Pond and Pond

Pond and Pond was an American architecture firm established by the Chicago architects Irving Kane Pond and Allen Bartlitt Pond.

Overview

Lorado Taft studio, 1909

Working in the Arts and Crafts idiom, the brothers gained renown for elaborately detailed brickwork and irregular massing of forms. One of their earliest projects, in 1885, was a building for the Ladies Library Association of Ann Arbor, Michigan. Only the dated cornerstone survives—preserved in a stairwell of the present Ann Arbor Public Library.

Irving K. and Allen B. Pond were born in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Their father was newspaperman Elihu Pond, editor of the weekly Ann Arbor Argus. Jokingly called by friends "Ikey" and "Abie", after their initials, the two brothers attended the University of Michigan, where in 1879 they were pupils in architectural classes given by William LeBaron Jenney, who commuted from Chicago to deliver the first courses in architecture at Michigan. [Later, in the Home Insurance Building, Jenney developed the steel skeleton framework that made highrise buildings possible.]

The Pond brothers were part of an active artists' scene in Chicago that included Lorado Taft, Bert Leston Taylor, Jane Addams, and Harriet Monroe. The brothers were founding members of the Cliff Dwellers Club of Chicago, of the Eagle's Nest Art Colony in Ogle County, Illinois, and associated with Jane Addams' Hull House in Chicago, for whom they designed various buildings.

The firm was considered among the "earliest modernizers in architecture" in the period after the Great Chicago Fire.[1]

The firm was also notable for its success in a new field of architectural design, that of large university student union buildings. Pond and Pond built student unions for the campuses of Purdue University, University of Michigan, Michigan State, and University of Kansas.[2] One interesting note is that their most significant student union building, the Michigan Union, was built on the site of the brothers' boyhood home.[3]

Allen Bartlitt Pond was born in Ann Arbor, MI, on November 21, 1858, and died in Chicago on March 17, 1929. Irving Kane Pond was born in Ann Arbor on May 1, 1857, and died in Washington, D. C., on September 29, 1939.

Architects trained through the firm of Pond and Pond include Andrew Willatsen. The firm's papers are housed in the Art Institute of Chicago.[4]

Selected commissions

References

Notes
  1. ↑ https://archive.org/stream/industrialchicag01good/industrialchicag01good_djvu.txt Industrial Chicago Illinois Historical Society, 1995, page 9
  2. ↑ https://union.purdue.edu/home/about/Index.html#architecture
  3. ↑ Lost Ann Arbor by Susan Cee Wineberg, Arcadia Publishing, 2004, page 43
  4. ↑ http://www.artic.edu/aic/libraries/research/specialcollections/subject/prewwii.html
  5. ↑ A Doctor's Memories, by Victor C. Vaughan, 1926, page 155
  6. ↑ Historic Photos of the University of Michigan by Michael Chmura, Turner Publishing 2007, page 186
  7. ↑ "Artistic Domestic Architecture in America" New England Magazine, June 1895, page 45
  8. ↑ http://www.aadl.org/gallery/buildings/hhaa052.gif.html Paul C. Freer House page
  9. ↑ http://photofiles.lib.uchicago.edu/db.xqy?show=browse21.xml%7C93 James Westfall Thompson House
  10. ↑ Architectural Record, American Institute of Architects, 1905, page 67
  11. ↑ Chicago Sketches by June Skinner Sawyers, Loyola University Press, 1995, page 248
  12. ↑ http://www.lakegenevanews.net/Articles-Community-columnists-i-2014-04-10-252934.114135-History-of-LG-YMCA-building.html
  13. ↑ The University of Chicago By Jay Pridmore, Peter Kiar, Page 108
  14. ↑ "Annual Report of the Supervising Architect to the Secretary of the Treasury", United States Dept. of the Treasury, Office of Supervising Architect, 1909, page 148
  15. 1 2 Karen E. Schnell (November 10, 1993). "National Register of Historic Places Multiple Property Documentation: Illinois Carnegie Libraries" (PDF). p. 52. Retrieved 3 February 2007.
  16. ↑ Quarterly Bulletin, American Institute of Architects, 1912, page 190
  17. ↑ The New Outlook for the Blind, American Foundation for the Blind, 1927, page 23
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