Arts and Letters

Eric Gugler, born in Milwaukee the son of German parents, departed this life on May 16, 1974; he was in his eighty-fifth year and was one of the last of our classically trained architects.

Following studies at The Armour Institute, the Art Institute of Chicago, and graduation from Columbia University School of Architecture in 1911, he won the Charles Follen McKim Fellowship to the American Academy in Rome where he spent three years, years that shaped his professional career, a career further stimulated and enriched by his long friendship with two distinguished academicians, Sculptor Paul Manship and Painter Barry Faulkner.

Upon learning of Eric Gugler's death, one of his friends wrote: "his life was concentrated upon that intangible thing called beauty. He never deviated for a moment from his high ideals in his chosen profession." And so it was. He followed the precepts of the eminent architect and academician, the late Paul Philippe Cret, who wrote that "the abandonment of classic principles is neither new nor without its price. Regardless of the use made later on of the forms they proposed as examples, these disciplines had an unquestionable value. What is to be substituted for their proved efficacy in training the eye to proportion, to rhythm, to composition, is not as yet divulged and those who condemn them as stifling to originality forget that an originality so easily stifled is not very robust."

Bertram G. Goodhue once said: "The architect, like the poet, is born not made." Eric Gugler was a "born architect" and, as Barry Faulkner wrote of him, "possessed of imaginative power and resourcefulness."

In setting forth a brief list of Eric Gugler's accomplishments, one naturally begins with one of the most important, namely, his design for the West or Executive Wing of the White House, done early in the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. This work included the Oval Office and the Cabinet Room. The new wing was the first substantial change made in the White House since the administration of President Theodore Roosevelt when, in 1906, the building was rehabilitated from plans by Charles F. McKim.

Some years later, President Franklin D. Roosevelt requested Eric Gugler to design an inscription to be carved in an important place in one of the public rooms of the White House. The place selected was a panel over the fireplace in the State Dining Room. The words for the inscription were taken from a letter that President John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail upon the occasion of the first night he spent in the unfinished White House, November 2, 1800. The words of the inscription are as follows:

I pray Heaven to bestow the best of blessings on this House and upon all those who hereafter may inhabit it. May none other than wise and honest men ever rule under this roof.

The inscription is a masterpiece of distinguished lettering and, when the White House was reconstructed during President Truman's administration, the original 1906 Cae-stone mantelpiece was removed; however, the Gugler-designed inscription was recarved on the new green marble mantelpiece. This may seem to be a rather trite accomplishment to record; it would be did it not hold such a peculiar historic significance for our time: "May none other than wise and honest men ever rule under this roof!"

In presenting an outline of Eric Gugler's professional accomplishments it is pertinent to include the following memorials:

to Theodore Roosevelt on Roosevelt Island in Washington, D.C., done in collaboration with Paul Manship, Sculptor;
to Franklin Delano Roosevelt on a triangular plot of land on Pennsylvania Avenue north of the National Archives in Washington, D.C.;
to Eleanor Roosevelt on the grounds of the United Nations Headquarters in New York City;
to Harvey Firestone in Akron, Ohio;
to William and Charles Mayo in Rochester, Minnesota;
to Waldo Hutchins in Central Park, New York City.

Among the distinguished World War II cemetery memorials, Eric Gugler's chapel in the American Military Cemetery at Anzio-Nettuno in Italy stands preeminent. For this work he received the Henry Herring Medal of the National Sculpture Society.

Another important monument from Eric Gugler's draughting board was the Chicago War Memorial, a two-hundred-foot tower on an island in Lake Michigan; this was done in collaboration with his friend, Architect Roger Bailey.

In addition to these memorials, Eric Gugler's work included the Educational Building, part of a complex in Capitol Park in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; buildings for Wabash College; the Business Administration Building for the New York World's Fair-1939 and other structures for a variety of purposes too numerous to mention.

His residences were particularly distinguished; he accommodated the special tastes and desires of his clients who were, or soon became, his friends.

One of Eric Gugler's particular interests was the work of the American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society, as well as of other public and quasi-public agencies whose efforts were directed to the preservation and care of America's historic buildings and landmarks. He served for many years as a member of the Advisory Board of the National Park Service of the Department of Interior.

A quarter-century ago, Royal Cortissoz wrote a memorial tribute to an architect, a member of the Institute-Academy of that day. Part of what he wrote about William Mitchell Kendall is equally appropriate for this memorial to Eric Gugler, long a friend of Kendall. Being unable to improve upon what Mr. Cortissoz wrote, I set forth a part of his tribute to Kendall, confident that the thoughts he expressed apply in this memorial to Eric Gugler:

He had a warm, generous nature enriched by a quick sense of humor and a playfulness which gave him a warm accent of gaiety. Scholarly yet merry, there went with his buoyant vivacity a strong inclination toward discipline in the arts, a strong feeling for fundamental admonition of great masters. All through his professional life he was in close communion with the grand style of the Classical periods. He had an instinct for heroic nobility and for refinement of detail. He could be versatile. He studied the past with unrelenting zeal, but he lived joyously in the present. He had the art of making friends. Gallant in the illness of his last years, his insatiable appetite for companionship never ceased to bring joy to his host of friends.

The last time I saw Eric Gugler was at his charming home, set in the midst of gardens, situated atop the Palisades on the Hudson River at Sneden's Landing, a little north of the New Jersey-New York State line. Here, with his talented wife, he spent the last years of a long and eminently rewarding life dedicated to art.

Here was a man attuned to beauty, wisdom, honesty; He nobly lived and, through his works, endowed posterity.