2010 Traveling Fellowship for Architecture, Design, and Urban Design
Obligation Opportunity: John D. Rockefeller Jr.'s Philanthropic Projects and the Aesthetic Visualization of US Identity

Introduction and Methodology

This section explains how and why I embarked upon the SOM Foundation fellowship project: what I hoped to accomplish through my research and travels; changes and modifications to the itinerary; and, what worked and what didn’t.

My interest in the aesthetics of John D. Rockefeller Jr.’s larger philanthropic oeuvre grew out of my master’s thesis at MIT, which I wrote in the spring of 2010. The thesis is about a failed proposal for a New Egyptian Museum and Research Institute at Cairo (hereafter referred to as NEMRI). James Henry Breasted, the Director of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, masterminded the project; JDR Jr. agreed to finance it and hired his personal architect, William Welles Bosworth, to propose an architectural style for the buildings. In my research, I focused on a political and aesthetic analysis of the museum’s conception and failure. In terms of its conception, I concentrated primarily on the actions of Breasted and Bosworth, who appeared to be the main protagonists. From the archives, the former emerged as a highly political figure: along with his professional ambitions as an Egyptologist, Breasted also demonstrated strong political strong ambitions (he was once considered a candidate for the post US Ambassador to Egypt) as well as a strong Orientalist stance toward the people and cultures of modern Egypt and the Near East. Breasted also appears to have contributed to the architectural style of the NEMRI: communicating with Bosworth, he discussed the merits of different architectural styles for the proposed buildings. For his part, Bosworth brought to the project a sophisticated understanding of the Beaux-Arts style, of landscape and layout, and of the use of ornament. Together, the communications of Breasted and Bosworth provided much interesting material for my project. In comparison, JDR Jr. remained mostly a silent figure—both in the archives and in my own critical thinking on the project.

As is the case with most research and writing projects, the thesis really began to take shape as I wrote the concluding chapters, in which both the architectural significance of the museum as well as the role of JDR Jr. began to shift. In addition to Breasted and Bosworth’s roles and their architectural and political contributions to the project, I found that studying JDR Jr. (his worldview, the importance of religion in his life, and his nostalgia for a technologically simpler time, etc.) was key to understanding how the NEMRI was conceived and why Breasted turned specifically to JDR Jr. for funding.

During my research at the Rockefeller Archive Center (RAC), which holds the papers of the Rockefeller family and their concerns, a much larger context for the proposed museum began to emerge. I was struck by the sheer quantity and scope of JDR Jr.’s domestic and international philanthropic work in the period between the two World Wars. His projects included churches, museums, international student housing, libraries, and research institutions. Often, these institutions were housed in architecturally striking buildings. In addition to these projects, JDR Jr.’s funded architectural restorations and reconstructions, landscape design and conservation, and archaeological excavations. Over the years, JDR Jr.’s role in the conception and funding of these projects has been largely forgotten. I, at least, was unaware of most of these projects. And, when I was aware of them, I did not know that the philanthropist had played a key part in their conception and execution.

I also discovered that JDR Jr. was personally interested in architecture and landscape design. (This is not a unique discovery on my part: other historians mention his interest in architecture as well. I was, however, unaware of these texts during my initial research at the RAC.) Together, this extensive oeuvre of cultural projects and their careful architectural articulation suggested to me that JDR Jr. had a highly sophisticated concept of cultural philanthropy and of its aesthetic visualization.

The other discovery toward the conclusion of my thesis research and writing concerns the museum’s “afterlife”: the proposed design of the museum and its preferred site appear to have had a direct architectural and urban impact in Egypt, which could not have been foreseen by the project’s protagonists.

The museum’s trajectory and its afterlife suggested to me that the Rockefeller team’s conception of inter-war projects at home and abroad—and the subsequent domestic and international responses to these projects—often produced important, and sometimes unintended, stylistic, technological, and disciplinary transformations in architecture and urban design.

After graduating from my master’s program at MIT, I used these findings to propose an independent research project to the SOM Foundation. My proposal was structured around these two late-emerging issues: the philanthropist and his international interests and motivations, and the aesthetic changes generated by his projects. Although I did not design my proposal expressly for this purpose, one way of understanding the fellowship is to think of it as an exercise in expanding both the context of the NEMRI (the subject of my thesis) and my critical thinking regarding it.

Changes (In Thinking and Otherwise)

So, the above are some of the original intentions and aims behind the project. They are also contained within the original abstract. The abstract, however, does not show how the project’s scope and my own critical thinking evolved over the course of the fellowship. Some of these changes were directly generated by the material I uncovered; others came about as a result of logistical challenges.

I embarked on the fellowship armed with some idea of examining cultural imperialism and its aesthetic impact in JDR Jr.’s work. But the archival material and research forced a reconception of my project to some extent and suggested additional avenues of thinking about JDR Jr.’s philanthropy. While I did not abandon cultural imperialism as a characteristic of JDR Jr.’s projects, I did begin to notice other (perhaps related) themes. Cultural internationalism, for example, merged as a possible interpretative critical framework for JDR Jr.’s work. Architecturally, this internationalism appears to have been accompanied by aesthetic eclecticism in the design and physical articulation of buildings and gardens associated with JDR Jr.’s projects. At times JDR Jr. appears to have embraced this eclecticism but often the different types of aesthetics (and what they stood for) brushed up against each other uneasily. While JDR Jr. himself preferred the Beaux-Arts aesthetic, the international style was beginning to impact his buildings. This tension between styles is apparent in the archival documentation of the conception of some projects, such as the Rockefeller Center in New York City. The Rockefeller Center is not a philanthropic project, but it is an important architectural project of its time and I mention it here for this reason. In art, while JDR Jr. preferred medieval European tapestries and Ming and Qing dynasty porcelains, his wife Abby Rockefeller helped establish the Museum of Modern Art. The tension between styles is also evident in the family estate at Kykuit, where Nelson A. Rockefeller introduced modern art in the Beaux-Arts landscape designed by his father and Bosworth.

I originally envisioned this report as a thoroughly researched analysis of cultural imperialism. However, the new themes of internationalism and eclecticism that have appeared in JDR Jr.’s work, as well as the complexity of this work (which I did not fully appreciate until after I had formulated my original proposal), have forced a reconsideration of the original goal of this report. It functions now more as an exploratory survey of JDR Jr.’s projects and motivations, it suggests new avenues of thinking for future work, and it provides the raw material for a critical analysis that will come later—hopefully in the form of a dissertation.

The Fellowship

By necessity, the fellowship’s scope and schedule have changed considerably over the course of two years. Although I formulated my fellowship proposal while I was in the US, I heard news of the fellowship after I decided to leave for Pakistan for a year. I had originally planned to visit sites in the US first, which would then be followed by travel to the Middle East (Egypt and Israel), and finally Europe. After moving to Pakistan, however, I had to make a few changes. Traveling to the US is a challenging consular/visa process under the best of circumstances, so I concentrated on traveling to Egypt and Israel first, given the relative proximity of these countries to my home base. However, the revolution in Egypt made this impossible. I postponed travel to this sector and focused instead on Europe—with a few additions to the itinerary. After I had submitted my original itinerary to the SOM Foundation, I discovered that JDR Jr. had financed important projects in Greece and Switzerland. I added these projects to my itinerary for Europe, which initially included only projects in England, France, and Italy. (Although I hoped to attempt the Middle East sector of my trip again, I suspected that this might prove difficult. Since I wished to maintain the original scope of travel that I had proposed to the SOM Foundation, I decided to make up for this by including Greece and Switzerland.)

The travel to Europe was an incredible opportunity to visit archives and institutions that I would probably never have visited outside of the fellowship project and the SOM Foundation’s support, such as the United Nations Office in Geneva, the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, etc.

Post-Europe, I took a nine-month break from the fellowship after I returned to the US and began my PhD studies. In the middle I tried to visit the Middle East once again during my winter break, but fresh problems in Egypt forced a final reconsideration of this sector: I applied for and was granted permission to remove Egypt and Israel from my fellowship. The final leg of my fellowship included sites and archives in the US. I completed my domestic research and travels and prepared this final report during the summer and fall of 2012.

As I mentioned earlier, there is a very good chance that this report will lead to a doctoral project in the future, during which time I hope to visit those sites that I had to strike out from my itinerary.

About the Final Report

My final report straddles a middle ground between write-ups and photographic documentation. The report begins with the original abstract (which has been left intact to reflect my earlier thinking on the project), followed by the final itinerary and the introduction (this present section). After this introduction, the reader will find a brief biography of JDR Jr., a map, and a historical timeline. The map shows the geographic scope of JDR Jr.’s philanthropy; it also shows the domestic and international sites that I visited during the fellowship. The timeline provides a helpful chronological analysis of the projects: it shows the sequence in which JDR Jr. embarked on his projects; it demonstrates interesting overlaps between individual projects; and it helps to situate JDR Jr.’s work alongside major historical events. So, for example, we learn that Jr. embarked upon cultural philanthropy in the Middle East immediately at the end of the First World War, and that his Middle Eastern projects coincided with his support for French Restorations and with the construction of International Houses at home and abroad. Cultural philanthropy, therefore, may be seen as an attempt to promote order and goodwill in a world destabilized by weakening European empires, emerging nationalisms, and the United States’ retreat into political isolationism.

This biography, map, and timeline—along with the abstract, itinerary, and introduction—form the first major part of the report. They are followed by the largest section of the report, “Travels, Fellowship,” where I have documented individual sites. This section is not strictly representative: I have not included every site that I have visited and—of the sites that I have included here—there are stacks of archival photographs, unprocessed archival information, and my own photographs that had to be left out of this report for the sake of expediency. Therefore, the second section may be understood instead as a small window into my larger travels and research.