Organic Creativity: Alden B. Dow’s Small-Gauge Architecture

Abstract

In May 1926, a young Michigander made the front page of the Midland Republican, his hometown paper: “Alden Dow Takes MovingPictures of ‘The Sights’ of Europe.” Dow, an avid photographer, had been filming with a 17.5mm Movette since 1917, and he eagerly adopted 16mm with the birth of the gauge. The “cleverly designed mechanism” of Dow’s new Kodak also gets some ink, as the paper extols the vicarious “thrills” the films gave Dow’s friends and family back in rural Midland, population 8,500.1 On its face, this is a smalltown, smallgauge episode in 16mm as a local novelty, an amateur’s delight. But Dow was no typical young man. The youngest son of Herbert H. Dow, founder of Dow Chemical, the Midlandbased industrial giant, Alden Dow was unusually well heeled and well traveled. By the summer of 1926, Dow had decided to abandon his expected course of study in chemical and mechanical engineering. Instead, he pursued his passion for architecture at Columbia University, followed by a fellowship with Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin in 1933. The 16mm blackandwhite and stunning Kodachrome films that Dow made during his time with Wright constitute but a tiny fraction of the approximately three hundred films produced by Dow over five decades, from 1923 through the 1960s. These productions include not only travel films and home movies but also philosophically oriented experimental films and a host