of filtered light-pink

downlighting) are heightened in effect by a soft background of cool

areas.27

Kelly summarized that a lighting program skillfully employing a combination of focal

glow, ambient luminescence, and play of brilliants would produce “beauty of architecture

and decoration” as well as “stimulation of the spirit.”28

To strengthen his argument associating the physical perception of light with an

individual’s spiritual or metaphysical response-experience, Kelly also cited “modern

metaphysicians” proposing that according to these famous thinkers, “real knowledge of

the concrete world and all materials is based on sense perception, not on abstract

learning.” 29 More than merely uplifting or invigorating the spirit, or expressing beauty or

architectural structure, Kelly believed that light itself was the source of human

understanding and as such represented “real” truth. Light for Kelly allowed the

perception and experience of “truth” in the visual environment. 30 He would later refine

these ideas into the remarkable aphorism, “visual truth lies in the structure of light.”31

In addition to his interest in the affects of light on the senses and sensual

experience, Kelly was involved in the material application of his principles of

illumination. Having graduated from the Yale School of Architecture in 1944, by 1950

Kelly had completed over 30 public projects and as least as many private residences. In

this period Kelly consulted on a variety of projects, such as the lighting for the Stork

Club Cub Room, the Little Casino Club (with Oscar Nitzschke), Tiffany & Co., Bonwit

Teller, and the Container Corporation of America’s executive offices in Chicago.32 It was

Kelly’s early work in private residences, however, that was most expressive of his theory

of the three light energy impacts and that best prefaces his later work. Two projects in

particular stand out as highlights of Kelly’s early career: Richard Neutra’s Edgar J.

Kaufman, Sr. house in Palm Springs, California (1947) and Philip Johnson’s Glass House

in New Canaan, Connecticut (1949)(Figs 1, 2). Both residences embody Kelly’s

innovative approach to the problems of illumination in relation to Modern architectural

methods and materials, glass in particular. These homes also illustrate Kelly’s

assimilation of the Modern ideal of expressing fluidity between indoors and outdoors

through the architectural form. Kelly felt that this aesthetic ethos could be further

articulated and improved through the design of light, natural and artificial. As Kelly

wrote in an article, “New Light on Living”:

Light indoors and light outdoors must be very closely correlated because

living indoors and living outdoors have become so elaborately inter-

related. In planning a house today it is not acceptable to conceive of

daylight in apposition [sic] to artificial light because the two have to be

conceived as one due to: (a) orientation of interest; (b) the real planning of

the architecture in terms of openings, skylights, etc.; (c) the planning of

artificial lighting in connection with the points of (a) and (b).33

The Glass House

“He was my teacher. He was my guru—the man who taught me the

importance of lighting. When I first moved into the glass house there was

no light—other than the sun. You can imagine the problem with

reflections. If you had one bulb, you saw six. When it got dark outside,

there wasn’t anything a lighting man could do, or so I thought. Richard

[Kelly] founded the art of residential lighting the day he designed the

lighting for the Glass House.” 34

–Philip Johnson, 1979

While no records have yet been found relating to Kelly’s concept and working

methods for the lighting design of the Kaufman House, the designer did discuss his

approach to the illumination of Philip Johnson’s Glass House in several published

sources.35 As was often the case with Kelly’s designs, the final lighting solution for

Johnson’s house emerged only after a period of some resistance from the client and many

negotiations between the lighting designer and the architect. Preceding the Glass House,

Kelly and Johnson had served together on a jury to select the ten best new lighting fixture

designs for 1946 as a part of the Museum of Modern Art’s “Good Design” program.

Johnson, then director of the museum’s Department of Architecture, was not responsible

for Kelly’s inclusion in the jury; Eliot Noyes, Director of the department of Industrial

Design, had brought in Kelly to participate in the museum’s program to foster “better

design in objects of everyday use.”36 Evidently impressed with Kelly’s understanding of

the principles of design and lighting, Johnson asked Kelly to consult on the lighting for

his Glass House. Describing his concept for the project, Johnson suggested that the house

was first of all a shelter…but having used transparent walls to enclose

myself within a decorative landscape, instead of hiding behind

conventional walls, I wanted to enjoy that environment at night, I didn’t

want to clutter the place with drapes and shut myself in. Neither did I want

to live in a gold fish bowl.37

Evaluating the unique challenge of the glass enclosure, Kelly suggested that the house be

illuminated from “the outside in,” an idea which was as costly as it was novel. Johnson

was entirely satisfied with Kelly’s proposed with the solution, or with the price, and

decided instead to light the house himself.

This would not be the end of Johnson and Kelly’s collaboration on the Glass

House. Brought together again for the remodeling of John D. Rockefeller III’s New York

townhouse, Johnson again approached Kelly about the problems he encountered

illuminating his country house. Johnson had run into more difficulties than he had

anticipated with the nighttime illumination. Glare and reflections multiplied to infinity in

the blacked-out glass and to compensate, Johnson had gradually reduced his lighting to

six taper candles in a candelabrum—far from an ideal solution. Johnson had been unable

to adapt traditional lighting technologies to Modern architecture and materials and

maintain a high degree of practicality. Kelly, on the other hand, had thought extensively

about the many problems glass posed to effective illumination in the modern dwelling,

explaining in “New Light on Living”,

As anyone who has read the architectural journals of the last few years

will have noticed, there has been a great change in indoor planning. Walls

are not used as much. Rooms open up to one another. There are long vistas

as a result, and we do not think of an interior as a collection of cubicles as

was true in Crete and Troy, but rather as an open-air area also open to the

outside. As a result it has become a problem to provide after dark a

compositionally equitable situation in the esthetic character for the entire

visual experience.38

The last sentence calls attention to an important element of Kelly’s theory of the role of

Modern architecture, and in particular how light mediates the aesthetic experience of the

built environment. In his concept for Johnson’s Glass House, Kelly saw the walls not

merely as transparent protection from the outside elements, but also as frames for planned

compositions, which would materialize through the lighting of the surrounding landscape.

This type of outdoor night-lighting served a two-fold purpose, one of fitness, allowing

continued transparency of the glass at night, and one of artistry, creating decorative

scenery out of the surrounding the landscape. As Kelly explained,

There have been a great many more glass houses—for example, Philip

Johnson’s Glass House…where the indoors mean nothing after twilight

without carefully planning of artificial light. The entire idea of the use of

glass to this extent was to relate the outside with the inside, and we have

found by experiment that when we do not have the outside lighted

properly the inside is a bleak, separated hole. On the other hand, when

you at evening try to use the glass as it was intended to be used, as the

cushion between the outdoors and the indoors it is very easily possible to

make the surrounding scenery the wallpaper of the home. In Mr.

Johnson’s house that has been carried a little further, as in Japanese prints

where the wallpaper (or in this case, the landscape has been rendered more

distant in the three-dimensions by five different levels of illumination.39

It is intriguing that Kelly would liken the effect of his lighting for the Glass house,

first to wallpaper, and then to the wallpaper in Japanese prints. Though, it is not that

surprising when considering the historically problematic relationship between decoration

and Modern architecture. Johnson himself, along with Henry-Russell Hitchcock and

Alfred Barr, had together formally organized the major tenets of Modern Movement

architecture under the moniker of the International Style over a decade earlier. Hitchcock

and Johnson help popularize the International Style to American audiences, with their

1932 Modern architecture exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art and the

accompanying publication, The International Style: Architecture since 1922.40 This

publication proposed a “style” composed of a hybridization of the work of a number of

prominent Modern European architects, including Le Corbusier, Ludwig Mies van der

Rohe, J.J.P. Oud, Walter Gropius, and others. Summarizing the principles of the

International Style in the preface to Hitchcock and Johnson’s book, Barr wrote:

Emphasis upon volume—space enclosed by thin planes or surfaces as

opposed to the suggestion of mass and solidity; regularity as opposed to

symmetry or other kinds of obvious balance; and, lastly, dependence upon

the intrinsic elegance of materials, technical perfection, and fine

proportions, as opposed to applied ornament.41

The International Style continued to gather cultural momentum and by the late

1940s to be “Modern” one naturally eschewed applied ornament and reserved

architectural emphasis for clarity of construction and quality of materials. At this time

new developments in illumination technology allowed light to be manipulated to enhance

both architectural materials and form without the addition of applied decorative fixtures.

Recessed or indirect lighting, in particular that of hot cathode and cold cathode

fluorescent lighting (which had been developed during the war), made possible the

integration of artificial illumination into the architectural structure of the building itself.

While this solution has been practiced in commercial environments, an article in Vogue

from 1957 explains the importance of indirect lighting in the private home:

Ideally, it should be built in when a house or apartment is built, or

remodeled—planned as a part of the architecture, not of the décor. It

should be custom-tailored to fit ceiling heights, wall widths and surfaces;

to make the most of good architectural details, and mask any poor (or

meaningless) ones.42

Skillful use of new illumination technologies could emphasize the materiality of

structural planes, or alternatively, suggest an indeterminate quality, depending on the

desired architectural effect. In this way, lighting provided an aesthetic solution to the

dilemma of Modernism, allowing the architect to “dress” the Modern box in an invisible,

yet decorative, or emotive, cloak. Architectural lighting offered the possibility of imbuing

a space with monumental grandeur or subdued simplicity, or even to alternate between

the two, depending on the requirements of the environment. Through early-stage

planning and careful design, architectural lighting could enable the architect to modulate

variously the unadorned structural expanses to created decorative effects without added

ornament.43 Kelly reiterated his belief in this concept, quoting Le Corbusier:

“L’Architecture est le Jeux, savant, correct, et magnifique des formes sur

la lumiere” (Architecture is the play, knowing, correct, and magnificent of

form in light).44

Kelly’s choice to cite Le Corbusier was in part one of reverence for an acknowledged

master of the International Style, as well as for the authority that such a voice would

confer on his theories. Undoubtedly of equal or greater importance to Kelly was Le

Corbusier’s belief that architectural form was revealed only through light.

Kelly, given a second opportunity to create a lighting scheme for Johnson’s Glass

House, presented a program completely in keeping with the rigorous principles of

Modern architecture and Johnson’s preexisting concept for the space.45 In Johnson’s

original plans there were no permanent lighting fixtures to interrupt the architectural lines

or the transparency of the glass walls (Fig 3). Kelly was determined to maintain this

element of Johnson’s architectural concept.

Devising an inventive lighting scheme comprised entirely of hidden and indirect

lighting sources, Kelly successfully illuminated the interior of the enclosure without a

single visible fixture.46 Powerful lights tucked into the eaves illuminated a strip of lawn

around the perimeter creating a light-frame for the house. 47 Floodlights buried in a trench

surrounding the house, just outside the glass walls, directed strong beams of light up onto

the interior ceiling providing soft diffused illumination, which served as the principal and

functional lighting for the house interior (Fig 4). To add complexity and depth to the

nighttime illumination of the landscape, individual spot and floodlights were placed at the

bases of specifically selected trees in the near and far ground, and spotlights mounted on

the roof picked out certain trees from above (Fig 5). Kelly’s combination of perimeter

downlights, buried uplights, and spot-lit landscape created a “luminous backdrop” that

could be enjoyed from the restful glass-enclosed reflection-free interior.48 Additionally,

for visual interest indoors, Johnson approved a large metal sculpture incorporating

several long tapered candles.49

The Glass House satisfied both Kelly and Johnson’s personal and professional

agendas. Johnson’s architectural program remained “pure” and undisturbed by applied

ornamental lighting fixtures and he had a house in which he could live, to a reasonable

degree, comfortably and efficiently. Kelly was able to incorporate his principles of focal

glow (the spot-lit trees), ambient luminescence (the indirectly-lit ceiling), and the play of

brilliants (candles). Johnson’s Glass House also allowed Kelly to assert himself as an

independent architectural lighting consultant with a thorough understanding of the

difficulties well as the possibilities of Modern materials and architectural forms. In the

end though, the Glass House did become quite a costly lesson for Johnson. Kelly’s

successful lighting program, when installed in 1949, added roughly one hundred dollars a

month to Johnson’s electricity bill.

The Business of Light

He is persistent and insatiable. Dealing with Richard is not unlike

bargaining with an Arab merchant. He asks for at least twice as much as

he expects in the lighting budget, and you naturally offer only half. I doubt

that he’ll ever admit he’s satisfied with the results.50—Philip Johnson

Kelly’s reputation as an architectural lighting designer grew exponentially in the

early 1950s as he progressed from largely residential and renovation contracts to large

corporate office buildings and major cultural landmarks.51 Never timid or vague, Kelly’s

writing in the 1950s nevertheless took on a new level of confidence as he continued to

proselytize his belief that architectural form and planned light were integral parts of a

singular whole.52 Kelly repeatedly asserted that “Lighting is so integrated with a

building’s use and appearance that it always should be given consideration in all stages of

architectural design and decoration development.”53 He also warned against the fallacy

that, “any architectural effects are possibly with light—an exaggeration, particularly so

when the lighting designer is not consulted before materials are chosen.”54 These ideas

represented the core of Kelly’s personal and professional ethos, and his stubborn

unwillingness to waver from these convictions won him as many enemies as it did allies.

Likewise, Kelly’s consulting fees and the costly specialized or custom-designed

equipment typically necessary for his elaborate lighting programs often spurred furious

letters from with his clients as to the relative value of both. The larger the contracts the

more Kelly’s methods and prices became a source of contention. In the late 1940s

through the mid-1950s, Kelly struggled to keep a balance between what his clients

expected—in terms of final product and total cost—and his particular vision as a

designer. This tenacious behavior was characteristic of Kelly. Even in the early years

when Kelly was struggling to establish his reputation, he often refused commissions if he

felt his principles compromised. Kelly’s inability to settle for less than what he believed

to be ideal resulted in his dismissal from a number of projects.55 More often than not,

Kelly would simply refuse to revise the final bill or the finished space, despite the client’s

insistent pleas.

A series of communications between the offices of William Lescaze and Richard

Kelly, dating from June 1955 to August 1956, exemplify the thorny relationships that

sometimes developed between the lighting designer and his clients.56 In this instance,

Kelly had been hired to design the lighting for the lobby, plaza, and exterior of Lescaze’s

New York City Grand Central Building, 711 Third Avenue (1956). On this project

Lescaze gave Kelly the task of illuminating the buildings to make it “the most noticeable

building in the midtown area.”57 Typical for the designer, Kelly adapted the most recent

illumination technologies and equipment available to satisfy his concept for the building,

turning a deaf ear to repeated protestations from Lescaze about the cost and practicality

of the proposed lighting scheme. With oblivious enthusiasm, Kelly wrote to Lescaze on

2 June 1955, of a new flood lamp still in development:

When we first heard of the imminent announcement of the new 500 Watt

PAR lamp I held up work on further detailing pending engineering data on

this new lamp. I also held up any final plan although I thought I had made

a rough and sent it to you…I believe that the new wattage figures on this,

if you must finally indicate wattage, can be used with adequate safety

factor added. I heard only Friday that the distribution of the new lamp will

be quite ideal, but I do not yet know of the beam candles, the life, and the

cost.58

Lescaze was not as thrilled as Kelly with the potential of the new experimental flood

lamps and seemed much more concerned with the invoice Kelly had submitted for his

services. In a letter sent six days later, Lescaze makes no mention of the new lamps or

lighting program of 711 Third Avenue, but rather only of Kelly’s charges:

I must confess that I am rather upset that the total amount of your bill to

date, $1139.80. This seems to me rather exorbitant when compared to the

amount of services rendered.

I would like very much to get together with you early next week

and settle for once and for all how much more information you should

give us and also what the total for services will amount to.

As you will recall, I have continually tried to oblige you, but you

have made it increasingly difficult for me.59

In the following letter, dated 24 June 1955, sent from Kelly’s office to Lescaze,

Kelly, rather than directly addressing the architect’s concern about the bottom line

proudly describes the “firsts” of his lighting program, perhaps to justify what Lescaze

saw as unreasonable costs:

The lighting of the upper building will be accomplished with a fixture

using a new General Electric 500 Watt PAR-64 flood lamp which has

never before been used (an installation the General Electric people are

proud to have as a “first”)…As we spoke this morning I am confident that

not only will it be comfortable for all tenants but that the effect will be

notable.60

Unfortunately, the new bulbs proved to be less than ideal and some of the building’s

tenants found the lighting in the main lobby to be confusing and “spotty.”61 The latter

was a frequent voiced complaint from Kelly’s clients and resulted from his non-

traditional and highly dramatic approach to lighting design, which often incorporated

areas of focal glow and deep shadow. Less than a year after the completion of Lescaze’s

Grand Central Building, Kelly received a brusque letter from the architect listing a

variety of concerns regarding the final lighting program:

There is a great deal of dissatisfaction with the lighting of the main lobby

which you designed.

The bulbs seem to burn out too soon and to be of a type which is

difficult to re-order.

Illumination seems to be uneven and spotty. Lighting consumes

what appears to be an exorbitant amount of kilowatts.

I would appreciate your examining the above situation.62

Kelly, unfaltering in the face of such criticism, replied point by point to Lescaze’s

concerns:

In answer to your letter…I personally inspected the main lobby…and

would like to offer the following comments:

1) The amount of wattage consumed by the lighting is as it was planned,

and seems to me to cause no surprise.

2) While Mr. Baker was talking to Mr. Steinmann, the electrician brought

to Mr. Steinmann’s office, upon my request, one of the lamps which

had burned out. It turned out to be a standard 120 volt lamp. The lamp

specified for this job was a 75-watt PAR side prong spot 130 volts.

This lamp if burned at 120 volts should last approximately 6,000

burning hours, and if burned at 115 volts should last approximately

10,000 hours. They are standard lamps and can be ordered from any

dealer, wholesaler, or lamp manufacturer…We suggest that a really

accurate record is kept of the life of these lamps, and if they are

unsatisfactory it has been the policy of the manufacturers to make

good.

3) The unevenness of the illumination was not evident to me except as it

was planned. For example: the very evident pools of light on the floor

along the walls are not undesirable, and it is important in those cases to

keep the light off the walls. Unevenness in a larger sense is certainly

desirable for drama and interest.

One phase of the installation that Mr. Steinmann questioned relates to the

use of the equipment. For instance, burning the lamps on the 44th street

entrance during the weekends. This is a detail which can be rearranged or

recircuited as desired. It is obvious we do not want to see a completely

useless waste of current. Certain other phases such as the use of the

downlights around the building at dusk are important to my concept of this

building.63

Kelly further suggested that Mr. Lescaze should arrange a conference for all interested

parties, so that he could explain in greater detail the importance of maintaining the

lighting, as he had designed it, throughout the lobby and the exterior of the building.

Lescaze and builder-owner William Kaufman had hoped to make a bid for the

expanding post-war “prestige” office-space market with 711 Third Avenue.64 Following

the standard Modern architectural formula, Lescaze and Kaufman proposed spare lines,

geometric massing, ribbon windows, a tower rising above a central building core, and the

incorporation of key pieces of Modern art (Fig 6). For this final component, Lescaze and

Kaufman commissioned the abstract expressionist painter Hans Hoffmann to design a

mural for the lobby elevator core, and Jose de Rivera to create a stainless steel sculpture

for the main entrance (Fig 7).65 Kelly, passionate about the arts throughout his life, took

the proper lighting of works of art seriously, and in later years devoted much writing to

the subject.66 Kelly also had significant prior experience with the lighting of art, sculpture

and painting. From the mid-1940s to the early 1950s Kelly designed the lighting for a

number of leading New York galleries, museums, and private art collections, including

the new west wing of the Museum of Modern Art (1951), the Knoedler Gallery (1951),

the Yale Art Gallery (1951-53), and the “Masterpieces of Art” building at the 1939 New

York World’s Fair. Therefore, Kelly’s lighting program for the lobby was based on

substantial prior knowledge and was specifically designed to enhance and spotlight the

commissioned art. Furthermore, the dramatic lighting of lobby, and the art

commissioned for it, largely determined the atmosphere of “cultural prestige,” which

Lescaze and Kaufman had requested.

Regardless of the validity of the criticism pointed at his lighting scheme, Kelly’s

response to Lescaze’s comments was typical and illustrates why he garnered a reputation

as a stubborn, even difficult, designer. This reputation, though, also speaks to the

newness of the discipline of architectural lighting design and the progressive nature of

Kelly’s work in the 1950s. The “spotty” lighting that Lescaze found unsatisfactory was

intentional, as Kelly indicated in his letter. The lobby lighting of 711 Third Avenue was

punctuated by Kelly’s use of “focal glow,” one of the three principles comprising his

philosophy of “light energy impacts.” Kelly believed that an environment such as a

prestigious corporate lobby needed “controlled vision” to confer and sustain a strong

corporate image. Controlled vision, according to Kelly, could be achieved through the

use of highly directive light, or “focal glow”, in conjunction with dramatic shadows.67 As

Kelly explained, focal light is directional and creates a bright center that “tells us what to

look at, organizes and marks the most important element.” Focal glow in an open plan

lobby is necessary to create a “sense of space” and to organize “depth through a sequence

of focal centers.”68 Kelly’s intention was not just to provide even illumination for the

building’s tenants to pass through, unaffected and unthinkingly, on their way to the

central elevator bank. Instead he created a particular environment and a specific

experience to elicit a desired response. Just as an architect controls space through

physical structure, Kelly controlled the perception of space though the structuring of

light. To hear his careful delineation of light and shadow called “spotty” must have

seemed rather ignorant, even insulting, and might help justify Kelly’s somewhat

egotistical remark, “If a client knows what he wants, he takes the grocery basket to the

store and buys it. If he doesn’t know what he wants, he hires people like us and then

abides by the decision.”69

From Lake Shore Drive to Park Avenue

“No written description of 860 Lake Shore Drive can do it justice, and

even the best photographs fail to give an adequate impression of the

monumental character and simple dignity of these two blocks; they must

be seen to be appreciated…”70

—The Architect and Building News, 1954

Not all of Kelly’s collaborations were battlegrounds. One of the most significant

and notably peaceful partnerships of his career was with a man of similar professional

meticulousness, the German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. This relationship

blossomed with the architect’s 860 – 880 Lakeshore Drive apartment towers (1948-51),

two steel-and-glass vertical boxes constructed on the edge of Lake Michigan in one of

Chicago’s most prestigious areas. While it cannot be determined conclusively how Mies

came to hire Kelly as the lighting consultant for 860 – 880 Lakeshore Drive, or if it was

their first collaboration, it is clear that the partnership worked. Although these men

emerged from entirely different professional experiences and cultural backgrounds, both

shared an uncommon passion for architecture as well as a highly developed and

uncompromising understanding of space, structure, and form.71 More poetic and less

pragmatic than Kelly’s grocery store analogy, Mies expressed a similarly categorical

attitude towards his work: “We are not decorating. This is structure. We put up what has

to be built and then we accept it.”72

For Mies, as well as for Kelly, the apartment towers at 860 – 880 Lakeshore Drive

represented the opportunity for a project of career-defining impact and great personal

satisfaction. Mies, who had served as the director of the Bauhaus (1930-1933) in the

years leading up to the school’s final closure by the Nazis, had received little formal

education, spending only three years in his youth at the cathedral school of Aachen.

Nonetheless, Mies had developed a complex philosophical approach to architecture in his

years of apprenticeship, practice, and teaching in Europe.

In 1908 Mies began his professional training as an architect in the offices of Peter

Behrens, where he came into contact with leading figures in the emerging Modern

Movement, not just in architecture, but in the arts, politics, and social milieus as well.73

After World War I, Mies directed the architectural section of the Novembergruppe, an

association of radical artist founded in December 1918 that sought to distance its

members from the individualism associated with the contemporary Expressionist

movement. This consortium of artists and thinkers fought for a universally valid style that

could answer the specific needs of the time, thereby embodying the essence of the epoch

itself. Mies parlayed his involvement with the Novembergruppe into his significant

contribution to the periodical G. Published in irregular intervals between 1923 and 1926,

G brought together such prominent figures of the European avant-garde as Theo van

Doesburg, Piet Mondian, El Lissitzky, Hans Richter, Raoul Hausmann, Hans Arp, Kurt

Schwitters, and others. For this publication Mies composed a number of short

manifestoes on the art and ethos of building, articulating what would later become, for his

followers, the gospel of Modern architecture, and for others, Modernist dogma. In the

premiere issue of G, Mies wrote, “Create form out of the nature of the task with the

means of our time. That is our work.”74

Unfortunately, historical circumstances conspired against Mies for the majority of

his early career and his “work” remained largely hypothetical. Material and monetary

shortages, political turbulence, and social upheaval in the first third of the twentieth

century in Europe, especially Germany, resulted in many frustrated projects, not just for

Mies, but for his entire generation as well. This situation did have the beneficial side-

effect of creating an enormously rich body of theoretical discourse on architecture and

the philosophy of the building arts.75 In these early writings Mies called for architecture

of “bold constructive thoughts,” best expressed by skyscrapers under construction. Mies

felt that this truth, revealed through the architectural skeleton, was vitiated with the

application of masonry walls. If, instead, glass was used to wrap the architectural

skeleton, then the spirituality of the form, and thus of the epoch, would be maintained and

made visible to all.76

In the early 1920s Mies produced a series of drawings and proposals for glass

skyscrapers and office buildings to illustrate his philosophy of architecture, or Baukunst,

which defined the building arts as resulting from neither technical functionality nor

aesthetic formalism, but rather from “the spatial expression of spiritual decisions.”77 For

Mies the skyscraper represented the ultimate architectural “skeleton” and glass the

transparent “skin” that revealed the “truth” of construction. As Mies wrote in an

manuscript from 1924:

Never have the building trades been more talked about than today and

never has one been further removed from understanding the nature of

building. For this reason the question as to the nature of the building art is

today of decisive importance. For only when it has been clearly

understood can the struggle for the principles of a new building art be

conducted purposefully and effectively. Until then it must remain a chaos

of confusing forces. One will have to understand that building art as

spatial expression is spiritually connected to its time and can only manifest

itself in addressing vital tasks with the means of its own time. It has never

been otherwise. For this reason it is a futile endeavor to use contents and

forms of earlier periods today…one cannot walk forward while looking

backward, and one cannot be the instrument of the will of the epoch if one

lives in the past.78

Mies’s proposals, frustrated by war in Europe, were revived in the post-war

building boom in North America. Like many other German artists, designers, and

architects, Mies immigrated to the United States just shortly before the outbreak of World

War II. Offered the position of director of architecture at the Armour Institute of

Technology in Chicago, Mies moved to the United States in 1937.

After roughly ten years in America, Mies began a working relationship with the

Chicago real estate developer, Herbert Greenwald of PACE Associates (Planning

Architects and Consulting Engineers). Hired as a design consultant for PACE, Mies was

assigned his first high-rise project with the Promontory Apartments in 1946. The

apartment building located on Chicago’s Near South Side, when completed proved

unsatisfactory for Mies, even if acceptable to Greenwald. The Promontory was a

speculative project and economic factors determined many design choices, that caused

significant compromises to Mies’s desired program. The finished construction, an

exposed concrete frame, brick infill, and applied stepped-back columns, was far removed

from Mies’s plans for a free-standing glass and steel slab.79

Despite the personal dissatisfaction Mies may have experienced with the

Promontory Apartments, in 1947 he agreed to collaborate on three additional projects

with Greenwald. The Chicago developer was looking to expand his properties northward

along the shore of Lake Michigan. Of these projects, the Delaware, later known as 860 –

880 Lakeshore Drive, would hold the most potential for Mies. Of the other two

properties, one fell through almost immediately, and the other, the Algonquin Apartments

moved into the preliminary planning stage a year before 860 –880 Lakeshore Drive was

to begin construction. The concept for the Algonquin, though problematic and awkward

its massing and proportions, proved to be the chrysalis from which Mies’s soaring glass

towers emerged.80

As Mies readied his proposal for 860 – 880 Lakeshore Drive, he took measures to

ensure that this time his vision would be realized. Mies aimed to illustrate to the

developers, especially Greenwald, the importance of his material choices and the

integrity of his initial architectural program. To this end, Mies had large brass mock-ups

of the proposed towers cast to sell Greenwald and PACE Associates his vision of the

modern skyscraper. The plan succeeded. Work on the Algonquin was halted and all

energy and funds were transferred to the Lakeshore Drive project.81

The apartment towers at 860 – 880 Lakeshore Drive were significant for Mies not

only because of their proximity to his architectural ideal, but also for the social prestige

of the project. The desirable address of the Lake Shore towers, as well as the income-tax

bracket of those who would be able to afford to live there, suggested a new level of social

acceptance and professional success for the German immigrant. As an architectural

newsletter published shortly after the project’s completion summarized:

An apartment in 860 or 880 Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, Mies Van der

Rohe’s two steel and glass towers on the edge of Lake Michigan, is an

enviable spot for a number of reasons. It is in the heart of the city, within

walking distance of the Loop and the fashionable shopping district around

Michigan Avenue—although few people would consider the idea of

walking—and it is in an area which has considerable social prestige, the

so-called “Gold Coast” of Chicago…The lake presents a spectacle which

changes as constantly as the sea…At weekends the whole length of the

lakeside in front of the city is as colorful as Miami with bright costumes

and the fashionable props of outdoor living. Mies’ buildings are part of

this environment, an exciting mixture of lake and city, and offer

opportunities for living in direct contact with it that have nothing to do

with aesthetics.82

Lake Shore Drive represented Mies’s debut into high-end, high-rise American living. For

860 – 880 Lake Shore Drive, Mies’s “most important building to date,” the architect

proposed a highly original and complicated program for the plaza and two entrance

lobbies.83 Placing two identical towers on the axes of the triangular lot, one in profile

facing the lake and the other oriented frontally, Mies created a dynamic tension between

the architectural solidity of the slab and the slender profile. The two towers were unified

on a shared open air plaza, yet allowed to remain autonomous, each raised on steel

columns above a glass enclosed lobby. In the lobbies light was used to reinforce the

harmony between the two towers, as well as the importance, aesthetically and socially, of

the free plan. Characteristically, the mechanical complexity of Mies’s architectural

program was masked to appear simple and austere to spectators or inhabitants of the

towers.

The project was, however, not entirely one of architectural wish-fulfillment. The

orientation and organization of two towers, set at right angles to one another was

determined largely by pragmatic considerations. Any construction on the triangular

waterfront property of 860 – 880 Lakeshore Drive came with the stipulation that sight

lines from the property inland could not be obstructed. Therefore, Mies was left with one

of two choices: a very tall building on one side of the site, or two shorter buildings with

view corridors separating the towers. Chicago’s building code requirements for structures

over 250 feet made a single tall-tower aesthetically unacceptable to Mies and he chose

two smaller towers.

Mies approached the design of the site and the two towers as an integrated whole,

divided into positive and negative space, solid and void.84 The towers were placed on a

shared travertine plinth and raised on columns aligned with the bays of the exterior

“skeleton.”85 Lifting the mass of the towers off the plaza, Mies created a terrace with a

canopied space beneath each building. Raising the structure up on columns or pilotis was

not revolutionary design in the early 1950s; rather it was directly related to the principles

of early twentieth-century Modern European architecture. Le Corbusier canonized the use

of pilotis and the related free plan, with his “Five Points of a New Architecture” in

1926.86 This manifesto called for the freeing of the ground floor for circulation of air,

flexibility of floor plan, and ease of human interaction with the outside environment. It

also allowed for the free façade, which could be variously articulated, as a slab or glass

membrane, over the structural skeleton.87 Remarkable in Mies’s approach to the free

plan, is the manner in which the architect chose to articulate this open space and to

balance the void with the solid mass rising twenty-six stories above. For this, Mies

enlisted the assistance of Richard Kelly, and together they forged a new architecture of

light.

To visually “lift” the 26-story tower off the ground required an aesthetically solid

colonnade. Mies supplied this with steel-faced columns that extended down from the

exterior I-beams of the tower. To create the impression of towers floating or hovering

over the plaza, however, light was needed—enormous quantities of carefully placed

beams. This was Kelly’s task. The apartment towers at 860 – 880 Lake Shore Drive

represented the serendipitous confluence of two very different minds; on this project

Kelly’s talents and energies aligned closely with those of Mies to create an extraordinary

architectural composition (Figs 8, 9).

Lake Shore Drive was a watershed project for Kelly as well as for Mies. Prior to

his involvement with 860 – 880 Lake Shore Drive, Kelly had worked largely on private

residences and gallery or showroom lighting installations. While many of these were

prestigious contracts with society clients, such as the Kaufmans and the Rockefellers,

they were relatively inconsequential as architectural projects. Kelly, who had gone to

great pains to establish his credentials as an architect, was, by the late 1940s, pushing

hard to be recognized within the architectural community as the leading practitioner of

architectural lighting design. A project of the scale of 860 – 880 Lake Shore Drive with a

high-profile architect like Mies van der Rohe and a budget of four million dollars, if

successful, would signal Kelly’s legitimate entry into American architecture’s inner

circle. Furthermore it would all but guarantee the lighting designer further large and

celebrated architectural contracts.

A telegram from Mies van der Rohe to Richard Kelly, dated 22 February 1950,

6:24 p.m., signals the beginning of their collaboration:

WE ARE ANXIOUSLY AWAITING YOUR RECOMMENDATIONS

FOR LIGHTINGING ON THE 860 LAKE SHORE DRIVE

APARTMENTS. HOW SOON MAY WE EXPECT THIS? PLEASE

CALL OR WIRE= MIES VAN DER ROHE:88

The urgent tone of Mies’s request, and the subsequent speed of Kelly’s response,

indicates the mutual interest and professional investment this project held for both men.

(Kelly replied five days later on the 28th of February, remarkable for the lighting designer

who often took months to answer his clients.) Kelly’s detailed response to Mies’s

telegram offers a remarkable glimpse into the thinking of both men and the architectural

challenge they would together solve. The task they faced was uniting the two towers on

the travertine plinth, without sacrificing the individual autonomy of each tower, and

maintaining the balance of the composition of the site as a whole.

Mies’s professional agenda and philosophical approach as an architect was firmly

established by the early 1950s and this distinctive “Miesian” vision informed the

planning of the Lake Shore Drive apartments. Reviewing the architectural and aesthetic

program of 860 – 880 Lake Shore Drive, one can readily find antecedents in Mies’s

earliest work. The manipulation of space and structure, the tectonics of column and load,

and the transparent curtain wall employed in the composition of 860 – 880 Lake Shore

Drive, had been present in Mies’s architectural process since the early 1920s. 89

According to Mies, formal or aesthetic considerations could not determine the physical

elements or articulation of the built form, and instead these properties must necessarily

emerge from a search for the spiritual. Guided by his self-proscribed doctrine, these

elements remained constant throughout Mies’s career and reflected his striving for a

geometric sublime, not an ideal form.90 The inherent difficulty of this spiritual search

compounded by the limited ability to build during much of his early career in Europe,

frames Mies’s return to many of the same architectural questions he posed in pre-war

Germany during his career in America. For Mies, architecture was not about innovation

as much as it was about perfection. Therefore it is not surprising that Mies revisited his

solution, first proposed in 1928, of using light as a means of organizing and unifying

space, in his plans for 860 – 880 Lake Shore Drive. In a draft of a letter outlining his

concept for the Leipziger Strasse Adam department store project Mies wrote:

You have indicated in your requirements that in general a building with

vertical articulation would conform to your tastes. May I say in all

frankness that in my opinion a building has nothing to do with taste but

must be the logical result of all requirements that result from its purpose.

Only if these are established can one speak of the intrinsic forming of a

building. You need layered floor levels with clear uncluttered spaces.

Furthermore you need much light. You need publicity and more publicity.

We stand at the beginning of new developments. Your building must not

appear obsolete in 2-3 years…I therefore suggest to you making the skin

of your building of glass and stainless steel, with the bottom floor of

transparent glass, the other of opaque glass. Walls of opaque glass give the

rooms a wonderfully mild but bright and even illumination. In the evening

it represents a powerful body of light and you have no difficulties in

affixing advertising…such brightly lit advertising on an evenly

illuminated background will have a fairy-tale effect.91

While Mies was not proposing advertising space per se on the concourse level of the

Lake Shore Drive apartments, he was similarly employing the particular transformative

effect and spatial clarity of bright illumination at night. It is possible to suggest that Mies

was intending a form of “publicity” with the core illumination at 860 – 880 Lake Shore

Drive. Mies was deliberately appealing to the same principles of human perception and

response as does nighttime department store lighting. With the glowing central core Mies

provided a powerful focus for the entire site and a singular visual anchor for the two

towers. Mies’s glowing core was successful precisely because it addressed the direct

relationship between the physics of human perception and the properties of light.92

Unlike his proposal for transparent glass on the street level of the Leipziger

Strasse Adam department store, Mies chose obscure glass for the ground and mezzanine

floors (“the core”) of the Lake Shore towers in Chicago. Existing literature explains this

decision as strictly utilitarian. According to these histories, Mies chose obscure glass to

hide unsightly facility supplies and activities in the service areas located in the core of

each building. This reasoning, while no doubt based in truth, is overly simplistic and

misses the larger aesthetic impact of Mies’s decision to use obscure glass. An evenly

illuminated central core, uninterrupted by any interior activities or articulations, visually

preserves the integrity of the suggested structure. Furthermore, the glowing core provides

a perfect backdrop for the load-bearing columns, themselves visual extensions of the

applied steel I-beams. This “shadow play” of light and load emphasizes, even advertises

the logic of the building’s “skeletal” construction. To Mies, construction was truth and

structure was gospel. Illuminating the core of each tower, Mies materialized these

principles in a brilliantly subliminal manner.93

As with any architectural project, there is the proposal and then there is the

practical implementation of the program. Mies may have devised a profound architectural

composition, but he needed an equally intelligent and creative lighting designer to

understand and realize his concept. Kelly, with his architectural training, philosophical

approach to design, and intrinsic perfectionism was uniquely suited for the task. Kelly’s

assimilation of Mies’s architectural concept is evident in his response to the initial

telegram concerning the Lake Shore Drive apartments:

I have, of course, held to your idea of lighting the obscure glass walls and

still believe, very much, in downlighting from the soffits of the two ends

of each building. After developing the lighting of the glass walls, it

became possible and I think advisable to use linear highly concentrated

down lights under these outside instead of the row of individual recessed

spotlights I suggested in Chicago for the sake of unity of light quality,

color and to some extent appearance of installation, though my preference

for this end-lighting is primarily one of fitness. With your conception of

the buildings, this linear projection of light on the ground and terrace

makes apparent the open continuity of space under the buildings, makes a

pleasant outlook from the lounges and also lights the ramp for

underground traffic.94

Kelly’s preference for placing concentrated down lights in the end soffits of either

building can be traced back to his experience with Philip Johnson’s Glass House.

Although a project of vastly different scale and purpose, Kelly’s lighting solution for

Johnson’s glass enclosure nonetheless established the necessity of illuminating the

perimeter of any all-glass structure after dark to preserve the material’s transparency,

inside and out. At Lake Shore Drive Kelly refined his earlier solution, not only satisfying

the practical requirements of material and site, but also achieving a sophisticated spatial

composition and visual organization of public space.

Having met with Mies and his staff, thoroughly discussing the architect’s concept

for the towers and plaza, Kelly’s goal was to translate Mies’s vision, both physical and

spiritually, through the physics of light. Kelly conscientiously chose to use downlights to

frame the common space with a precisely defined perimeter of light. Instead of the earlier

proposed spotlights, which would have created “pockets” of bright light and shadow,

Kelly suggested strong linear downlights to preserve mechanical invisibility and

compositional continuity with a wash of unbroken light. The “space-frame” created by

this even perimeter illumination served to focus attention on the glowing core of each

structure and cleverly contained the slender void between the two towers.

After briefly discussing the recessed lighting for the vestibule entrance doors and

the technical mechanics of how these lights should be structurally integrated into the door

lintels, Kelly returned to his recommendations for the trans-illumination of each

building’s core:

As noted, commissary lighting must be restricted to downlighting and

shielded local lighting to prevent its spilling in any noticeable way,

patterns, patches, etc., on the obscure glass walls and thus spoiling the

smooth exterior wash of light on these walls from above. I will be happy

to suggest ways of doing this, but will need a quite detailed layout of

probable use of this space.95

Elaborating on the difficulties of illuminating the obscure glass of the core evenly from

top to bottom, Kelly continued:

To make the most of lighting the glass walls around the first and second

floors under the buildings, it is necessary to have first, a highly

concentrated linear distribution of light, and second, a source of very high

original lumen intensity per foot, and third, a source of long life in

maintenance and replacement costs to allow for continuous evening

operation at practical electric current cost and lamp replacement. A

dimmer installation might be practical for late evening.96

Concentrated distribution in one plane is to spread the light evenly

down the entire height of the glass walls. This in place of an uncontrolled

source which accidentally over-lights the top in a band of glare which

tapers to practically nothing in a foot or two from the top…I had in mind

one lens made from a privately owned mold by Corning which works to

much greater effect that the commercial ones on the open market and is of

similar low cost though I do suggest some hand grinding after molding as

the additional cost is minor compared to the difference in performance.97

The simple beauty of the finished project, the illuminated core and plaza against the dark

sky does little to indicate the extraordinary technical challenge facing Mies and Kelly in

1950. At that time architectural lighting technology was still in its infancy and the range

of readily available lamps and lenses was rather limited. The basic principles of modern

architectural lighting were still being established in the first half of the twentieth century.

As observed in an article from 1957 entitled “New Progress in Light”:

Though Edison’s incandescent lamp is nearly 80 years old and has been

refined to a high degree, and the more efficient fluorescent lamp has had

an almost equally great development since its introduction commercially

in 1938, still a flood of new and improved light sources indicates that

progress is by no means ended. And beyond these new sources, there is a

development in the architectural use of light which indicates that we are

only now beginning to understand what light can do.98

As demonstrated in his collaboration with Mies on 860 – 880 Lake Shore Drive,

Kelly was a driving force in developing the architectural use of light. This project broke

new ground, not only in terms of the aesthetic integration of light into the architectural

program, but also in establishing new illumination technologies. The suggestion of using

a privately owned mold indicates the innovative nature of Kelly’s designs as well as his

refusal to compromise or adapt his vision to standard “readily available” lighting

solutions. Kelly wished to illuminate the entire length and height of the core’s obscure

glass walls to appear as a continuous wash of unbroken light. He was grappling with the

inferior nature of the commercially available lenses then available. The special lens that

Kelly indicated was especially designed to project a light beam downward with such

power and intensity as to cover evenly the entire height of the wall. The hand grinding

that Kelly suggested would create better diffusion of the light spread and eliminate

shadow lines between horizontal bulb joins.99 Kelly’s ingenious solution helped establish

standards for “wall-washing” illumination—an aesthetic device that became ubiquitous in

Modern architecture, particularly in corporate lobbies and prestigious public spaces.100

At 860 – 880 Lake Shore Drive, Kelly articulated Mies’s desire to maintain the

visual purity of the glowing core with great creativity and technical virtuosity, translating

the concept of the luminous plaza into three-dimensional space. The glowing core,

compositionally offset by the dark lines of the regularly spaced vertical support columns

and the intersecting horizontal band indicating the first floor of the service area, is indeed

a visual celebration of Miesian tectonics (Fig10). Kelly’s recommendations for this area

confirm Mies’s choice of obscure glass was the result of larger (and longer-established)

aesthetic goals, not simply the site-specific disguising of service activities. This important

point has been omitted from previous histories of 860 –880 Lake Shore Drive and

deserves inclusion because the glowing core was a key element of Mies’s architectural

program and was essential to the complete realization of his vision for the project.

Furthermore, the illuminated core deserves attention as it was an aesthetic device

appearing in plans for some of Mies’s earliest glass towers and which he employed again

after Lake Shore Drive in other high rise projects.101 Existing of Mies’s work tend to

emphasize those elements that support or confirm the larger mythology surrounding the

architect. This governing perspective glorifies Mies’s devotion to clarity of structure and

dignity of proportions, but often fails to mention how the architect called attention to

structural clarity and dignified proportions. In many cases, this had less to do with the

actual tectonics of construction than with architectural decorative effects, such as those

provided by lighting.

Kelly, who fought to bring recognition to the marginalized discipline of lighting

design, did not see these distinctions and instead held that the “decorative” art of

illumination was inseparable from architectural form and should be considered equally

alongside other structural and aesthetic considerations. Kelly’s holistic approach to

architectural lighting design and his absolute certainty of its impact on the success or

failure of any structure is apparent in his final recommendation to Mies concerning the

Lake Shore Drive project:

I have made no indication of lighting in service halls as this must follow

throughout the building. Similarly, lighting of the elevator cab and public

halls on the floors above should be considered together.102

Despite the often limited scope of his assignments, Kelly was invariably unable to

restrain himself from proselytizing on the importance of continuity in lighting design

throughout any given project—a tactic that frequently did more harm than good for the

designer’s career and reputation.103 Lake Shore Drive was no exception, and Kelly,

regardless of any reverence for the Modern master, felt it necessary to instruct Mies that

the lighting of the high-rise apartment complex, including the service areas and elevator

cabs should be considered together, as individual components of a singular composition.

Mies no doubt took Kelly’s suggestions into consideration, but it was not until

their collaboration on the Seagram Building (1954-1957) that the lighting designer would

be able to realize his desire to integrate completely lighting systems with the total

architectural program. The lighting of the plaza and core at 860 – 880 Lake Shore Drive

firmly established the principle vocabulary that Kelly, in collaboration with Mies,

Johnson, and Lambert would employ to extraordinary effect throughout the Seagram

corporate headquarters.

Tower of Light

The House of Seagram is made of dream stuff: air and light as well as

bronze and concrete. And it is light which makes the most spectacular

contribution…by day for work, by night for drama.104

—The New York Times, 7 April 1957

A promotional brochure generated to celebrate the completion of the Seagram

Building in the spring of 1957 featured on its cover a collection of intense portraits of

seven men, each seemingly engaged in deep thought or active problem-solving, along

with the singular question, “Who are these Men?” Opening the brochure, one finds the

answer. The individual portraits are reproduced along with their respective names and

project credits in a graphic style corresponding to that used in contemporary cinema

posters.105 The names read:

Architects: Mies van der Rohe, Philip Johnson

Associate Architect: Eli Jacques Kahn of Kahn and Jacobs

Electrical Contractor: Harry F. Fishbach of Fishbach and Moore, Incorporated

Lighting Consultant: Richard Kelly

Electrical Engineer: Clifton E. Smith of Jaros, Baum and Bolles

Underneath this collective of the Seagram building’s stars and supporting players the

“title” of this pamphlet is printed in all bold capitals, “THEY DREAMED OF A TOWER

OF LIGHT” (Figs 11, 12). This slogan, it should be noted, was crafted to reflect the

interests of Lightolier, a company specializing in contract lighting who produced the

brochure to promote its own role in the lighting of Seagram building. Drama aside,

Lightolier’s promotional copy was not far from the truth. Both Mies and Kelly, although

for different reasons, had been interested in building a “tower of light” for sometime. The

shimmering tower, revealing its skeleton with a soft inner illumination, reoccurs

throughout Mies’s project proposals beginning in the early twenties.106 Kelly, less

singular in his formal approach as an architect and lighting consultant was determined,

however, as Mies in overall project control and unity. In his early writings as a

professional architect and lighting designer, Kelly stressed that:

Lighting is so integrated with a building’s use and appearance that it

always should be given consideration in all stages of architectural design

and decoration development. Active cooperation between the architect and

engineer is insurance against practical difficulties. Lighting can become

the basic decorative or appearance motif, as well as a necessary working

tool and an aid to comfort and safety in any interior.107

The Seagram project offered Kelly his first opportunity to create a total lighting program,

in consultation with the principal architect, beginning with the initial planing stage.

Kelly’s designs would be would be integrated throughout the structural components and

aesthetic devices of the building, from executive offices to broom closets. In this respect

the Seagram building was Kelly’s most important project to date and his dream

realized.108

Kelly’s engagement with the design and engineering of the Seagram building’s

lighting systems transcended the architectural division of labor that parceled

responsibility for certain areas of the tower and plaza according to a rough hierarchy of

importance. This division of labor began when the Seagram building’s contracts were

negotiated and the project’s general contractor raised concerns over Mies’s age, which

was then sixty-eight years old. It was suggested that Mies appoint someone to take over

in case of illness or death. In response, Mies named Philip Johnson as his architectural

understudy and gave him exclusive responsibility for design of fixtures and graphics,

certain lighting systems, elevator cabs, interiors of the Four Seasons Restaurant, as well

as the fountains for the plaza pools. Phyllis Lambert, Director of Planning for the

Seagram’s project, writes “the role of Johnson, who was in the process of stepping down

as director of the Department of Architecture and Design at MoMA, and who had built a

few houses in Connecticut, was essentially one of service.”109 Johnson may have been at

the service of Mies and Lambert but their planning offices were democratic, with all three

sharing adjoining cubicles. To what extent Johnson’s contribution to the Seagram

Building was directed or autonomous is unknown, but with these intimate quarters and

powerful personalities it seems likely that Kelly would have worked in consultation with

all three—Mies, Johnson, and Lambert.110 Ultimately, it is of less importance where or

from whom the suggestions came, as it was Kelly’s responsibility to maintain the

integrity of the architectural program initially proposed by Mies and the continuity of the

lighting throughout the building. Several voices may have informed the various lighting

systems of the Seagram building, but because one knowledgeable and well-practiced

hand guided the final solution, a fluid unity was maintained.

The lighting for the Seagram building is remarkable for more than its subtle and

elegant continuity, representing in 1957 major innovations in office tower lighting, both

internally, within the offices themselves, and externally in the illumination of the tower

as a singular unit. It is with this latter aspect that the Seagram building distinguished itself

from its predecessor at 860 – 880 Lake Shore Drive, which as a residential project

presented a greater challenge in terms of aesthetic control.111 A corporate tower, such as

the Seagram building, offered the level of control that both the architect and lighting

designer had long sought, and together Mies and Kelly developed an exceptional new

office lighting system. As an article in the International Lighting Review, published three

years after the completion of the Seagram building announced:

A new light on the New York City skyline gleams at 375 Park Avenue

from a specially designed, and engineered luminous ceiling system created

by Lightolier, Inc., for the bronze-sheathed Seagram Building.

The ceiling which glows at night as well as during the day has

been installed from the second to the 38th floor of the building which has

been completed early in 1958. It introduces several new concepts in

architectural lighting.112

The article outlines the Seagram building’s advances in lighting design, emphasizing the

new technologies employed in the luminous ceiling system. The innovative lighting

system was comprised of fifty-two inch square translucent vinyl diffuser panels in an

anodized aluminum-trimmed modular grid. The proportions of luminous ceiling’s grid

pattern were composed to correspond exactly with that of the building’s exterior bay

structure as expressed in the applied bronze mullions.113 Furthermore, the ceiling panels

were specially designed, in consultation with Lightolier’s engineer, Noel Florence, to

project a non-directional light pattern with the “absence of any design or configuration in

the diffusing panels” to create a sense of “natural” illumination.114 This soft diffused light

emphasizes the grid super-structure, not the light source. The smooth vinyl panels also

neatly disguised the lamps, water pipes, electrical conduits, and other services.

True to Miesian aesthetics, great lengths were taken to maintain the visual

simplicity of the luminous ceiling. The diffuser frames were designed to fit inside the

visible ceiling grid structure to avoid the “clutter of a frame within a frame.”115 To avoid

visible latches or hinges, portions of the grid were designed to drop down a short distance

with a specially engineered spring device permitting insertion or removal of diffusers and

allowing access to services (Fig 13).

Besides hiding service pipes and wires, the modular nature of the luminous

ceiling served to reduce dramatically sound transmission from room to room. A prior

complaint with many luminous ceilings was the carrying of sound through the false

ceiling space. To avoid this problem, Kelly and the engineers at Lightolier devised a

system of modular sheet metal boxes that formed the reflecting cavity for the lamps and

also supported the ceiling grid. This division of the inner-ceiling space had the added

benefit of providing instant equalization of air pressure, so that when a door was opened

or closed no movement would be perceptible along the diffuser panels. Additionally, the

grid structure incorporated hidden metal plates to which prefabricated metal room

partitions could be attached. This feature allowed individual tenants ease and economy of

office space reconfiguration.

In response to Mies’s disappointment over lack of control of the appearance of

windows in residential towers at 860 – 880 Lake Shore Drive, visual uniformity of the

Seagram’s tower was preserved with venetian blinds, set to a limited range of

adjustments, and installed throughout the building. These blinds could be set at one of

three standardized positions: fully opened, fully closed, or exactly half-open. The slats of

the blinds throughout were fixed at angle of 45 degrees “to let pedestrians get full impact

of the lit-up building at night.”116 Thus, through careful aesthetic regulation and

sublimation of the service elements of the building, the design of the Seagram building’s

luminous ceiling boldly illuminated the Miesian grid, embodying and projecting with

pristine clarity the ideal of the building’s skeletal construction (Figs 14, 15).117

Seagram’s luminous ceiling served many practical purposes as an office lighting

system and contributed significant design improvements in terms of controlling office

noise pollution, reducing glare through even diffusion of light, and facilitating office

partition reconfiguration. Yet it was the aesthetic effect of this ceiling that received the

most attention and praise. Jürgen Joedicke’s 1962 overview of office design singled out

the Seagram building for its lighting systems, writing:

The external effect of the lighting at night was deliberately utilized by the

architects as an aesthetic feature, thus giving artificial light an entirely new

significance as an element of architectural design.118

In the same text, under an illustration of the building fully illuminated at night, reads the

caption “lighting by ‘luminous ceilings’ is provided on all floors which strikingly reveals

the building’s structural pattern at night.”119 Mies had desired just this effect, indicating

early on in the design process that he wished the entire tower glow at night.120 The

luminous ceiling may have incorporated numerous practical improvements upon

traditional office lighting systems, but the primary impetus behind its creation was

aesthetic. Regardless of the Miesian mythology of “less is more,” in the case of the

Seagram building, more appears to be less. The luminous ceiling extends from the glass

curtain wall into the building in a twenty foot-wide band, which creates the impression of

even and consistent lighting throughout. Beyond this band of luminous ceiling is a more

traditional office lighting system of acoustic panels alternating with low-brightness

reflecting troffers—a more energy efficient system, although visually much less attractive

and unified in appearance (Fig 16). Additionally, Kelly’s inclusion of a secondary

lighting circuit within the primary ceiling system allowed for the illumination of the

tower as a singular unit and further indicates the decorative character of the luminous

ceiling. This secondary circuit enabled two levels of illumination. During office hours,

the system produced illumination levels of roughly 85 footcandles. At night, to create the

“tower of light,” the system was switched to the secondary circuit, which used separate

lamps running at one quarter of their maximum output and produced light levels near 20

footcandles. To ensure a soft glowing quality of light, complimentary to the custom

bronze tinted glass of the curtain wall, Kelly specified the use of warm white deluxe

fluorescent lamps rather than the standard cool white fluorescents used at the time. These

special lamps, when illuminated at quarter-power (to produce the 20 footcandles rather

than 80 footcandles at which they were designed to function) rendered a color and quality

of light similar to that of incandescent bulbs (Fig 17).121 Whether or not Mies would have

approved or agreed with his lighting consultant’s candor, Kelly said in 1958, “The night

lighting of the building is a purely promotional use.”122

As a promotional tool, the Seagram Corporation must have been quite satisfied

with their new headquarters on Park Avenue, and especially with the attention

commanding evening visage of the tower. In July 1958, Architectural Form, ran a

photograph of the Seagram building on the cover of the journal and inside a tripartite

feature praising the many wonders of the new corporate headquarters. In the second

section of this article, next to a nighttime photograph of the glowing Seagram tower, the

Architectural Forum editor prominently credited Richard Kelly as “Lighting Designer”

and held him responsible for “one of the best-illuminated buildings ever constructed.”123

Phyllis Lambert, as an accompaniment for her biographical article on the Seagram

building, “How a Building Gets Built,” chose as the cover image a dusk photograph of

the “tower of light” shimmering defiantly against the dark masonry facades of Park

Avenue (Fig 18).124 Popular magazines, newspaper articles, and specialized journals

across many disciplines praised the Seagram building for its drama and beauty as well as

for its clarity and discipline, and nearly every article makes reference to the impressive

effect of the building’s nighttime illumination.125

The overall success of Seagram’s illuminated tower owes, in part, to the recycling

of Mies’s “glowing core” from 860 – 880 Lake Shore Drive. In the margin under a

photograph of the Seagram building illuminated at night, Kelly wrote “a tower of light,

but the lobby predominates.”126 Again, as with the Lake Shore apartment towers, Mies

proposed a brightly illuminated core to levitate the tower visually and emphasize the

structural support columns.127 For the Seagram lobby, Kelly did not have the benefit of

the obscure glass to facilitate a broad source of even illumination as he did in Chicago.

Therefore the material choice for the Seagram’s elevator banks, which formed the

building’s core, was of critical importance. Kelly aware of the technical difficulties of

Mies’s original request for a rich dark green marble to wrap the elevator banks,

recommended a light travertine stone instead. For the lobby to be seen at night from the

plaza or street, and not disappear into darkness beneath the projecting canopy, Kelly

knew that a light colored material with diffuse-light reflective properties was required.

Following Kelly’s advice, Mies approved the switch to a light travertine for Seagram’s

core. Kelly was then left with the task of making the travertine glow. While the effect

desired was the same as that of 860 – 880 Lake Shore Drive, the new core material

necessitated an entirely new engineering solution.

For the Seagram’s glass-enclosed entrance lobby, Kelly devised a specialized

indirect lighting system that “washed” the length and breadth of the travertine elevator

banks with warm incandescent light so that they appeared to glow. A key to the success

of this type of “light-wash” is the invisibility of the light source. Recessed lighting, or in

Kelly’s language “ambient luminescence,” appears “natural” without distracting lamp

apparatuses or decorative fixtures. The emphasis remains on the materials, in this case the

rich travertine, and the “purity” of the uninterrupted surfaces. Though Kelly’s lighting

scheme for the Seagram lobby was quite functional, it was specifically engineered and

custom manufactured to satisfy specific aesthetic goals.128 With the assistance of lighting

engineer and fixture manufacturer Edison Price, Kelly designed a tailored wall washing

system using powerful PAR lamps hidden along the perimeter of the ceiling. Kelly and

Price’s system effectively articulated the drama of Mies’s proportions, emphasizing the

soaring height of the lobby walls and the unquestionable authority of the bronze sheathed

support columns (Figs 19, 20, 21). Finally, just as he had done with Johnson’s Glass

House and 860 – 880 Lake Shore Drive, Kelly created a light-frame for the lobby,

placing two rows of downlights in the soffits of the Seagram building’s canopy. The

light-frame maintained the transparency of the lobby’s glass walls, readied the eye for the

intense illumination of the core, and carried the suggestion of the building’s interior glow

onto the plaza. Four times the brightness level of the upper floors, the combined

illumination of the glowing core and the perimeter light-frame visually reinforced the

ideal of the “free-plan” and defied expectations of gravity and mass.129

The Seagram building’s “tower of light” and glowing core represent a synthesis of

Kelly’s theories on the properties light and its potential to mediate the architectural

experience with Mies’s ideal of the glass-and-steel skyscraper. As Peter Smithson wrote

in 1958, “The Seagram Tower certainly communicates a dream of a controlled, spacious,

machine age environment, even at the popular level.130 Kelly communicated Mies’s

dream through architecture’s immaterial material, light, and with Modern architecture’s

silent partner, decorative manipulation.131 The Seagram building, despite its many

artisanal elements and aesthetic devices, expresses the hopes and desires latent in the

“machine age” with an earnestness that surpasses the problematic issues of architectural

“truth.” As Kelly suggested, “The look of things determines more of how we feel and

know them than the things themselves.”132

Epilogue

If light is so vital to the fulfillment of the architect’s scheme, then light is

not an added component, as it is sometimes treated, but a basic material

in the architectural solution. It is at once the material that renders all

other materials visible and the one material common to all spaces.133

—Howard Brandston, 1973

Richard Kelly devoted his professional life to forging the discipline of

architectural lighting design. He never relented in his mission to legitimize light as a

primary architectural material, essential to the fitness and aesthetic success of any project.

Kelly’s career was prolific in scope, despite the designer’s untimely death in 1977 at the

age of sixty-six. Considering the great number of projects Kelly was involved with

throughout his life, it was necessary to limit this investigation of the designer’s career and

his contribution to the field of lighting design to the period 1948 to 1958. This period was

selected for the unique achievements of several projects realized in these years, including

the Glass House, 860 – 880 Lake Shore Drive, and the Seagram building.

Kelly’s lighting program for Philip Johnson’s Glass House integrated light as an

architectural material into the built form and maintained a visual continuity or connection

between the interior space of the dwelling and the outside landscape. Translating

Johnson’s architectural ideal for the Glass House, Kelly created an environment where

light served Johnson’s functional needs as well as his aesthetic goals for the residence.

With the Glass House, Kelly established many of the principles of illumination design he

would use in future projects, such as 860 – 880 Lake Shore Drive and the Seagram

building. In these subsequent assignments, Kelly did not merely recycle earlier design

solutions, but instead built upon this knowledge to push the limits of contemporary

lighting technology. The Lake Shore Drive apartments represented a great step forward

for architectural lighting design, raising professional and public awareness of the

discipline and brilliantly illustrating the potential of light as an architectural material, as

well as a means of organizing space and defining form.

Mies and Kelly, in their collaboration on the Seagram building, turned these ideas

into architectural epiphany. The elegance of the uniformly illuminated Seagram tower,

visually supported with the powerful glowing light of the travertine core, represents the

high-water mark of International Style corporate architecture, as well as the realization of

Mies’s long-held dream of an aesthetically obedient glass-and-steel skyscraper.

Seagram’s “Tower of Light” resulted from the confluence of many talented individuals,

including Mies, Kelly, Johnson, and Lambert. Indeed, the collabroative design process

should be credited, not Mies or Kelly alone.

Kelly’s innovative approach to architectural lighting design, in conjunction with

some of the key figures of Modern architecture, had significant impact on the realization

of the distinct “look” of Modern architecture. While this “look” is instantly recognizable

to most individuals, Kelly is not, and architectural lighting design remains, ironically, a

historically invisible discipline. However, this was not always the case. Kelly received

much attention for his work during his life, with interviews and articles in such popular

publications as Vogue, The Saturday Evening Post, and House and Garden. In 1964, the

American Institute of Architects (AIA) awarded Kelly its Collaborative Achievement in

Architecture Award, for his contribution to the Seagram Building and Four Seasons

Restaurant. Then in 1967, the AIA again honored Kelly with its prestigious Gold Medal

Award for the designer’s contribution to “Light in Architecture.”134 On the occasion of

the award ceremony for the Gold Medal, President and secretary Charles M. Nes of the

AIA said, “The American Institute of Architects, in conferring this honor, recognizes the

virtuosity of architect and lighting designer, Richard Kelly. His imaginative and

architectural use of light greatly enhances the visual environment of building. The

illuminations created by his work are at once part of the contemporary American

environment.135

Kelly’s contribution to the built environment did not end with his sudden death,

but continued with his many disciples, who embraced his philosophy of “light energy

impacts” and adopted many of his lighting techniques, adapting them to suit the needs of

changing architectural fashions.136 Authoring numerous articles and teaching throughout

his career, Kelly is credited with inspiring many young designers and helping to establish

the fundamental vocabulary for the emerging discipline of architectural lighting design.

Recent history has not been so generous with Kelly, his contemporaries, or his

followers. The thrill of discovery and the fascination with the potential of electrical light

faded in the post-war environment. For many Americans the social upheavals of the

1960s displaced the belief in the “good life” technology had promised in the preceding

decades. Compounding the disillusion in technology, the energy crises of the 1970s

signaled an end to extravagant uses of electricity, an ecological crime of which many of

Kelly’s projects were guilty. These are not the only factors contributing to the exclusion

of Kelly’s work and lighting design from the historical record; it is a complex issue and

deserves further and separate attention. Instead, the purpose of this thesis is to restore

Richard Kelly to his well-deserved position within the historical record and draw

attention to his contribution to twentieth-century American architecture and design.

Furthermore, this thesis has, I hope, initiated a scholarly discourse on the role of

architectural lighting design within the built environment and to emphasize the

multifaceted and collaborative character of the building arts.

1 As quoted in Arnold Nicholson, “Mr. Kelly’s Magic Lights,” The Saturday Evening Post v.231, n.1 (5 July 1958): 65. 2 As quoted in “Lighting Starts with Daylight,” Progressive Architecture v.54 (Sept. 1973): 82-85 3 Addison Kelly, interview with the author, 25 Feb. 2002. 4 Der Scutt, “Richard Kelly, 1910-1977, A Personal Memento,” Lighting Design and Application (Oct.1979): 56-58. In this personal essay Scutt recalls a humorous story about Betty Kelly’s (Kelly’s wife) first visit to the young designer’s bedroom, “Mrs. Kelly remembers being invited to Richard’s bedroom—in those days it was a strict ‘no-no’ for any female to enter upon the sacred den of the male. But Richard, it seems, was very proud of his bedroom because it contained some of the early lighting effects that we promulgate today. Above his headboard, he had a wonderful picture of Greta Garbo that was illuminated with a precisely controlled accent light. The entire ceiling was a field of stars which represented the beginning of one of his other tools, known as ‘sparkling brilliance’.” 5 Kelly, “Lighting Starts with Daylight,” 82-85. 6 After obtaining a degree in architecture, Kelly generally emphasized these credentials and eschewed any connection with theatrical lighting design. 7 Quoted in Kelly, “Lighting Starts with Daylight,” 83. 8 “Lighting,” Kelly said, “is really just planning what we see; what we see and how we respond to it an be organized by mixing the various light energy impacts.” Quoted in Scutt, 58. 9 Richard Kelly, “The Better to See,” House and Garden v.90 (December 1946): 152-154. 10 The concept of “good living” is repeated throughout the late 1930s and 1940s and is indicative of a social yearning for the ideals embodied in the phrase. It is a complex and rich historical ideal or construct that deserves closer attention in terms of how light was used to articulate the social and cultural goals of “good living” in the pre-war and wartime eras in America. 11 Richard Kelly, “Focus on Light,” Flair (Feb.1950): 67- 71. 12 Quoted in Nicholson, 61. 13 Nicholson quotes Kelly, “They had pinned a Four-F label on me, due to the aftermath of an abdominal operation. There wasn’t any lighting business then…I figured it was a good time to investigate those architectural reasons.” Nicholson, 61. For more on Kelly’s personal motivation to attend Yale’s School of Architecture see Scutt, 56. 14 Kelly, Flair, 67. 15 Richard Kelly, “Life Notes,” The Kelly Archive, US Lighting Offices, New York, 2-3. 16 Letterhead of Kelly Offices, dated 11.10.65, the Kelly Archive, US Lighting Offices, New York.

17 Willard Warren, interview with the author, 12 Feb. 2002. Warren, himself a lighting consultant from the generation following Kelly, when asked about the emergence of the field of architectural lighting design described a nascent discipline in the early 1950s. He said that previously the principle electrical or mechanical engineer of the engineering firm on any given project would be given the task of determining the lighting of a building. Usually these designs were functional first, and decorative or interpretive a distant second. The lighting engineer might have received some aesthetic directives from the architect, but most certainly was not considered an “architect” or an “artist.” 18 Warren suggested in his interview that designers like Abe Feder and Leslie Wheel were not as concerned with technical excellence as much as with aesthetic brilliance and tended to approach lighting as an applied discipline rather than an element of the architectural plan. Warren, interview with the author, 12 Feb. 2002. 19 More research needs to be done into the career and teachings of Stanley McCandless as it may provide insights into the origins of Richard Kelly’s theories on light and perception. 20 “Method” here refers to the “method approach” to acting first developed by Konstantin Stanislavski, who directed the Moscow Art Theater in the early 1930s. Stanislavski wrote a number of books on acting, including, An Actor Prepares, which was published in English translation in 1936. The Method was promoted in the United States by Lee Strasberg, a teacher and theorist of acting, as well as a leader of the Actors Studio in New York. The Studio emphasized a psychological approach to acting. The “Method” required a performer to draw on his or her own experiences, memories, and emotions to inform a characterization and to express an interior life. Rather than being stereotyped figures representing a single concept (the villain, the heroine), they could become complex human beings with multiple and contradictory feelings and desires. Similarly McCandless taught that a layering of light qualities could produce “real” emotional responses in those exposed to the designed environment. See David Krasner, Method Acting Reconsidered (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000). 21 Philip Cialdella and Clara D. Powell, “The Great Illuminator,” reprinted pamphlet from LD+A (May 1993). 22 Kelly, Flair, 67. 23 Kelly, Flair, 67. 24 Kelly delivered this particular speech, addressing issues of architecture, art, design, and illumination at a joint meeting of the AIA, the SID, and the IES. There was a sincere effort at this time to try to forge understanding among the disciplines, as well as to better define the role of each. Here Kelly clearly makes the case for the necessity of architectural lighting design. See, Richard Kelly, “Lighting as an Integral Part of Architecture,” reprinted in College Art Journal (Fall 1952): 24-30. 25 Kelly, College Art Journal, 24-25. 26 Ibid., 24-30. 27 Kelly, Flair, 67. 28 Kelly, College Art Journal, 26. 29 Kelly mentions, “George Berkeley, through Whitehead and Santayana, to Einstein.” Kelly, College Art Journal, 26. 30 Kelly, College Art Journal, 26. 31 Kelly, Personal notes, undated, the Kelly Archive, US Lighting Offices, New York. 32 In addition to collaborating on the interiors of The Little Casino with Oscar Nitzschke, Kelly and Nitzschke began work on a “good living” guidebook entitled, A Home of Your Own for Perfect Living, sometime in 1945. This book was to serve as a manual on how to, “Live perfectly instead of to live meagerly, not by great expenditure but of free and personal planning, using the good and economic equipment available.” Richard Kelly and Oscar Nitzschke, “A Home of Your Own for Perfect Living,” unpublished proposal (ca. 1945-46), Kelly Archive, US Lighting Offices, New York. 33 Richard Kelly, “New Light on Living,” unpublished lecture (dated 25 July 1955), Kelly Archive, US Lighting Offices, New York. 34 Quoted from a speech given in honor of the creation of the Richard Kelly Grant in 1977, Philip Johnson, “Philip Johnson Remembers Richard Kelly,” Lighting Design and Application v.9 (June 1979): 28, 49. 35 Richard Kelly, “New Light on Living”; Kelly, Flair, 67-68; Nicholson, 28-29, 61, 64-65; and “A House Decorated with Light,” Vogue v.129 (1 Jan. 1957): 135-137. 36 Eliot Noyes, “Dear Dick,” 23 November 1945, two page letter, the Kelly Archive, US Lighting Offices, New York.

37 As quoted in Nicholson, 61. 38 Kelly, “New Light on Living.” 39 Ibid. 40 Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson, The International Style: Architecture Since 1922 (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1932). For more on the marketing of the International Style see Henry Matthews, “The Promotion of Modern Architecture by the Museum of Modern Art in the 1930s,” Journal of Design History, v.7 (1994): 43-59. In this article Matthews traces, in detail, Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Philip Johnson, and Alfred Barr’s campaign to “replace the pluralism of current (early twentieth century) American architecture with . . . a cohesive modern style,” and their absolute centrality, in conjunction with the Museum of Modern Art, in establishing and promoting the formal principles of Modern architecture. 41 Hitchcock and Johnson, The International Style, preface by Alfred Barr, 13. 42 “A House Decorated with Light,” 135-136, 146. 43 George Dunton, “Artificial Lighting,” Architect’s Year Book v.5 (1953): 170-180. This source discusses the attitude about new lighting technologies at the time of their creation, offering a unique perspective on the state of lighting design during the mid-century period. 44 Kelly, College Art Journal, 26. Translation is Kelly’s own. 45 In the article by Kelly, “Focus on Light,” which describes in detail the lighting program of the Glass House there is absolutely no reference to the “wallpaper” effect of the night-lighting. Kelly, Flair, 67. 46 There were ultimately numerous illumination problems stemming from Johnson’s wish to keep the house free of lighting fixtures and choice of glass as structural material. Eventually Kelly and Johnson together designed the now famous tripod lamp as a solution to the challenge of nighttime lighting in a glass house. Even this answer provided its own set of difficulties, when the tripod form proved unstable and indeed so dangerous that a fourth leg was added. For more on the tripod lamp see, Martin Eidelberg, ed., Design 1935-1965: What Modern Was (Montreal: Musée des arts décoratifs de Montréal; New York: H.N. Abrams, 1991), 204. 47 For a provoking look at the oft neglected architectural surface, the lawn and its electrification (including lighting) see Mark Wigley, “The Electric Lawn,” The American Lawn, ed. Georges Teyssot (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999), 155-195. 48 Kelly, Flair, 67. 49 The importance of the landscape, and therefore the illumination of the landscape, to architectural concept of Johnson’s glass enclosure is argued in Kenneth Frampton, “The Glass House Revisited,” Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies, n. 9 (1978): 38-59. Here Frampton writes, “the tress surrounding the house serve as the perceptual limits of the domain. These limits are unambiguously established at night by floodlit trees, while during the day the domain is determined by the extent of the manicured lawn.” 50 As quoted in Nicholson, 65. 51 A partial list of Kelly’s work is included in the appendix. 52 See for example Kelly, Flair, 66-69; College Art Journal, 24-30; and “Good Lighting is Part of Good Living,” House and Garden (March 1952): 139. See also, “New Progress in Light,” Architectural Forum (Feb. 1957): 152-155; and slightly later “Names” Architectural Engineering News v.4 (Oct. 1962): 85. 53 Richard Kelly, Light in Architecture (New York: New York Chapter, American Institute of Architects; Illuminating Engineering Society, 1955). 54 Kelly, Light in Architecture; and “Names” 85. 55 Scutt, 60. 56 Within the hundreds of letters housed in the Kelly Archive, representing the sweep of Kelly’s career, are many notes of praise and thanks. Among these though, are also a significant number of letters of complaint—of inattention to the job, to unhappiness on the part of the client with the final result of the lighting, and overall cost of services and instillation. A particularly antagonistic relationship developed between Kelly and Jac Lessman, a well established interior decorator specializing in hotel and resort contracts. This thorny relationship often resulted in such quips from Lessman as: “I am glad to find that you are so busy but I must keep reminding you that whenever the time comes when you are too busy to take care of requests, no matter how important you may think they may be to you, we will have to engage others who are in a position to pay attention to our assignments with you, as we don’t want to suffer the embarrassment of not being able to comply with our client’s wishes because of your negligence.” Despite Lessman’s complaints their professional working relationship continued for over a decade. Jac Lessman, “Dear Mr.Kelly,” 15 Nov. 1949, one page letter, The Kelly Archive, US Lighting Offices, New York.

57 Richard Kelly, “To Mr. William Lescaze,” 24 June 1955, one page letter, the Kelly Archive, US Lighting Offices, New York. 58 Richard Kelly, “To Mr. Lescaze,” 2 June 1955, one page letter, plus enclosure, the Kelly Archive, US Lighting Offices, New York. 59 William Lescaze, “Dear Kelly,” 8 June 1955, one page letter, the Kelly Archive, US Lighting Offices, New York. 60 Richard Kelly, “To Mr. Lescaze,” 2 June 1955, one page letter, plus enclosure, the Kelly Archive, US Lighting Offices, New York. 61 William Lescaze, “Dear Mr. Kelly,” 20 July 1956, one page letter, the Kelly Archive, US Lighting Offices, New York 62 Lescaze, “Dear Mr. Kelly,” 20 July 1956. 63 Richard Kelly, “Dear Mr. Lescaze,” 6 August 1956, one page letter, the Kelly Archive, US Lighting Offices, New York. 64 “Color and Art Help an Office Building,” Architectural Forum v.105 (Oct. 1956): 154-155. Quoted from this source, “On the ground floor of this $13.5 million building [711 Third Avenue], the owner made an added $80,000 (0.6%) bid for prestige in New York’s competitive office market by lending bright notes to a neighborhood only recently under the shadow of the Third Avenue El: a big lobby mosaic and stainless-steel sculpture. Says Building-Owner Kaufman: ‘It cost so little to have something outstanding I’m amazed more ‘spec’ builders don’t go in for it.’” 65 “Color and Art Help an Office Building,” 154-155. 66 Indeed in Kelly’s later career he worked almost exclusively on museum and gallery lighting projects. The Kimball Museum of Fine Arts in Fort Worth Texas, designed in collaboration with Louis Kahn is Kelly’s most respected and remarkable project of this later period. 67 In a series of undated notes Kelly outlined his thoughts on “Modern Monuments”, he lists GM (General Motors) and Seagram, and he writes, “Why they were they built? Relative importance of controlled vision.” These notes are reproduced in the appendix. The Kelly Archive, US Lighting Offices, New York. 68 As quoted in Scutt, 59. 69 Scutt, 58. 70 Edward D. Mills, “860 Lake Shore Drive, Chicago. USA,” The Architect and Building News (8 April 1954): 402-408 71 Phyllis Lambert, Mies in America (New York: H.N. Abrams, 2001), note 94, 513.Lambert suggests that it was Johnson who brought Kelly to Mies, but this is simply speculation. While Kelly and Johnson had worked together on a number of projects previous to 860-880 Lakeshore drive, by the early 1950s Kelly had consulted for nearly every major architect working in the US and was well known among his peers—and was even a bit of a “star” in New York. It could just as easily have been that Mies himself chose Kelly, based on an appreciation of his work. 72 Mills, 402-408. 73 For more on this period consult, Terence Riley and Barry Bergdoll, ed., Mies in Berlin (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2001). 74 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, “Office Building,” G n.1 (July 1923): 3, as quoted in Fritz Neumeyer, The Artless Word: Mies van der Rohe on the Building Art., Trans. Mark Jarzombek (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991), 240. 75 Americans like Philip Johnson and Henry-Russell Hitchcock would later co-opt and codify the ideas latent in this largely European discourse with their 1932 publication, The International Style: Architecture since 1922 .This may also explain, in part, the devotion that Johnson showed Mies in their later collaborations 76 Published one year before the premiere issue of G, was Mies’s first professional manifesto, which declared “Only skyscrapers under construction reveal the bold constructive thoughts, and then the impression of the high reaching steel skeletons is overpowering. With the raising of the walls, this impression is completely destroyed; the constructive thought, the necessary basis for artistic form-giving, is annihilated and frequently smothered by a meaningless and trivial jumble of forms.” Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, “Skyscrapers,” Frühlicht, 1 (1922): 122-124, as quoted in Neumeyer, 240. 77 As quoted in Neumeyer, 325-26. 78 As quoted in Neumeyer, 249. 79 Lambert, Mies in America, 356-357; and notes 46-49, 510.

80 Joe Fujikawa, a student and later collaborator of Mies’s, said of this project, “we had all the germs of 860 when we started on Algonquin.” As quoted in Lambert, Mies in America, 357. 81 On this Fujikawa says, “[Mies] had the concept in already in mind…His idea was to strike while the iron was hot, and so he had a big model made in brass and got everybody excited—Herb Greenwald, Bob McCormick, who was his partner and who was involved because he owned the site. And from then on, it was full speed. Let’s get going and build it, and maybe that was one of the reasons that Algonquin was never brought to fruition, because Herb then jumped on 860 and really rammed it through to the point where he got the financing successfully.” As quoted in Lambert, Mies in America, note 57, 511. 82 Geoffrey Holroyd, “American News Letter—9,” The Architect and Building News (8 April 1954): 400-401. 83 According to The Architect and Building News, “860 Lake Shore Drive is Mies van der Rohe’s most important building to date.” Mills, 402. 84 In her section on Mies and 860 – 880 Lake Shore Drive, “Paradigmatic Urban Space,” Lambert discusses at length her interpretation of Mies’s architectural composition of solid and void. See Lambert, Mies in America, 375-376. 85 The “skeleton” is not truly the structure’s skeleton, it is merely an applied superstructure which articulates the ideal of the essential structure of the skyscraper. 86 Le Corbusier, “Five points towards a new architecture (1926),” reprinted in Ulrich Conrads, ed. Programs and Manifestoes on Twentieth Century Architecture (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1970), 99-101. 87 Certainly the structural and aesthetic devices outlined by Le Corbusier in his “Five Points,” were known and in use before he penned his manifesto, but he was the first to so clearly articulate them into a single comprehensive system. 88 Reproduced in Appendix; Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, telegram to Richard Kelly, 22 February 1950, The Kelly Archive, US Lighting Offices, New York. 89 Mies was not alone to approach the architectural process as a means to spiritual awakening and the betterment of society as expressed through the interplay of solid and void and the intersection plane and space. Other European architects and artists, such as Kasimir Malevich, Theo van Doesburg, Gerrit Rietveld, Walter Gropius, Paul Klee, and Le Corbusier, who were similarly engaged with these ideas and theosophy of architecture. 90 Mies wrote in G in 1923, “We know no forms, only building problems. Form is not the goal but the result of our work. There is no form in and for itself. The truly formal is conditional, fused with the task, yes the most elementary expression of its solution. Form as goal is formalism; and that we reject. Nor do we strive for a style. Even the will to style is formalism. Neumeyer, 242. A colleague has suggested that Mies was seeking the “platonic form,” an ideal in spirituality and form defined in classical philosophy. This is an intriguing suggestion and further links Miesian thought and architecture to the classical tradition. However, more research is needed to confirm this theory. 91 Mies van der Rohe, “The Adam Building,” draft of a letter on the 1928 project for the Adam department store. Manuscript in Museum of Modern Art, later German projects, Folder 1. The design was introduced in Das Kunstblatt, 14, n.3 (1930): 111-113; Neumeyer, 305. 92 Lambert suggests a similar interpretation of Mies’s aesthetic program for the Lake Shore Project, “Mies reworked the concept at 860 – 880 Lake Shore Drive in a vertical superposition of the solid form of the tower above void, the void a horizontal transparency between the strong columnar framing of the two towers. Mies’s high-rise buildings from 860 – 880 onward affirmed this complementary relationship of space and structure, as the freestanding columns would meet the ground plane of the plinth. The elegantly slim canopies that mark the entrances to and connect the 860 and 880 towers standing on their shared travertine plinth reinforce the spatial extension of the void beneath the orthogonal vertical volume.” Lambert, Mies in America, 376. Although it should be noted that Lambert neglects the important role that lighting plays in the aesthetic composition of the site and the transposition of positive and negative space with nighttime illumination. 93 Mies wrote of the task of the modern architect, “The materials are concrete, iron, glass. Ferroconcrete buildings are essentially skeleton structures. Neither pastry nor tank turrets. Supporting girder construction with a non-supporting wall. That means skin and bone structures.” Mies van der Rohe, “Office Building,” G, n. 1 (July 1923): 3; Neumeyer, 241.

94 Richard Kelly, “Dear Mr. Mies van der Rohe,” 28 February 1950, three page letter, the Kelly Archive, US Lighting Offices, New York, 1. Reproduced in appendix. Kelly’s emphasis on the fitness of his solution, while certainly true on each count, perhaps also reveals his desire to prove the architectural seriousness of his designs as well as his faith in the tenets of modern architecture. Certainly Kelly must have been aware that Mies himself had helped define these principles in the earlier part of the century, and it is therefore, not unlikely that he wished to prove his appreciation and understanding of Modernism’s goals to the elder architect. 95 Kelly, “Dear Mr. Mies van der Rohe,” 28 February 1950, 1. 96 Kelly’s innovations in terms of dimmer technology and dimmer use are unparalleled. In keeping with his theories on illumination, a single setting for any lamp is insufficient for the varying conditions produced by changes in daylight, the number of people in a space, desired emotive effects, so on and so forth. An examination of Kelly’s impact on dimmer technology is therefore, warranted and much needed. 97 Kelly, “Dear Mr. Mies van der Rohe,” 28 February 1950, 1-2. 98 Quoted from, “New Progress in Light,” Architectural Forum n.106 (Feb. 1957): 152 –155. 99 The technological innovation of Kelly’s solution was carefully elaborated from the text of the letter by Addison Kelly, (Kelly’s daughter) herself an honored and well-known lighting designer, in an interview with the author, 25 Feb. 2002 100 Many of Kelly’s extraordinary lighting solutions would not have been possible without the collaboration of Edison Price and Isaac Goodbar, two of the twentieth century’s most influential and important lighting engineers. Price’s ingenuity and Goodbar’s technical expertise allowed many of Kelly’s seemingly impractical or impossible concepts to be realized. For more on Price see Stanley Abercrombie, “Edison Price: his name is no accident,” Architecture Plus v.1 (August 1973), 34-43. 101 Indeed the glowing core appears consistently in Mies’s glass towers from the 1920s on, whether only on paper or realized in built work. A quick review of his plans and projects reveals this important aesthetic device—the glowing core accentuating the skeletal construction. A good representation of plans and images can be found in Lambert, Mies in America. 102 Lambert, Mies in America, 1. 103 For example Der Scutt recounts this story about Kelly’s fanaticism, “During the restoration of the First Church of Christ Scientist in New York Kelly was in one of the back rooms, which was out of public view, worrying about how to light the space. One of the ladies representing the Building Committee said, ‘Mr. Kelly, don’t worry about this, no one is ever going to see it.’ He replied, ‘Lighting is important for every space.’” Quoted in Scutt, 57. 104 “They Dreamed of a Tower of Light,” (advertisement) New York Times 7 Apr. 1957: Sec. 10, advertising supplement, 15. 105 While there has been a certain cultivation of “star” status by some architects in the later decades of the twentieth century, this brochure indicates the cult of celebrity was employed even in the 1950s for the promotion of not only architects like Mies and Johnson, but also of lighting designers like Kelly. 106 As I have illustrated earlier, Mies’s proposals for such structures as the Adam Building on Leipziger Strasse in Berlin from 1928 or his skyscraper proposal for the Friedrichstrasse from 1921 rely on the transparency of the material, glass, for aesthetic effect and as such then necessitate carefully controlled lighting for overall unity of composition. There is an obvious correlation between the image representing the completed Seagram “tower of light” in the Lightolier brochure and Mies’s famous skyscraper drawings from the twenties and clearly suggests an aesthetic continuity with the ideal modern tower as Mies had imaged earlier. 107 Kelly, Light in Architecture. 108 The Lightolier brochure reproduced in this paper belongs to the Kelly Archive, but was originally produced to commemorate a special advertising section in the New York Times, for this publication of the same imagery and text see, “They Dreamed of a Tower of Light,” (advertisement) New York Times 7 Apr. 1957: Sec. 10, advertising supplement, 15. 109 Quoted in Lambert, Mies in America, note 113, 513. 110 The literature surrounding the completion of the Seagram building variously gives credit for the impressive illumination to (vaguely) the architect, (more specifically) Mies and Johnson, Johnson and Kelly, or sometimes Kelly alone. Lambert, in “How a Building Gets Built,” gives herself credit for overseeing every detail of the construction, including lighting. See Lambert,” Vassar Alumnae Magazine (Feb. 1959): 18.

111 At 860 – 880 Lake Shore Drive Mies had required (written into tenant leases and paid for by the tenants) that silver-colored curtains be installed throughout, and the personal draperies could only be hung inwards of the standardized curtains. As Joe Fujikawa said, “anything to help pull the wall together as a monolithic unit, he [Mies] was all for,” as quoted in Lambert, Mies in America, 374. 112 “Seagram Building, New York City,” International Lighting Review v.12 (1961): 68-69. 113 The Seagram’s luminous ceiling panels, custom-designed and manufactured, were the largest flat diffusers manufactured to that date. “Seagram Building, New York City,” 68. 114 “Seagram Building, New York City,” 68. 115 Ibid., 68. 116 “Seagram’s Custom Look.” Architectural Forum v.109 (July 1958): 72-75. 117 For a period discussion of the innovations of luminous ceilings in office lighting design, see Jüreng Joedicke, Office Buildings (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1962), 140-141. 118 Joedicke, 158-159. 119 Ibid., 160. 120 According to Lambert, Mies originally suggested that lights be placed in pots with their beams directed upward to create an indirect lighting scheme, which would have kept the ceilings free of apparatus but would have been much less energy efficient and generally impractical. The luminous ceiling system answered both Mies aesthetic and practical needs. See Lambert’s comments on the luminous ceiling, Mies in America, note 127, 514. 121 Philip Cialdella, unpublished notes for IESNA exhibition, Richard Kelly, Selected Works, New York, New York, 1993; The Kelly Archive, US Lighting Offices, New York. 122 Nicholson, 61. 123 “Seagram’s Custom Look,” 72-75. 124 Cover image for Phyllis Lambert, Vassar Alumnae Magazine, 13-19. 125 See for example: “The Seagram Building,” Arts and Architecture v.77 (Jan. 1960): 14-15; New Progress in Light,” 155; Nicholson, 28-29, 61, 64-65; William H. Jordy, “Seagram Assessed,” Architectural Review v.124 (Dec. 1958): 374-8; “A House Decorated with Light,” Vogue, 135-137, 146; Building is Designer’s Testament.” New York Times 10 Nov. 1957: Sec. 8, 1, 8; “Seagram Building, New York City,” 68-69; “Seagram’s Bronze Tower;” Architectural Forum v.109 (July 1958): 67-71; Henry Wright, “Introduction: Light as Architecture,” Progressive Architecture n.9 (Sept. 1958): 115-123. 126 Philip Cialdella, unpublished notes for IESNA exhibition, Richard Kelly, Selected Works, New York, New York, 1993; The Kelly Archive, US Lighting Offices, New York 127 “The architects and Kelly felt that the ground floor had to be much brighter than upper floors; otherwise, design effect would be lost.” Quoted from, “New Progress in Light,” Architectural Forum, 155. 128 Despite the Miesian mythology supporting the benefits of industrialization and mass production, artisanal elements of the Seagram building include among others the amber-tinted glass, the bronze exterior mullions, the luminous ceiling, granite surfaces, and lamps and reflector lenses used in the building’s lobby. 129 According to an article in Progressive Architecture, “Uniform intensity of brightness over the lobby walls with fixtures minimized was the design goal to achieve simple monumentality effortlessly and elegantly. It required the courage to spend enough wattage to achieve the minimum intensity that could be expressive. It is probably the highest wattage per foot yet used in a lobby.” For the complete article see “Seagram Building: Definition of Structure,” Progressive Architecture n.9 (Sept. 1958): 139-143. 130 Peter Smithson, “Footnote on the Seagram Building by Peter Smithson,” Architectural Review v.124 (Dec. 1958): 382. 131 Kelly never polarized architecture and decoration, writing “Architectural design and decoration is created to serve mankind by bettering the sensual perceptions in life. Thus the purposeful and accidental action of light in creating visual perception determines…the total impact of architectural and decorating work.” Quoted in Kelly, “Lighting as an Integral Part of Architecture,” 26. 132 Nicholson, 29. 133 Howard Brandston, “A Profession Grows Up,” Progressive Architecture v.54 (Sept. 1973): 74-78. Brandston was a colleague of Kelly’s and his writing and work illustrates represents one aspect of Kelly’s lasting impact on the disciple of lighting design. 134 “Life Notes,” The Kelly Archive, US Lighting Offices, New York.

135 “Architect is Honored; Ex-Resident,” Zanesville Times Recorder 12 March 1968 (Sec A, 5). 136 Within the Kelly Archive are a number of letters from grateful students around the world, who thank Kelly for guidance and inspiration in their own careers. Many of them sent pictures of their own work, reflecting the international influence of Kelly’s teaching and writing on lighting design.