page_title: Irving Kane Pond
section_title: Architectural style and philosophy
hierarchical_section_title: Irving Kane Pond / Architect / Architectural style and philosophy
caption_attribution_description: English: Photograph of American School of Correspondence
context_page_description: Irving Kane Pond was an American architect, college athlete, and author. Born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Pond attended the University of Michigan and received a degree in civil engineering in 1879. He was a member of the first University of Michigan football team and scored the first touchdown in the school's history in May 1879.
  After graduating from Michigan, Pond moved to Chicago where he worked as an architect from 1879 to 1939. He began his architectural career as a draftsman in the offices of William LeBaron Jenney and worked as the head draftsman in the office of Solon Spencer Beman during the construction of the planned Pullman community. In 1886, Pond formed the Chicago architectural firm Pond and Pond in partnership with his brother Allen Bartlitt Pond. The Pond brothers worked together for more than 40 years, and their buildings are considered to be among the best examples of Arts and Crafts architecture in Chicago. The Ponds gained acclaim as the architects of Jane Addams' Hull House, and three of their buildings have been declared National Historic Landmarks—the Hull House dining hall, the Lorado Taft Midway Studios, and the Frank R. Lillie House.
context_section_description: As early as 1892, Pond became known as one of the "earliest modernizers in architecture."  The Art Institute of Chicago, where Pond's papers are housed, said of the firm: "While Pond and Pond were best known through their work for social service organizations, they designed a wide range of buildings — social, religious, educational/academic, residential, governmental, and civic — mainly in the Chicago area and the Midwest. They were known for detailed brickwork, asymmetrical massing, and distinctive decorative detail, producing fine examples of Arts and Crafts and early modern architecture."
  In 1905 a 15-page article in the Architectural Record by Pond and illustrated by his designs was published. Pond described his views in it about architecture as an art:
  Architecture is an art, and as an art, it does not consist simply in piling up forms, old or new, but is a means of expression. ... If architecture is an art and art consists in the expression of life, then that is neither architecture nor art which merely reproduces, even in new combinations, the old forms because they were once the accepted forms. That is a phase of archaeology and is unworthy of living architecture. ... However, the old ideas are not to be spurned and the old forms are not altogether to be cast aside when they contain the spark of life ...
  Pond's article was viewed by some as a criticism of those in the Prairie School who overemphasized the horizontal over the vertical.  In this regard, Pond wrote:
  In architectural composition, as in music, order is comprehended in rhythm.  Rhythm is expressed in the flow of part into part, of mass into mass, in the appearance and reappearance of certain proportions which are made to exist between the subordinate masses and between these masses and the dominant mass; between all the parts of the perfect whole.  Without order there is no architecture; without rhythmic composition no vital architecture can be.  That is the highest architecture in which rhythmic action of the structural forces becomes apparent.  Vertical forces in action, by the law of gravity, tend to work in right lines; horizontal forces, acted upon by this same law tend to work in curves. ...  It is not enough that the rhythmic movement be in horizontal direction only, but there must be a rhythmic flow vertically as well.  The result of these combined movements should be that of unity -- simple in its effect though complex in its harmonies.
caption: American School of Correspondence by Pond and Pond
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