AIA Seattle Medal 1984: Paul Thiry FAIA

Interview with Paul Thiry (AIA Seattle Medallist 1984)
Conducted by Meredith Clausen
At the architect's home September 15 & 16, 1983

Preface The following oral history transcript is the result of a tape-recorded interview with Paul Thiry on September 15 & 16, 1983. The interview was conducted by Meredith Clausen for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Interview DATE: SEPTEMBER 15, 1983 [Tape 1; side 1]
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Mr. Thiry, you were born in Nome, Alaska, 1904, is that right?
PAUL THIRY: Yes, that's right. (chuckles)
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: And what sort of city was it? What was your childhood like?
PAUL THIRY: Well, at the time, of course, Nome was a rather busy place because this was the heyday of the gold rush. My father and mother came from Paris to Nome in 1903 and...
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Was your father Parisian too?
PAUL THIRY: And my father was Parisian, yes. As a matter of fact, he was a graduate of the Ecole Centrale, which was a military college for engineers. He graduated in the artillery division of the school. And then of course my mother lived a very fine existence, and her father was a doctor and had a background in French history.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: And what was it that brought them to Alaska?
PAUL THIRY: Well, my mother and father were married in 1903 and actually they came to Nome on their honeymoon. It was kind of in the light of an adventure, but also he was the director of mining operations in Nome that was sponsored by the Belgian syndicate. And the whole thing seemed to be a rather promising possibility, but the syndicate didn't hold up their end, and where they required funds to carry on operations, the funds were not forthcoming. And as a consequence, why, my father of course became somewhat discouraged, especially when they encountered the first winter in Nome. As you know the snow piles up rather heavily in the wintertime, sometimes up to 20 feet. All of the houses get buried and people get around through tunnels under the snow. And really, all you see from the walkways on the surface is chimneys sticking out of the snow from the houses. (chuckles)
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: It must have been rough on your mother to get used to.
PAUL THIRY: And then in the springtime, of course, the snow melts and everything is very wet and the place is infested with mosquitos. The first thing people do in the early springtime, after the snow is thawed-- I do mean the sun has thawed the ground-- why, everybody goes out into the fields to pick blueberries and that sort of thing. That whole part of the country is nothing but tundra, and there's nothing more than two or three feet high in the way of vegetation standing on the hills for miles around. It was an interesting experience for my parents, but on the other hand it was a very difficult situation, especially for my mother in that type of [cultural setting--Ed.].
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: How long were they there?
PAUL THIRY: Well, they were there until 1906. And then of course I was there. And they decided to go to San Francisco. He had an opportunity in San Francisco and so they moved there and bought a house and furnishings and were just barely esconced when the earthquake came on, and everything was destroyed-- the house was gone, and all of our earthly possessions, and...
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Where were they living in San Francisco? PAUL THIRY: I don't recall the exact district, but they had a house and it was... Some of the names of the streets just don't come to me, but given time they may. (laughs)
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: And what happened after the fire? Did they...
PAUL THIRY: Well, after the fire they were-- I wouldn't say absolutely destitute, but the situation was certainly deteriorating quite rapidly, and so the French consul in Nome offered to send my father transportation back to Nome. They didn't want to return to France, especially under the situation that existed, and so they did return to Nome. But as time went on, why things didn't really improve too much, and my mother found it really very difficult, especially in the wintertime. So in 1909, just as the ice was coming out, she took me and we went to Paris and lived in Paris for the better part of a year. We stayed with her sister who had a house on the Rue de la Victoire which was just a short ways from the Place des la Victoires, which Mansart had designed. And I could say that was of particular interest because of my father's grandfather, who was Adrian Thiry, a contemporary of Eiffel and developed many steel structures especially in greenhouse and the shaped steel fabrications; at one time they designed a group of greenhouses for the Shah of Persia, and reputedly he also was the inventor of barbed wire. That's what I was told anyway.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Well was it at this time that your interest in architecture was kindled?
PAUL THIRY: (chuckles) No. I was a little young for any interests of any kind, because actually when we went to France I was only 5years old. So anyway, we returned through Seattle and we stayed at the old Lincoln Hotel. And my mother had realized that a lot of people in Nome, while a lot of them had a difficult time, a lot of them made unreasonable amounts of money. And so they, like egrets and birds of paradise, liked all the fine clothing that she had when she went to Nome. So she got the idea of bringing back clothing and hats and things from Paris, and we had to stay over at the Lincoln Hotel for a few months in order to get organized for the boat. And while she was there the people at the hotel realized that she had, while she wasn't trained as a seamstress or anything of that kind-- why most French women of any class at all learned to sew and cook, maintain house, even if they don't have to do it. And so it seems that [Faye Bayberry] was having a difficult problem with some clothing or something that had gotten lost and so the Blackwells at the hotel asked my mother if she would help, and she did. And so with that, why I guess Sarah Bernhardt came shortly after that and she had a problem [finding appropriate attire--MEREDITH CLAUSEN], and then after that, why Isadora Duncan. (chuckles)
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Boy!
PAUL THIRY: So, anyway, at that time they had a roof garden on the hotel and I used to play with the Duncan children there.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: So, now how long were you in Paris? You were in and out for...
PAUL THIRY: A year.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: A year, and that was 1909?
PAUL THIRY: Nine and '10.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: There was a lot going on artistically in Paris at that time. Do you remember anything?
PAUL THIRY: Yes, well, not too much. The main thing I remember, of course, was a fleeting glimpse of Luxembourg Gardens and things of that kind. But I remember my mother got me a whole set of lead soldiers-- I mean several hundred of them-- and I lined them all up on the dining room table and when my mother's sister came in she just about blew a fuse and took a broom and swept the whole mess off onto the floor. (laughs) So that was my main memory because I was just as mad as I could be. But that didn't really help too much.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Was your mother interested in the arts? What was going on...?
PAUL THIRY: Well, she was an educated woman. Part of their education was primarily in the cultural arts and things of this kind, and so...
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Did you go to any of the exhibitions in Paris at the time?
PAUL THIRY: Well I wouldn't remember really. I was a little young for remembering refinements.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Well, my question about when you first became interested in architecture, maybe we can return to that? Was your interest aroused now or at a somewhat later time, and who was your major mentor, or did you have one?
PAUL THIRY: Well, my entry into architecture was a kind of a strange coincidence really. My father went [back to France to go--Meredith Clausen] to war in 1914 from Nome and he didn't return, and my mother had a nervous breakdown and [we] moved into Seattle. And so I was enrolled in boarding school of Saint Martin's College [in Lacey, outside Olympia, Washington--Ed.] where they had a prep high school. I had only gone to school a few months and up to this time my mother had taught me most of what I knew. I entered in school at Saint Martin's and I went through the grade school in a year and a half, and then I entered the high school. My mother felt that as long as I was settled there, why it was better to leave me there until I graduated from high school. This was a boarding school and the things that you remember, of course, is the chants of the monks in the early morning and the early evening. And I remember the big study halls, the big dormitories (chuckles) and everything was kind of interfraternity [communal--Ed.]. Of course, one good thing you could say is that you did have the companionship of other students, and also where I maybe never would have learned to play baseball and basketball or any of those sports, why I did learn them at Saint Martin's. I graduated from there in 1920, when I was 15years old. And then of course at this point, I had gained a rather good education from the monks there at Saint Martin's, but I hadn't really arrived at a career. And my mother was rather narrow on the subject of careers; she thought a man should have a profession and so she thought you should be a priest. She was a very religious woman.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Was she Catholic? You were raised as a Catholic?
PAUL THIRY: Catholic, um hmm. And then of course a lawyer is professional, and a doctor is a professional. So out of this, anyway, I didn't want to be a priest (chuckles) and before I could make a decision really, why she decided that lawyers were somewhat crooks, for the most part. And so that left me medicine, and so I entered the University of Washington in 1920 in pre-med.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Oh. Had you had any thought of architecture at this time?
PAUL THIRY: No.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: None, oh.
PAUL THIRY: Well I hadn't any thought of anything, really, yet. And so I went to the university and started pre-med, and well, some parts of it I liked, especially the course where you have to draw, like in comparative anatomy, and you did dissecting and then you uncovered bones and all sorts of things, and of course you made drawings. I did rather well at that, but as a scholar and in subjects that were akin to pre-med, I didn't have too much interest, though I rather enjoyed dissecting. But, oh, one spring afternoon, it was terribly hot in the lab and you couldn't open the windows because the wind would blow the papers and we were soaked in formaldehyde (chuckles). I [was with] a group of Orientals that were very eager at the business of dissecting this cat, and I decided right there that this wasn't for me. And so in the meantime, I had seen a picture of the Villa de Medici, a watercolor rendering that one of the dean s there at the university had done. And so I asked him. I said, "What do you have to do to, to make these renderings?" And he said, "Well, I took landscape architecture, but the only thing we have that would be akin to that would be architecture."
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: So it was really an interest in drawing at that point that _____?
PAUL THIRY: So I signed up for architecture because it appeared to be something that I could do and would like to do. And of course I didn't say too much to my mother about shifting, but it finally had to come out. At first she was pretty mad about the whole thing, and then she began to think back about my father's relationship and the fact that his grandfather married a Mansart and that this Mansart presumably was a direct descendent of the architect, Mansart, and well, then, this was a profession and so maybe it was all right. (laughs)
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: So you really came into the field of architecture, you were lured into it by the drawing, and not so much the building?
PAUL THIRY: That's right, that's right. And so I had gotten into some kind of lazy habits in pre-med because of my lack of interest and I carried that into my first year in architecture. Carl Gould, of course, was the head of the school, and he knew my mother, and he figured that I had capability of doing better than I was doing, so he started to ride herd on me.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: And what was the date of this now? This was about...
PAUL THIRY: About 1923.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: '23. That's when you entered the architecture program?
PAUL THIRY: Um hmm. And so he started to ride herd on me and get me straightened out-- not that I was that bad, but he figured I could [do] better, you know. So every time we had a class, and especially the early morning classes, why I was the first one he'd call on, you know. He'd say, "Thiry! Stand up!" So then he would quiz me and he made it rather disagreeable if I didn't know my lesson. So I began to work hard, more from fear of him than for any other reason. But as I worked harder and I did well, why then I began to really enjoy what I was doing. And as a consequence, I did fairly well in the architectural school and then at the same time I had previously-- while I was in pre-med-- become interested in cartooning for the Sun Dodger magazine [University of Washington student magazine--Ed.], and for Tyee [University of Washington Yearbook--Ed.] and different periodicals, and I worked on The Daily [University of Washington student newspaper--Ed.] and I was quite active in university affairs as well. And then too, when I first [came] to the university, why I actually was a stranger because there were only one or two other students from Saint Martin's, but I became acquainted through my activities, and joined a fraternity, and then of course I had more direct contact and I got more into the run of things at the university and ended up... Well, during the time I was at school, I went to Fontainebleau and I was gone for the better part of the year.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Of the year...?
PAUL THIRY: This was in 1927.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Ah, I wanted to hear more about, but before we go into that part of your career, can you tell us a little bit more about the architectural curriculum at the UW at the time? Was it a Beaux Arts curriculum?
PAUL THIRY: Oh yes. It was based on the Beaux Arts. As a matter of fact, in those days, you didn't have to go to school for three years, you know, before you started architecture; you started immediately. And this is something I feel is a deficiency now. I mean, I think the average architect fancies himself as something more than being an architect and you can't do this just by one or two courses in each subject, you know. And I think the present system is very, well, I would say that the average [student--Ed.] that wants to be an architect is entitled to be an architect in school as well as immediately thereafter. That was the case then. We took Beaux Arts problems that were issued from the Beaux Arts in New York, and of course at that time, they were pretty much geared to stylistic problems. In other words, they would state that in the Spanish period, _____ so-and-so [would] design a library, let's say, or something of that kind, and of course then you would research the period and research the Spanish architecture, whatever the style would be, and your problem was developed that way.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: How much of a premium was there put on historical accuracy?
PAUL THIRY: Well, every problem was judged in competition with the other students, and of course at that time the students were rated-- first place, second place, and mention, and so on. I think that was good because I think that if you have any pride and you have competition, why you're going to work at it, you know. And that's something that doesn't exist anymore.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: But what would happen if you came up with something original, an original design, something that wasn't historical...? My question is how much of a premium was placed on originality and how much room for it was there?
PAUL THIRY: Well, you have to consider discipline in the school. If you didn't follow the program, why then you got what they called an HC [hors concours--Ed.]; in other words, the problem was based on the program. And that was it, you see. And, so of course, if you had too many HC's, why you didn't last long from the grade standpoint.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: And one could be eliminated for not following the program; if you were given the program of, say, designing a mosque in such and such a style, the historical accuracy would be one of the major criteria.
PAUL THIRY: Oh, I wouldn't say it was major, but it was a criteria that was supposed to be followed, you know.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: And what were some of the other criteria?
PAUL THIRY: Well, they would give you the requirements of a problem, so many rooms, and siting, which would [be] on a hillside or in a valley, and they would state the kind of surrounding, the communities, and that sort of thing. And of course you would end up with a building with flamboyant decorations and entrances and windows and maybe with parapets and finials and all sorts of things. And still at that time we knew that, in America especially, buildings of this kind were not very durable. I mean, the roofs leaked, the windows leaked, the finials eroded, and corroded, and... (laughs)
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: And were difficult to keep clean.
PAUL THIRY: And were difficult to maintain and so on. And so while I didn't feel violently about this, I thought that this really wasn't going at things in the right way. And so I voiced my opinion a couple of times, but as I say, I finally lived in a state of fear because I didn't want to get into any particular trouble because of being opposed to what was going on. And then too, after all, I was just a beginner and a student and I really had no right to be impolite.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: What was the curriculum? What courses were you required to take?
PAUL THIRY: Well, every quarter of every year, we took design, for four years. And then we had a couple of years of engineering. Then too in those days, they had more respect for the fine arts than they seem to have in the school now. We took watercolor painting, modeling, and sculpture work, and things of this kind; art appreciation, and history of architecture. And then in line with drafting, we took drafting perspective, graphics, and-- well, things of that kind. And then, of course we had electives that delved into choice of languages and then there was options for psychology, sociology, zoology...
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Who were your professors at the time?
PAUL THIRY: Carl Gould of course was the head, and he was also architect for the campus, and of course he had good training. He was a Beaux Arts man from Paris, and he'd gone to Harvard and no one could question his qualifications. And I will say that he was modern in the sense that he fostered the idea of prefabrication, and actually he'd built a house for himself on Bainbridge Island that was an assembly of doors; I might say that he bought the doors and then built the house on top of the doors. (laughter) And then too he made ventures into modern, it was kind of modernistic, somewhat of basis for change in architecture. But this didn't get into our training in school. Finally in 1927, there were three others and myself who [went to] Fontainebleau. The previous year, Walter Wurdeman, who later became a partner with Welton Becket-- who also went to Fontainebleau with me; he preceded us in school and he came back with great reports on how he enjoyed it and how much he learned. And it's true, we learned a great deal. At Fontainebleau we had illustrious professors and...
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Let me interrupt and ask you a question. Why, if you were at the UW, already beginning to question the Beaux Arts method, did you then go to the fountainhead [of Beaux Arts--Ed.], if not Paris itself, then pretty close to it at the Ecole d'Beaux-Arts [in Fontainbleau].
PAUL THIRY: Well this was a special school that was set up by the American government during the first World War, and after the war was kept on, and still is. And most of the students there were-- like Rome prize, Paris prize-- they were prize students from all over the United States. And of course the professors for the most part could all speak English, like Jacque Carlu, who was also the dean of MIT at the time, was director of the School of Fontainebleau. And then we had students like Tom Locraft, he came from Catholic U., and was an excellent student, and rather well known as a student at that time. And [Allman--Ed.] Fordyce from Yale, and Percy Goodman was a Paris prize man, and that was Labatut's first year of teaching at that time. And then of course of the older professors, why there was old Laloux, who designed the Sacre Coeur [sic--Meredith Clausen] Church in Montmartre, in Paris. He was in his nineties at the time, and he had a great white beard. I remember he even had white hair on his nose. (laughs) About all you could see were eyes. And then there was Laloux, and Labatut, as I already said.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Laloux was out at Fontainebleau, not in Paris?
PAUL THIRY: Laloux was Beaux Arts and of course he was a famous architect in Paris. I was thinking of Labatut.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Ah hah.
PAUL THIRY: Labatut was a student assistant at Fontainbleau, and later became the dean of Princeton, I think maybe-- I'm not sure that he still is or not-- but a very talented architect. And of course, Percy Goodman made his way as an architect and so did Fordyce. But we sat-- Welton Beckett and Hugo Osterman, and Jack Woodmansee from the university-- we all sat in the group of some 50students from all over the United States with these foreign and English-speaking professors. We became interested in mural painting and travel and all sorts of things. And [Jean--Ed.] Despujois was a muralist at that time. And so I did one problem down in the caves of painting on the wet plaster. (laughs) And then of course while we were at school we had two or three tours that were initiated by the school, where we went to the chateaux. I remember going to Vaux-le-Vicomte, and the owner of Vaux-le-Vicomte had gout and had his foot all wrapped up and he was sitting in a big easy chair in his library. (laughs) We had a lot of fun on those tours. One time I went up into northern France with Charles Agle, who's a planner that lives in Princeton right now, and Joe Hawthorne, whose father at that time was Charles Hawthorne, the painter at Cape Cod. And we bicycled all up through northern France, came back on boxcars and trains.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: I'm curious about the experience at the Ecole. Did you have a choice of ateliers?
PAUL THIRY: Well, no this wasn't at this school; it was in that degree. After I left Fontainebleau I spent a short time, not long, in the Atelier Gromort in Paris.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Um hmm. And was Gromort actually the patron?
PAUL THIRY: Yes. [Tape 1; side 2]
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Okay, let's return to the question of the Fontainebleau experience. You say there weren't ateliers at...
PAUL THIRY: Not at Fontainebleau, no. The atelier system was at the Beaux Arts in Paris. And they had a number of ateliers, and as I mentioned I attended the Atelier Gromort for a while, but not too long; it was more for the experience of how they worked. [Paul Thiry later clarified the he did not actually attend Atelier Gromort but took one problem there, in landscape, as a means of study--Ed.]
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: And that was in Paris?
PAUL THIRY: That was in Paris, after Fontainebleau.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: And you were at Fontainebleau for what, one year?
PAUL THIRY: No, no. Fontainebleau at that time was about four months, three months.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: I see. What was the setup there? Lecture courses or...? PAUL THIRY: Well, what they did at Fontainebleau, on Monday they would issue a problem, and then you would finish it on Friday. And you didn't have to do anything if you didn't want to.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: And all students went through the same program?
PAUL THIRY: That's right.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: I see.
PAUL THIRY: They [were] all the same, and they were all, you might say, upperclassmen, and some of them university graduates. Our group was junior class; we had finished our junior year. They'd issue the problems, as I said, on Monday, and then you'd turn them in on Friday, and then they would jury the following week, and then you were graded again, you know, first medal, second medal, mention, and so on. Or you could, you could go out to the country and sketch or you could go and play the violin, or any... There were any amount of things that you could do within the fine arts range, and as long as you did them, why this all counted towards your attendance, you know. But of course a lot of the students who went there didn't really go to school; they wasted an awful lot of time. But actually living in Fontainebleau, no matter what you did, was no waste, you know. It was education by itself.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Who were your professors there?
PAUL THIRY: As I had already mentioned there were Laloux, Labatut, and company.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: And Laloux, did you see much of him?
PAUL THIRY: Well he used to come in about once a month, and he'd give you one look-see at your problem that you were working on. I did most of the problems but not all of them, and other times why, as I say, we went on tours and did sketches and photographing, which of course at that time wasn't as popular as it is now.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: I'm very interested in Laloux because he has proved, in retrospect, to have been one of the most important professors, particularly for American scholars or American architectural students. What are your recollections of him? Were his comments useful to you?
PAUL THIRY: Well, as I say, he was an old man, and he didn't really say very much. I would say that as far as getting the most out of Fontainebleau, I got it out of just one encounter with Carlu. I remember one time I was working on a problem-- again getting back to the Spanish idea. Why of course Carlu was a modernist, not in the sense of Corbusier or some of those, but he had changed; it was kind of, oh, what they called the Art Nouveau at that time. And so he had a certain style of his own, and in fact he did quite a few things in Paris.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Let's see, this was what year now?
PAUL THIRY: 1927.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: 1927. This was two years after the Exposition des Arts de Decoratifs, is that right?
PAUL THIRY: Um hmm, that's right.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: How aware were you of what was going on in the decorative arts at the time? PAUL THIRY: Oh well, you see, this was kind of more in my way of thinking; this began to open up a little different aspect. Anyway, I was designing this problem and so the day he [Carlu--Ed.] came by, the first day, why I was fussing around with a cartouche and a drawing around an entrance way-- oh, I was having myself a time trying to get this baroque attitude into this building design. And so a couple days later, he came by and he said, "Oh my, you seem to be having a very difficult time." (chuckles) And I said, "Well, I must admit I'm having a hell of a time trying to get the right type of decoration around the entrance." And he said, "Did you try nothing?" This was a very deep statement, and I had to pause and think about it. Because this is the difference between all the goulash versus nothing. And so I erased everything and just left a simple door, and the door itself was paneled, and it looked quite well. (laughs)
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Oh! Well how aware were you at that time of what was going on in other architectural currents, like the modern tradition, in 1927.
PAUL THIRY: Well we read books and so on, but the printing and the distribution of books and everything wasn't quite what it is nowadays. You more or less had to search out books, and then also you had to keep track... And then of course a lot of the Art Nouveau didn't appeal to me either, because that was really no improvement over the baroque. And so it had it's faults too. It took a little time to develop an attitude of a practicing architect. And before I finally arrived at that point, this was kind of the opening statement, and gave me a good deal to think about. And after we left Fontainebleau, before I was to head out for Italy, and...
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Now was Paris and the Atelier Gromort in between Fontainebleau and Italy?
PAUL THIRY: That was right after Fontainebleau, you see, and I stayed in France, oh, it was two or three weeks. Becket and Wurdeman had gone ahead, and I met them in Rome.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Um hmm. So you stayed behind to go to the Atelier Gromort?
PAUL THIRY: Yeah. Then I also had another experience at that time. My mother and father of course were French, and while I was born in Nome, why I was an American citizen, but at the same time, I also was a French citizen by birth. A Frenchman could come to America and obtain American citizenship, but he never lost his French citizenship; he was always liable for conscription in the army. And of course, when I was at Fontainebleau I had exceeded the age for reporting for conscription. And the French consul in Seattle had a disagreement with my mother over some (chuckles) religious and socialistic discussions that they had, and anyway she had ordered him out of the house on one occasion. So he was rather wrathy about her. And he had the good grace to report that I was at Fontainebleau, and my French passport that I had to have-- as well as my American passport, because he wouldn't give me a visa on my American passport-- why my French passport was only good for three months. I hadn't reported in three months and I got notice to report. And so I went into Paris and went to the different military offices and so on, but all they would say to me is "Mais non, monsieur, vous est Francais." And that was it. Then too, I had to finish school, and on top of that I had a few things I wanted to do, so I stayed behind. But it was also because I was really concerned about crossing the border. And so anyway, I...
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Ah hah. Did you put this time to good use as a student in the Atelier Gromort?
PAUL THIRY: Well I was a student in the sense that Gromort let me take the problem, but I wasn't really enrolled in the sense of a Beaux Arts student, you know. I had the experience as I said.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Was it difficult to get in or to get his approval for that?
PAUL THIRY: No, no. I mean, if the head of the atelier would accept you, that was all that was necessary. Of course if you came there under different circumstances, I mean, as a student for the full term and so on, why then of course the enrollment requirements are a lot different than just attending class. (chuckles)
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Ah hah. Was this one of the ateliers libres, or was this part of the Ecole?
PAUL THIRY: Oh no, no. It was part of the Ecole at the time, in the Ecole building.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Can you describe the atelier? The way he ran it and who the students were?
PAUL THIRY: Well I would say that it was pretty much the same as Fontainebleau. I mean they issued a problem, and so they varied according to the nature of the problem. And at that time, why you started by doing an esquisse, and then you went into your drawing, and then you finally made a rendering, which at that time most of the students turned them as India ink washes. And some of the work, of course, was just magnificent.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Exquisite, right. What were the problems at the time? Again, were they historically based?
PAUL THIRY: Oh, the problem that I had, as I remember, was a lodge in the Alps. (chuckles) It gave you chance to exercise your artistry in landscape drawing, mountain scenery and trees and that sort of thing. And it, too, was after the Swiss tradition, which was-- I don't know how you describe it-- it was medieval.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Do you have any major recollections of that atelier, or of Gromort personally?
PAUL THIRY: Well not too much. He was a fine gentleman and he was along in years at the time; he was quiet spoken, and he didn't find too much to criticize with what I was doing. He seemed to like it and that was about it, as I recall. I didn't really become acquainted with too many of the students because I had other friends around. Quite a few of the students from Fontainebleau stayed around Paris, and so I didn't associate too much with the [atelier--Ed.] students. And then while I could speak French after a fashion and I could understand it fairly well, why it was easier to speak English with my own pals.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Was the work that you were required to do still plans and elevations and drawings?
PAUL THIRY: That's right.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: No question of models at this point?
PAUL THIRY: No. You could make models if you wanted to, but they didn't do too much with models.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: They didn't stress them. PAUL THIRY: Yeah, in some problems, of course, where they had a large problem that involved a whole series of buildings, let's say a parliament compound or something of that kind, they quite often did make models. But usually it was a rendering in black and white.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: And do you still have your drawings from those days?
PAUL THIRY: The one I did stayed at [the Ecole des--Meredith Clausen] Beaux Arts. I have a few that I did at Fontainebleau and...
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: What were the texts that were being used at the time? Was Choisy still being used, and Guadet?
PAUL THIRY: I didn't get into much on text reading or anything of that kind. As I say, I never was much on the scholarly touch. (chuckles) Not at that time anyway. And I enjoyed drawing and painting and some modeling, you know, that sort of thing. Other than doing research on a particular problem, why I didn't, other than... Well, Professor Herman at the University of Washington was an excellent professor in architectural history, and as a matter of fact he taught in such an interesting way that you remembered every building that came to your attention. And when I went to France, and later to Italy, why I walked down the street and there was the building-- there was a palazzo so-and-so, and I knew them all, inside and out. That was wonderful.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Well, I'm very curious now about what was going on in France. You were there in Paris now, this was 1927, or was this '28?
PAUL THIRY: In 1927.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Were you aware of what was going on architecturally with the [advent of modernism--Meredith Clausen]? It was a tumultuous period, wasn't it?
PAUL THIRY: Well, not so much. You see, for the length of time we were there, at that time-- I've been there oh maybe ten, fifteen times since-- but at that time, why our time was really at Fontainebleau and geared to tours and to the old France, and visiting the countryside. And we didn't go into what was going [on] as I would right now, you see.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Well, did you hear anything of it at the Ecole? Was there talk of...? PAUL THIRY: Well, not too much. The students, of course, would gather every night. We used to sit out in the courtyard there at the palace. Most of us lived at the Launoy, which was a kind of a hotel with a big courtyard in the middle; the palace was across the street, and we used to gather at the palace gates there, and usually there was somebody with a guitar or something. And then there were cafes across the street too, and so they'd sit around cafes and shoot the breeze. And so it wasn't really that kind of situation. And so as we traveled, after Fontainebleau, of course, we looked more into things. But actually, in 1927, there wasn't all that much going on...
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: In Paris. PAUL THIRY: ...in the way of new construction. There were a lot of civil constructions. I remember one time in the course of going around-- I was going to the American Embassy in Paris-- and as I came out, why Sacco and Vanzetti and a group of demonstrators were coming up the pike, marching and screaming and so on, in automobiles, and somebody tossed a bomb that lit just about 20feet from me, and I just fell over on the pavement and the air was full of cobblestones. I don't remember anything between landing and being two blocks away-- I just got out there that fast. (laughs) Fortunately, I wasn't hit, but that was the sort of thing in the way of an experience that was outstanding.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: It was tumultuous politically, if not necessarily architecturally, huh?
PAUL THIRY: Yeah.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Well, what in retrospect was the most valuable aspect of your Beaux Arts training? Both here in this country and in France?
PAUL THIRY: Well, to look at it correctly, I believe in discipline, and I was taught discipline. Discipline means that you kind of obey the orders, you obey a program. Without discipline, why you have no basis for anything really. Because otherwise, if there's no order and no background, why then there's really nothing to base a future upon. And so I don't regret having the education that I had. A lot of the students nowadays are just beginning to discover the things that we knew all the time. I know for a lapse of time for about ten years the students didn't travel because they could learn more in the United States. Well consequently, I remember when Yamasaki went to India and he encountered the Taj Mahal, he was amazed. And he came back and, God, everybody wanted to listen to him and his trip and this great discovery and so. Well, this wasn't really any great thing, any great shakes as far as I was concerned. I mean it was a great piece of architecture, but I had known that years before. You understand?
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Sure. In the architectural history class that you had at UW, were you using the Banister Fletcher at that time?
PAUL THIRY: Yes. And so actually I believe that to be a good sculptor or good painter, you can do anything that you want to do, assuming that you have an education. You see?
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Um hmm. PAUL THIRY: And I think the big problem today is that people have no education, no historic background. Consequently, they don't really understand what's good or what's bad. And so we had a good grounding in the principles and design. And then as I went along I realized that it was no longer proper to do traditional things. On top of that [I realized--Ed.] what is traditional today wasn't traditional yesterday. So that every phase of architecture really was in modern architecture. I mean gothic was modern. And so now we had run out of source material for a number of reasons, one of them [was] that we didn't build the same way any more. I mean, we didn't pile stone on stone and we didn't build [with] beam and lintel; we didn't necessarily have to use an arch. There are other more refined techniques and more economical ways, and so we take from what I had learned and build on that and then realize that architecture has to be functional. It has to serve the purpose of the client, whether it's industrial, or whether it's commercial, or whether it's housing; it all has a purpose. And that purpose wasn't always found in the old ways of doing things, so we had to create new ways, new techniques, and then also we had to overcome the maintenance problem. In the so-called Pioneer Square architecture [in Seattle--Ed.], which is interesting-- but even Gould said that that stuff was an abomination and strictly lacking not only in function but also lacking in good taste. Really the only supporting factor for that bunch of stuff is the fact that there's a certain amount of continuity, and a certain style, and there's a certain city life, you might say because of the shops and living within the structures; it brought some of the things of the old world as far as life in the city was concerned. But on the other hand, at least by the time I got out of school, I would say that 90percent of the buildings (the old style buildings that were built after the [1889--Meredith Clausen] fire), were condemned and were vacant because they had improper access, and ingress and egress, and they were fire hazards. Several earthquakes had shaken all the mortar out of the brick. The old skylights were leaking, and the old metal parts were rusting, and you know, they were real junkers. And so I believe, like in Pioneer Square, in keeping the square-- at least I did believe in it, when every building was there and they were all at the right height, and they were dedicated to a use. In fact I recommended to the city that maybe the city should buy Pioneer Square-- not the whole district, just around the square-- and use each building for a different department of city functioning. This was way back in, oh, 1930, I guess.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Ah hah!
PAUL THIRY: But of course at that time, why these buildings were for the birds, you see, and it's only been lately that people have picked them up because of the cost of new construction. And in fact I think it's devastating to go beyond Pioneer Square and to keep all that stuff up on First Avenue and try to make the new buildings [over for reuse--Meredith Clausen]. Well, live with the old. And so it's kind of a disaster that's creating a visual slum, or else maybe the use of the buildings is up to date; it still doesn't represent a new society or new order.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: I'd like to continue talking about Seattle, but before we move on, I wonder if you could say just a little bit more about your Beaux Arts background and what you gained from it. Any of the design principles that the Beaux Arts is so highly respected for, architectural composition, or large-scale planning, or drawing, for example. What are those principles, the monumental/classical principles?
PAUL THIRY: Let's put it this way. As I pointed out, you take from history of the past, what's applicable and applies, you might say, to the present. And as you look back to these magnificent Beaux Arts programs where they involve palaces and city planning, in problems like the development of Versailles or Vaux le Vicomte and so on, there's a great deal to be learned. And especially for me, where I have always admired the plan of Washington, D.C., that was developed by L'Enfant, why my Beaux Arts training acquainted me first-hand with what L'Enfant was trying to accomplish.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Did you feel a certain sympathy with that?
PAUL THIRY: Well yes, I mean I definitely feel through my Beaux Arts training that there's something more to life than just little people, you know. If you're going to destroy nature, well then you should replace it with something that I consider wonderful. Everything that you do in the mess should be wonderful.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Um hmm. So it's the Grand Design?
PAUL THIRY: That's right, and of course I don't look at that as being elitist as some people do, as cold and boring and unfriendly. I look on it as being worthy of man's intelligence as well as his intellect and culture. And that it's very fine and _____ if it's well done. We have to attack problems of cities in great ways, recognizing problems and not be Mickey Mouse about parks and all of that. They should be a part of the grand plan. And so with the kind of education people are getting now, and everyone being equally intelligent, and understanding about all problems of architecture and design and planning, you can, you know, speak to the average grammar school graduate, and he'll give you the full treatment in how to do things. A person with Beaux Arts (chuckles) training is a contradiction to this wisdom that's exhibited by everybody in the street. And... (chuckles)
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Did that Beaux Arts training give you a competitive edge when you returned to the States?
PAUL THIRY: Well I've always felt that life is competition. I never regarded life as owing me anything, other than what I could contribute to the welfare of the world and of the people. But if I did a good job, why then the good job would take care of me. I have no regrets as far as that part of it goes.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: When you started in the practice in the early thirties, weren't most of your colleagues also trained in Beaux Arts?
PAUL THIRY: Oh yes. They were all trained this way up until about, oh, I couldn't give you the exact date, but I think that the curriculum largely changed about the time that Lionel Pries left the university.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: That was post-war, what, late forties?
PAUL THIRY: I'm not sure just when he left... But even when Pries was there change had come in. Everyone up to my time and for two or three years after were all educated the same way, through the Beaux Arts system and the problems that were issued in New York at the Beaux Arts [Institute--Meredith Clausen].
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: When was it that you were first exposed to the work of the modernists? LeCorbusier, Mies, Gropius? Do you remember when you first heard about this revolutionary current?
PAUL THIRY: Well I would say, oh, about 1930 or so.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: So you didn't hear about them at all while you were abroad?
PAUL THIRY: Well, you can't say you never heard of anything at all, but I mean to the point where you made special notice, you know. And as I say, there are two types of architectural thinking. One of them is an academic approach that involves history, delving into philosophies, and this sort of thing. As opposed to the practice of architecture that deals in facts and the world as it is and the world as it should be, and this sort of thing. And so, while you're aware of things, why you don't meditate on them, or you're meditating more on [them than--Ed.] what you're doing right at the moment. But as I say, I started practice before I finished the university, because I lived in the Shoremont Apartments on the lake [Lake Washington--Ed.] and the owner of the building was going to build another apartment next door called the Lakecrest and so he asked me to design it. [Tape 2; side 1]
PAUL THIRY: I started to say that William Duxor, the owner of the apartment-- the apartment I was living in with my mother-- wanted to build an apartment next door, and so anyway he commissioned me to be the architect. I was still in the university because I graduated that year, in 1928. He wanted a similar Normandy-style apartment, and of course I was full of Normandy style at the time because I had just traveled all through Normandy. So I designed his building for him. At the same time, why there was a contractor by the name of E. C. Edwards that built houses, and he sort of liked the traditional Normandy style houses, and so he started me designing houses; one of them was a model house, which was widely published. The trip that we had taken [abroad--Ed.] was widely published, and so it wasn't long anyway before I was esconced with an office and working and doing houses. Up until 1934, when [I] left for Japan, why I had done quite a few apartments and various houses and several churches and...
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Well now, at what point were you exposed to the work of LeCorbusier?
PAUL THIRY: Well, actually in 1934, '35, when I was in France.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: I see. This was the first time you had returned to France-- after having left it in...?
PAUL THIRY: Well let me go on. I mean you asked me when I first encountered the modern...
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Okay.
PAUL THIRY: I went to the Chicago Fair, "Century of Progress," in 1933, and that of course was the first time that I was kind of pleased with the idea that times have changed. And of course I had seen prepublication things of the fair. There were some very interesting buildings, I mean like Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion house, and, oh, there were various things and a lot of it was Art Moderne, but just the same it was a complete change, you see. And it was a new thought; they had began to recognize highways and interchanges and that sort of thing, and new structures and new ways to achieve things. So this was my first encounter and then I began after that to branch out. But as times became more difficult-- and I had a lot of work, strangely enough, even after the '29 stock crash, why even then I had work-- but one by one my clients began to worry about spending their money, and so it finally ended up I had no more work. And I had a friend that I'd gone to school with, by the name of Matsumoto, who had previously won the Municipal League prize in New York, had gone back to Japan and he wanted me to come and work with him in Japan. And so (chuckles) I went home one day, being thoroughly disgusted when I had lost my last client, you might say, and I said to my mother, "For two cents, I'd go to Japan and work with Matsumoto." And so she said, "Well, why don't you?" And so the next day, anyway, I went down to the ticket office for the American Mail Line. At that time too there were a lot of strikes and ships were all tied up and it was kind of a mess. And so I said, "I'd like to get a ticket to Yokohama," a round trip, because I wanted to be sure to get home, and I wanted to have my ticket paid for in advance if I ran into trouble, you know. The ticket wasn't too much, as money went -- as money goes now. And so I thought, "Well, if I'm going to go there, maybe I should get a ticket to Manila and back, because I could live on the boat and have no problem as far as my daily subsistence was concerned." So the man said, "Well, if you're going to get tickets to Manila, why don't you get a ticket around the world? It's only a few dollars more." And so I said, "Well, how long would it take to go around the world?" And he said, "Well, the ticket covers about 35,000 miles and it would take about three-and-a-half, four months, if you just stayed on the boat, and visited the various ports and stuff." So I got a ticket around the world and then I took off for Japan and I worked with Matsumoto for a while.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: This was in...
PAUL THIRY: Tokyo.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: ...1934, is that right? PAUL THIRY: Um hmm. And then of course while I was in Tokyo, why George Nakashima, who was a famous woodworker and furniture designer-- he lives in New Hope, Pennsylvania, right now-- why he was working for Antonin Raymond. I was in touch with George and so he invited me at the time, when Raymond had his summer office up in Kurazawa, up in the mountains. And so I went up there and visited with George and I became acquainted with Raymond, and Raymond was a very open sort of a person, and quite a braggart. But he had reason to brag, because to my opinion he's probably the greatest architect of the whole bunch of them, and even including Corbusier. I admired him and of course he liked that. (laughs) So he spent a lot of time talking architecture. And he took me around to the new buildings that he was building at the time. He had a great practice in Tokyo and he had about, oh, 40 or 50 draftsmen, all Japanese, working for him. And so then his wife, Naomi, did all the furniture and they actually did the weaving and materials and I don't know whatnot. And these houses were all concrete and were strictly modern in every sense of the word, really different and beautiful. And so this is what I've been thinking about.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Would you describe as modern the kind of work that he was doing?
PAUL THIRY: Oh yes, yes. Strictly. And of course they had a certain influence; they were influenced by Japanese open planning and of course the modular shoji and tatami and, you know, all that sort of thing.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: But wasn't it touched by European modernism, at this point?
PAUL THIRY: I would say it was different because he had to design for earthquake and so...
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: But did he know of, and was he influenced by, the work of the modernists?
PAUL THIRY: Oh well, you see, Corbusier was well known at the time. And Corbusier of course was one of Raymond's lead-- well he was a great, I wouldn't say his teacher, but his great...
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: ...mentor?
PAUL THIRY: ...mentor, yeah. And so he had great admiration. Well, I do believe that Raymond's work was superior to Corbusier's. It was more refined in a sense, and I think it was more civilized. And of course doing a total design of furniture and carpeting and curtains and everything, they were consistent with the architecture and made it a complete departure, you know. Everything was new. And the idea of the planning, especially in Japan, came halfways between the Japanese house with no furniture and a European house with furniture. So he might on some occasions, for some Japanese owner-- most of them were aristocrats-- have a Japanese part, but also built in [factory]. But obviously when you design for earthquakes such as they have in Japan, tolerance is bigger than they would be under normal conditions and so it developed a sort of style on its own, you know, just because of structural requirements.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: What about the influence of Frank Lloyd Wright on Raymond's work?
PAUL THIRY: Well, Frank Lloyd Wright, of course, designed the Imperial Hotel-- where I lived, incidentally, when I was in Tokyo. Raymond was Wright's representative and he went out to supervise the construction of the Imperial Hotel. As a matter of fact, it was because of that that he was in Japan. And he became acquainted while he was supervising the construction of the hotel with Japanese. Also he was Czechoslovakian by birth and he was appointed honorary consul, I believe, of Czechoslovakia, so that gave him access to the diplomatic circles. And so with this acquaintance and his great ability as an architect he stayed and was a very successful practitioner. And of course, while I didn't know him, you know, like George Nakashima would know him, why I became very well acquainted and when he would go on his inspection tours and so on, he'd call me and ask me if I wanted to go. And so at one time, when I had more or less decided that I didn't want to stay in Japan indefinitely because-- oh, it was a complete reeducation in a way of life. I had to learn the language, I had to learn the various ways of counting and dimensioning. And then too, the social customs were different, and so on. And if you're going to go through the hardship of learning a new way of life, why then you should have a reason for it, and the only reason to spend that amount of time would be to stay there. And I didn't feel that I wanted to stay there indefinitely, though I went there with the idea that I might. And so...
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: So you left...
PAUL THIRY: So anyway I had indicated that maybe I would, you know, take advantage of my ticket (laughs), which went around the world. So at that time, he wanted me to stay a little longer because he was trying to do the Ford automobile industrial plant there. He thought if I stayed that I could do the supervisory work on it, and so anyway I did stay longer than I had planned. The Japanese government had decided against the plant being built at that time-- it was built later. And so I left and went to Shanghai. And I worked for a while for a Chinese architect, but...
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: You say for a while. Is that a couple months? Or a couple weeks?
PAUL THIRY: Oh about five or six weeks. And then while I was there, of course, I made several junkets up to Soochow, Hangchow, or Nanking, and Hong Kong, and then finally left from there and went on to Manila. And then I went from Manila to Singapore and by train to Malacca and on to Panang. And I picked up the boat in Panang and went on to Ceylon and then Bombay and I spent quite a bit of time in India.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Well was it on this trip that you met Corbusier?
PAUL THIRY: Um hmm. So anyway I landed in France. And, while I didn't like to barge in on people just willy nilly, I thought I would like to meet Corbusier after what Raymond had said about him. And so I went to his office, which at that time was in the, oh, I wouldn't know whether it was a residential building or what. But you went through a great courtyard, and then you went up some steps, and you came into a kind of a gallery, which as I remember was about a hundred feet long. And at the end of it was a kitchen table and a couple of drawing boards and a man. (chuckles) And so I walked the distance and here was Corbusier. I told him that I was a student and I was going around the world and of all the people that I had heard of, I wanted to meet him.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: You still considered yourself a student at that time, even though you'd been out and essentially practicing for a number of years?
PAUL THIRY: Um hmm. Well I was a student as far as he was concerned. And so anyway, he was kind of delighted and he took me around to a few of his jobs and, and then...
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Now this was about 1935, was it?
PAUL THIRY: Yes. It was in the winter, early winter of 1935 [actually February 1935--Meredith Clausen]. And...
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: So just the two of you went around?
PAUL THIRY: So he took around a few of his jobs that were close to Paris. And then he gave me letters of introduction-- some of them I still have-- to his clients. And he drew me some maps of how to get to these places and so on. And during the course of the conversation, why I mentioned Raymond and he was mad at Raymond because Raymond presumably had copied one of his designs that he had made for a house in Brazil, in his house at Kurazawa. And so, in Corbusier's book you'll see that he mentions Raymond without benefit of design. And so, anyway I told him, I said, "You're entirely wrong." I said, "The house in Kurazawa is done with logs, you know, and timbers, and it has a tin and thatch roof, and the plan is your plan, but Raymond doesn't make any point of it. He admits that he liked the plan and he copied it, and he couldn't do anything any better." And I said, "He never talks about his house or publishes a thing or anything else that he doesn't give you credit." And I think it's too bad that you're so mad at him." "Oh," he said, "Mon Dieu, mon Dieu, c'est moi que est trompe."
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: (laughs) This is tout en francais, eh?
PAUL THIRY: And so anyway, if anything I squared [away] the thing between Raymond and Corbusier. (chuckles)
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: You say that he gave you some letters of introduction to clients, so you didn't really spend too much time with him; how much did you spend with Corbusier?
PAUL THIRY: Oh I spent several hours, an afternoon. I became pretty well acquainted with him, and also he explained his work. He's kind of a teacher by natural instinct, and he liked to talk about it. And then also he felt kind of lonesome at the time because they had barred him from the fair, you know, that was developing there in Paris. And if you'll remember, he set up a tent outside the fairgrounds and displayed his work and so on, in kind of a retaliation (laughs) for being rejected. And so...
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Well, this is interesting. The way you're describing the situation now, it's beginning to sound to me as if Raymond was actually [far] more important in the development of your own work than perhaps Corbu. Is that right?
PAUL THIRY: Oh yes. No, no. Raymond made several pertinent remarks, and then-- whereas Corbusier spoke but he wasn't carried away with the idea of conversation. Raymond, especially if you seem to be in agreement or at least if you seem to accept what he was saying, why he'd just warm to the subject, you know. And then too, I honestly respected him as an architect probably more than anyone I have encountered, before or since. And so I was just the right guy to absorb what he had to offer. (chuckles)
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Had you been interested in Japanese architecture before you'd gone over there?
PAUL THIRY: Well, yes, after all I was graduated from school and I had been to France and Europe, and so I wasn't exactly just a hillbilly, going out to the country.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Were you knowing about Japanese architecture before you'd gone?
PAUL THIRY: Oh yes.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Was there an influence?
PAUL THIRY: Well this kind of appealed to me because of the planning aspects and also the prefabrication aspect. It seemed to me that this was an introduction to, not necessarily something new, but to a new way to be followed generally. You see?
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Um hmm.
PAUL THIRY: And then also Raymond, while he was influenced by the modern movement generally, and by people like Corbusier and different ones, why he was more influenced by the Japanese methods, you might say. Not the appearance so much as the techniques. And so then of course, I absorbed that not only from Raymond; I met other people in Japan like Bruno Taut. And then too quite a few Japanese architects-- some of them that I had gone to school with. And so I had an opportunity in the five or six months that I was in Japan to really absorb what was going on.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: How talked about was Frank Lloyd Wright at this point? With...
PAUL THIRY: Well, he was talked about a great deal, and especially by Raymond. As I say, Raymond went out there to represent Frank Lloyd Wright, but of course Frank Lloyd Wright, while he did the Imperial Hotel and other buildings in Japan, really was more influenced by the Japanese than the Japanese were influenced by him. And so between Mexican architecture and Japanese architecture, why Frank Lloyd Wright kind of developed a style that you could call his own. But just the same, if you're familiar with historic styles and background, why you can find all of these elements as a part of his development.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Particularly in the twenties.
PAUL THIRY: Yeah. And so, of course Raymond had personal dealings with Wright and he admired Wright and so on, but he didn't have that all-going admiration because... Well, he developed his own set of ideas, you know. And Wright was modern in a sense but not in the sense that Corbusier was modern or that Raymond was modern, you see. So Wright was something that people in this country, in house building and so on, could probably be more willing to follow than they would the so-called International Style. And, well, anyway (chuckles), I went around and then of course, I went around Europe and came back and then I stayed in Washington for a time.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: This is Washington, D.C.?
PAUL THIRY: D.C.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: And this was what, '36?
PAUL THIRY: 1935. I looked into what was going on, I mean at that time it was mostly all public works, you know. And so after staying there for a few months, I went to New York and got on the boat and came home through the Panama Canal.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: And why did you return to Seattle at that point?
PAUL THIRY: Well, there are two or three reasons. I mean, number one, Seattle was home and that's where my mother was. And then times weren't all that good, and finding a place for yourself in the east wasn't all that simple. And especially, you could buy into a big practice or something, but... I had gained a certain amount of reputation by this time, and I had opportunities, but it wasn't all for free, you know.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Now what kind of work had you been doing up to that point? It had been all residential?
PAUL THIRY: No, no, as I pointed out to you, at that time I had residential work, and I had done several apartments. I did several church buildings, and...
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: And how would you describe these [works done--Meredith Clausen] before your trip? Were they...?
PAUL THIRY: Well they were what I'd call stylistic, as Alban Shay, a man I had been in partner with at one time would say, "They were traditional." (laughs)
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Okay. Historicizing, then. This trip abroad then was really quite a watershed for you?
PAUL THIRY: Oh yes, and then I had opportunities too to meet architects and different people with different viewpoints and attitudes, and so it was really a great occasion as far as I was concerned. And of course being away for the better part of a year, and traveling all around the world, at that time was something unique, you know. Nowadays, practically everyone has been around the world, you know, so-speaking. But at that time, why going around the world (chuckles), visiting all the places that I've been and meeting the people that I had met, this was newsworthy and of course this was all over newspapers and of course I had no more arrived than a number of architects wanted me to go into partners with them. Also I had clients that just kind of came up out of the ground. Alban Shay offered me an opportunity to be a partner with him, and he would take care of all the business and the contracts and that sort of thing.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: That was 1935? When you came back?
PAUL THIRY: Um hmm. And then also he would let me be the architect as far as design and everything went.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Had there been any thoughts in your mind of going someplace else other than Seattle? Would you have liked to have been able to go elsewhere?
PAUL THIRY: Umm, not really.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: How did you view Seattle at the time? As a land of opportunity, unfettered by tradition? Or was it provincial...?
PAUL THIRY: Well, there really wasn't anyplace that was any different philosophically, you know.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: What about New York or San Francisco, though, as an arena for an architect?
PAUL THIRY: Well, you have to consider, number one, I'd been away for a long time, and I'd been alone. I'd gone off into faraway places and so you get just a little bit homesick. And then you're continually encountering strangers, and while you learn a great deal and you exchange viewpoints and so on, why still, you know, they're strangers, and they don't know anything about you and you don't know anything about them. So you take everything at face value. And then too, you've come to a place like New York, and it's big and you have to really live in some kind of boarding house, or you have to go out into the suburbs to work in the city. At that time, Washington, D.C., occurred to me that way, though I had a chance to stay there and work for the government in housing, but, I don't know, I had a good practice in Seattle, and so there was every reason why I should go back, you see. And I don't regret the fact that I have, despite the fact that I think I probably could have opened an office in Washington, D.C., and done it with a reasonable amount of success, you know, because I had good patronage in Washington.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Did you know John Graham [Seattle architect--Ed.] at the time?
PAUL THIRY: Oh yes.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: And you knew of their firm opening up an office in New York, in the late thirties?
PAUL THIRY: Well, I knew particularly that old John Graham had opened an office in Shanghai [John Graham, Sr., was founder of the firm; his son, John Graham, is now head of the company--Ed.]. And this renews another aspect of Shanghai. He had taken into partnership an engineer...
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: William Painter.
PAUL THIRY: Bill Painter. And so when I was in Shanghai, why... [Tape 2; side 2]
PAUL THIRY: While I was in Shanghai, I met Painter, and he had been in the Navy and he been in, oh, what do you call it, raising old ships and things of this kind? Salvage. And then he had been there with Graham, and Graham had passed away, and so he had kind of established an office, engineering, and he's big... At the time, there was not too much in the way of ethics, either in Japan-- or in China, you know, it was kind of every man for himself. And so he opened up an office, really as a contractor. He would get the plans, let's say for a chemical plant that was to be built and he would analyze the plan and then he would propose a price to construct, and then also he would parallel [prepare--Ed.] a plan of his own, which showed that he could do it this way cheaper, you see. And so he was getting quite a bit of business by giving them a better and cheaper way of doing things. (laughs) And he had developed a fairly good practice. And so one day he called me and said he wanted to talk to me and he wanted to go and visit a new building that was just finished in Shanghai and so we went up and the partitions were not in, so we looked at the bare floor of the building, and he said he was going to rent some space and he wanted me to be his architectural designer, you know. (laughs) So I said, "Well, where are the jobs?" I mean he didn't have any jobs yet, but he was going to get them, and I didn't even think that that was likely for a while. But strangely enough, sometime after I left he did fill the whole thing. (laughs) And he did do quite a thriving business. But when you mentioned Graham that recalled that. At one time when I first got out of the university, I worked in Graham's office, when I came back from Fontainebleau for a while, and I used to do a lot of the perspectives for buildings. I remember the physics building at the university, I did.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Well, they were doing commercial work downtown [Seattle--Ed.] at the time, weren't they, late twenties?
PAUL THIRY: Yes. I did that, and... But to get back to why I came back to Seattle, I guess that was the easy way to do things. As it turned out, why I wasn't home two weeks and I had more work than I could handle. And then I had Shay to take care of the mundane part of the practice and...
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Now what kind of work was this?
PAUL THIRY: Well, I came back embued with new ways to do things and Shay was willing and really didn't, frankly, care one way or the other, you know. In fact, when he encountered a new plan he would sometimes say, "Do you want traditional or modern mystic?," which always kind of griped me. (chuckles)
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Well when you say that [you were--Ed.] embued with these new ways, can you elaborate?
PAUL THIRY: Well, I mean flexible planning and windows and environmental considerations of siting, of climate, of view, you know. Things of this kind, which were not considered, really, in the buildings that were being built at the time.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: The principles, then you would say, of the modern movement?
PAUL THIRY: Oh yes, far out at that time. I don't compare myself to some of the people I've been talking about, but you might say as the next generation, why I did things of that type and variety [International Style--Ed.] almost exclusively. And I did this because I felt that you couldn't really plan in a flexible way and still confront styles of roofing, bay windows and all this sort of thing [that--Ed.] didn't fit in with walls of glass and... And so I would say it was modern as any architect was doing at the time, including the ones that I had more or less learned from, you know.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Well, the house that you built for yourself and mother over in Madison Park? That was one of the first that you did when you came back, is that right?
PAUL THIRY: Well, yes it was; it was...
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: 1937.
PAUL THIRY: '36, '37. I did that, in fact at that time I did four or five houses all in similar appearance and style.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: So it was at that point really that you embraced the International Style, the modern...?
PAUL THIRY: Well, I was subject to a lot of ha-ha-ing and criticism and most of the architects, you know, seemed to enjoy criticizing and so on. Because I seemed to enjoy criticizing also. (laughs) So as far as Seattle goes, you know, I was the second coming of the Lord! (laughs)
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: On what grounds were you criticized?
PAUL THIRY: Well, number one that, you know, glass and all of these ideas were not comfortable and...
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: When you say glass, you mean broad expanses of glass, like what? That other architects saw as nonpractical?
PAUL THIRY: Yeah, they were not practical and then too, it's just the idea that a different way of thinking, really, all by itself was a criticism of what they did. And at the time too, I was invited to speak quite often. I remember one time I was invited to speak at the Women's University Club and Mr. Gould was kind of the toastmaster. And so I spoke of flexible spaces, of the practicalities of flat roofs, of overhangs, and letting the sun in, and keeping the sun out, and building to accomodate the breeze in the summertime, and to discourage the wind in the winter, and to keep out of the rain. And then I got into subjects like building reflecting surfaces, and the dark inner parts of houses, and of sliding screens and shojis, and you know, it really denounced the American home, the idea.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: The traditional homey home.
PAUL THIRY: That's right.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Particularly the flat roof.
PAUL THIRY: And then of course, a lot of people just loved it, and then other people didn't take to it, you know. They thought I just came over from some socialist society or something. But I had my claque, you see, and I enjoyed a small, a minimum, you might say, of the potential clients. But the ones that I had were my clients.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Devoted.
PAUL THIRY: You know, they were my type of people. (laughs) And they were receptive, you see. And they wanted it, "Give me that!" And so that made it good. So everything I did more or less was after that manner. And that has more or less followed me, all my life since then. But oh, at the time, this was all new and strange to a lot of people-- particularly students and far-out society, and so I...
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Were there other people practicing modern-movement...?
PAUL THIRY: Not at that time around here, no.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: You were alone. What about [Pietro--Ed.] Belluschi down in Portland?
PAUL THIRY: Oh, he didn't in my mind really go as far as I did with total change, you know. And then he worked with [John--Ed.] Yeon, whereas I worked for myself, you know. Even with Shay, [he--Ed.] never interfered with me; he took it as it came, good and bad. Belluschi was mixed up in an office-- [Albert--Ed.] Doyle's office-- and he did modern work... I just mean it wasn't the same as I was doing, you see. Belluschi, of course, was an older man than I was, and he had a more mature background, and I think he did more conservative... Well, like the Portland Art Museum, some of those things were strictly you might say modern but they weren't the kind of thing that I did. I suppose mine was more what they call International Style, but I didn't mean it to be; I just felt that way.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: How did you justify the flat roofs?
PAUL THIRY: Well, I justified it because I could turn corners and go around. I could do every damn thing I wanted to in plan, and...
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: And you were sure they didn't leak.
PAUL THIRY: Oh no, I wasn't, you see. But the flat roof gave planning flexibility. You could go off in strange manners with a flat roof, or you could just continue and have a porch, and you could have an atrium, and you didn't have to worry about ridges and valleys and all that sort of thing. And of course I learned, as a lot of people learned, that if you don't take care of the runoff, the water, you're going to develop leaks; the quality of the roof, that is, as a function of preparation, had a good deal to do too with the weatherability. I think one of the bad things about flat roofs is people don't use good judgment as to where they use them, either on the building itself or on the siting of the building. I mean for instance, if the street is above the house, and you're looking down on a flat roof, there's water pockets and all kinds of vent pipes and stacks sticking out of it and everything; I don't care how well designed the building is, it isn't going to look good. And those are things that you have to learn. And then you have to go to the practical aspects of design, and think there are a lot of so-called modern buildings that have gone off the path, [in] that they don't really respect the reasons for change. They just take it as a style and they design indiscriminately, you might say-- the weather, the sunlight, or even moonlight. I always, when I design a building-- You take this room that I designed outside of our house here. I thought of the moon and the shadows it would make. You think of grey days, you think of rain, you know, as an atmosphere. You have to think of shadows different objects cast-- the leaves, the branches of the trees, and all of these things have to be thought of. And if you design a room with the full consideration for all of the aspects of environment, why you don't really design one room, you design a thousand rooms within a single room. You see?
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Um hmm.
PAUL THIRY: And this is really the background of the change in architecture that I entertain. I don't do it as a style; I do it for what the so-called style accomplishes. And I think in recent years, whether it's a commercial building or a church or anything else, if you're perceptive to change and to incidental things that happen in buildings and that just come and disappear again, why you'll understand what I'm talking about.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Can you take a moment to describe what your firm was like at this time? It was small. How was it organized? Who was involved? PAUL THIRY: Well, when I first came back from my trip around the world, as I say went into partnership with Alban Shay. We had a few draftsmen, one or two, and Shay took care of, you might say, the general outside work, and business, and contracts and that sort of thing, and I used to draw and make perspectives and...
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: You did the designing then?
PAUL THIRY: ...and meet with the clients and that sort of thing. And then we'd have maybe one or two people to help us and so this kind of grew in numbers, and as time went on, I of course was called on to do more lecturing and writing and...
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: But it still remained a small firm then?
PAUL THIRY: Oh yes. And then of course, we did some worthwhile work, but we didn't do the monster category.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Were you ever tempted to join a larger firm?
PAUL THIRY: No, as a matter of fact, the main reason I joined with Shay was he was willing to do some of the things that I didn't particularly like to do. I did them previously, but I didn't necessarily like writing specs and that sort of thing. And so he served his part and we were a good team, except that he wasn't very intense. I was uptight, if you know what I mean. And so we were together until about 1939, I think, or else '40, and then we decided to kind of part company. I gave a talk at the Athletic Club, and it was well attended, and of course I went into great depths of modern thought and so on, and most of the ladies that attended the lecture were really distraught. (laughs) I mean with some of my ideas, maybe [about--Ed.] living Japanese style, with uniform garments, uniform tatami, uniform this, and storage, and sit on the floor, and maybe just on a bench. Then I got into all these environmental things, and of course they didn't understand all that. And so there was a lot of hubbub, and Shay's wife was the butt of a lot of it, and he was kind of upset. And then also there didn't seem to be the advantage [to the partnership--Ed.] because I just kind of felt like I had to go my own way, you know, and so about that time I did go my own way. (chuckles) It wasn't too long after that that the war came on, but even before the war, why things were rather difficult. Anyway, we parted company on good terms, and friends.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Was most of your work at that point still residential and church?
PAUL THIRY: Mostly. Oh we did other kinds of work, but that was the mainstay. And then I opened up my office on my own and times were a little difficult but I had sufficient work to keep things together. By this time, we'd had an awful lot of work published and so my name was becoming known all over the country. I had a lot of communication and invitations to talk and I don't know whatnot, and so the time was right, you might say. But times began to tighten up, and one day I was at home-- this was of course quite a while after I had built my house-- and I had a call from a government [man who] asked me, "You're interested in housing?" And I said, "Yes." And in fact I had done a lot of talking about housing because it was in the air at the time, public housing.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Now what year was this?
PAUL THIRY: About 1939, '38.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Uh huh, so you were still with Shay?
PAUL THIRY: Still with Shay, but after I parted with Shay this man had called, you see. And he asked me if I wanted to go into a collaboration or joint venture with John Paul Jones and Fred Olson in designing a housing development. I was delighted to do it at the time, because John Paul Jones had inherited the Bevin-Gould office, and Fred Olson was a friend of mine that I'd gone to school at Fontainebleau with, and he was a Paris prize winner at the time, and had come to Seattle to work for Graham. And then at that time he had left Graham. And so I said yes.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Was this right on the eve of the war? Excuse me, this was wartime housing, essentially?
PAUL THIRY: Well, it was what they called houses for the workers; but before we really got into it, why it was war housing. The first job we had was Holly Park [located in South Seattle--Ed.], and we had really quite a beautiful design for it. That was site planning and I did the designing and building design, and John Paul took care of the business, you know. And business at that time was important because we were talking money, you know, large sums of money.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Before we go on much further I want to ask about the late thirties, just to pick up on a question that remains unanswered at that point. You were working on churches and houses in the late thirties?
PAUL THIRY: Um hmm.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: It's interesting that Pietro Belluschi, down in Portland, was doing much the same sort of thing. Were you aware of what was going on down in Portland? How much contact was there? And did you know Belluschi?
PAUL THIRY: Oh, well, yeah, certainly I knew Belluschi by name but I don't...
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: There wasn't a lot of close contact, hmm?
PAUL THIRY: ...the first time I really became acquainted with him was at an AIA [American Institute of Architects--Ed.] convention. I just don't remember the year, but it was early in the game. I admired Belluschi then; I don't know, he just appealed to me as being a diligent architect and not afraid to work, you know. In fact I visited him one time in Portland. It was Saturday. I went into his office and he was all alone in there and he was working! (laughs)
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: It doesn't surprise me.
PAUL THIRY: That impressed me, because that was more the way I operated, you know. I worked all the time. I liked to work. And I liked to design and do things. And so I worked nights; I worked Saturdays, Sundays, holidays, whenever I wanted, not all the time naturally. But I'm not afraid to.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Well that's very interesting; your two careers were paralleling each other so closely at this time-- both involved in housing and churches, and then too, with the onset of war, in war-related projects. But your contacts with the Portland architects were not close at that time. Is that right?
PAUL THIRY: No, not particularly.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Okay, well do you want to go on with Holly Park then? What you were saying about Holly Park and the housing...?
PAUL THIRY: Yes, well the first job we had, as I stated, was Holly Park. Jones, Olson, and Thiry was the name of the firm. And then we did several other jobs, like we did most of the public housing in Renton, and in one project we were teamed with George Stoddard. But...
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Now these were houses of mostly wood?
PAUL THIRY: Yeah.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: And with simple pitched roofs?
PAUL THIRY: Yeah, in fact we just had one-way roofs on a lot of them.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Oh, a shed roof, ah hah.
PAUL THIRY: And of course early in the game, we'd started out with the idea of houses for workers, with the idea that these would be more or less permanent. And so we had central heating plants and all that sort of thing. But as we got into it, why it became evident that the government didn't want to plan permanent housing as such, for the simple reason that it wasn't an attractive idea socially, and then on top of that, they didn't want to spend the money. And so before we issued the drawings, well, we found that central heating was out, and we had coal stoves and they had to have a place for coal, and all that so... [Break in taping]
PAUL THIRY: Well, all of this change in the cost ratio and in the use of the housing cut down on the quality of the product, and so a lot of things were designed as a temporary measure. Also I seemed to be the only one that considered that these projects should be maintained for the long use. And I kept arguing that the sidewalks and the streets should be paved and that they should have curbs and the things that would provide houses for poor people after the war. To a large extent, I was successful, except that we still designed, you know, for a temporary purpose. I think Yesler Terrace [by Aitken, Bain, Jacobsen, Holmes, & Stoddard; Butler Sturtevant, landscape archictect--Meredith Clausen] was really the only project around here that was built and designed as a permanent residence. In fact, even on some of the projects that we did, we built them in masonry and so on, but they were all designed as houses for the workers. (laughs)
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: [Still in] masonry. That's very interesting.
PAUL THIRY: And that's too bad, because there were a lot of refinements that could have been added had the thing been basically planned to accomodate the long-run use. And of course they are used as housing, you might say, for, if not the poor, at least the people that are somewhat dependent.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Did this experience in war-time housing have any lasting impact on your approach to architectural design, and particularly your residential work?
PAUL THIRY: Well, it did to the extent that we encountered all kinds of attitudes and ethnic groups and I don't know whatnot, and so you couldn't help but learn a little here and there about attitudes and what really was required for physical comfort and how people treated things, too, which was important. We had to design against rough usage as well as gentle people, you know. (chuckles) They imported a lot of people that actually had never seen an electric stove except in a store window, you know. So there [were] a lot of things that were interesting.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Well, now I'm curious. The Architectural Forum, in an article in the Forum of 1945, described a house that you designed outside of Olympia as having a "certain rigid formality"-- the design was 1939-- and they said that its "rigid formality bore little relation to the romantic quality of the natural surroundings." Now, I'm wondering, were you still working in the International Style in your other domestic work at this time? And at what point did that approach begin to soften under the demand for more regionalist approach?
PAUL THIRY: It was a house I did for Sy Nash. He was in the wholesale plumbing business and as I remember, if he wasn't all Russian, at least he was partly Russian, a medium-sized gentleman. He had a five-year plan, and he owned this beach property out on the point there outside of Olympia-- this was prior to the war. George Nakashima worked for me and with me, and he built the central circular stairway out of oak and prefabricated the thing and brought it there and set it in place. And that house was strictly, you might say, International, you know, in appearance. But it was by itself and it was on the beach. It wasn't really in a wooded setting because it was in a beach setting, and if there were any wooded areas at all, it was across the country road that was over beyond it. But the house was all glass, similar to what we have here, and it looked out onto the water. [Tape 3; side 1]
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Okay, you were describing the house on the beach. My question really was, at what point did your work start moving away from that orthodox International Style, if you will, towards a more gentle regional approach? And was this under pressure from clients? Or was this your own initiative?
PAUL THIRY: Well, no. You see, there had always been this argument about regional architecture, and...
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: When did that argument...?
PAUL THIRY: Oh this developed, you know, a long time ago.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: What, in the thirties?
PAUL THIRY: Hmm? Oh, yeah. I maintained that there was a regional architecture and that even some of the so-called traditional buildings that Ellsworth Storey designed and some of the others, they had a certain regional characteristic. In other words, even if they were of a Swiss derivation, or a mountain derivation, German and so on, they were peculiar to this part of the country anyway. You know, they had [beams _____], roofs and gables and this sort of thing and they were built of wood. And then too, even the work that I was doing, and of other architects that I worked with had certain local characteristics, and the reason that it hadn't been more recognized is that our work had been copied all over. It's just, you know...
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: I want to find out more about this. This was somewhat later, wasn't it? Or was this early, when are we talking of?
PAUL THIRY: Oh, this thing started years ago. (chuckles)
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Uh huh, but was it forties?
PAUL THIRY: As long as I can remember.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Oh, still earlier. But in the thirties your work was mostly rigorous international, wasn't it? Or the [white?-- I won't use that term-- modernist. At what point was it that you began to embrace...
PAUL THIRY: Well, I did things in two different ways. Let's put it that way. And of course now, we're talking about houses. Sometimes people would come and they, oh, they had a certain amount of nostalgic attitude about a home, you see. They didn't really want to be educated on a better way to live, but they still were somewhat, oh, impressed with the idea of environment, and view, and a lot of the things where we departed from the past, you know. And at the same time, why, they kind of liked what they had, you know. (laughs) So I've always respected the other person's opinion, especially if he's paying me a fee to please him, and if I didn't want to do that, then I should tell him I didn't want his work. But if they came to me, and in the first place that showed a certain amount of acceptance of ideas, then I thought that I was under obligation also to accept some of their ideas.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Well, at time, were you doing work that was essentially what we today might call regionalist work in addition to, paralleling, your International or your modernist work?
PAUL THIRY: I couldn't tell you just off-hand without checking back. But on occasion I did. Like cedar siding and cedar shingle roof, and this was all on top of what I would call a flexible plan, and...
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: And that work predated the war? The use of cedar?
PAUL THIRY: Yeah, I did some predating the war. In fact, the work that I did before I went to Japan was practically all, not necessarily as extreme as what I've just said, but it was of that type. I did quite a few houses around Broadmoor [exclusive Seattle housing development--Ed.] and different places that kind of leaned on the more traditional aspects of architecture. I didn't really have the full comprehension of the possibilities of change until after I went to Japan.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Well, the residential work of the thirties that is most celebrated or most often quoted are the International Style houses.
PAUL THIRY: Yeah, pretty much all of that style. You know there's one thing about ideas, and the other one was function. And of course the idea was that everything should be functional, but then as you do things, why you run into problems. Hmm?
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Uh hmm.
PAUL THIRY: And so if you [have--Ed.] a problem then you're not exactly functional. And I've always been kind of gung-ho on the idea of being functional.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: But didn't that sometimes conflict with a certain aesthetic need?
PAUL THIRY: Well, no, I never really designed strictly on aesthetic principle. I always kind of grew from the plan, you know. I always considered the plan the important thing because after all it's the plan that fits the site.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: [Form generated by plan--Meredith Clausen] That's a Beaux Arts approach, isn't it?
PAUL THIRY: Well, it's a functional approach also. And then the vertical interpretation, of course, is anybody's guess. Many plans, not every plan, but most plans, you can project vertically in a number of different ways. And so then it's a matter of whether you do it in so-called International, or whether you do it with a certain flavor of the woods, or whether you do a rockpile, or you know. (laughs) Or you work in ceramics, or in stucco. There's so many ways to do things and if you can only do it one way, why then you're kind of in a rut. And then also there's really no great pleasure in always [solving--Ed.] the problem the same way. So you have to be kind of open for different solutions to a given problem. And so people that have a style and adhere to it, you know, religiously, and really are not open to ideas...
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Well, at that point then, in designing a residential building, one had the opportunity to work in at least three different styles. One would be the historicist, or traditionalist; two would be International Style, or modern movement; and three would be regionalist. Is that right?
PAUL THIRY: Um hmm, that's right.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: And was this all very deliberate, self-conscious; you knew that you had essentially those three choices?
PAUL THIRY: Well, let's get back to Nash House, for instance. If you're going to name the style, this was probably as modern as anyone has gone-- I'm speaking visually. That house to me fits the seacoast. I mean after all, what is indigenous with the water? There's an old sea galley, and there's a modern steamship. There is a house that compares with a boat, you know. Is that compatible? Or is a wood house compatible? And is a concrete building? And here's a rock building. What is compatible? I mean, you might have a rocky beach and so you build a rock house. Well then, you have to ask yourself the question, is this a practical way to build a house-- I mean of rock-- and that sort of thing. The answer of course is, it's not. It's not a practical way, it's a kind of nostalgic way. So I say that the Nash House fits the setting and it's built outside of Olympia on the bay, and consequently I think it belongs there. Just because people have built houses other ways doesn't mean that that house doesn't belong there. Because it does! But it's endemic, you might say. (chuckles) And so, now you could build a number of different ways and accomplish the purpose of building the house, but I don't think that you could build one that accomodates itself to the program of Nash's way of living and to the beach itself. We employed certain handcrafts in there, like the stairway I told you George Nakashima made the whole thing by hand and fitted it all together. And right after that, why of course they took him off to one of these Japanese camps. But the changeover really wasn't a changeover. I did houses in the so-called modern vernacular at the same time as I did houses in what you term regional style. If a person came in and they wanted something that reminded them of home, the way they were brought up, but they still were tuned in to the environmental process, why then we designed the house that way. We used wood, or we used brick, and things that are made locally, and then also we put a roof on, and applied shingles or tile, and so this kind of house you might say was regional. But this didn't divorce me from what I had previously done or was doing at the time.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: It sounds sort of gradual, not so much a shift, but one that...
PAUL THIRY: Well, you see, before I went to Japan I designed, you know, more or less in, oh, there was a little of new forms injected into buildings, but for the most part they were recognizable [i.e., traditional--Meredith Clausen]-- let's hope a little better designed houses, you know. And then...
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Well, at what point did...
PAUL THIRY: ...when I got back into it, why then I reverted to that [new style-- Meredith Clausen], along with the ideas that I employed in the new viewpoint, you see. But none of those houses that I did after I came back from Japan had anything to do with a style. They were strictly the way I did it. And without bragging, it was picked up by a lot of architects and it became after a while hard for me to recognize my own work. And of course it's hard for other people that you might say kind of were influenced to admit it, and especially to the client. It could be the architect himself. (laughs)
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Ah hah. When you say your "look" or this new approach, this was the flat-roofed and essentially unarticulated white walled architecture?
PAUL THIRY: Yes. Well, at first, yes.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: And the free plan?
PAUL THIRY: I did things in, well, some in wood, but for the most part houses were painted white and they were stuccoed.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: These were wood-framed, but stuccoed?
PAUL THIRY: Um hmm.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Rarely concrete. Is that right?
PAUL THIRY: Well you know, just from a cost standpoint. But of course I didn't just do houses. I did a lot of other things besides. And when I was able to employ the true modern construction techniques, why then of course this delved-- just like Raymond's work-- into a realism of a new architecture. Whereas if you dealt in traditional structure, why then you were only [expressing] you might say sort of a faith in the idea of something new.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Um hmm. The question that I wanted to ask when you were talking about your early work or those early [International Style--Meredith Clausen] houses was the use of color. They were primarily white, is that right?
PAUL THIRY: Um hmm.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: But they did have spots of color, certain areas of color. How was color used?
PAUL THIRY: Well, sometimes, you know, to highlight a wall or to accentuate a part, why you'd change the color to yellow or red.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: This is on the exterior, hmm?
PAUL THIRY: Well both exterior and interior. Of course a lot of houses that were done then are getting along in years and-- some of [the] houses you're talking about-- new people have moved in.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Well, let's go back...
PAUL THIRY: For instance the house that I designed for myself, I had the downstairs more or less for myself. Up to that time, I had made up my mind that I would never attach myself to worldly goods, and that anything that I had or any house that I'd built, when the time came for me to depart, why I would have no belongings to remain. In other words, I was willing to leave this earth unencumbered, both practically and mentally. And so I designed this house of mine on a hillside, and I built it on stilts. I had the thing arranged so that my mother kind of had her quarters, and then I had a little, you might say, atelier of my own. You could drive the car underneath, and then I had an entrance down below, so that people didn't walk right into your house. They walked into your house, but not into your living quarters, you see. And so I took it-- in fact it's the only time I ever borrowed money-- I took it to the bank, you know, to get some mortgage money. And they, they just didn't [approve it--Meredith Clausen], this was too new. (laughs) And too goofy.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: They had to approve your designs before granting you the money, is that right?
PAUL THIRY: Well, yeah, I mean after all, they were investing in the house. (laughs) So they said no, that they were willing to go my way to an extent, but not to the extent that was indicated here. So anyway, I was kind of upset about it, but I redesigned and we ended up with what I built. And of course I got the money for that, which was kind of a restraint, you know. MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Do you have the original drawings still? PAUL THIRY: Oh, I don't know what happened to them, but I imagine. And so this way, anyway, I more or less had my quarters below and my mother above. And of course, we joined household[s] in winter and company and that sort of thing, but after we sold it, why [other] people lived in it and they made some changes. And I think now they've turned it into a duplex. And they enter upstairs and downstairs, and so then... MEREDITH CLAUSEN: It's been painted too.
PAUL THIRY: You know, things change over a period of time, and it's rare when any building that you do can withstand that. People have to be constantly sympathetic with things. And of course times change and attitudes are different now. I don't [think] the present attitude towards building is very healthy. It's kind of a disaster, as far as I'm concerned.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Can you elaborate?
PAUL THIRY: Well, I think restoring buildings of no value, for one thing. And then a lot of the younger architects are injecting some of this old bad architecture into new architecture.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: You mean the recycling process?
PAUL THIRY: Yeah, that's right, and so [by--Ed.] the time you get done with it, why you've got a cacophony here that's neither fish nor fowl. It represents an era, but it's not a history-making era as far as I'm concerned. It's deplorable, as old man Gould used to refer to the buildings on First Avenue.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Um hmm. Well would you agree that some of these older historical buildings ought to be preserved? And if so, how would you use them?
PAUL THIRY: I think, as I have stated before, that where they're historically important-- not architecturally-- but historically you see, politically, like Pioneer Square, which was the hub of the city. And it was reminiscent of the old colonial towns, when they had a square. It's reminiscent of the European towns where they had a square, and the town was built around the square-- a small town; if it was a big town it had more squares. So this represented the construction attitude of the 1890's until, let's say, the 1910's you see. And so to me, it [Pioneer Square, Seattle--Ed.] should have been restored. Now you have to face it that they were structurally bad, poorly done, and where the masonry on the outside, most of them were wood joists and steel beams on the inside. And most of them were deficient in fire safety, stairways, and ingress and egress. They are deficient in lighting, because the electrical... So the insides, you might say, were completely deficient, and for the most part the outsides were deficient. And historically the, the, they're not reminiscent in whole of anything in the past, but they were kind of a conglomeration of, oh, various styles. They didn't represent an office building; they didn't represent anything, because no two floors have the same kind of windows, and they were not modular. They were not adaptable to new usage. They're not flexible, you see. But, they were built. And they surrounded Pioneer Square. And I thought that historically they represented the old city, the taste of the time. There's more in a building than quality of design; there's also representation of taste, of ways of living.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: They express the time.
PAUL THIRY: And even of locomotion, you see. And so I believe they should have been kept. For the most [part they--Ed.] have either been reduced in height-- one of them was fallen down and then removed, and another one was taken down all together and turned into a parking lot. And so now they're trying to restore them, you see. But I don't think the restoration job's very good, because they're not restored to the way they were, you see. They still have these holes that eliminate the continuity. But in going through this process of trying to keep these buildings in the district, why some of the architects have become charmed with some of the ornament and with some of the ironwork, with some of the materials, and some of the details. Somehow or another, why they want to grasp that and put it into the [new--Meredith Clausen] buildings that have to have an affinity with these old buildings, you see. And they just can't do it.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Yeah, that makes it difficult. The Watermark Towers, for example...
PAUL THIRY: Can't do it, and I've written numerous articles on the subject of mixing new and old. Now, you can design, as they have in Paris, compatible with old buildings without copying them, you see. This is really what I believe in. But I don't believe in trying to build a building that in your mind lives with what's there. What I'm saying is you shouldn't take away from what's there if you're going to build; my viewpoint is that they never should have allowed what's happened to happen. Consequently, they have these holes in the fabric, and so now they have to replace and fill the holes, and in doing it, why I don't think they're doing it very well.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Well, I think this question of the design relationships between old and new will come up again when we start talking about the work down in Olympia and also of course in Washington, D.C. But before we get into that, there are a couple other questions that I'd like to ask about regionalism, if that's okay to go back to that. Because I think that regionalism was particularly important in the forties and fifties, and there are a lot of still unanswered but important questions I think to ask about it. Particularly regionalism here in the Pacific Northwest. For example, how influential was Aalto's work at the time?
PAUL THIRY: You mean regionally?
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: In regionalism.
PAUL THIRY: Oh, I don't know. Of course, I'm not the great admirer of Aalto as some people are. But I don't think it has anything to do with our regionalism.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: What about Japanese architecture?
PAUL THIRY: Well, I think Japanese architecture did, yes. But I really think that actually the medieval architecture of Germany and Switzerland and Normandy and buildings of that kind really set the pace, you might say, for the residential styles of this part of the world.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Ah hah.
PAUL THIRY: And this was at the time when Storey and this...
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: [Kirtland--Ed.] Cutter.
PAUL THIRY: ...Kirtland Cutter, and people of that kind were doing things. And [Joseph--Ed.] Coate... Well, Coate was more classic, but...
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: But essentially these were historical styles that were introduced here because of the natural affinity [to the region--Meredith Clausen], is that right?
PAUL THIRY: That's right, but they also were, you might say, somewhat indigenous, because the material problem was the same. I mean they're built of wood; they had a certain amount of stucco. But primarily the style itself kind of predominated and so it was natural to build in that manner, and for a while it wasn't regional in the sense that everything was that way. It set the certain regional pattern, but there are other things that created what I term regionalism in this part of the world. I think Belluschi touched on one thing, and this was the barn. See, these buildings were wood. For the most part they had appendages of smaller buildings.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: This raises a very good question-- whether that affinity that we can now see between, say, the Swiss chalet, which has the simple pitched roof and your overhangs, and the native or indigenous barn-- whether that was an affinity that was recognized after the fact or were the so-called regionalists [deliberately]...?
PAUL THIRY: No, we never had regionalists, as such, and including myself. I think it's like chewing, you know; you don't think about chewing when you chew your food; you're more interested in the food. And you design buildings after sort of a fashion without necessarily saying I'm doing a regional building. See what I mean?
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Um hmm.
PAUL THIRY: And so a lot of this way of doing things, or this habit, this way of everybody's thinking, why you create something, and you create something unique. And so when you start to rationalize something and you call it regionalism, well then you begin to think of everything that's being done- or has been done. So then you do like Belluschi did; he was going through the fields and here was a beautiful barn, you see, pitched roof, with all these little added buildings, it's weathered, and it's of the earth, it's beautiful, you see. It's indigenous; it was built by a farmer that had a function. He didn't design a building to be beautiful; he just put the damn things up to be practical. But he did it simply, and see this is the essence of my thinking of simplicity. You see those things and so they influence you. And you see a shape and, gee, I like that, and then when you're designing a building or a house or anything you, somehow or another you don't remember that, but it's unconsciously on your pencil.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: What about the indigenous Indian art?
PAUL THIRY: Some people know Indian art and some don't, you see. Most don't. I happen to know it because for many years I've been tremendously interested in the indigenous art of the country and of the Indian, particularly, and the Eskimo. As a matter of fact, I don't know if you've seen the book that we [he and his wife Mary--Ed.] did on Eskimo artifacts. [Eskimo Artifacts, Seattle, 1978--Ed.] I got into structures of longhouses and into the representation of clan by totem designs and decorative arts and all of that sort of thing.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Now, when was your interest in this...?
PAUL THIRY: Oh, this started years ago, part of it because I was born in Nome, and I remembered some of the Eskimo things, and...
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Was it post-war that you started collecting?
PAUL THIRY: Yeah, actually I became vitally interested when I designed the Museum of History and Industry.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: So, 1950.
PAUL THIRY: I did the first part of the building. And they discharged the director that they had hired-- for reasons of their own-- and there was no one to open the building, you see. And so I volunteered to open the building and to put in the displays. And in so doing, why I went through, with my office crew. We catalogued the whole collection, and then we put on the exhibition and in doing it, why I ran across all of these Eskimo artifacts and Northwest Indian masks... [Tape 3; side 2]
PAUL THIRY: Well, in going through the various cases and artifacts, why I was kind of taken with a harpoon head. It appeared like the beak of a crane, you know, bird. And of course it was mammoth ivory and beautiful coloring and I thought this is just beautiful, you see. And I brought the piece home and I showed it to my wife and I said, "Just see how beautiful this is." And then about that time I went through a case of points that had been loaned by the Smithsonian, and here was one or two dozen of these pieces of mammoth ivory artifacts. And so not long after that, why we were down at the Curiosity Shop and Joe James had a whole box full of these pieces and so anyway we started collecting. (chuckles)
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Oh, so that's been your interest in Eskimo art, really.
PAUL THIRY: Yeah, well, I had been interested, but I hadn't been interested to the point that I [collected--Ed.]-- Before, I had viewed all of these primitive things as more or less junk, but this was the first time I had come to realize that beyond this point there was great intrinsic value, I mean something that went beyond the primitive. And this was sophistication. And so then we started collecting and being more interested. And then too, we started to take more interest in the way of life and the climatic conditions under which the Northwest Indians lived, and why they had the habits they had and why they did what they did, and their superstitions that were born out of the climate. And so by the time I got into this seriously I became a real follower of the culture. And so I've designed fabrics for the Anton May collection of Northwest Indian, fabrics I did years ago and [were] manufactured, and that really was a success all over the United States. And I've done other things in that way but we've persisted in collecting, and this book, as I mentioned, indicates part of our basic collection of Eskimo [things]. The longhouse itself is structurally interesting, and the way it was used was interesting. And so you take that, with the alpine architecture and with the modern viewpoint, at least my viewpoint, about being consistent with environment, wind, rain and sunshine, and site and location, why you mix the whole thing and you have [what] I would term something that's unique to this part of the world. I wouldn't say that I invented the system because obviously nothing happens in one place, and as you mentioned, Belluschi developed a style of his own along with Yeon and some others. But I think we were all coexistent.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Were you all aware of what each other were doing?
PAUL THIRY: Oh, you're bound to be to some extent, naturally. And of course, Belluschi preceded me and so I wouldn't claim to be the founder of the style, [but] it might be when you go back as far as Ellsworth Storey and some of the cottages he did. And while that little Episcopal church, the Epiphany, is strictly a kind of an English country church, it still has a certain reminiscence of what I'm talking about.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: A number of critics have actually questioned whether there is indeed an identifiable Pacific Northwest regional style. What do you think?
PAUL THIRY: I think if you concentrate on what I'm talking about and look, there is, yes.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Um hmm. And how would you identify it? What are its essential characteristics?
PAUL THIRY: Well, principally I would say that what we would call regionalism over a period of years-- you see, not since I returned from Japan, but preceding that-- I would say that there's some feeling of houses for the old world, of the Norman, Germanic cultures. Next, with our local supply of materials and with our contemporary attitude about-- I'm talking about a true contemporary attitude, because a lot of people build the same house no matter where; I'm talking about someone that's tuned to fitting the building to the lot or the situation-- you'll find that the fenestration and the sheltering of the overhanging roofs and all of that is completely unique.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: How? Can you describe the fenestration patterns?
PAUL THIRY: Well, I mean like rows of windows, sliding windows, and rows of doors. I think one person, Roland Terry, certainly has contributed what I call [original] _____; he [is a] very talented architect insofar as that particular class of work is concerned. And he has even gone so far as to use the peeled log for supporting members, and so on. But I would say that if you look for that sort of thing you won't find it anyplace else and that it may go back even so far as the national parks are concerned, where they built these great structures with logs and...
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Yellowstone Park and people like [Robert C.--Ed.] Reamer.
PAUL THIRY: That's right.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Well, that raises a new question. How does this compare to the California Bay Area style, for example?
PAUL THIRY: Well, I would say that the Bay style is different in detail, that somehow or another the houses built for California, oh I would say they were more or less influenced by the Victorian attitude, you know.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Can you elaborate on that?
PAUL THIRY: I don't know. There's a certain form of porches and turned wood, and you know. And of course Maybeck and some of those have developed a kind of an architecture which is regional in a sense. Maybe when we speak of regionalism, maybe we're talking about the coast, maybe we're not just talking about the State of Washington or the Northwest, you know. There's a similarity, and still if you're dealing with photographs you probably could pick up the difference or even pick up the designer. But I think you'll find that Greene and Greene and Maybeck and some of those introduced more ornamental wood, carving, you know.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Tends to be simpler up here.
PAUL THIRY: Yes, more direct.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Simpler, and I would have said perhaps more influenced by the Japanese?
PAUL THIRY: That's right. And I think, I think our work is more protected from the weather. Maybeck and the rest of them used to go beyond the roof with outriggers and different things that are subject to rot.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: How influential were those Californians, though-- Greene and Greene for example-- in the developing regional style up here?
PAUL THIRY: Oh, they were in the same category as Storey and Cutter and some of the rest of them. They all lived at the same time and they all came from other places; they were not really native to the country, I mean. But the real, what I call "indigenous" [architecture--Ed.] has more or less come about through their influence, but by more contemporary architects. Do you follow the point?
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Sure, indeed I follow the point. Now (and this is an interesting question) there was an editorial in 1953 in the Architectural Record, that said that at that point the Pacific Northwest was exerting a new influence on the development of modern architecture. This was 1953. How true to do you think this is?
PAUL THIRY: Well, I think that's true. More so than anyplace else on the coast. Well, you see, you have to realize that Neutra existed too. And Neutra was doing his thing in California.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: But an entirely different thing, though, wasn't it?
PAUL THIRY: Well, I know, but just the same, he had an influence on the change in thinking. And this so-called regionalism that I'm talking about doesn't represent historic construction by itself, but it represents a new attitude, you see, about environmental design. And so when you get into Neutra's type of new work, why he introduced modernistic or modern theme, and this modern theme was also carried into what we term regional, you see. Except that he did a lot of balconies and flat roofs and things of that kind. There were a lot of things that he did, too, you see, that found their way under a wood roof.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Um hmm. Well, but this editorial, in the Architectural Record, spoke specifically of the Pacific Northwest, which would have eliminated that Southern California work.
PAUL THIRY: Well, without trying to put myself up as being the forerunner, why, in a way I broke the ice. And so, in other words...
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: With the regionalism or with the International?
PAUL THIRY: Well, with the change. I don't like "regionalism" or "contemporary" or "modern" or anything. All I think of is that life is a progressive thing and some people represent new ideas and change. And I like to think I'm one of those, you know. See. (chuckles)
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Well, you think that's what this editorial, or this editor of the Architectural Record was talking about then?
PAUL THIRY: Well, I think he might have a limited vocabulary.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: He was talking about the influence of the Pacific Northwest on the development of modern architecture.
PAUL THIRY: Yeah, I know but I think he should have said in there: influence and the change in architecture, not modern architecture.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: I see.
PAUL THIRY: I mean, what is modern architecture? You see, what's modern 40 years ago isn't modern right now. You see, really, if you want to speak about something modern let's look at the great building that [Buckminster--Ed.] Fuller did in Montreal.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: The geodesic dome?
PAUL THIRY: This is something; this is creative; it's new. And if you said modern at that time, that is still an understatement for what that man did, you see.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Uh huh.
PAUL THIRY: And so you can't dress buildings with terminology. And right now they're trying to call this Chippendale thing that Philip Johnson is doing in New York, you know, as modern.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Post-modern, isn't it?
PAUL THIRY: Oh come on! Oh God! To even say modern... This, you know, when he could do such a wonderful thing as that house he did for himself, and then turn around and do this Chippendale architecture on a tremendous building [AT&T building, New York--Ed.] which is bound to have a tremendous influence. But this in no way represents what I'm talking about. See, this is style; this isn't change.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: And you would say the same about the Graves building in Portland [the Portland Building--Ed.].
PAUL THIRY: Oh, I don't want to talk about that at all.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Okay. Well let me ask one last question on the regional style. The Northwest regional style is said to be on the wane now, usurped-- or so it's been said-- by this new interest or revival in the International Style. Do you think that's true? And if so, that really implies that it is a style rather than...?
PAUL THIRY: No, no, no. You see, what's going on right now is really a strange piece of work. I mean strange architecture. They're using shingles, and clapboards, and siding, and God knows whatnot, along with plastic domes, and, you know, new devices of one kind or another. And then they're throwing the whole thing together into what is called a new idea, new form. And it has no basis for design at all. You can't point to anything that's generally being done as having any particular reason behind it. And so, sure, you reenact, or you continue, you might say, the International Style in certain types of buildings, and this is true. And I think, well, Meier in New York has picked up the International, so-called, and he has [his] own little way of doing things. And to that extent, why they've picked up a style that has become a style through use, just like gothic is a style through use. You could say a man could go back and pick up a gothic and build himself a gothic structure, but that doesn't say that he's doing the right thing. And now, there's more reason to pick up, you might say, the International Style and refine it than there is to depart from it and gookly-gook the whole thing, you see.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Well, is anybody refining it now?
PAUL THIRY: Well, I don't think anybody's improving on what's been done. And you see the discouraging thing about everything that's happening now is that we're reverting to appearance, and we're reverting to trying to be sensational, to shock, you see. And it's working, but it's working to the detriment of progress.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Well, haven't architects throughout the centuries always sought to do something different, monumental, eyecatching, and perhaps...
PAUL THIRY: No, I don't think... Oh yeah, there's always been some, but then there are others that have gone through functional and practical uses of materials, construction. You take gothic architecture, for instance, that wasn't styled; that's structural, you know. They wanted to have more light, thinner structure, less material, greater spans, so they end up, you see. And then of course, the embellishment of the frame, that's the style. The functional gothic is the frame, and the visual gothic is what's applied to the necessary.
MEREDITH CLAUSEN: Couldn't you say that about any building? The Graves building, for example, in Portland is structural and then on top of that you've added, if you will, your...
PAUL THIRY: Yes, but in order to accomplish what he's accomplished, it isn't necessarily a venture in structure, you see. He just built a building, he faced it