Mar

Cranbrook Institute of Science Films Digitized

Cranbrook Archives is pleased to announce the preservation and digitization of eight Institute of Science early education films. Made possible through generous funding by the National Film Preservation Foundation (NFPF), these silent films were sent to a professional film lab where they were inspected and expertly cleaned, repaired, copied onto archival safe film stock, and scanned. Previously inaccessible to users due to their fragility, a combined ninety-four minutes (2,450 feet) of footage can now be viewed digitally.

Opening credits from Emergence of the Periodical Cicada at Cranbrook, 1936. Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives.

In a post exactly one year ago, I first mentioned the Institute’s early forays into the burgeoning educational film market of the 1930s. Using 16mm film technology (the amateur version of Hollywood motion picture film), Institute staff documented scientific field research, captured the work of exhibition preparators, and recorded educational programs. Many of these films were shown regularly to museum patrons and were often accompanied by lectures.

With the exception of one 1955 film, the NFPF grant films were all created between 1935 and 1938. Six of the films collectively display a range of astronomical, botanical, zoological, ornithological, and marine ecological research efforts. In addition to Emergence of the Periodical Cicada at Cranbrook, finished titles include Solar Prominences, featuring telescopic footage of solar flares, and Birds in Summer, which tells the story of newly born birds. Untitled films show the behavior of adult birds, deer, and coral reef life.

Birds in Summer, 1935. An Institute scientist can be seen banding a young blue heron. Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives.

While these snapshots in time may no longer be useful as originally intended – to educate the public on their present natural world – they do have the potential to inform current and future research on conservation or climate change. For example, a film on coral reef life, with its unique early underwater footage, offers the opportunity for comparing current conditions with those documented by Institute scientists three generations ago.

Untitled film with underwater footage of a coral reef, circa 1955. Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives.

The remaining two films demonstrate curatorial and membership activities. In one, staff are seen in the Institute library; painting scenes for exhibit backdrops and gathering botanical specimens in a forested setting; and making plaster molds of specimens in an Institute workroom. In another, Institute Junior Members and staff take a field trip to a local quarry to collect rocks and minerals.

Untitled film showing exhibition preparator, Dudley Blakely, painting a display case backdrop, 1936. Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives.

The Institute of Science film project marks the beginning of a concerted effort to digitize the Archives’ audiovisual collections. Due to their age, complex chemical/mechanical makeup, and obsolescent playback equipment (who still owns a VCR?), audio and video recordings capturing the sights and sounds of Cranbrook’s past are some of our most at-risk materials. I hope to share more stories of success in the near future!

—Deborah Rice, Head Archivist, Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research

Feb

Ruth Adler Schnee’s Interior Design Legacy

Cranbrook Archives was saddened at the passing of design icon Ruth Adler Schnee last month. As proud custodians of the Edward and Ruth Adler Schnee Papers we know that her legacy lives on in the many documents, photographs, drawings, and textile samples available to researchers. With a long and varied career in textile design and interior design, there are a plethora of materials to inform and admire, adding nuance and context to her catalog of accomplishments seen in current textile production, museum collections worldwide, and public, commercial, and residential buildings throughout the Detroit area.

Ruth and Edward Schnee, circa 1990. Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives.

Her personal and professional story is inspiring in so many ways, not the least of which were the interior design projects completed for Schnee & Schnee Consultants, a company that Ruth owned with her husband Edward Schnee from 1977-1985. She designed, and he ran the business, much like their other design consulting partnerships, the earlier Adler-Schnee Associates, and the later Schnee and Schnee Inc.

View of the chapel, Edward and Freda Fleischman Residence/Blumberg Plaza, 1985. Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives.

One of their major commissions, and particularly well-documented in their papers, was the Jewish Community Center’s Edward and Freda Fleischman Residence/Blumberg Plaza in West Bloomfield, a three-year project spanning 1982-1985. One does not automatically think of innovative design when considering assisted living facilities, so it is particularly a delight to view Ruth’s colorful palette at work in her project sketches and product choices, both of which evoke her affinity for vibrant textiles.

Sketch for the Edward and Freda Fleischman Residence/Blumberg Plaza Chapel, 1982-1985. Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives.

The Schnees’ thoughtful work in addressing the needs of the residents is evident in the detailed project records and numerous oversized room design presentation boards. In comments about the project Ruth stated, “every design decision became an important element in providing a warm and protective environment.” The residence quickly became a model for similar projects across the country as the modern idea of assisted living facilities, versus the institutional nursing home model, grew in popularity.

Design boards for the Edward and Freda Fleischman Residence/Blumberg Plaza, 1982-1985. Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives.

Immediately following their success with the Fleischman Residence, Schnee & Schnee consulted on a similar project just north of Cranbrook Educational Community, St. Elizabeth Briarbank. Collaborating with the architectural firm John Stevens Associates Inc. (Ruth was their Director of Interior Design from 1977-1979), Ruth designed the interiors for an addition to the Catholic assisted living community for women, drawing on her research and application at the Fleischman Residence. From the red and orange beauty parlor, featuring the same John Yellen chairs, to the softer wall murals in common rooms, to the light-hearted wallpaper in the communal kitchen, Ruth’s touch is irrefutable.

Pages from the design book used to furnish the St. Elizabeth Briarbank addition, 1985-1986. Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives.

The Fleischman and Briarbank projects are just two of the eight senior residential complexes (four with architect John Stevens) that Ruth “transformed” with her sensitivity and playfulness, demonstrating yet another intriguing facet of Ruth Adler Schnee’s career.

—Deborah Rice, Head Archivist, Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research

Editor’s Note: Find out more about Ruth’s early design pursuits and her retail business venture with husband Eddie in previous Cranbrook Kitchen Sink posts. Browse additional images from the Edward and Ruth Adler Schnee Papers here.

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Apr

Photo Friday: Life of the Party

Parties are a regular part of student life at Cranbrook Academy of Art, a tradition from its earliest years. Who doesn’t like a good party?

In the Archives we have many images from parties past, most of which involved themes and costumes. Those depicting the Mae West Party are some of my favorites. Held on February 16, 1934, just one day before the famous original Crandemonium Ball (are those the same murals in the background?), the party was the brainchild of Academy Executive Secretary and Vice President, Richard Raseman.

Eero Saarinen at the Mae West Party, February 16, 1934. Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives.

The reason behind this theme is a bit of a mystery – the photographs are the only evidence of the gathering. Of course, Mae West had just starred in two smash hit films, She Done Him Wrong and I’m No Angel (both costarred a young Cary Grant). And, while West was a controversial figure for her unapologetic brazenness, she was wildly beloved by Depression era musicians, artists, and writers like Cole Porter, Frida Kahlo, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. So, a simple celebration of an iconic figure, or simply a convenient excuse for revelry? Whatever the case, the costumes were fabulous!

—Deborah Rice, Head Archivist, Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research

[NOTE: Join the Center at its next party, A House Party at Cranbrook Celebrating Loja Saarinen. Virtual tickets are available here.]

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Mar

The Cinema of Science

What do birds, cicadas, and solar prominences have in common? These were all subjects of films produced by the Institute of Science in its first decade of existence. Maybe it’s those Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom episodes I watched in syndication as a kid, but when I uncovered films made and produced by some of the Institute’s earliest scientific staff, I felt like I had hit the jackpot.

The 2014 Center for Collections and Research exhibition, Cranbrook Goes to the Movies: Films and Their Objects, 1925-1975, featured a 1960 Institute promotional film titled, So, You’re Going to Visit the Institute, which introduced viewers to the museum’s exhibit halls. Fascinating though it is, the film was hardly the Institute’s first foray into film production.

Credits and introduction of So, You’re Going to Visit the Institute, Cranbrook Institute of Science, 1960. 16mm film, 13:14 minutes (full-length). Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives.

In fact, the Institute’s “Ciné Film Collection” had begun in 1935, just five years after the Institute opened. Scientists at the Institute, not merely content to rely on handwritten notes and still photography, embraced the new 16mm motion picture technology to record their field research and then craft educational films for Institute members.

Some of the raw footage taken in the field was recently recovered, courtesy of the Museum of Cultural and Natural History staff at Central Michigan University. These 177 films found their way back to Cranbrook after over fifty years on the road, journeying to North Carolina and back, by way of Mt. Pleasant, MI. Created by Walter Nickell (also affiliated with CMU’s museum), Edward T. Boardman, S.P. Stackpole, Florence Maxwell, and other Institute staff, several of them can be traced directly to the aforementioned early educational films.

Take for instance, Birds in Summer, the first production, which almost certainly used footage taken that same year by zoologist Edward T. Boardman, labeled “Great Blue Herons Bird’s Nests.” Couple that with the September 1935 Institute News-Letter [sic] announcement, “New Movies in Color,” which heralded the work of zoologists that summer, and you get a fuller sense of the flurry of filming activity. The article goes on to mention the capture of new footage of Michigan animals, including hummingbirds, baby herons, and others, that were soon to be edited into films.

Institute staff continued to film birds even after the 1935 educational film was completed. Walter P. Nickell, July 27, 1944. Harvey Croze, photographer. Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives.

Another early film drew from raw footage now in the Archives, perhaps again at the hand of Boardman or Donald T. Ries, Curator of the Division of Insects. Emergence of the Periodical Cicada at Cranbrook was released the following year and had several showings.

Also in 1936, a modern solar tower was built at the new McMath-Hulbert Observatory in Pontiac that made possible a film by Robert R. McMath, Institute Trustee and Chairman of the Astronomy Division, and Director of the Observatory. The film was shown publicly for the first time in the Cranbrook Pavilion, to the largest Institute audience to date: 575 people.

View of Dr. Robert McMath at the controls of the McMath-Hulbert Observatory’s solar telescope, 1940. Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives.

Some 3,000 feet of motion picture film footage was shot in just the first year of production, alone. Though it’s not yet confirmed how many in total were produced in the 1930s, nine resulting educational films are currently preserved in the Archives. While research work is the predominate focus, other films include exhibitions and staff activities, including field trips with the museum’s junior members.

Junior Members, on a field trip, descend into a quarry in Monroe, MI, September 1935. Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives.

Like So You Want to Visit the Institute, the Archives hopes to digitize all nine films. Get your popcorn ready!

—Deborah Rice, Head Archivist, Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research

Feb

Cranbrook’s Great Books (Part II)

In Part I of this post, we explored Cranbrook’s love of the book, from its origins with founders George and Ellen Booth, to the existing special collections at the Archives and Academy of Art. I invite you now to learn of the many rare, valuable, and historical tomes whose existence may be unknown to most or simply overlooked in collections at the Schools, Institute of Science, and two historic homes cared for by the Center for Collections and Research: Saarinen House and Smith House.

Hoey Patch Collection at the Cranbrook School Library. Courtesy of Kate Covintree, Cranbrook Kingswood Upper Schools.

Like the Academy of Art, although not at all on the same scale, books from George and Ellen’s Cranbrook House Library were dispersed to the Cranbrook Schools Libraries, now comprised of five separate spaces. Following the Booth’s example, Cranbrook School Headmaster Harry D. Hoey (1950-1964) and Latin teacher George Patch (1928-1944, Emeritus 1944-1950) donated 120 books from their personal libraries to the School’s library in the 1950s, forming one of several special collections. Known as the Hoey Patch Collection, all of the volumes focus on an aspect of Abraham Lincoln or the American Civil War.

*He Knew Lincoln*, a fictionalized account written by Ida Tarbell, a progressive journalist, and published in 1907. The book’s custodial history is documented with correspondence from the author, written directly on the inside of the book. Courtesy of Kate Covintree, Cranbrook Kingswood Upper Schools.

Highlights include a First edition of The Life of Abraham Lincoln, the first full-scale biography of the President. Written by newspaper editor J.G. Holland, it was published shortly after Lincoln’s assassination in 1865. Also included is a first edition, two-volume set of the Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant. Ulysses S. Grant penned his autobiography shortly before his death in 1885 as a means of financial support for his family. It was published with the support of his friend Mark Twain by the Charles L. Webster Company (owned by Twain’s nephew).

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Jan

Cranbrook’s Great Books (Part I)

Across Cranbrook’s campus are eleven different spaces, including the Archives, that house book collections – some 110,000 physical items. Several of these spaces are typical school or academic research libraries, where students, faculty, and staff can check out the majority of these books. As a library and information science professional, I champion the importance of these lending libraries and the egalitarian access to information they provide.

In this post, however, I’d like to focus on Cranbrook’s non-circulating book collections – those rare, historic, or valuable tomes that, in many cases, hide in plain sight in public areas. With help from colleagues at the Academy of Art, Schools, Institute of Science, and Center for Collections and Research, I’ll highlight some of these gems that promise to delight the bibliophile, art appreciator, historian, or simply the Cranbrook curious.

Cranbrook’s special book collections are carefully preserved as both informational and evidential artifacts, and many are housed within cultural heritage areas. Valued not only for research purposes, they also serve as historical objects which help individually or collectively to tell the Cranbrook story.

South end view of the newly completed Cranbrook House Library, 1920. John Wallace Gillies, photographer. Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives.

The origin of book collecting at Cranbrook actually predates any of the current collection spaces and begins with Cranbrook founders George and Ellen Booth. George, in particular, was an enthusiastic collector, and started acquiring volumes in 1900, commissioning purchases of William Morris works and other fine books in London. As George explained, “I am not a millionaire and cannot pay the big prices now prevailing in New York.” His strategy allowed him to accumulate 1,000 books by 1916, effectively seeding the Cranbrook House Library Collection when construction of the library wing was completed four years later.

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Nov

Photo Friday: Greetings from Thornlea

The holiday season is upon us once again, and hopefully you and yours had a wonderful and safe Thanksgiving celebration.

Holiday gatherings were important to Cranbrook founders’ son, Henry Scripps Booth and his wife Carolyn, as evidenced by this card given to Henry by Carolyn in 1971. Although one of few Thanksgiving cards, it is an example of the many greeting cards included in the Henry Scripps and Carolyn Farr Booth Papers. Among those the couple gave to each other are cards which send greetings to family and friends from their home, Thornlea.

As we look forward to the holidays ahead, I leave you with the photo below, showing patriarch Henry Booth at his home, Thornlea, bringing in the turkey for what surely was a fabulous Christmas feast!

Henry Scripps Booth at Thornlea House, December 25, 1956. Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives.

Similar items from the Archives will be on display during the Center’s upcoming Behind-The-Scenes-Tour, The Treasures of Thornlea House, taking place next week. As of this writing, a few tickets are still available for Thursday, December 2^nd – we hope you can join us!

—Deborah Rice, Head Archivist, Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research

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Oct

Cranbrook Students Kick Out the Jams

How many high schools can lay claim to hosting a performance of the legendary Detroit band, the MC5? In 1967, Cranbrook School joined a handful of Metro Detroit high schools as a venue for arguably one of the most influential rock bands of all time.

Cover of the MC5’s debut album, recorded live at Grande Ballroom in Detroit, 1969. Courtesy of private collection.

Known the world over today for their groundbreaking music, and as progenitors of the subsequent 1970s punk rock movement, the MC5 (Motor City Five) were relatively unknown outside the Detroit area when they played the Cranbrook School Little Gym on April 28, 1967.

Rob Tyner, lead singer of the MC5, performing for the Cranbrook audience. *The Brook*, 1968. Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives.

Billed as a Jazz Psychedelic, the concert featured fellow Detroit musicians, the Charles Moore Octet and the Joseph Jarman Quartet, both avant-garde jazz groups. Trumpeter Charles Moore’s band had already played earlier that year at Cranbrook (their musical repertoire including poetry by John Sinclair) and had developed a following among students and faculty. Accompanying the music at the April concert was a light show by the Magic Veil, which consisted of several sheets placed around the gym, a large number of lenses, watercolors, and an overhead projector. Open to Cranbrook and Kingswood students, faculty, and the area’s interested general public, tickets cost $3.25.

Charles Moore Octet at Cranbrook. *The Crane*, January 20, 1967. Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives.

The event was sponsored by the revamped Jazz Society, a student club formed in 1966 with a goal of exposing students to different forms of jazz (including a trip to the Masonic Temple in Detroit to see Count Basie). Under their new name, REAL (Revolutionary Enjoyment Authenticity and Love), they continued to arrange musical experiences both on and off campus, providing tickets and transportation to venues such as the Fisher Theater, Meadowbrook, and the Grande Ballroom. A trip to this last venue, “home base,” if you will, of the MC5, included a concert by the Eric Clapton band, Cream.

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Aug

Photo Friday: Coastal Life in Maine

Recently returned from a sojourn to the coastal towns of Midcoast and Downeast Maine, the sights, sounds, and rhythm of the ocean remain with me still. For eight days many activities, particularly swimming and beachcombing, were often dictated by the tides. Twice daily the ebb tide revealed fascinating marine life – plant and animal – in tide pools, beaches, and on rocks, of which I attempted to capture with my iPhone camera to varying degrees of success.

One of the good ones! View of Spruce Head from Clark Island, Maine. July 2021.

Photographs taken by Institute of Science Exhibition Artist and Preparator, Dudley Moore Blakely, do much more justice to the varied species found in tidal pools along this majestic coastline. He, too, spent a part of his summer in Maine, traveling instead in 1948 to the southern beach towns just over the New Hampshire state line.

Blakely’s trip involved field studies for a permanent biological exhibit, Between the Tides, which would be mounted in 1949, after his departure for the Boston Museum of Science.

Blakely’s photographs helped him simulate in rubber mold casting the barnacle encrusted rocks, and exhibition staff members George Marchand the lesser algae and animals, Luella Schroeder the kelp, and Dorothy Olsen Davies the sea anemones. The exhibit’s purpose was to recreate the “zonal distribution of life in response to the rhythm of the tides.” (Cranbrook Institute of Science 1949-1950 Annual Report, Vol. 20, p.14)

A man of unique talents, Blakely also created a ripple pattern of lighting for the Tides exhibit where “light from a single source passes through actual waves on its way to the exhibit.” (Cranbrook Institute of Science Newsletter, October 1949, Vol.19:2, p.23)

*Between the Tides* exhibit, Alcove 5, Cranbrook Institute of Science, 1949. Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives.

Dudley Blakely oversaw the exhibition department at the Institute from 1936-1948 (except during the war years), where he designed and fabricated exhibits and provided architectural drawings and models for the Institute.

– Deborah Rice, Head Archivist, Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research

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Jul

A Summer Education at Brookside

Summer school. Those two words usually make most children cringe—who wants to spend their summer vacation studying and attending classes? Sheer morbid curiosity made me explore further a few folders in Brookside School Records, a collection just opened for research last month. What I found was not the usual story.

The Brookside summer school program, AWAKE, had a different purpose than remedial education for elementary students. Developed in 1968 by Pontiac Elementary Principal Jim Hawkins and Brookside Headmaster John P. Denio, it was designed to promote harmony and understanding amongst young children who might not otherwise share life experiences due to racial, social, and economic segregation.

AWAKE followed on the heels of the “long hot summer” of 1967, which saw civil unrest in Detroit and cities across Michigan, including Pontiac, due to long-standing racial inequalities for Black Americans. Instituted in 1968, AWAKE’s purpose was to “bring together young children in essentially two segregated school areas,” in some ways foreshadowing the desegregation of Pontiac and Detroit schools in the early 1970s.

On the playgrounds of Brookside School and Bethune Elementary, circa 1968. Jack Kausch, photographer. Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives.

Roughly fifty children split their time equally between the Bloomfield Hills and Pontiac schools for five mornings a week, over a four-week period in July and August. Co-sponsored by Cranbrook’s Brookside School and Pontiac Public Schools’ Bethune and Whittier Elementary Schools, the program included art projects, field trips, swimming, reading, and other enrichment activities for kindergarten-age children in both communities. Directed at young children because of their natural receptiveness at that age, Denio believed that,

With AWAKE, children four through six, through work and play activities and through simple, open contact with each other may perhaps develop the knowledge and understanding necessary to reinforce their acceptance of each other as human beings.

Governed by a Board comprised of community members and Pontiac Public School administrators and teachers, the program was self-sustained through tuition fees (waived in cases of need), financial contributions, and community support. Christ Church Cranbrook, for example, played a significant role through both donations and parishioners’ participation in the program. Familiar Cranbrook names, such as Cranbrook School teacher and Horizons-Upward Bound founder, Ben Snyder, and his wife Margot were also regular advocates of the program.

Borrowing lyrics from Rogers and Hammerstein and with photographs by Jack Kausch, poster displays sum up AWAKE’s ethos: “Getting to know you … Getting to know all about you … Getting to like you … Getting to hope you like me.” Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives.

A grass roots experiment in creative problem-solving of the urban crisis faced by cities across the country, AWAKE only lasted for five years (1968-1972). Because of its short duration, the effectiveness of the program was never fully appreciated, despite a 1969 study conducted by a University of Michigan Ph.D. student in education and social sciences and regular solicitation of teacher and parent feedback. Ultimately, rising costs and a lack of grant money; shortages of staff; and dwindling enrollment, undoubtedly due in part to the integration of Pontiac schools and the unsettling atmosphere of anti-busing protests, prohibited the continuation of the program.

—Deborah Rice, Head Archivist, Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research