As the National Cathedral was in the news this week, we thought we'd re-publish this profile from earlier this year that featured, along with two other men of significance, the Cathedral's architect, Philip Hubert Frohman.
For those not schooled in philosophical minutiae, Objectivism is the mildly crackpot philosophy formulated by Ayn Rand, who wrote the novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Both books outline an economic philosophy based on individual freedom and the power of free enterprise and capitalism. In the latter novel, the protagonist is a genius inventor who decides, after his invention is stolen from him, to cease to make or maintain his innovations. He manages to persuade other genius inventors, all of whom have been robbed by politicians, academics, and members of the media, to do the same.
Naturally, the world basically comes to a halt. Once it does, the inventors offer their services in return for recognition and, particularly...well, let me put it this way, the protagonist at the end of the novel makes the sign of the dollar over the world waiting to be re-built.
I am unsure of the primary motivation for the three innovators whom we profile this week, but there was certainly something that permitted their innovation to transcend to the status of art.
Norman Borlaug
Almost certainly, however, the first essential component of social justice is
adequate food for all mankind.
Norman Borlaug saved more lives than did anyone else in human history. Considering that his life-saving efforts are still active in our contemporary age, one day it will be easy to say that he saved more lives than the entire rest of the human race. Ever.
Borlaug was born on his grandparents' farm in the middle of Iowa in the first year of World War I. If the reader is hoping for a soul-stirring story of early derring-do and international adventure, suffice it to say you will be disappointed. Borlaug attended the University of Minnesota on a partial wrestling scholarship and earned degrees in the decidedly non-sexy fields of plant pathology and genetics. Upon graduation, he went to Mexico to study varieties of...wheat. Yes, not the most interesting of flora, either.
While south of the border in a climate that permitted him to create a double-yield wheat season, the local farmers were dealing with a plague of plant disease. As he could study the pathology twice as quickly, Borlaug, remembering his wrestling coaches advice to always give 105%, dedicated himself to preventing the disease's contagion and spread. Instead of developing a chemical toxin, Borlaug did something much more difficult and much more effective: He would, in effect, re-boot the entire genetic structure of the seeds through rapid cross-breeding and selection, thus making the wheat remarkably disease-resistant.
Because pure line (genotypically identical) plant varieties often only have one or a few major genes for disease resistance, and plant diseases such as rust are continuously producing new races that can overcome a pure line's resistance, multiline varieties were developed. Multiline varieties are mixtures of several phenotypically similar pure lines which each have different genes for disease resistance. By having similar heights, flowering and maturity dates, seed colors, and agronomic characteristics, they remain compatible with each other, and do not reduce yields when grown together on the field.Technically, Borlaug produced what's known as "semi-dwarf, high-yield, disease-resistant wheat". In other words, wheat that could grow quickly, strongly, and free from the most common of diseases producing in such a volume that it virtually wiped out starvation, even in the most inhospitable of climates and conditions. It is estimated the Borlaug's wheat has saved over a billion people.
So virile was Borlaug's wheat strain that it was shipped, in seed form, to every portion of the world that had been vexed by periods of food shortage or even mass starvation. As such, he is recognized as the progenitor of what is now known as the Green Revolution, that period beginning in the mid-20th century when agriculture and technology combined to greatly improve human health and life-span.
Borlaug would spend the entirety of his 95 years improving the yield of agricultural products and battling against the causes of hunger. For his efforts, he would be awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and, in 1970, the Nobel Peace Prize. After all, he managed to wipe out for many, many people the experience of famine which, along with war and disease, is one of the three traditional vexations of the human condition. Thus, he improved the prospects of future peace by at least one third.
Charles Brush
[Not known for being loquacious, The Coracle was unable to find any quotes from Brush.
That's a first.]
I feel an odd kinship to Charles F. Brush. He and I grew up in the same part of Cleveland, Ohio; the eastern portion along Lake Erie that is known as Euclid, so named because the original surveyor was a fan of geometry [no kidding]. It was a township in Brush's day, born as he was in 1849, and became a manufacturing center and city with its own mayor and municipal government by the time I was alive, much of it due to the innovations and efforts of Brush.
Brush was a descendant of the great migration to the Western Reserve from New England, his ancestors desiring farmland that was not only richer but wonderfully free of rocks, boulders, and shelves of shale. To say Brush was precocious as a child is an understatement when, as a child, he began to build machines powered by static electricity and invented the functional arc light by his final year in high school. He earned his bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan in just two years, majoring in mining engineering as it was the closest to his area of interest [there were no degrees yet offered in electrical engineering as electricity was too new and largely misunderstood].
By the late 1870's, as he continued to make the arc light more advanced and productive, Brush designed a power source for it such as had never been seen: An electrical generator that Brush called a "dynamo". It was the forerunner of every generator since and enabled the growth of the industrial age and the economy that it produced.
Brush also experimented in the theoretical side of research, testing his private theories as to the kinetic properties of gravity and the existence of ether as a gas that would regulate it, increasing or decreasing gravity's pull with some electrical manipulation. While these experiments would prove largely fruitless, they would at least lead to the development of the very first wind generator, a forerunner of the machines that are now common in many parts of the world.
However, Brush saw that with the invention of the dynamo, and the role that generated electrical power and lighting would have on manufacturing and commerce, that population growth might become an issue. Thus, he established a foundation that would work to remove the 19th century stigma against contraception, so that people might be able to control, in this new non-agrarian economy, the size of their families without violating moral expectations or written law.
As sharp as he was an inventor, Brush was an equally shrewd businessman and amassed a fortune during his lifetime, building a mansion on Cleveland's "Millionaires' Row" with John D. Rockefeller, John Hay, and others as his neighbors. He was generous with his money, endowing various chairs at the universities and institutes of science that were and are still part of northeastern Ohio's academic life. The three schools that make up the current Case Western Reserve University, the Cleveland Orchestra [rated one of the best in the world], the superlative Cleveland Museum of Art, the beautiful Trinity Episcopal Cathedral [where this writer was ordained], and many other institutions benefited from his largesse.
Brush would die in 1929 at the age of 80. In keeping with the stipulation in his will, his mansion and its basement laboratory were razed within the year of his death, so that his more dangerous experiments would not fall into the hands of those with a less moral vision.
[An aside: In my junior year of high school, I was in the cafeteria of a high school in a neighboring community taking my SAT's. As is common in the springtime in Ohio, a vicious and sudden storm lashed through the area, knocking out the power. When, ten seconds later, the emergency generator started and the electric lights were restored, I had to smile. I was hoping the blackout would release us from the SAT's, but I ruefully noted that we were taking them at Charles F. Brush High School, so not a chance.]
Brush also experimented in the theoretical side of research, testing his private theories as to the kinetic properties of gravity and the existence of ether as a gas that would regulate it, increasing or decreasing gravity's pull with some electrical manipulation. While these experiments would prove largely fruitless, they would at least lead to the development of the very first wind generator, a forerunner of the machines that are now common in many parts of the world.
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| Brush's wind generator, circa 1890 |
However, Brush saw that with the invention of the dynamo, and the role that generated electrical power and lighting would have on manufacturing and commerce, that population growth might become an issue. Thus, he established a foundation that would work to remove the 19th century stigma against contraception, so that people might be able to control, in this new non-agrarian economy, the size of their families without violating moral expectations or written law.
As sharp as he was an inventor, Brush was an equally shrewd businessman and amassed a fortune during his lifetime, building a mansion on Cleveland's "Millionaires' Row" with John D. Rockefeller, John Hay, and others as his neighbors. He was generous with his money, endowing various chairs at the universities and institutes of science that were and are still part of northeastern Ohio's academic life. The three schools that make up the current Case Western Reserve University, the Cleveland Orchestra [rated one of the best in the world], the superlative Cleveland Museum of Art, the beautiful Trinity Episcopal Cathedral [where this writer was ordained], and many other institutions benefited from his largesse.
Brush would die in 1929 at the age of 80. In keeping with the stipulation in his will, his mansion and its basement laboratory were razed within the year of his death, so that his more dangerous experiments would not fall into the hands of those with a less moral vision.
[An aside: In my junior year of high school, I was in the cafeteria of a high school in a neighboring community taking my SAT's. As is common in the springtime in Ohio, a vicious and sudden storm lashed through the area, knocking out the power. When, ten seconds later, the emergency generator started and the electric lights were restored, I had to smile. I was hoping the blackout would release us from the SAT's, but I ruefully noted that we were taking them at Charles F. Brush High School, so not a chance.]
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| The massive wind turbine, a direct descendant of Brush's invention, that adorns the skyline of his hometown of Euclid, Ohio. |
Philip Hubert Frohman
Whether it is a chapel, small church or great cathedral or any portion thereof, we should endeavor to enclose space in a manner which will suggest the infinite.
I feel as if I should have known Philip Frohman, if not for us being separated by time and circumstance, simply because of how often I have interacted with places that were seminal in his life. I lived around the corner from the place of his birth, served on a committee that restored one of his designs, and have marveled, with much of the world, at his crowning achievement and appreciated its traditional role in the presentation of Anglican theology in the United States.
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| The Chelsea Hotel, today |
Frohman was born in the Chelsea Hotel [aka Hotel Chelsea], that landmark in Manhattan's lower west side that was, during my lifetime, the place where poets such as Dylan Thomas and Brendan Behan, and musicians such as Bob Dylan, Janice Joplin, Leonard Cohen, and Sid Vicious, would spend some time. Frohman, born in 1887, simply thought of it as the home designed by his grandfather, a noted architect of the Gilded Age, that was at the time the tallest building in Manhattan.
It has always surprised me that one born in such a flamboyant family, not only with a famous grandfather, but a father who was a theatrical impresario and a mother who was a stage actress, would be so submerged by his work that it is all but impossible to find a photograph of him. A photograph, often thought to be of him, of a child standing next to his grandfather while in Paris, is actually that of his younger brother. The grand building that serves, among other purposes, as his burial site also lacks any photographic evidence of his existence.
It doesn't really matter, though, as Frohman is best known through his designs. Following in his grandfather's vocation, Frohman became an architect, not originally of grand buildings or hotels, but of simple shelters for the U.S. Army at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland during World War I. A graduate of what is now known as the California Institute of Technology, or Cal Tech, these chores were a bit below Frohman's talents, but there was a particularly fortuitous moment when he met an Episcopal priest who would eventually become dean of the cathedral in Washington, D.C. and, later, the bishop of that diocese.
Finding churches to be of his taste professionally, Frohman made a name for himself in their design. Over fifty churches and chapels in the United States were designed by Frohman, among them the Cathedral of the Incarnation [Episcopal] in Baltimore, the chapel of Trinity College in Hartford [on whose restoration committee I once served], and...well, that's where his story really may be found.
The original Episcopal cathedral in Washington was, like much of the town in 1912, plain, low, and simple. Yet it was, certainly in the eyes of Frohman, rather beautiful. He just had one or two ideas as to how to improve it, so much so that he scrawled a small, touching prayer in the visitor's book, written in a code known only to him. All it begged of the Almighty was a chance to use his talents to design an offering worthy of God's grandeur as revealed in a country on the cusp of greatness.
In 1921, his prayer was answered as Frohman, due to his friendship with the bishop, became the chief architect of the new Cathedral Church of Sts. Peter and Paul, better known these days as the National Cathedral. It's design and construction would take up the remainder of his life.
Frohman was what is nowadays called "hands on" in his approach to construction, maintaining a level of personal fitness that permitted him, even in his senior years, to access the catwalks and scaffolding of his designs, ensuring the they would be followed to the letter and attending to all of the details. This was wise, as Frohman took an existent plan, already approved by the chapter [a cathedral's version of a parish's vestry] and engaged in a seemingly perpetual series of improvements, some that required just a fraction of change in dimension.
The cathedral, first envisioned in the 1890's, is a work of art in perpetual construction, with some of the workers now the third generation of their families to find their vocation among the Gothic sweep, the flying buttresses, the 200+ stained glass windows, and the 112 gargoyles. While we could detail everything from the "space window", which contains an actual moon rock, to the "yuppie gargoyle", the cathedral maintains a helpful and informative website that informs the viewer of many of the fascinating aspects of its construction and architecture.
While there would be other projects, it was the cathedral that would be the most dear of Frohman's life, and the one place where he was given absolute free reign to innovate and create, all for the sake a making a grand work of art that celebrated divine inspiration and human endeavor. In 1972, while walking to the cathedral to once again admire his creation and observe the ongoing work, Frohman would be struck and killed by a car in Washington's notoriously pedestrian unfriendly streets. He was 84. He is interred in the cathedral's chapel.
Christian structures in the 21st century have many enemies, mostly those of indifference and misguided intention, and the National Cathedral is no different. During the first decade of this century much of the endowment and other gifts were diverted from maintenance to programming that was mostly of benefit to the egos of the clergy, ignoring a building that was, in and of itself, a far greater proclamation of the Gospel than any virtue-signalling priest or dean could ever realize. Such misuse is having its effect, and a sacred space is in danger because of it. Fortunately there are, for now, those unwilling to permit a great structure to perish.
Such as it is with innovators, especially those like Borlaug, Brush, and Frohman. Each added something of value to the human race, furthering and enriching our physical, mental, and spiritual lives, and enabling us to live the rich, varied, and generally happy world we enjoy. They may be all but unknown to general history these days, but their endeavors and intelligence are still felt and, to the few who know of them, still celebrated.
The cathedral, first envisioned in the 1890's, is a work of art in perpetual construction, with some of the workers now the third generation of their families to find their vocation among the Gothic sweep, the flying buttresses, the 200+ stained glass windows, and the 112 gargoyles. While we could detail everything from the "space window", which contains an actual moon rock, to the "yuppie gargoyle", the cathedral maintains a helpful and informative website that informs the viewer of many of the fascinating aspects of its construction and architecture.
While there would be other projects, it was the cathedral that would be the most dear of Frohman's life, and the one place where he was given absolute free reign to innovate and create, all for the sake a making a grand work of art that celebrated divine inspiration and human endeavor. In 1972, while walking to the cathedral to once again admire his creation and observe the ongoing work, Frohman would be struck and killed by a car in Washington's notoriously pedestrian unfriendly streets. He was 84. He is interred in the cathedral's chapel.
Christian structures in the 21st century have many enemies, mostly those of indifference and misguided intention, and the National Cathedral is no different. During the first decade of this century much of the endowment and other gifts were diverted from maintenance to programming that was mostly of benefit to the egos of the clergy, ignoring a building that was, in and of itself, a far greater proclamation of the Gospel than any virtue-signalling priest or dean could ever realize. Such misuse is having its effect, and a sacred space is in danger because of it. Fortunately there are, for now, those unwilling to permit a great structure to perish.
Such as it is with innovators, especially those like Borlaug, Brush, and Frohman. Each added something of value to the human race, furthering and enriching our physical, mental, and spiritual lives, and enabling us to live the rich, varied, and generally happy world we enjoy. They may be all but unknown to general history these days, but their endeavors and intelligence are still felt and, to the few who know of them, still celebrated.