Friday, 14 October 2016

‘Henry Ford House,’ by Marion Mahony

 

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The Henry Ford House in Dearborn, Michigan looked like a done deal. But returning from Europe when the foundations were already poured, the great industrialist declared he wanted “a touch of English manor” and not the Prairie Style masterwork Marion Mahony had already delivered.

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So the possible very public breakthrough for a natural-born American architecture was stillborn, and on its foundations (quite literally) the Old World architecture Mahony and her colleagues were trying to shake off took over again.

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2 comments:

MarkT said...

I never knew about this. It does show a lot of the events in Ayn Rand's novel The Fountainhead had a sound basis in reality.

Peter Cresswell said...

Oh she'd done her research alright!