In an interview on October 25, 2024, Jon L. Seydl, the director of Krannert Art Museum, and Brenda Nardi, the senior director of advancement in the College of Fine and Applied Arts, sat down with Robert D. Kleinschmidt to discuss his work and his relationship to Jack Baker, John Replinger, and Richard (Dick) Williams.
JS: It is October 25, 2024, and this is an oral history with Robert Kleinschmidt, and we should all go around and give our name so the person doing the transcription knows whose voice is whose. I’m Jon Seydl. I am director of the Krannert Art Museum.
BN: I’m Brenda Nardi, senior director of advancement in the College of Fine and Applied Arts.
RK: I’m Rob Kleinschmidt, graduate architect, Bachelor of Science in Architecture at the University of Illinois, June 1963.
JS: Excellent, so, just to set the stage, we’re talking to people such as yourself about houses built by Jack Baker, [John] Replinger, and [Dick] Williams from the 1950s to the 1970s in Champaign and Urbana, but with special attention to the homes of the three architects, as well as the Margaret Erlanger House. We’re interested in knowing more about their work as designers, but also about how people actually lived in and used these houses, particularly as places to make art, to perform, and to interact. I’m going to ask a few specific questions, but more importantly, you should just take whatever opportunity you would like to tell us things I’m not even thinking about asking, especially keeping in mind things you would really like future generations to know and to remember. And I’ll just start: you knew all three of the architects, and I’m just curious how you got to know them.
RK: Well, it all began with American Institute of Architects’ monthly meetings that were hosted by each of them separately at their homes, and I was highly impressed as a student. As I said earlier in our discussion, I always rode my bike to these places, and they were within the city limits and the neighborhoods of the university. So, I’m very, very, very taken with each of these dwellings. It began with the first AIA meeting, invited to the house of Richard Williams—later, Dick Williams. I rode my bike there, and I got there earlier than the meeting started, and so he gave me a tour of the house, and I immediately was taken with the size and the width of the main entrance door. It was narrower than most front doors were, I usually think of a front door with 3 feet, 3 feet 0 inches, 36 inches. And this door, seemed to me something like 18 inches wide, half of what that was, but it created a very, very strong impact and composition. So, you were brought in slowly through this tight opening and then exploded into the majesty of a larger space. It was a one-story house at the time, and the front was Chicago common brick, which I was familiar with, and it had no windows on the front on the north side, and this opening was floor to ceiling—it was either 12 or 18 inches wide—and to me, that just startled me. What a powerful entrance to the entire composition.
And so I was early, as I said, and I had to take my shoes off and walk in my stocking feet, and because the floor was the solid planks that were about 2 and 3/4 inches wide of teak, and they were going in a north to south direction. They composed an elevated platform that one maybe went up one step, which was a large rock, that was an intermediate step. So, you stepped up 6 inches, and then from 6 inches to 12 inches, you arrived at the teak floor. So, I thought that was very well thought out, and the teak was in beautiful, beautiful condition. And as I said, it progressed 2 and 3/4-inch-wide boards that I thought were tongue and groove and had a “V” joint about an eighth of an inch wide separating each of the boards. I thought it was oil teak, and it was just drop-dead gorgeous. I also thought, well, this man was a consummate architect, and I was told that he headed the graduate school of design, assisting and mentoring students working towards a master’s degree in architecture. I also later learned, when I asked him about his background, that he spent some time during World War II in the United States Navy and learned a great deal about construction and all the elements that later an architect learned to prepare himself for the practice of designing residences or buildings for education. So, I was highly, highly impressed with Dick Williams, and thought he was very cordial. I guess at that time he was probably in his forties and maybe approaching fifties.
Later in my experience, working towards my bachelor’s degree in architecture, he designed a university building—the Department of Education across the street from what was the Architecture Building at that time. This was to the south, and it had a very shallow pitched roof, which I thought honored the look of many of the university buildings. But how was this guy going to design something that was modern and in today’s world? And he did it beautifully, absolutely beautifully. I remember there was a light going into a court outside of the building on the west side that was divided with a brick—separated as a brick wall—that was maybe 8 to 10 feet high, thus forming the west boundary. But behind that was a garden court, and that really, really impressed me. Each of the classrooms opened visually with glass walls onto the garden court. And then there was a garden court on the east side. The first one was on the west side, and it had this cantilever limestone element that accommodated a light fixture so that you could enter the court and have safety. And it was safe and visual, and it was concealed in the limestone coping above the brick wall that was enclosing the garden court. To the east was an area that had glass walls opening to a lower level, which could have been a basement, but it was graded very, very carefully with a berm and a heel, and it was very sensitively designed to bring light to a lower-level space, which I thought was very clever and very creative. I liked the Department of Education and thought that Dick Williams did an outstanding job and was a very competent and accomplished architect and had beautiful taste, and this conveyed it. And the Department of Education, I believe, is still standing today. When I went back to visit Jack Baker and started working on the exhibition titled “An Architect [Collects].” I definitely stopped in there. And of course, it was across [the] street to the east of the Krannert, absolutely. So that was always a delight [in] part of the urban planning that was integrated to the museum in some way.
JS: To jump back to your experience at Williams’s house. Do you remember what year, roughly, this might have been?
RK: 19… 19… I don’t remember exactly, but I will recite two years. It was either the winter of 1959 [when] I first arrived from Navy Pier, Chicago—that branch of the University of Illinois, and I began my education there in September 1957. I graduated from high school in June 1957, so I spent two to two-and-a-half years there because I couldn’t afford to go down state to pay the tuition and the housing and all of the subsistence that that required. So, it was like two to two-and-a-half years and then three to four in Champaign-Urbana to complete my education and obtain my degree in the bachelor of science in architecture.
JS: And do you remember what the event itself was like at the house? You arrived early, but then…?
RK: It was a typical gathering where there was a reception before, and that was maybe 15 minutes or half an hour, and students greeted each other. There were some light refreshments, some beers and some wine. And then the AIA meeting started, and we all sat on the floor, and that was it for the meeting.
JS: And so maybe we could turn to Jack Baker and how you got to know him.
RK: I wanted to be in his class because I had heard about him and saw him arriving at the architecture building for the daily design class that he was [a critic] for. And that was Monday through Friday, like 1 to 5 p.m. and that was it, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. He was always handsomely dressed, and I could see that he had good taste in his attire—[he] always had a suit on and a white shirt and a black tie. And usually the suits were shades of olive green and wonderful gray-green. And I thought that that was very handsome, but it was always a suit; Replinger was more casual, and would come in construction boots and khaki pants and a short jacket, but I remember riding my bike to Replinger’s for a critique once and…
JS: And this would have been the Burnett Circle house, the first one.
RK: And what impressed me is that he had a Charles Eames sofa compact, and that was the primary sofa in the living room, and it was very thin, like one-and-a-half inches thick of upholstery, and it was like 72 inches long. And I just thought it was neat. But I knew he had young children. I think they had two or three children. I thought that at one point they had three boys.
JS: That’s correct.
RK: But I remember once asking him about [the sofa and] somehow the conversation shifted to savings: he had established savings accounts for each of the children, and he and Dot would start them off with a savings account, but it was their responsibility to add an equal amount that he would contribute to their savings account. He thought that was very important to teach them the meaning, the value of money. And I was highly impressed with that.
JS: And so you got to know Dot Replinger as well?
RK: Only that I knew that she was a weaver, and I did invite her to the [reception] dinner for “[An] Architect Collects,” which held five tables of eight people in the Erlanger House… The [exhibition] opened April 19, 2007.
JS: This is just, your recall [of] details, is incredible and it’s incredibly useful. What do you think is the most important or interesting thing about their work as architects?
RK: I think that they were friends. I think they were close. I think they respected each other enormously. [During] semester breaks between January and February (we were on semesters then not quarters) … there was usually a week to a week-and-a-half, and I later learned that Jack Baker, Richard Williams, and Harold Young went to Mexico. [Another] break—certainly Illinois winters in Champaign and Urbana were still cold, just like Chicago—they went to part of Puerto Rico, and all three came back beautifully tanned. The envy all those students had, oh those lucky guys, but I know that each got along well. Harold Young lived in a separate second floor above, it could have been a garage, but I think it was just a one-story house, and they added a second floor to it, and that was, that was his residence. And I went there for a meeting, and that’s where I saw the double black leather sofas and thought, “How neat!”
JS: Where was that house? Do you remember?
RK: I feel that it was slightly east of Dick Williams’s, but it was also on University Place, and it was an addition to a one-story house, and he lived there. And so that was that… Baker, of course, his father had a restaurant supply store, and that is what the actual ground floor and second floor were—to accommodate this restaurant supply store of all the fixtures that were required to outfit and furnish a restaurant: kitchens and kitchen equipment and stainless steel sinks, refrigerators and all of that… I believe the address was 71 1/2 Chester Street and it had two spaces on the ground floor. And then, of course, Jack created a studio for himself in 1959 and 1961 which I marveled and said, I think this is one of the first loft spaces in America. It was early, and I thought it was so clever. And I remember when he furnished it, and I asked if I could come and see it. I was designing windows once a month at a local tailor shop that did custom tailoring for men, made men’s suits. I would work with the wool bolts of fabric and arrange them and compose them at the storefront, as a design. I would go there [and was able to] convince the lady that was the owner that she needed to show what men’s suits could look like and what the choices were. So, I put the bolts in the window. There were about 20 to 25 bolts, and I composed them vertically, stacked them and rearranged them in different compositions. [I] made larger samples more dominant each of the months of my time [there]. I would go and trim the windows on a Friday night.
JS: Terrific, was this in downtown Champaign?
RK: Yes, excellent, maybe two blocks away from the railroad station in downtown Champaign. I remember that going north and south, and Jack’s space was here, and you went under an underpass to get to Chester Street and all of that.
JS: So, you visited the loft?
RK: Yes, yes, I did.
JS: Could you talk about the experience of that, and also just your recollections of the space?
RK: I don’t think I talked about the marvel of it—how unique it was and everything. But I remember knocking on the door and asking if it would be possible to see [it] and on a Friday night, that’s when I went to trim the windows. And never was he inhospitable or anything else. He usually dined out with friends or family, [but] I remember the kitchen—the space behind the dining table, [where] the top of the counter flipped back and forth and opened up. It could be totally closed to not reveal any of the elements of the appliances of the kitchen—I thought that was very clever. The space for dishes was at the end of this [counter] that backed up [to] the corridor, which connected to the bathroom.
JS: Ah, I see!
RK: Right. So, we would sit in the conversation pit, and he would sit up and lean up against the back of one of the sofas; I would be at the opposite end, at the other end, and I would [stay] for like a half an hour or 45 minutes, and then thank him for his hospitality, and bicycle home.
JS: What did you talk about?
RK: Architecture and who was doing what. Paul Rudolph designed a building [the Christian Science Student Center] at the corner of a residence hall [likely Lungren Hall]. I stayed [there], and [the Student Center] was to the north of [that]. It since has been demolished. It was a chapel, and I thought it was brilliant. Jack Baker had a friendship with Paul Rudolph, which I was impressed about. [Baker] thought [Rudolph] was a talented architect, and the fact that there was this two-story space—it was a chapel. There [were colored] skylights, and the colors were the entire spectrum—red, yellow, blue, orange, green, and purple—and they [were] on various beams and rafters going through the whole space. And I thought this was just very cutting edge, and Paul Rudolph was really one of the leaders at that time, because he had designed the Yale School of Architecture. And ironically and incidentally, I was [recently] looking for an article, [and] there’s a current exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City on Rudolph, of all of [his] work, saying that he was unripe. He faded from fame very quickly and tried to design … fluid modern examples of buildings that were two-story, three-story parking structures in New Haven. And yet, for all [that] commission at the design of the Yale School of Architecture fell out of favor, very, very fast, and now it’s being brought back and re-evaluated. I’m trying to find the article that I had.
[audio of BN searching for the article]
RK: Thank you. Here is one of the buildings that he designed that was [a] parking structure. Where did [the article say] it didn’t have soul? Here is his masterpiece of the Yale School of Architecture.
JS: As a Yale undergraduate, I remember that building very well. I even remember the parking garage [Temple Street Parking Garage]. When you visited Jack Baker in his loft, you came up the stairs past the office and went into the room with the conversation pit. Did you see the rest of [it]?
RK: I came up the side steps that were at the south end. I first left my bike in the court garden and then walked up a few steps. I think the fence was very thoughtfully composed. And in the structure that held 4-by-8 plywood panels, the structure was 6-by-6 inches, and that were posts of just wood, pine, 6-by-6, and they then went vertically up about 8 feet, and then 4 feet to the left was another one, and then 4 feet to the left, further, and these accommodated with a space for a reveal that was about a half an inch wide, or three-quarters wide or 8 foot high. But that was the essence of the space, and he enclosed the space. These 4-by-8 plywood panels were painted white, and the top was creasoled to protect them from rotting—water and storm protection [as well]. Again, I thought this was all so clever, and it really formed a beautiful garden space in the back that you could see out of that large sliding glass panel.
JS: And did you see the spaces on the first floor as well when you visited?
RK: Those came later. They were not renovated at the beginning [because] they were the supply and storage space for the restaurant supply store that his father owned and operated. [When] the father retired, I believe Jack bought from his father the two buildings that then he designed. [He] thought he had to have income, so he designed a space, and later Harold Young rented that. Jack always had an entrance from Chester Street for his clients to come. And that was all the pine door, but I always remember the flush door as Jack Baker, Jack S. Baker Architect, and the door was painted a beautiful shade of tomato red.
JS: Is it still?
BN: Yep.
JS: Wow. So, clients for his architecture would come from the Chester Street side, yeah. But visitors coming for other reasons, more social reasons, would come from either or. That’s great. I’m curious if you could just talk about what their classes were like, what were they like in the classroom and as mentors to you.
RK: Baker or John Replinger, I think in academic terms, each of them walked around to review the progress of each student’s project and project we had. I remember in the first [class with] Replinger, as an architect, as a student for John Replinger, there was a sketch problem for five weeks. And then there was another deadline of an eight-hour sketch problem … and [we had to design] a pavilion. I won a prize of $800, so [today] that [would be] something over $1,000 or $2,000. I remember the building, and I have the drawings, and I kept one of my prospective brochures that I made for my first interview when I graduated and interviewed with Gaul and Voosen, Catholic church architects. They did Catholic churches and breweries. I am still amazed, but I did a more elaborate brochure for my interview for Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill and was hired to work in interiors and interior architecture. Don Powell interviewed me and had to determine for Walter Netsch, if I was good enough to be hired. Well, I’d like to show you my brochure at the beginning, because it has my … eight-hour sketch problem [for Jack Baker], and then my thesis under Jack Baker. [I studied under] Replinger, that was two semesters, and then my thesis was a nuclear reactor for Jack Sherman Baker.
JS: That’s a perfect early 1960s project. [brief conversation about lunch and transition to scrapbooks in Kleinschmidt’s apartment with his student work]
JS: And these are albums from your time at the U of I?
RK: Yes, projects executed at the University of Illinois. Oh my gosh. Robert D Kleinschmidt, and look at that handsome [guy]. That was probably the early 1960s. Oh? Oh, what? What does this say? Brenda, I can’t without my glasses.
BN: The program in resume, the program, prepared by Victor Gruen, architect and planner, was basically, and then there’s the description. A Parkway police station, one of the early ones.
JS: And these are all of your student projects?
RK: Yes, yes. This was the beginning of what I thought was some of the better work, the brick wall and the courtyard.
JS: And these are what… What are we looking at?
RK: First- and second-year design problems. And then this was an indoor ice room. This is a living memorial to Jules Verne and the brick wall, and then this. There was a certain word for it, a hyperbolic paraboloid.
JS: Got it, yes.
RK: There always was an exhibition space.
JS: These are three-dimensional models.
RK: Yes. Housing for the University of Illinois, student housing.
BN: Dormitories.
RK: Here is the first chapel.
JS: And would you have seen the Rudolph chapel at this point?
RK: Yes, oh, yes. Here’s the courtyard. This was a convent. That was the first competition that I won. Oh, look at that [reading] “Illinois student wins the Stainless Steel Award,” yes, and that was, that was with John Replinger, and I won $800.
JS: So that’s the project for which you won the big prize.
RK: That was the beginning. And here’s the jury and your notification letter. Committee of Stainless Steel Producers, American Iron [and] Steel Institute in New York.
BN: Here is something that is … Architectural and Engineering News with a paragraph about you. Robert Kleinschmidt, student, oh, referring to your stainless steel prize, yes. Department of Architecture, College of Finance, Illinois. They gave you another $100 for some reason.
RK: This is the Bradley and Bradley award for $100. This was the real chapel where I use the staples for the model for the legs of the pews. Oh, sure, yeah, and that was a little lower level. I was so impressed with Dick Williams, and the College of Education, so I created the lower level below the main floor for the Sunday school, etc., and the plan of the main sanctuary and [I was] very into asymmetr[ic] design, rather than pure symmetrical. Remember the pews and again, this asymmetrical structure with the sunlight coming pouring through, the model coming up. That’s the model of the chapel. Cherished all of that and had such fun making it in the steps.
JS: They’re such gorgeous models.
RK: Thank you. And there’s more here, more.
JS: The lower part, that’s lovely.
RK: It was all in gray wood and gray cedar and all of that—I just thought that would be very tasteful. And then I got this from a prairie, that’s what I’ve had. I made my trees for the model eight-and-a-half hour sketch problem, right? There was another one: it displays a pavilion and high-rise prairie houses. Then here’s the beginning of the thesis, a nuclear reactor in Colfax. That was my [undergrad] thesis: [reading from album] “The Nuclear Reactor Terminal Project, Architecture 338, Professor Jack Baker, September 1962. Department of Architecture program written by Robert E. Planche, brief history of nuclear reactors. What is a nuclear reactor? This program would like to offer his sincere gratitude to Dr. Martin, professor of nuclear engineering and physics, table of contents, and statement of purpose.”
JS: You needed to do research on the typology of the nuclear reactor before you started?
RK: Yes, oh my gosh, yes. [reading from a different page] “This was the director’s office furniture, comprehensive storage system. Herman Miller [unintelligible].”
JS: And were you assigned this topic, or did you come up with it on your own?
RK: You had to come up with it. And now we’re going to see a shot of the model.
BN: Oh, beautiful, goodness.
JS: Wow. These models are works of art in and of themselves.
RK: These were all the straight pins and my hands were bloody with all putting in these straight pins to recall the wheat field surrounding Columbia University. [reading from a letter] “We are pleased to inform you that you have been awarded a scholarship school architecture, $1,000 and a student loan for $1,000.”
JS: So, now we’re moving to Columbia University.
RK: Graduate school. This was the clay pits in Woodbridge, New Jersey. That was my thesis in graduate school.
JS: And what is this project?
RK: The city in Woodbridge, New Jersey: creating low-cost housing for the entire community and the old city of Woodbridge, New Jersey.
JS: Oh, and this is the blueprint?
RK: Woodbridge Center, School of Architecture, Columbia University graduate design. That was my, one of my partners. I had two partners at Ertugrul Hervis—he was Egyptian—myself, ninth graduate design, and Joe [unintelligible]. Okay, so the three of us.
JS: You were all graduate students and worked collectively on this.
RK: Yes, [reading] “commercial parking plan.” It was the detailed commercial core plan.
BN: My goodness.
RK: It was such an enjoyment. Lastly, the commercial court plan and the department store commercial court plan, again.
JS: And did you choose your two partners?
RK: Yes, in this project, yes.
JS: Did you stay in touch with them after graduate school?
RK: Not really. Everybody… This is the roof plan, sections, elevations.
JS: I hope this album can come to the University of Illinois Archives eventually.
RK: I never thought of that.
BN: It should.
JS: It really should.
RK: I would love to do it. I really would. Here’s the summary statement, here’s the three of us.
JS: So Ertugrul Hervis, Robert D. Kleinschmidt, and Joseph [unintelligible].
RK: Yes, so, Woodridge Township, Middlesex County, New Jersey, at the continuation of Jersey Turnpike, the garden state…
JS: And again, were you assigned this project. Or do you come up with it on your own?
RK: I came up with it. And here it was published in Progressive Architecture, August 1964.
JS: Oh, how marvelous!
RK: Three solutions of the same re-development problem. This was ours.
JS: So, three different groups of students here.
RK: Here’s the credit.
JS: Wonderful.
RK: [reading from a newspaper clipping] “Robert Kleinschmidt, Joseph [intelligible],” New York Times. “You can publish Jersey town, which feels like a city may become one with bridges, votes Tuesday, whether to change the status.”
JS: Oh, I see. This was a real life problem.
RK: That’s the traveling fellowship I got at graduation from William Kinney’s fellows. The $1,000.
JS: In 1964, right?
RK: [It] helps an architecture student to get an oversea grant. [subvocalizing] That was one of my first jobs there at Gaul and Voosen Architects. That was…
JS: What is this?
RK: A rendering for the perspective of St. Mary’s mission house.
JS: Oh, right, so that’s a recollection of your undergraduate chapel project, right?
RK: I then worked for Gaul and Voosen, and I applied this and designed this while I was hired there, and as a graduate architect.
JS: This model’s for the same project, right?
RK: Right. And this was my thesis from a sculpture course that I took with the Department of Education when I was at Columbia University.
JS: Oh, wonderful.
RK: And that was that. [looking at album] That was the sculpture that I did in the fifth year of architecture, and that’s Jack Baker’s court garden in that, and I designed this 3-inch pedestal for water, and then the fountain came through electrically wired. And it dripped down, and that was the sound of water.
JS: Can you clarify? Where is this?
RK: Champaign-Urbana—Jack’s court garden, the studio is here where I’m standing. Uh huh, two stories. And then this was the 4-by-8 plywood with the 6-by-6 that I described. And that was the support for the fence of the south boundary.
BN: So, if you are at the end of the pit, those big windows, sure look down into that…
RK: Exactly, exactly.
JS: And just to make sure I’m clear what I’m looking at. Your sculpture thesis at Columbia was installed in Jack Baker’s courtyard in Champaign-Urbana at the loft.
RK: Yes, yes.
JS: And how long did it stay there?
RK: Like a year.
JS: Okay, how wonderful. So that meant you kept in touch with Jack Baker.
RK: I did. I did. And here is a view with the fountain on with the dripping from the top. The abstract.
JS: How terrific.
RK: This three-inch pit is painted black, so maximum reflection.
JS: And so, what happened after the year, what happened to the sculpture?
RK: I remember loaning it somehow. It happened that it was in my parents’ yard, but they didn’t want to keep it or something, or both parents passed away? That was it, and so then I loaned it to David Zeinert, and it was here for the first year after graduation.
JS: And who is David Zeinert?
RK: David Zeinert. There were two other classmates that went to the University of Illinois: Dick Hanna, Byron Dunham’s partner, and then David Zeinert and myself. The three of us were inseparable during undergraduate school and were the best of friends.
JS: So, David took it for his own property.
RK: Yes, exactly, and stored it for me. But I really don’t know what happened to it in the end. I can’t remember at this point, [only] in the Baker courtyard. If you would like to utilize this for the exhibition, I would be very pleased to loan it and eventually gift it, when I have two copies, to the University of Illinois in the archives.
Transcription by Mary Baker
