For this May’s upcoming A House Party at Cranbrook: Celebrating the Legacy of Music, we are celebrating the music and spirit of the 1950s. Naturally, that means digging into our closets for our best mid-century modern outfits, and more importantly, our dancing shoes. Seventy-five years ago, guests invited to a Cranbrook party could head down to Hudson’s department store on Woodward Avenue for a full evening’s attire. That is, unless they, like Loja Saarinen, preferred to design and sew their own clothes! This year, we may be deprived of Hudson’s and its record-breaking 705 changing rooms, but we do not lack sources of inspiration for a fifties night at Cranbrook.
Cranbrook Academy of Art: Packard Motor Competition, 1950. Cranbrook Archives, Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research.
Eliel and Loja Saarinen at the front entrance of Saarinen House, Cranbrook Academy of Art, circa 1950. Cranbrook Archives, Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research.
The 1950s was an exciting time for snappy dressers, even those not as artistically gifted as Loja Saarinen. While Cranbrook-trained designers like Ruth Adler Schnee and Florence Knoll were transforming the look of the modern American interior, American clothing was undergoing a revolution of its own. The 1950s can be seen as the dawn of the modern fashion era, defined by an extraordinarily diverse range of stylish modes of dress, and a new emphasis on comfort and adaptability. The introduction of novel synthetic fabrics like orlon and spandex, and a new prominence for sports and lounge wear anticipated the rise of current athleisure apparel. The cocktail dress reached its zenith in this decade, as did the requisite accessories: shoes, handbag, and a trunkful of costume jewelry.
Handbag, used by Elizabeth Parke Firestone. From the Collections of The Henry Ford. Gift of Elizabeth Willis Leatherman.
Christian Dior Dress, Worn by Elizabeth Parke Firestone, circa 1956. From the Collections of The Henry Ford. Gift of Elizabeth Willis Leatherman.
Many designers, including Christian Dior himself, continued to embrace the sloping shoulders and hourglass shapes of the “New Look,” inaugurated in the late forties. However, no single silhouette dominated the womenswear scene. Waistlines and hemlines rose and fell according to the whims of individual designers, dresses and coats billowed outward or narrowed to follow the line of the body, and the range of possibilities for fashionable dressers expanded rapidly in all directions.
Claire McCardell, “Popover” Dress, circa 1956. RISD Museum.
Cristóbal Balenciaga, Chemise dress, circa 1957. RISD Museum.
The one common and consistent demand for women’s clothing then was elegance; truly casual clothing was not yet a part of the upper or middle-class woman’s wardrobe. Whether in a cocktail dress, playsuit, full-skirted evening gown, or daring slacks, women were still expected to present a polished exterior. Menswear, on the other hand, trended towards greater informality and comfort across the decade.
Attendees at a Cranbrook Academy of Art weavers’ party, 1959. Cranbrook Archives, Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research.
The structure of the modern suit gradually loosened, while ties, worn short and wide at the start of the decade, narrowed and lengthened, and soft knit ties became an accepted part of a business wardrobe. Boxy, straight cut and swing jackets, for men and women alike, allowed for complete freedom of movement, and leant a jaunty sway to an outfit’s profile. A new pop of color enlivened men’s suits, in the form of a bright shirt, tie, belt, or a contrasting waistcoat. For the more daring, a colorful velvet smoking jacket might be just the thing for an evening party.
Youth culture drove much of the sartorial transformation, particularly in casual dress; Elvis Presley, Marlon Brando, and James Dean modelled the classic white t-shirt and jeans for the first time on the big screen in this decade, and James Dean’s short career in Hollywood left a lasting fashion legacy in the form of his distinctive red nylon golf jacket, in Rebel Without a Cause.
Theatrical poster for Rebel Without a Cause, 1955. Warner Brothers Pictures Distributing Corporation. Image via Wikimedia Commons.
In fact, it would be hard to find better – or more entertaining – fashion inspiration than in the films of the 1950s. Throughout the decade, star actresses like Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly, and Dorothy Dandridge modelled iconic looks, both onscreen and off.
Dorothy Dandridge photographed for LIFE Magazine in 1955. Image via Harper’s Bazaar.
Eight-time Oscar-winning costume designer Edith Head (the inspiration for superhero costumier Edna “E” Mode in The Incredibles (2004)), created some of the 1950’s most iconic looks, for men and women alike. Her designs reflect the breadth of possibilities for glamorous women’s dress in the period, from Grace Kelly’s full tulle skirts, inspired by ballet tutus, to Kim Novak’s sleekly severe suits in Vertigo (1958). True couture also made appearances on screen, as Hepburn was dressed by M. Hubert de Givenchy himself for Sabrina (1954) and Funny Face (1957), the latter a cinematic send-up of the fashion industry itself.
Audrey Hepburn alights from a TWA plane in Los Angeles on September 5, 1953. Los Angeles Herald Examiner Photo Collection, Los Angeles Public Library.
Publicity photo of Audrey Hepburn and William Holden in the motion picture Sabrina, 1954. Paramount Pictures, Inc. Billy Rose Theatre Collection, Los Angeles Public Library.
Menswear in these classic films receives less attention on Pinterest boards today, but it too evinced a witty, modern spirit and a widening range of options. There’s a new, comfort driven sensibility behind Gregory Peck’s lightweight, loosely-cut suits in Roman Holiday, joy and humor in Fred Astaire’s dance number in Funny Face, in which his white duster coat’s scarlet lining transforms it into a matador’s cape, and there is nothing uptight or understated about Cary Grant’s polka-dotted scarf and striped sweater in To Catch a Thief.
The glamorous costumes of the big screen set a high bar for fifties fashion, but even Audrey Hepburn had a more ordinary go-to look: the capris, sweater, and ballet flats ensemble that she was photographed in time and time again. The ease with which the stars of the fifties wore their exquisite clothes reminds us, in our own era, not to take our own wardrobe too seriously. Not even for A House Party at Cranbrook!
Join the Center in your 1950s-inspired finery on May 18 to help us celebrate the legacy of music at Cranbrook with a garden gala at Thornlea House and enjoy musical stylings from the era. Head to our website to learn more and purchase your tickets to A House Party at Cranbrook: Celebrating the Legacy of Music!
– Mariam Hale, 2023-2025 Collections Fellow, Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research
Following on the heels of Leonard Bernstein, Don Shirley, and Dave Brubeck, yet another famous musician came to Cranbrook: Harry Belafonte. While his trip to campus, unfortunately, did not involve a performance, it is well-recorded in the Archives: in news items, photographs, and a Society page headline in the Wednesday, November 23, 1960, Birmingham Eccentric.
Being a relatively new recording star on the RCA record label, the 1960 visit included Belafonte’s third Detroit performance. After his debut in 1956 in a show called “Sing, Man, Sing!” Belefonte played the newly converted live venue, the Grand Riviera Theater the following year in support of his record album, “An Evening With Belafonte.”
Portrait of Harry Belafonte, singer and actor. Courtesy of E. Azalia Hackley Collection, Detroit Public Library.
At this point, the actor and singer was pretty much a household name, having starred in the 1954 film Carmen Jones, and riding the wave of his 1956 breakthrough hit album, Calypso, the first million-selling LP by a single artist. Who doesn’t know the song “Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)?”
When Belafonte returned to the Riviera in 1960, his show was again billed as “An Evening With Belafonte” but now featuring an opening performance by South African singer Miriam Makeba, sponsored by the Junior Women’s Association for the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. And this time, in the audience were Henry Scripps Booth (son of Cranbrook founders George and Ellen Booth), his wife Carolyn, and their son Stephen with his wife Betty.
It’s not surprising that Henry (known to family and friends as Harry) was in attendance. An avid music aficionado, he was a charter member of the Cranbrook Music Guild, founded in 1951, and had been floating the idea of a creative music center on Cranbrook campus for at least that long. In fact, earlier in 1960, he had even proposed in a letter to Eero Saarinen the building of a music shell on the west lawn of Cranbrook House. Alas, the music center (and Saarinen music shell) never came to be.
In any case, Henry must have been visibly enjoying Belafonte’s concert. According to another Eccentric columnist, “Cheers went up at Harry Booth’s impromptu performance. Mr. Belafonte took his mike down to Mr. Booth’s ringside seat and induced him to give forth on a chorus of ‘Matilda‘ (it was all unrehearsed – we checked).”
Harry Belafonte with Academy students in the Painting Department, including Annie Sanders (Fiber ’62) and Dan Radin (Painting ’62). Harvey Croze, photographer. Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives.
A few days later, Belafonte made the trip from Detroit, at Henry’s invitation, to dine at the Booth’s home, Thornlea, with the family. Afterwards, he was given a brief tour of Cranbrook where he stopped at the Academy of Art to meet students and view work in their studios.
Join the Center on May 18 to help us celebrate the legacy of music at Cranbrook—dine at Thornlea and enjoy musical stylings from the era of Harry Belafonte’s visit. Head to our website to learn more and purchase your tickets to A House Party at Cranbrook!
—Deborah Rice, Head Archivist, Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research
From 1908 to 1919, the room we now call the Old Country Office was George Booth’s personal workspace in Cranbrook House, where he carried on managing his newspapers and met with the many farm employees, contractors, and artists involved in the operation and transformation of the estate. A side door leads directly into the entry vestibule, allowing outdoor workmen to come inside without tracking mud onto the hall carpeting.
George Booth’s tastes shaped the whole of Cranbrook House, but here in his own office we see a concentrated expression of his personal preferences in interior design. Yet, because it was also the space where George interacted with employees and colleagues, the office speaks not only to what George liked, but also to how he wished to be perceived.
George Booth’s office, photographed in 1910. Cranbrook Archives.
The office’s dark tones and simple, solid materials reflect the serious and businesslike side of George’s personality. The exposed timbers, wood paneling, and prominent fireplace all demonstrate George’s enthusiasm for historic English homes, and his pride in his own English heritage. Its furnishings – books, prints, and statuary – speak to his desire, despite his working-class background and his position as a newspaper manager, to be seen primarily as a sophisticated art lover.
How different an impression of George’s personality we might form from the exuberant colors and rich textures of the Still Room! That space, wholly set aside for private relaxation, with its rainbow ceiling, walls hung with gold fabric, and violet velvet sofa (sadly faded now), reveals George’s inner aesthete. Yet both rooms, the luxurious Still Room and the somber office, tell us something about his character – specifically, how highly he valued the arts.
The Still Room at Cranbrook House, Summer 2023. Photograph by Jim Haefner.
In England in the 19th-century, a new school of thought about domestic design arose, which argued that the houses we live in do not just shelter us – they also shape us, emotionally, morally, and intellectually. Having a beautiful home with well-made furnishings could elevate the spirit, encourage thoughtfulness. Collectively, a community that dwelt surrounded by art would be a better society than one that lived without it. This ideal was embraced by the Arts and Crafts movement from its early days, and taken up by the Booths.
The mantelpiece in George’s Old Country Office, Cranbrook House. Photograph by Daniel Smith, CAA Architecture ’21.
George Booth once wrote, “A life without beauty is only half lived.” In his office, we can see how important it was to him to always be within reach of some great work of art or craftsmanship, even in the most ordinary moments of daily life. This same principle shaped the greater Cranbrook campus, for the benefit of all its community members.
— Mariam Hale, 2023-2025 Collections Fellow, Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research
Every four years, we add an extra day to the calendar to catch up to Earth’s revolutions around the Sun. For most of us, it is just February 29th, an extra day in the week. For leaplings, it is a day to celebrate their true birthday.
Different cultures have different customs associated with February 29th, known as Leap Day. In some cultures, it is also known as Bachelor’s Day or Ladies’ Privilege, because that is the day that women can propose to men.
In Finland, leap-year day proposals are considered good luck. If, however, the gentleman says “no,” he is required to give the woman enough fabric to make a skirt.
According to Medium.com, “The tradition reflects the Finnish spirit of equality and a shared sense of humor within romantic relationships. It challenges gender norms in a playful manner, encouraging women to take the lead in expressing their feelings and creating a shared memory that will be cherished for years to come.”
“While leap-year day may be just one day every four years, the tradition of women proposing adds a touch of magic and unpredictability to Finnish love stories. It’s a celebration of love, luck, and the joy of shared laughter, reminding couples that romance can be both traditional and delightfully unexpected in the heart of Finland.”
Something else unexpected is an elopement, a sudden and secret ceremony involving a flight from home without parental approval. One of Cranbrook’s “Finnish love stories” involved one such elopement.
Shortly after she turned 21, Eva-Lisa “Pipsan” Saarinen eloped to Toledo, Ohio with Jons Robert Ferdinand “Bob” Swanson, one of Eliel’s architecture students. They were married on May 8, 1926. According to Pipsan Saarinen researcher Alison Kowalski, “The young couple eloped because Eliel and/or Loja objected to the match, probably in part because Bob was of a lower socio-economic status than the Saarinens. According to Henry Scripps Booth, a close friend of Bob and Pipsan, Loja felt Bob was using Pipsan to get close to Eliel.”
Eliel, Bob, Bobby, and Pipsan aboard the MS Gripsholm, 1929. Courtesy Cranbrook Archives.
Bob struggled to support himself and Pipsan at the beginning of their marriage. Perhaps she proposed, and he didn’t have enough money to cover the cost of skirt fabric for such a fashionable lady.
Watercolor dress design by Pipsan Saarinen Swanson, circa 1933. Collection Cranbrook Art Museum.
More likely, they were truly in love. They were married from 1926 until Pipsan passed away in 1979.
—Leslie Mio, Associate Registrar, Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research
Cranbrook Archives is excited to announce the launch of a historical digitization project, made possible by a generous two-year grant from the National Historical Publications & Records Commissions (NHPRC). The Archival Projects grant “supports projects that promote access to America’s historical records to encourage understanding of our democracy, history, and culture.” One of 21 awardees in 2023, alongside the Amistad Research Center, NYU, and others, we have begun full digitization of Cranbrook Schools’ Horizons-Upward Bound Program (HUB) records in an effort to facilitate discovery and use of material that documents one of the nation’s oldest and largest college access programs. The new online collection promises to elevate the visibility of HUB’s important story, and by extension, experiences of under-represented youth, primarily African American, in the U.S. educational system.
Cover of Horizons-Upward Bound’s first annual report, 1965. Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives.
HUB historical materials include approximately 18 boxes (20.4 linear feet) of material relaying HUB’s history from its founding in 1965 through the year 2000. Material includes paper, news, photo, and film media primarily generated by HUB administration and HUB students. During the first year of the grant we are focused on digitizing all paper material. The second year will be devoted to digitizing photography and film, including images taken by local photographer Jack Kausch.
Digitization workstation where paper records are currently being scanned.
What we’ve done so far…
Digitization began in-house at the Archives in Summer 2023, with two HUB student volunteers who scanned a selection of newsletters and annual reports and drafted initial keyword/descriptions of the material. Later that Fall, I was hired to dedicate full-time attention to the project for the duration of the grant period. I continued the students’ work by first conducting quality control of the scanned material and digitizing the remaining publications in the collection. So far, I have digitized and quality checked over 7,500 pages of paper material. Currently, I am writing descriptions and creating keywords for these items and transferring the digital files to our online collections website, where they will be made public at the end of the project.
Selection of Horizons-Upward Bound publications spanning from the 1960s to 1990s, including annual reports, literary magazines, brochures, and newsletters. Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives.
More to come!
In honor of HUB’s founder and first director, Ben Snyder (1965-1989), we hope for this digitization project to help realize the desire he expressed for HUB’s records in his 1977-1978 Annual Report:
Annual Report cover, featuring HUB’s first cohort to include young women, 1977-1978. Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives.
“One hopes that these annual entries will, at some point in the future, be useful to the educational historian or, in a narrower sense, to someone reviewing the Cranbrook scene as it relates to community involvement. Should that time come in say the next century, the task would be far happier if the nation had in the meantime eliminated the need for compensatory education.”
–Ben Snyder (pg. 34)
Initially self-described as “An Experimental Enrichment Program,” in conjunction with representatives from Detroit Public Schools and Oakland County Schools, HUB was the only program of its kind at its inception. The artifacts and stories found within its historical collection have great potential to inform and inspire continued community-building and educational programming that span across metro Detroit and the nation. We hope you will share in our excitement about this project and we look forward to sharing more updates about the Horizons-Upward Bound collection!
– Courtney Richardson, Project Archivist, Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research
Editor’s Note: The NHPRC was established by Congress in 1934 as a statutory body affiliated with the National Archives and Records Administration. Chaired by the Archivist of the United States, it is composed of representatives of the three branches of the Federal Government and professional associations of archivists, historians, documentary editors, and records administrators.
Each year before my History of American Architecture lecture series, I like to commission Cranbrook Academy of Art student or recent alumni to design a poster to promote the event. This year, I asked second-year 2D Design student Luis Quintanilla to create a poster for this year’s series, Detroit and the World. I am thrilled with how the poster turned out—you can pick one up at the first lecture February 6, 2024—and thought I would share with you some of how it came about.
When I visited Luis’ studio in the Arts and Crafts Court, I was struck by their graphic sensibility combining imagery and text in sticker-like collages. I was also very impressed by a series of stipple drawings in ink on tracing paper, which Luis kept in a shoebox. As we talked about the themes of my upcoming lectures, and what we both admire about Detroit and its architecture, the idea of the poster came about. With Luis’ sketches strewn across the table in their studio, I was reminded of the great tradition of architectural capricci.
Architectural capprici are fantasies, where artists or architects combine buildings from across time in a single image. Traditionally, 18th century capprici could be oil paintings, pencil or ink sketches, or engravings. Joseph Michael Gandy is the most famous painter of architectural fantasies. Here, he is combining the London works of Sir John Soane into a single fantasy, set within the studio of Soane’s own house.
Joseph Michael Gandy, Public and Private Buildings Executed by Sir John Soane between 1780 and 1815, first exhibited 1818. Courtesy of Sir John Soane Museum, London.
If you’ve come to many of my previous architecture lectures, you might recognize my favorite painting: Thomas Cole’s The Architect’s Dream of 1840, a capprici which embodies the mid-19th century debate between gothic and classical styles. Contemporary British painter Carl Laubin creates stunning work inspired by Gandy, using contemporary architects for elaborate capprici.
What might an architectural capprici of Detroit include?
Marshall M. Fredericks’ The Spirit of Detroit, 1958, photographed by Helmut Ziewers for Historic Detroit Area Architecture.
I created a list of forty buildings I thought embodied the best of Detroit architecture. I narrowed it down to twenty buildings for Luis’ consideration, and shared images of each. My only real request: include at least one building from each of the five lectures, and center the poster on John Portman and Associates’ 1977 Renaissance Center.
I don’t think Detroit has a more iconic building than the RenCen, with its piston-like glass towers rising up from the Detroit River. There are better works of architecture, sure, but as far as an associated image of Detroit? Nothing tops the RenCen.
I suggested, too, that Luis include the 1901 St. Josaphat’s church by architects Joseph G. Kastler and William E. N. Hunter in front of the RenCen, to recall the almost too-good-to-be-true alignment of these two structures when driving into the city from the northern suburbs on I-75. After all, by the nature of delivering lectures about Detroit from the distance of Cranbrook, this is the view (from the suburbs, from the car) many of us hold toward the city.
We went back and forth about including the Spirit of Detroit, former Cranbrook Schools faculty member Marshall M. Fredericks’ monumental bronze at the Detroit City-County Building. What attracts me to the Spirit is its iconic status and its graphic replicability: whether on the redesigned city buses or the new city holiday lights, all you really need is an orb and some rays of light to know: that’s the Spirit of Detroit.
What would be the mood of our Detroit capprici?
Inextricably linked to the history of Detroit since 1980 is Detroit Techno, a form of Electronic Dance Music (EDM) that combines synth-pop with African American styles such as house, electro, and funk. For me, Detroit is most exciting, and its dynamism most electrifying, at night. In riding through the city after dark, buildings become speeding landmarks, and its possible to disappear for a time into a former factory or repurposed commercial building for a party or a rave. In these moments, buildings become less defined by their former glory or current decay than by their inhabitation as a dancefloor pulsating with music and lights. It’s a new way of occupying the city’s architecture to unique advantage.
Luis went to work. They began by printing out and arranging the buildings I’d shared. Then, they began overdrawing some of the images—distorting or highlighting certain features.
Layering on tracing paper, Luis dutifully stippled certain prominent architectural elements. I was especially impressed at the beautifully rendered hand, orb, and rays of Spirit of Detroit.
Luis then cut out stars on blue and yellow paper, adding in light sources to the night scene. The Ambassador Bridge, Dodge Memorial Fountain, Penobscot and Fisher Buildings are all recognized for their dramatic nighttime illumination, and Luis captured this with hand-drawn and cut stars.
Fisher Building with Full Moon Eclipse in Nov. 2022
Finally, Luis scanned in the physical elements of the poster and reassembled them in Illustrator, where text was added. Luis took inspiration from Detroit Techno posters for the colors and fonts. I could not be more thrilled with our poster, and the capprici of Detroit at night (with techno).
Luis Quintanilla, CAA ’24, working on the poster. Luis is from Austin, Texas, and earned their BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University.
Can you identify all the buildings shown? Can you speculate why I chose them?
If you can, you’ll love this year’s History of American Architecture: Detroit and the Worldlecture series! If you can’t, you’ll also love this year’s History of American Architecture: Detroit and the World lecture series! The first lecture is February 6, 2024, at 12:00pm ET online and at 6:30pm ET online and in de Salle Auditorium at Cranbrook Art Museum. Purchase your tickets and learn more on our website. All lectures will be available for viewing after the lecture to ticket holders. See you there!
—Kevin Adkisson, Curator, Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research
Special thanks to Artist-in-Residence Elliot Earls, Head of 2D Design, for suggesting Luis for this project. A perfect fit!
With Maestro now streaming on Netflix—and nominated for four Golden Globe Awards—it’s high time I set the record straight about the Cranbrook House Steinway Grand and its most famous pianist, Leonard Bernstein. It is a legendary story, told and retold for decades, that places Bernstein composing none other than his most famous work, West Side Story, here, at Cranbrook.
It is a story, however, that is hard to unravel fact from fiction. So, like all Center historians and archivists, I started by doing some digging in Cranbrook Archives. This is the story I uncovered.
Cranbrook has several Steinway grand pianos, including two of the grandest: a Model D concert grand in Page Hall on the original School for Boys campus, and a second Model D in the Cranbrook House Library. The Cranbrook House concert grand piano was manufactured by Steinway & Sons of New York City and completed a little more than eighty-five years ago on December 18, 1929. It was purchased by Grinnell Brothers of Detroit in January 1930 and, later that year, sold to the Colony Town Club, a women’s club located on East Jefferson Avenue in Detroit.
Cranbrook House library facing south. Steinway & Sons Model D Concert Grand piano sits below the “Story of Ceres” tapestry, March 1957. Photographer Harvey Croze. Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives.
Enter, George Booth
The black concert grand piano was to have a short life at the Colony Town Club. Within a few years, its members sold it back to Grinnell Brothers where, in February 1935, it was purchased by George Booth. I remain intrigued by the fact that Booth purchased a “pre-owned” piano. While America was in the throes of the Great Depression, I think it was more than a simple cost-saving measure; it was a decision warranted by the piano’s intended use.
The piano did not begin its life at Cranbrook in the Booths’ Library, the center of their social life after it was completed in 1919. Rather, Booth first placed the piano in the main hall of the Cranbrook Pavilion on Lone Pine Road. Known today as St. Dunstan’s Playhouse, in 1935 the recently renovated pavilion was being used as an exhibition gallery and event space for the Academy of Art and its nascent Art Museum. The piano was played at exhibition openings and for preludes before lectures, including at least one by Frank Lloyd Wright. Although St. Dunstan’s Guild began using the pavilion in 1937 for rehearsals and storage, Cranbrook Academy of Art continued to hold exhibitions there until 1942, when the new Eliel Saarinen-designed museum opened.
Cranbrook Pavilion staged for an Academy of Art formal party, January 16, 1936. In the center is what would become known as the Cranbrook House Steinway concert grand piano; in the background is the Cranbrook Map Tapestry, designed by Eliel Saarinen and woven by Studio Loja Saarinen in 1935. Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives.
Sometime between 1942 and the summer of 1946, when the pavilion was cleared out and rented by the Cranbrook Foundation to St. Dunstan’s Guild, George Booth moved the Steinway down the road to Christ Church Cranbrook “to protect the instrument from damage by dampness or other causes and to give it the benefit of expert use.” It was also during this period, in March 1944, that George and Ellen Booth formally deeded to the Cranbrook Foundation the Homestead Property, which encompassed not only Cranbrook House but also the forty acres adjacent to the house, including the Cranbrook Pavilion and its Steinway.
Enter, Leonard Bernstein
In the spring of 1946, Bernstein traveled to Detroit for several concerts in March and April, including one on April 5th at Detroit’s Music Hall where he conducted the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.
During this time, Zoltan Sepeshy, the Hungarian Head of the Academy’s Painting Department and soon to be its Director, invited Bernstein to visit Cranbrook for a three-week respite before he traveled to Europe. While we do not know the details, a contemporary newspaper clipping noted that Sepeshy and Bernstein had met in New York.
The musician took him up on the offer and, after playing a concert broadcast from Sam’s Cut-Rate Department Store in Detroit on April 7th, he traveled to Bloomfield Hills and stayed at the Academy of Art. Not surprisingly, Bernstein later commented on his host’s “spartan” guest accommodations—he was, after all, staying in the student dorms.
Academy of Art Painting Studios and Dormitories, May 1, 1944. Harvey Croze, photographer. Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives.
In advance of Bernstein’s arrival, the Sepeshys had the piano moved from Christ Church back to the Cranbrook Pavilion and, according to Zoltan’s wife Dorothy Sepeshy, the musician was given a key to the space and the privacy he needed to compose during his stay. At the end of the day, Bernstein often had drinks and dinner with the Sepeshys, and enjoyed walking the grounds.
Reporting on what was to be this upcoming “three-week rest” at Cranbrook in advance of a scheduled trip to Europe, The Detroit Times noted that Bernstein planned to “complete work on his First Piano Concerto, the draft of which [was] already written.” Bernstein conducted two more broadcasts at Sam’s Cut-Rate Department Store (yes, that really was the store’s name) on April 14th and 21st, before ending his truncated two-week rest at Cranbrook and returning to New York City on April 22nd.
Detroit Free Press article noting Leonard Bernstein’s stay at Cranbrook, April 5, 1946. Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives.
Reenter, Leonard Bernstein (forty years later)
Bernstein returned to Cranbrook in August 1986. He was in the area to conduct a concert of the New York Philharmonic at the Meadow Brook Music Festival. The concert, which took place on Wednesday, August 13th, included performances of Bernstein’s own Overture to “Candide”; his Serenade for Solo Violin, String Orchestra, Harp and Percussion; and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 in B Minor, Opus 74 (the Symphonie Pathetique).
While in town, Henry Booth, who after his parents’ deaths in the late 1940s assumed the mantle of volunteer leadership at Cranbrook, had persuaded the composer and conductor to return to Cranbrook and discuss the formation of a composarium (a concept and word conceived by Henry). Henry Booth and Bernstein were joined by then Cranbrook President Dr. Lillian Bauder and Archivist Mark Coir. Alas, a very young Art Museum curator by the name of Greg Wittkopp was not invited to be a part of the conversation!
Leonard Bernstein enjoys conversation—and a smoke—in the backyard of Thornlea, August 14, 1986. Pictured, from left to right, are Henry Scripps Booth, Keith Kleckner, Dr. Lillian Bauder, David Hart, and Cora Joyce Rauss. Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives.
The composarium, which would have established a program for musicians and composers to live and work on campus, much like Bernstein had done in the mid-1940s, was a long-standing idea Henry Booth conceived to provide a life for his residence, Thornlea, after his death. Earlier that same year, Booth had invited Bernstein to serve as Honorary Chairman of the National Advisory Council of the Composarium, an offer that he accepted after noting that he thought it to be “a wonderful idea.” Bernstein, in fact, also brought Aaron Copeland to the table of this National Advisory Council.
Thornlea Living Room with a Steinway grand piano owned by Carolyn Farr and Henry Scripps Booth, June 12, 1951. Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives.
It was during this visit in 1986 that the sixty-eight-year-old Bernstein, with Dr. Bauder and Mark Coir as his witnesses, not only recalled his 1946 visit to Cranbrook, noting that he was working on what would become his 1949 Symphony No. 2 (The Age of Anxiety), but also—and this is where the myth began—recalled a second visit to Cranbrook in 1957 during which he remembered working on West Side Story, which premiered in August of that same year.
While it is hard to refute the personal memories of the composer himself, they are memories that the archival record indicates may have been incorrectly seeded by Henry Booth who, by that time, was eighty-nine years old.
Dr. Lillian Bauder and Leonard Bernstein at Thornlea with Cora Joyce Rauss (far left), Frances Poling (later Booth) (back), and Keith Kleckner (far right), August 14, 1986. Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives.
An Archivist Takes a Trip
A few years later, our former Head Archivist, Leslie Edwards, did some more research, this time in Washington, D.C. According to the Leonard Bernstein Day Books at the Library of Congress, it is highly unlikely that the composer traveled to Michigan in 1957, the year of his purported second trip to Cranbrook.
For the two years leading up to the opening of West Side Story, Bernstein worked non-stop on the production, with almost daily meetings in New York. As for his 1946 visit to Cranbrook, the one that most certainly took place, the Library of Congress Senior Music Specialist Mark Horowitz believes it is more likely that the piece Bernstein was working on at Cranbrook was Facsimile –Choreographic Essay for Orchestra, which premiered in October of 1946, six months after his two-week rest at Cranbrook, not Symphony No. 2.
Bernstein died on October 15, 1990, in his apartment at The Dakota on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, four years after what was most likely his second and not his third visit to Cranbrook.
Program for the New York Philharmonic concert conducted by Leonard Bernstein at Meadow Brook Music Festival, August 13, 1986. Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives.
Enter, Jamie Bernstein
As a final footnote, let’s return to West Side Story and the myth of its composition at Cranbrook. Another musicologist, Mary Abt, told me that it was not uncommon for Bernstein to take an early musical “sketch” and decades later incorporate it into a composition.
It was a theory that I presented to a group of Cranbrook Schools parents—with Jamie Bernstein as my witness—during her first visit to Cranbrook in March 2023, following the publication of her book, Famous Father Girl: A Memoir of Growing Up Bernstein. I asked the composer’s daughter if one of her father’s 1946 Cranbrook “sketches” could have become West Side Story. She replied that it was entirely plausible.
Center Director Greg Wittkopp and Jamie Bernstein at Cranbrook, March 26, 2023.
First Piano Concert, Symphony No. 2, Facsimile, or West Side Story. While we may never know the truth of what Leonard Bernstein was writing at Cranbrook, it is all part of a fascinating history of the Model D Steinway Concert Grand piano, now lovingly restored by the members Cranbrook House & Gardens Auxiliary and proudly displayed—and still played—in the Cranbrook House Library.
– Gregory Wittkopp, Director, Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research
The author gratefully acknowledges the research of former Cranbrook archivists Mark Coir and Leslie Edwards. Their memos are part of the 2.5 million documents and photographs that comprise the collections of Cranbrook Archives—the DNA of Cranbrook and the heart of Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research.
To learn more:
Jamie Bernstein will be making her second visit to Cranbrook later in January when she will speak with Cranbrook students and parents, accompanied by a pianist, about her father’s career and her own life in music. As you might have expected, the event is a at maximum capacity.
Henry Booth and the national stage he created for music at Cranbrook will be the subject of the Center’s sixth annual House Party at Cranbrook, which will be chaired by Carolynn and Aaron Frankel and take place at Thornlea on the evening of Saturday, May 18, 2024. To support the Center and guarantee a seat at the party as a member of the gala’s Host Committee, please contact the Center’s Director of Development, Amy Klein, at AKlein@cranbrook.edu.
As college students across the country buckle down to study for final exams and finish writing end-of-semester papers, there will be one school where that’s not happening: Cranbrook Academy of Art. Instead, our Academy students are busy making in their studios, and frantically producing work for their semi-regular critiques with Artists-in-Residence. This follows the model set up here by founding president Eliel Saarinen, who famously rejected what he called the “non-creative-school-book-learned-art-teacher” in favor of a method he called “self-education under good leadership.”
While the Academy’s extremely self-directed, studio-based education is proudly traced back to our founding, Cranbrook did, in fact, once offer formal courses in the history of art. These quarterly courses—taught by museum curators, visiting professors, and artists—utilized both slide shows and actual paintings.
Museum Director Albert Christ-Janer teaching his “Survey of the Arts” history class for Cranbrook Academy of Art students, 1945. Christ-Janer arrived at Cranbrook in June of 1945 and left for the University of Chicago in September 1947. Harvey Croze, photographer. Courtesy Cranbrook Archives.
Here, we see Museum Director Albert Christ-Janer lecturing in the then-new Cranbrook Academy of Art Museum and Library. The classroom is simple, just folding chairs and an illuminated blackboard set up in the lower-level galleries. In front of the students hangs Doris Lee’s Fisherman’s Wife. I admire Christ-Janers books, and imagine it would’ve been very exciting to attend one of his lectures.
Christ-Janer discussing Fisherman’s Wife by Doris Lee (CAM 1945.27). Lee painted the scene of Key West, Florida while she was a visiting artist at Michigan State in 1945. It was purchased by the Cranbrook Foundation that same year. Harvey Croze, photographer. Courtesy Cranbrook Archives.
In the Academy’s 1945 Course Catalog, Christ-Janer is listed as “Instructor in the Survey of the Arts.” By the 1970s, then President Wallace Mitchell stopped offering anything like a history of art course at the Academy in favor of a history/theory seminar called the Humanities Forum. This evolved into the Critical Studies program today—the only required lecture/seminar for Academy students, but which is, as always, ungraded.
I’d note that Christ-Janer is teaching in a full suit and tie—a sight rarer at the Academy today than a history of art course!
Even though the Academy no longer offers a History of Art course in its curriculum, I like to think that the Center’s History of American Architecture lecture series continues the tradition of art history at Cranbrook. For the past six years, I’ve taught architecture history to interested Academy and Cranbrook Schools students, and open to members of the public.
Kevin Adkisson teaching History of American Architecture: Cranbrook in Context, March 3, 2020. Photography by Daniel Smith, CAA 2021, Courtesy Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research.
Starting on February 6, 2024, the History of American Architecture lecture series returns. This year’s subject is “Detroit and the World,” and we are offering two ways to attend the lecture: virtually, at noon or 6:30pm EST, or in person at Cranbrook Art Museum’s de Salle Auditorium at 6:30pm. We launched the website and ticket sales on Wednesday, and I encourage you to read more about each week’s topic and consider signing up over on our website. There’s so much great Detroit architecture, and I am excited to share it with you in lectures this winter!
In his unpublished 1950 manuscript, The Story of Cranbrook, Eliel Saarinen wrote of Cranbrook students as “the pupil is like an empty sack to be filled during the school year.” I hope you’ll join me in February as we fill ourselves up with knowledge!
—Kevin Adkisson, Curator, Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research
HISTORY OF AMERICAN ARCHITECTURE
DETROIT AND THE WORLD
This installment will focus on the architecture of Detroit, studying the buildings, designers, and policymakers that shaped the city’s dramatic transformations from the late nineteenth century to today, and how Detroiters have influenced the course of architecture around the globe.
George G. Booth’s “Old Country Office” at Cranbrook House. Photograph by Kevin Adkisson.
Every year at Christmas, the Center for Collections and Research decorates George Booth’s office in Cranbrook House with a special display. This year, our Christmas display is all about Brighty of the Grand Canyon, a movie produced by Stephen Booth, a grandson of Cranbrook’s cofounders. Brighty was a real donkey who inspired first a children’s novel, then a feature film.
In the late 1800s, there were hundreds of half-wild donkeys in the Grand Canyon, brought there by prospectors and then lost or abandoned. Brighty was one of them.
Photograph by Kevin Adkisson.
Brighty lived in the Grand Canyon from 1892 to 1922. In the winter, he roamed the warm depths of the canyon. A sociable animal, he liked the company of prospectors, hunters, and hikers, but if anyone loaded a heavy pack on his back he would soon make his escape. Every summer, he returned to the North Rim to stay with the McKee family who rented cabins to tourists. He would carry water, give children rides, and visit each cabin in turn for attention and treats—his favorite food was flapjacks and honey.
In 1953, the author Marguerite Henry learned about Brighty, and immediately decided to base her next novel on him. In search of more stories about the adventurous donkey, she travelled to the Grand Canyon herself, where she interviewed locals who had known him, hiked in the canyon, and even sampled the creek water and tasted the plants that Brighty would have eaten! She adopted her own donkey, Jiggs, to learn from him how the real Brighty might have behaved. In Brighty of the Grand Canyon, a free-spirited donkey helps solve a murder mystery and protects his human friends from a dangerous bandit.
This is the 1963 edition of the novel, the same year that the Booths bought a copy to read on their family road trip. Photograph by Kevin Adkisson.
Stephen Booth and his wife Betty bought a copy of the book to read to their children, Douglas, Charles, and George. They all loved the story, especially Stephen, who had his own film production company, and decided to make a movie about Brighty.
Filming began in 1965, with Marguerite Henry’s own pet donkey, Jiggs, starring as Brighty. Filmed on location at the Grand Canyon and in the Dixie National Forest in Utah, the actors and crew spent weeks living in the canyon. A tiny helicopter and an airplane with a camera mounted on the front were used for aerial shots, and for flying special visitors, like Stephen’s parents, Henry and Carolyn Booth, down into the canyon.
Norman Foster, the film’s director, reviews the script with Jiggs the Donkey. Stephen Farr Booth Papers, Cranbrook Archives
The movie premiered on November 22, 1966, just down the road in Birmingham, doubling as a fundraiser for Kingswood School for Girls. As the star of the movie, Jiggs himself came along to the premiere. Afterward, he participated in the Festival of Gifts at Christ Church Cranbrook, an annual Christmas tradition that began in 1928 and continues today.
From left to right: Betty Booth, Stephen Booth, Marguerite Henry, and Jiggs greet children at the film’s premiere. Stephen Farr Booth Papers, Cranbrook Archives.
While Brighty was visiting Bloomfield Hills, he also posed for a series of sculptures by Peter Jepsen. They were modelled here at Cranbrook, on the second floor of Thornlea Studio. We still have one of the sixty Brighty figurines that Stephen Booth had made to give as presents to people who had helped in the making of the movie. Our Brighty was given to Stephen’s parents, Henry and Carolyn, to thank them for their support.
Photograph by Kevin Adkisson.
Peter Jepsen at work on Brighty in Thornlea Studio. Stephen Farr Booth Papers, Cranbrook Archives.
Stephen also commissioned Jepsen to make a life-size sculpture of Brighty. In 1968, Stephen gave that version to the Park Rangers at the Grand Canyon as a Christmas present. You can still see Jepsen’s Brighty at the visitor’s lodge on the North Rim of the Canyon, close to where the real Brighty spent his summers, more than a hundred years ago.
Peter Jepsen poses with his sculpture at the lodge on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. Stephen Farr Booth Papers, Cranbrook Archives.
— Mariam Hale, Collections Fellow, Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research
People of a certain age will remember listening to American Top 40 on the radio. Detroiter Casey Kasem offered an opportunity for listeners to give “long-distance dedications,” requesting a song for a loved one, a friend, or if they themselves needed cheering up.
Loja Saarinen’s letter to WJR on October 26, 1961. Saarinen Family Papers, Cranbrook Archives.
Loja Saarinen wrote this note to the programers at WJR in Detroit, asking them to play two songs. Though she did not send this note to Casey Kasem, I imagine what Loja Saarinen’s words may have been if she had in October of 1961. On September 1, 1961, Eero Saarinen had died during surgery for a brain tumor:
Dear Casey,
I recently lost my son at far too young an age (51). He was overseeing the completion of a new music building for the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance and our family so loved music. Casey, could you kindly play Concerto in D Minor by my good friend and fellow Finn Jean Sibelius?
Yours, Loja
Well, Loja, here is your long-distance dedication, Sibelius’ Concerto in D Minor played by Jascha Heifetz and conducted by Thomas Beecham.
London Philharmonic Orchestra London, 1935
If you’d like to make your own dedication, no need to be long-distance. Chamber Music in the Age of Resistance: Finland, Korea, Haiti and America, and France is being presented by Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research, in Collaboration with the University of Michigan “Art & Resistance” Fall 2023 Theme Semester, on Sunday, November 12th, 2023 at Cranbrook House.
Please join us for the concert and remember, as Casey Kasem said, “keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars.”
– Leslie S. Mio, Associate Registrar, Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research
Cranbrook Kitchen Sink 
