Moulins à Vents

Since moving to Kansas, I've become fascinated with historic windmills. They still populate the landscape, some remarkably intact and others denuded of every moving part. T. Lindsay Baker's American Windmills: An Album of Historic Photographs (2007) and A Field Guide to American Windmills (1985) are handy resources. The former was developed out of the author's personal collection of windmill photographs, which he began to acquire sometime before 1974.

Some amazing windmill images were drawn from world's fairs, where the mechanistic towers were clustered together as entertainment venues. The Columbian Exposition (Chicago 1893; below), the Exposition Universelle (Paris 1900) and the Louisiana Purchase Exposition (St. Louis 1904) all featured prominent windmill displays.

K-State Libraries' Richard L. D. & Marjorie J. Morse Department of Special Collections retains a copy of agronomy professor Max Ringelmann's Matériel Agricole à l'Exposition de 1900 (Paris, 1901). The author -- reporting on the fifth Parisian fair -- was particularly enamored of American improvements over the Eclipse model, which had been introduced at the nation's third fair (1878), namely that the new models could work under less windy conditions. He also acknowledged French models by Plissonier, Bompard et Grégoire (above, left), Vidal-Beaume (top; below, right) and Édouard-Émile Lebert's ÉolienneBollée (below, left).

For the North American models, he featured Stover Manufacturing Company's Ideal (center, right). The windmill had curved wings comprised of fabricated steel and its galvanized supporting pylon could be erected without any scaffolding. He perceived -- accurately -- that the Ideal would be of great service on French farms. It and other American models proliferated in the countryside prior to the First World War.(1)

Today there are windmill museums that display multiple models in a single setting:

Dalley Windmill Collection, Fairgrounds, Portales, NM

Windmills of the Riverwalk, Batavia Historical Society, Batavia, IL

Mid-American Windmill Museum, Kendallville, IN

Shattuck Windmill Museum, Shattuck, OK

Windmill Museum, Wind Experience Center, Lubbock, TX


(1)See John Walter & Régis Gerard. A History of the Éolienne Bollée. N.p.: By the authors, 2002-2015. As viewed 15 March 2016. URL: http://www.archivingindustry.com/Eolienne/webhistorybook-2015-1.pdf

Images above:  1, 3, 4 from Max Ringelmann. "Moulins à Vents." Section in Matériel Agricole à l'Exposition de 1900. Paris: Librairie Agricole, 1901, pp. 9-13. Richard L. D. & Marjorie J. Morse Department of Special Collections, K-State Libraries.

2 from "Vue d'ensemble de l'expositions de moulins à vents et turbines atmosphériques a l'Exposition universelle de Chicago." Le Génie civil XXIII: 9 (1 July 1893): p. 133.

At Large in the Library: Banned Books Week

Banned Books Week kicked off a few days ago, and it seemed a good time to mention Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead.  Twelve publishers rejected the manuscript -- first titled Second-Hand Lives -- before Bobbs-Merrill finally released 7,500 copies on 6 May 1943.  The company's New York business manager felt that sales would never surpass more than 10,000 copies. Overall Bobbs-Merrill spent about $250,000 on promotions and within a few months Warner Brothers acquired the film rights.

The idea for the book stemmed from Rand's 1926 arrival to Manhattan; she later recalled that "there was one skyscraper that stood out ablaze like the finger of God, and it seemed to me that [it was] the greatest symbol of free man.... I made a mental note that someday I would write a novel with the skyscraper as a theme."

The novel's visionary architect-protagonist, Howard Roark, was widely believed to have been inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright. There has been some recent speculation that Raymond Hood may have been the basis for the novel's other architect character Peter Keating.

The Fountainhead frequently appears on Top 100 lists of banned and challenged books.

Frances Benjamin Johnston (1864-1952)

The Library of Congress is celebrating the 150th birthday of Frances Benjamin Johnston (shown above), born 15 January 1864. Her archive resides at LoC, and the Prints and Photographs Division has digitized a portion of her work. To view the digital gallery, click here.

The Southeastern Architectural Archive's new exhibit, "Bellocq and Beyond" features Johnston's undated photograph of 1133-1135 Chartres Street's courtyard. The exhibit will be up through 20 February 2014 in the SEAA's Reading Room, 300 Joseph Merrick Jones Hall on Tulane University's Uptown campus.

Image above:  Frances Benjamin Johnston, full-length self-portrait dressed as a man with false moustache, posed with bicycle. Circa 1880-1900. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA. LC-DIG-ppmsc-04884 (digital file from original) LC-USZ62-83111.

In New Orleans, The Owl: The Organ of the Young Men's Hebrew Association, featured a cartoon deriding female cyclists:

Image above: "What We Are Coming To." The Owl: The Organ of the Young Men's Hebrew Association. 1890s. Louisiana Research Collection, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Changes at Library of Congress

Walker Evans. Movie Theatre on St. Charles Street, New Orleans, Louisiana. 1935 or 1936. Farm Security Administration Image LC-USF342- 001285, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.

The Library of Congress has recently changed its Prints and Photographs Division On-Line Catalog, which includes images from the Historic American Buildings Survey and the Farm Security Administration/Office of War. The new Interface has more robust search capabilities, and features easy ways to share and save links to selected images.

It also has a new URL:

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/

Sample searches are posted with a Flickr set, http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/sets/72157623631646607/

Link changes have been made on Tulane University Research Guides pages for Architecture and Historic Preservation:

http://libguides.tulane.edu/architecture

http://libguides.tulane.edu/content.php?pid=87072

Sanborn Maps Checklist Online

The Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress, has just announced the online availability of its Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps Checklist, a new version of the popular out-of-print Library publication entitled "Fire Insurance Maps in the Library of Congress: Plans of North American Cities and Towns produced by the Sanborn Map Company” (Library of Congress, 1981). The new website can be accessed directly via http://www.loc.gov/rr/geogmap/sanborn/

This checklist describes the nearly 700,000 sheet collection of maps published by the Sanborn Map Company from 1867 to the 1960’s in the Library's collection, the single largest and most comprehensive collection of maps published by the Sanborn Map Company. These maps were acquired by the Library as a result of copyright deposits, government agency transfers, and gifts. For those who may be unaware, fire insurance maps and plans show detailed, accurate and large scale building “footprints” of individual structures and are often the earliest large scale urban mapping available for small cities.

In addition to a searchable database which lists all editions and number of sheets for each city/town/village represented in the collection, the online checklist will be continually updated to reflect new acquisitions. Most importantly, the online checklist contains links to existing downloadable digital images from the collection and will be continually updated as new digital images are added to the online checklist.

The web site includes essays on the history of large scale mapping related to fire insurance efforts and examples of how large scale maps can be used by historians, geographers, and researchers in virtually any discipline.

For additional information contact Ed Redmond, Library of Congress,
Geography and Map Division at ered@loc.gov

Please note that Tulane University's Southeastern Architectural Archive retains a unique copy of the 1876 Sanborn Atlas for New Orleans, as well as a compilation of Proto-Sanborn Atlases (c. 1850s-1874).

Ray & Charles Eames

Eames Demetrios, the grandson of Ray (1912-88) and Charles Eames (1907-78), has recently made historic footage and photographs of his grandparents' work available to the public. His short presentation includes a clip from the earliest Charles Eames film (1939), shot at Cranbrook Institute and featuring legendary Finnish ceramist Majlis Grotell (1899-1973).

The Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress retains extensive holdings related to Ray and Charles Eames, more than 750,000 items dating from roughly 1940 to 1978. Ten years ago, the LC partnered with the Vitra Design Museum to organize an exhibition of the Eameses' considerable oeuvre. The online manifestation of this exhibit is still available to the public here.

Eames Demetrios curates the online Design, Architecture and Sustainability FilmFest (DASFilmFest.com). Currently screening is Ross Lovegrove's Bamboo Bicycle (2009), but the archive includes footage of St. Mary's Church in Helena, Arkansas (1935) and the Meyer House in St. Louis, Missouri (1936). Check out the Mozart Symphony No. 40 in G-Minor in the brick!

Image above: Clip from The Design Genius of Charles & Ray Eames (Eames Demetrios on TED Posted July 2009) at: http://www.ted.com/talks/the_design_genius_of_charles_and_ray_eames.html

Digitized Architectural Drawings

For those searching for digital reproductions of architectural drawings, there are a growing number of resources available. Archivision, now accessible by subscription via ARTstor, has been mentioned in an earlier post.  The Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division is another important source, especially rich due to its housing the Historic American Buildings Survey.  

The Art Institute of Chicago (web capture shown above) is also a great resource, featuring digital reproductions of works by Burnham & Root, Buckminster Fuller, Bertrand Goldberg, Holabird & Roche, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Granted, they are small in scale, but the digitals may provoke a visit to Chicago.

Natchez, Mississippi 1940

Marion Post Wolcott. Unidentified Structure in Natchez, MS. August 1940. Digital reproduction from color slide. FSA/OWI Color Photographs, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. LC-USF35-115.

Farm Security Administration (FSA) photographer Marion Post Wolcott shot this image in the autumn of 1940. The digital reproduction is part of a Library of Congress pilot initiative to make some of its Prints and Photographs Division holdings available through Flickr, the photograph-sharing website. Begun in January of this year, the LC project was primarily intended as a means to make its collections known to a wider audience in a cost effective manner. The planners also hoped that viewers would contribute to the identification process, which would result in improving the cataloging for the related image, and thereby increase access. Architects have been especially helpful in this regard. To hear more about the logistics of the project, including copyright and non-exclusivity issues, click here.

Marion Post Wolcott (1910-1990) traveled extensively throughout the southeastern United States while working for the FSA. Among many other places, she visited the New Orleans Quarantine Station in Algiers, a Juke Joint in Melrose, and a Fish Shack in Natchitoches. Her daughter, Linda Wolcott Moore, maintains a sizable archive of her original negatives and has published a biographical sketch here.