{"id":413104,"date":"2025-11-29T15:27:34","date_gmt":"2025-11-29T15:27:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/413104\/"},"modified":"2025-11-29T15:27:34","modified_gmt":"2025-11-29T15:27:34","slug":"bruce-goff-gets-his-moment-in-the-spotlight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/413104\/","title":{"rendered":"Bruce Goff gets his moment in the spotlight"},"content":{"rendered":"

People who saw the strangely shaped house being built in Aurora \u2014 its red curved steel ribs, a black coal wall dotted with marbles and glass cullet \u2014 had different names for it, Life magazine reported<\/a> in 1951. Some called it a \u201cbirdcage.\u201d \u201cBig apple.\u201d \u201cDome.\u201d \u201cHangar.\u201d<\/p>\n

Their comments were enough for its owners, Chicago Academy of Fine Arts director Ruth Van Sickle Ford and her husband, Albert, to put a sign outside that read: \u201cWe don\u2019t like your house either.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nearly eight decades after it was built, the Ford House continues to be one of the best examples of the ingenuity that sprang from the mind of architect Bruce Goff \u2014 and the mixed reaction that creative wellspring could elicit.<\/p>\n

The Kansas native has been called an \u201coutsider\u201d and a \u201crebel,\u201d the best architect the public\u2019s never heard of, a master of organic architecture and a prodigious talent whose relentless desire to never copy himself or anyone else is one reason he\u2019s often not mentioned in the same breath as Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Sullivan or Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.<\/p>\n

Goff designed more than 500 buildings in a career that started at 12 and ended with his death 66 years later. Most were set in middle America. The Ford House is one of eight he built in Illinois, including two in Chicago, where pre-World War II, he established a private practice in Rogers Park and taught at Ford\u2019s academy.<\/p>\n

Goff\u2019s eclectic designs \u2014 at times angular, curvy, futuristic, Seussian \u2014 and innovative use of nontraditional embellishments \u2014 glass ashtrays, feathers, sequins, coal \u2014 mirror the kinds of quirky attractions that have become synonymous with Route 66<\/a>. (Architectural historian and writer Charles Jencks once dubbed him \u201cthe Michelangelo of kitsch,\u201d a description Goff reportedly bristled at.)<\/p>\n

And like the famed roadway, which celebrates its centennial<\/a> next year, Goff is in the midst of a cultural resurgence of sorts.<\/p>\n

In 2018, T: The New York Times Style Magazine profiled Goff<\/a> in an article titled, \u201cThe Man Who Made Wildly Imaginative, Gloriously Disobedient Buildings.\u201d Three years later, the city where he got his start in architecture, Tulsa, Oklahoma, played host to the first of what\u2019s become an annual celebration called Goff Fest<\/a>, co-created by a local filmmaker whose documentary about his life and work is scheduled for a wider release this winter.<\/p>\n

\"AA 1962 photograph shows architect Bruce Goff in his studio with his cat, Chiaroscuro. Goff was daringly inventive and often used unconventional materials in designs. (Art Institute of Chicago)<\/p>\n

Starting in December, the Art Institute of Chicago will hold an exhibition titled \u201cBruce Goff: Material Worlds<\/a>,\u201d which will feature more than 200 of his drawings, models and paintings taken from the museum\u2019s extensive Goff collection and archive, donated in 1990, eight years after his death.<\/p>\n

One of the show\u2019s goals is to introduce Goff to the broader public, co-curator Alison Fisher said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe just really isn\u2019t in the mainstream of most people\u2019s architectural history education, and the people I know who\u2019ve heard of him just had a really enterprising professor who loved him,\u201d she said. \u201cSo, I think we\u2019re really excited about trying to bring him more into the canon, because without people like Goff, the profile looks pretty flat for midcentury architecture.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Out in the hinterland\u2019<\/p>\n

Goff was born in 1904 in Alton, Kansas, a tiny town in the north-central part of the state. His family eventually settled in Tulsa, where he took inspiration from the natural world and the Native American tribes who lived there.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you\u2019re out in the hinterland, as they say, you\u2019re not supposed to have any culture,\u201d he told a British Broadcasting Corporation television crew<\/a> in 1981, a year before his death. \u201cAnd there isn\u2019t a whole lot of it around except what\u2019s native to the area.\u201d<\/p>\n

He described his entry to architecture as an accident. \u201cI had never heard of the word architecture or the word architect,\u201d he told the BBC. His family saw Goff had artistic talent in the homes, castles and cathedrals the boy drew on scraps of wallpaper or wrapping paper.<\/p>\n

One day, he said, his father came home \u2014 having \u201chad a little too much to drink\u201d \u2014 and told him to put on his hat and coat. They went to East Fourth Street and South Main Street in the heart of Tulsa\u2019s downtown. Goff\u2019s father stopped a stranger and asked, who\u2019s the best architect in town?<\/p>\n

Rush, Endacott & Rush, the man answered. Goff and his father walked to the firm\u2019s office, where his dad requested they make him into an architect.<\/p>\n

\"GuarantyThe Guaranty Laundry building on 11th Street, Route 66, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on June 17 2025, which is now the Page Storage warehouse. It was designed by Bruce Goff in 1928 when he worked with the firm Rush, Endacott & Rush. (E. Jason Wambsgans\/Chicago Tribune)<\/p>\n

Goff started as an apprentice. Two years later, he was designing homes. His early drawings were compared to Wright, though he was unfamiliar with the famed architect and his work. He would eventually correspond with Wright and another of his heroes, Sullivan, once writing both men to ask whether he should pursue a formal education in architecture.<\/p>\n

In response, Sullivan told him he\u2019d spent his life trying to live down the education Goff was considering. Wright\u2019s reply was shorter: \u201cIf you want to lose Bruce Goff, go to school.\u201d<\/p>\n

He took their advice, opting instead to continue learning on the job.<\/p>\n