Even before she commissioned a modernist marvel that made architectural history, Dr. Edith Farnsworth was ahead of her time.
Born in 1903 in Chicago, she studied at the University of Chicago and the American Conservatory of Music, becoming an accomplished violinist and a poet conversant in multiple languages.
In 1938, she graduated from Northwestern University’s School of Medicine, one of four women in her class. Her medical career was brilliant: Beside treating patients, Farnsworth headed a research lab, pioneering treatments for kidney disease.
Farnsworth remained a mystery in many ways — in life and after death. A new book, “Almost Nothing: Reclaiming Edith Farnsworth” (University of Illinois Press, $19.95) by Nora Wendl, a University of New Mexico architecture professor, sheds fresh light on Farnsworth’s life, including the events that led to and followed the ambitious project she took on in 1945 that changed the course of her life and reputation.
That was the year Farnsworth commissioned Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, then head of architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology, to build a weekend retreat for her near Plano. She’d bought the tranquil, rural spot from Chicago Tribune publisher Col. Robert R. McCormick.
What resulted was one of the most influential modernist houses of the 20th century, one that continues to attract people from around the world almost 75 years after its completion.
Nestled near the Fox River, this still-fresh and startling space-age structure draws in visitors with its glass, rectangular exterior framed and supported by white steel.
As spectacular as the house is, the story of the relationship between architect and patron has loomed even larger. Their collaboration did not end well. Before the house was even finished, they had fallen out. Eventually, they were embroiled in a lawsuit over escalating construction costs, which Farnsworth refused to pay. Mies won in court and received a small settlement. Farnsworth continued to live there, selling it in the early 1970s.
What remained, like a persistent stain, was the tale of a supposed affair gone wrong, of Farnsworth, who never married, as being so scorned that she fought her former lover in court. Wendl first read a version of this story in the Style section of The New York Times, when the house came up for auction in 2003. Characterizing it as “the dumbest plot I’ve ever heard,” she says she felt compelled to write about Farnsworth, who died in 1977.
“I thought, ‘There’s a better story here. She must have been a remarkable person,’ ” Wendl says. “Looking at her papers at the Newberry [Library] and realizing the vision she had for her life and the way she wrote about herself got me hooked.”
Wendl spent a decade writing “Almost Nothing,” reconstructing her subject through interviews and archival research of materials that included Farnsworth’s personal papers, poems and memoir. She traveled to some of the places Farnsworth lived, including a villa near Florence, Italy, where the doctor spent the last years of her life.
Wendl uncovered fascinating details about her subject but few concrete facts to support the rumors of a romance between Farnsworth and Mies. The doctor’s memoirs are discreet, and some pages are missing. Wendl’s probing of the trial transcript and correspondence conveys a scene of two strong wills clashing over diverging desires for the house:
“Nothing I write can make Edith immortal or change the story of who she is, who she was or what she has hidden from us; I can hold the shards of what I have found up to the light for you, let you see whatever glints off them.”
Architecture is an endless source of compelling stories, especially in Chicago, where the subject and Mies profoundly shape the city’s identity. Wendl’s book comes amid growing interest in Farnsworth and the glass residence that has operated as a house museum since 2004.
Scott Mehaffey, Farnsworth House’s executive director, says he and others at the museum have worked hard to expand the story of the “Mies-oleum.” That includes renaming it the Edith Farnsworth House in 2021, inviting artists to interpret the space and developing exhibitions to recreate aspects of Farnsworth’s life there.
Earlier this month, Wendl joined Alice T. Friedman, another Farnsworth scholar, on the travertine terrace of their subject’s famous residence for a book reading and discussion that drew a small crowd, including some of Farnsworth’s descendants.
Lynn Carpenter, who was married to Farnsworth’s nephew Fairbank Carpenter but never knew his aunt, was among them. She says she hadn’t yet read Wendl’s book but hopes it helps correct some “unflattering” misconceptions.
“I’m glad to see that attention has been paid to Edith,” Carpenter says, “as a strong woman of her own.”
Rather than craft a conventional biography of Farnsworth, Wendl lays bare the complexity of her own efforts to recreate a life subjected to erasure and distortion. The author dramatizes her attempts to make sense of the fragmentary, nonlinear nature of the memoir Farnsworth left behind. She details the textures of her archival research, from the sterile, highly supervised rooms where she reviews materials to the dirt and insect cocoon that tumble out when she unfolds a document.
Wendl inserts aspects of her own biography, describing the precariousness of her life as an academic and her struggles to access archives and materials. At times, she writes, she faced awkward encounters with other architects and historians who didn’t understand — or looked down on — her approach and credentials.
“It was infuriating to realize that the same misogynist, patriarchal structures still exist,” Wendl says. “I recognized so many of the same obstacles I was facing in her life, though a lot of things separated us.”
In Plano, an audience member asks Wendl what she’d have most liked to have asked Farnsworth. Wendl’s unhesitating response: “Were you quiet. or were you silenced?”
Wendl says her time with Farnsworth has come to a close, but she hopes her work inspires others to discover the rewards of investigating overlooked or misrepresented histories.
Immersing herself in Farnworth’s life, Wendl writes, she found personal closure:
“I see my life and Edith’s as parallel projects, have found in her writing a way of making sense of my own life, a kind of relief.”
