Honoring Walter Netsch, 1920-2008

Walter Netsch, architect of the Main Library, as well as many other prominent and radically unconventional buildings around the country, died on June 15 at his home in Chicago. He was a lifetime member of the Board of Governors, and the Board had hoped to thank and honor him in person at the May 15 Deering Society Recognition Dinner by presenting him with its 2008 Deering Family Award. By then his health was too fragile to allow him to attend, however, and the award was accepted on his behalf by University President Henry Bienen.

Netsch was perhaps most well known, nationally, for leading the team at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill that designed the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs in the 1950s, including its dramatic Cadet Chapel. Now Colorado’s top man-made tourist attraction, the chapel earned Netsch the American Institute of Architects’ prestigious 25-Year Award in 1996. He designed the Chicago campus of the University of Illinois, and several buildings at the University of Chicago. His influence on the Northwestern campus was sweeping, beginning in 1962 with his involvement with the Lakefill project, which added about 70 acres to the university’s grounds. He went on to design the Lindheimer Astronomical Research Center (no longer standing), the Rebecca Crown Center, the O. T. Hogan Biological Sciences Building, the Frances Searle Building, the Regenstein Music Building, the Seeley G. Mudd Library for Science and Engineering, and of course, the University Library.

His innovative approach to the Library’s design was deeply influenced by the close relationship he formed with Clarence Ver Steeg, who chaired the library’s planning committee. “We were very good friends,” Netsch told the Library's Footnotes last July, at the time of Ver Steeg’s death, “and we made a very good team.” The curvilinear stack system Netsch created, with book stacks radiating out from a central core, and study carrels around the circumference of each tower, was revolutionary not only in its aesthetic design but in its philosophy. Most libraries at the time still operated closed-stack systems, but Ver Steeg believed intensely that scholars should have free access to their books and work in close physical proximity with them.

Northwestern University Press recently published Walter A. Netsch, FAIA: A Critical Appreciation and Sourcebook, edited by Art Collection head Russ Clement. The book includes a biography, chronology, building projects list, essays, statements by Netsch, and a comprehensive annotated bibliography of primary and secondary literature about the architect's life and work. "We're so glad that Walter was able to see and enjoy the book," Russ says. "The day the first copies arrived, I hurried down to give several to him and Dawn. We spent a memorable hour examining the book. This was a rare work project that developed into a warm personal friendship."

Russ, University Librarian Sarah Pritchard, and Art Collection Manager Lindsay King attended Netsch's memorial service in Chicago last week, and Lindsay provided Libstaff Links with the following account of the service:

A memorial service for Walter Netsch was held at the Arts Club of Chicago on July 7, 2008. The Lincoln Quartet played selections by Barber and Shostakovich, and several friends, relatives, and colleagues spoke about Mr. Netsch. The assembled crowd was large enough to overflow into a second room.

Duane Boyle, now the resident architect of the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, recalled how he was initially intimidated by the legendary original architect, but said that Mr. Netsch surprised him by ending a phone call with the words, "Goodbye, my friend," early in what would become a decades-long friendship. Dawn Clark Netsch ended the memorial service by talking about the things other than architecture that defined their 44 years of marriage—modern art and music, political activism, Boston terriers, the White Sox, and above all the conviction, generosity, and love that Mr. Netsch brought to both work and life.

This past spring, Netsch had suggested that Russ and Lindsay meet with Duane Boyle for a tour of the USAFA campus while they were in Colorado for the Art Libraries Society conference in May. Lindsay wrote the following account of the visit:

The United States Air Force Academy campus sits in a beautiful mountain environment, and as we drove up, viewing it from a distance, light snow was falling. We were met by Duane and Bob Nauman, a professor of architecture at the University of Colorado at Boulder, who contributed an essay to the new book on Netsch.

Duane told us that he was fascinated by the Academy buildings long before he became an architect himself and had long admired Mr. Netsch—he had even named his son Andrew Walter after him. He also told us a story I particularly liked while we were inside the library: General Harmon, then the superintendent of the USAFA, had complained to Mr. Netsch that there was nothing round anywhere in the campus design, and that there should be more gold, rather than silver. Mr. Netsch responded by creating a dramatic cantilevered spiral staircase backed on one side by a gold mosaic glass wall. I can just imagine him saying, “The General wants round? I’ll give him round!” The staircase is bold and decisively modern—just like its architect.

(Air Force Academy Photos by Lindsay King and Brian Armknecht. Photo of Walter Netsch and Dawn Clark Netsch courtesy of University Archives).