To many people, Le Corbusier seemed “distant; not very smiling or making people at ease…and always in a big hat” he did not waste time or suffer fools, for his sole remaining objective in life was to get buildings and cities made the right way.39 Effectiveness was the imperative. This was why he took the Métro between the office and the rue Nungesser-et-Coli; it was more efficient than a taxi. Similarly, he collected seashells and stones because they succeeded at being what they were.
9
The conclusion of Le Corbusier’s relations with India was not a happy one. On October 26, 1963, the architect sent a telegram to Jawaharlal Nehru: “URGENT stop Dangerous intrigue at Chandigarh against Corbusier and Jeanneret stop Hostility of Secretary Capital Project stop Letter following. LE CORBUSIER.”40
The letter sent that same day explained that Le Corbusier felt he had been slighted. Four days earlier, there had been an opening ceremony for the Bhakra Dam, which he and Pierre had helped design. He had not been invited. Pierre Jeanneret, on the scene in Chandigarh, was reporting “violent hostility” on the part of the new local administration. K. S. Narang, now in charge, was annoyed that Le Corbusier was remaining as a government advisor, even if unpaid. Le Corbusier went on to state his achievements to the prime minister in the same manner with which he had touted his virtues to his mother when she complained of her leaking roof.
Dear Mr Nehru, since twelve years I have made an enormous effort for yourself and Chandigarh. I have created an important “Plan of the City” (town planning) and I have made the plans of the four palaces of the Capitol: High Court, Secretariat, Assembly and Museum of Knowledge. Moreover my intervention in the construction of the Bahkra Dam has been considerable (Power Plant and top of the Dam). This intervention of mine has given Chandigarh a world-wide reputation.
My architecture has universal value (and signification)…but it is not appreciated in certain departments. (There has been considerable criticism in the Legislature on “Le Corbusier and his buildings.”)
You are aware of my deepest respect and friendship for you; since twelve years you are present in my preoccupations. Chandigarh and my other works have placed me at the head of the architectural evolution in the world without leaving my office 35 rue de Sèvres. I have transformed architecture all over the world. It is modest to write in this way!! I am very sorry, please excuse me, but it is a fact.41
The stilted English was a result of the translation someone in his office had made from his French. The errors had been relatively minor thus far. But the translator made a truly unfortunate mistake in Le Corbusier’s conclusion: “I wish to (and I must) complete my work at Chandigarh. I have written that my work would be gratuitous [sic], without any fees (I had informed you of this in my letter dated the 17th December, 1962.) I ask to remain beside you so that Chandigarh should be an Indian landmark.”42
For Nehru’s review, Le Corbusier attached correspondence from Narang and Pierre Jeanneret that made clear the gravity of the situation. Pierre’s letter explained precisely how the Punjab government had terminated Le Corbusier’s role on October 18, 1963. At a time when there were fourteen works still under consideration, both Pierre and Le Corbusier deemed it urgent that Le Corbusier return to Chandigarh—even if the new regime did nothing more than pay for his airplane ticket and accept his continuation of the role he had had for twelve years.
There is no indication that Nehru answered. On November 4, Le Corbusier again wrote the prime minister, this time too impatient to have his letter translated from the French, which, after all, he had discovered Nehru spoke at their very first marvelous meeting, under much happier circumstances: “Dear Mr. Nehru, Forgive me for disturbing you once again. I enclose a photograph of the project for the monument accepted by the Bahkra Dam Committee. This project is unbelievably stupid and horrible. Life is difficult!!! Believe me, dear Mr. Nehru, you have my profound friendship. P.S. If this project reaches the stage of execution, I shall make certain it is published the world over and in all periodicals of the highest reputation. And the world will be dismayed.”43
Again, there was no answer.
With an old man’s trembling hands, the seventy-six-year-old Le Corbusier wrote a last letter to Nehru in March 1964. Even to a distinguished prime minister, he did not bother with a full sentence to start. The message was urgent enough to warrant his telegraphic style: “Dear Monsieur Nehru, troubles and tempests at Chandigarh. Actions have been taken in opposition to us,” he began. Then—treating himself, as he often did, as a subject to be observed—he continued, “Le Corbusier has created a work at Chandigarh that is admired the world over. Pierre Jeanneret as well.” He then reverted to the first person: “I am government advisor. My ideas and plans must be respected.”
Le Corbusier was devastated. As he told the man who had defended him so assiduously in the past, the Indians he had come to know over the previous decade were of “the highest value, morally and professionally.”44 He begged for Nehru’s help.
He never received a response. Today, the world deems Chandigarh among Le Corbusier’s greatest triumphs—for India as well as for the architect personally. To Le Corbusier, it was, in the end, another bitter defeat.
LX
Drowning, of course, drowning is strange, I mean strange for those on shore. It all seems done so discreetly. The onlooker, attention caught by a distant feathery cry, peers out intently but sees nothing of the struggle, the helpless silencing, the awful slow-motion thrashing, the last, long fall into the bottomless and ever-blackening blue. No. All that is to be seen is a moment of white water, and a hand, languidly sinking.
—JOHN BANVILLE, Eclipse
1
In 1955, Le Corbusier had taken Hilary Harris, Marguerite Tjader Harris’s son, into the office at 35 rue de Sèvres as an intern. Twenty years earlier, Hilary had been the six-year-old Toutou who had joined his mother and the architect in driving around New York. In the thirties, whenever Le Corbusier wrote to his American mistress, he almost always included a message to her affable son. Now the boy had become a young man who wanted to study the connections between cinema and architecture. Especially with the Philips Pavilion being planned, there was no better place to explore that relationship, from both an aesthetic and a technical point of view, than the office of his mother’s lover.
Harris returned to America following the internship, but he and Le Corbusier remained in touch. In April 1960, on a trip to Paris, Harris eagerly tried to visit, and he telephoned the studio repeatedly. On the day they were finally supposed to talk, Le Corbusier had a meeting at the Ministry of Construction that lasted longer than anticipated, prompting an explanatory letter from his secretary to “Madame Tjader Harris” in Darien apologizing for the missed encounter with her son.
In the spring of 1961, Marguerite Tjader Harris sent a note to Le Corbusier’s office saying that she had missed seeing him in New York and now was at the Lutétia, half a block from 35 rue de Sèvres. She instructed him to phone on the morning of Tuesday, May 30, to see if they could schedule a rendezvous either at the hotel or somewhere else. She said she wanted to show him photos of her son’s work.
At the bottom of Tjader Harris’s letter, Le Corbusier wrote, “Lunch 24 N-C Friday June 2 1961.”1 Now that Yvonne was no longer alive, the coast was clear.
The following April, Hilary Harris, whose film company had an office on Eighth Avenue in Greenwich Village, wrote Le Corbusier urging him to come by on his next trip to New York so he could show the architect his films and a machine for drawing he was trying to make. Le Corbusier was in India at the time and never made the visit.
Then, at the start of 1963, Marguerite Tjader Harris, on behalf of her son, wrote Le Corbusier about an architectural project far grander, even, than the Gare d’Orsay proposal. Its location was in the middle of Manhattan. The liaison that had begun thirty years earlier now seemed to be leading to one of the greatest projects of Le Corbusier’s life.
Tjader Harris explained it very simply.
It was her pleasant duty to offer the seventy-five-year-old Le Corbusier an enormous architectural commission. The site was thirty-five acres on the west side of Manhattan, between Fifty-seventh and Seventy-second streets, along the Hudson River. Le Corbusier would design an entire neighborhood adjacent to Lincoln Center. The powerful Amalgamated Lithographers’ Union was in charge. They had a budget of two hundred and fifty million dollars and wanted to build on 8 percent of the acreage, leaving the rest for parks and “banksides” next to new docks on the river. Apartment buildings, an international student center, stores, a library, and recreational facilities, including a swimming pool and playing fields, were envisaged for the site.
Le Corbusier could thus transform a large part of New York City. The situation was different from his proposals for Paris; little destruction would be required since at that time there were mainly railroad yards on the site.
Le Corbusier made some calculations. On his lover’s typewritten letter, he penciled in the upper left-hand corner
1 are = 100 m2
1 acre = 50 ares = 5000 m2
35 acres = 35 × 5000 = 175 000
In the left-hand margin, he wrote,
250,000,000 × 500 = 1,250,000,000 00 A $ = 490
490 ou 500
725,000 000 000 0002
This is how his aging mind worked: in mathematical sequences, feeling the sheer excitement of large numbers when they demarcated land mass and money. Converting dollars into francs, this, at long last, was the chance for victory in America.
2
Tjader Harris reported that the union president, Edward Swayduck, had been speaking with Hilary about a film on which they hoped to work together. In the course of their conversation, he had raised the subject of this urban center and said he wanted to find an architect. Swayduck greatly admired Le Corbusier already and told Hilary he would love to approach the renowned Swiss but had no idea how to find him.
Swayduck was thrilled when Hilary Harris offered to make the connection. Now the only question was how, when, and where Swayduck and the architect could meet—assuming Le Corbusier had the time and interest for such an encounter.
Tjader Harris provided enticing details. President John F. Kennedy was supposed to visit New York that coming summer to launch the project. Hilary, now a successful filmmaker, was working day and night, which is why his mother had written on his behalf. The son’s dream, beyond negotiating this commission, was to make a film about Le Corbusier’s work in India. In the meantime, he would send Le Corbusier a photo of the site in Manhattan.
Tjader Harris asked Le Corbusier how Swayduck should make his approach and under what conditions the architect would accept an invitation to New York. It was urgent. But after three decades of scheduling trysts, she knew the system. If he couldn’t answer, could his secretary please do so? “From what I understand, you’ll be quite free to do as you like. In friendship, ever, Marguerite.”3
HILARY HARRIS sent Le Corbusier the photo and his own letter the following day to reiterate the seriousness of the offer. The panoramic picture, taken from a low-flying aircraft, showed what was mainly a wasteland a few, blocks from Central Park and the skyscrapers of Gotham that Le Corbusier had first discovered in 1935. “Airview Number 60-741” from the Fairchild Aerial Survey included, among other things, the RCA Building—which Le Corbusier had visited with Marguerite Tjader Harris when Toutou was six years old. One never knew what would lead to what.
3
It took Le Corbusier only a few days to answer:
My dear Hilary,
I was glad to have your news; what a long time it’s been! I received your letter of January 26, 1963, accompanying your mother’s of January 25, discussing the great project between 57th Street and 72nd Street along the Hudson.
I’ve thought the matter over, and reason has convinced me that I cannot concern myself with this business. It is a matter of too great importance for me to follow it in all its technological and administrative details. I’m 75 years old and still in perfect health, but I’m no longer at an age when one can take such enterprises in hand. Add to that the difficulty of the language (English) and American pronunciation, and add further the divergence of conceptions of life and work in general between Americans and Frenchmen. You must find the right man for such a situation. I am not he, or I am no longer he.
The UN building appears in the upper-right corner of your photograph—a bitter memory for me. I worked in New York for 18 months, and my plans were not borrowed but stolen! I am the opposite of a man engaged in financial speculations. I am an artist (an architect and something else besides), and my whole life consists of work, hard, modest, continuous, persevering, and uncomprising work. I’ve never compromised in my entire career. Only the Americans have done so with my UN plans, making them into a demihorror.
Please don’t regard my refusal as a manifestation of ill humor, but let me repeat the factors involved:
My age
The speculative nature of the enterprise
The intervention of “architecture.”
With regard to this last factor: my entire life and the books I have written have manifested it, have entered public opinion, have indeed entered the public domain. Others can utilize it without any objection from me.
It is to this factor that I think you should turn your attention: find a second or third or fourth Le Corbusier. Good luck!
It was generous of you to think of me in this business. I am grateful to you, and you have my thanks.
I hope that you are doing extraordinary things with your film work.
I have the fondest memories of you, and I send you my friendliest sympathies.
Le Corbusier4
THAT SAME DAY, the aging architect wrote his longtime lover at Vikingsborg:
Dearest Friend
You send astonishing news! I thank you for thinking of me with regard to an enterprise of this importance. I have answered your son, Hilary, and enclose a copy of my letter to him.
I am hardly a pessimist, but at my age I am an old pine or an old palm, the choice is yours. (I cite two trees that habitually grow straight.)
You have certainly become what people call one of the great women of the USA: fortune, consideration, and exalted sentiments as a “right-thinking American.” It gives me great pleasure to think of you.
I dream of being able to be armed with my two hands and working at things I am passionately concerned about, but life is too hard for me, and I am compelled to adopt an imperative discipline.
Greet New York for me, whisper that it has kicked me out of the United Nations with a frightful brutality, a gesture it repeated to wrest me away from UNESCO in Paris and reject me by veto. Say what one may and do what one may, there are certain things that cannot be digested! You may think I’ve become a grumbler; the fact is quite the contrary, I maintain the best humor at all times, but it cannot be detected by the naked eye.
With all my friendship.
Le Corbusier5
4
Marguerite Tjader Harris gave Le Corbusier what must have been his dream response. She wrote that he had already changed the world with his work, that he was still “the pioneer.” She spoke to him in his sort of language: he no longer needed to “crack his skull with a mountain of details.” She also stood up to him: “But Le Corbusier, I don’t like your way of referring to me. I am not a ‘right-thinking’ and ‘respectable’ American woman…. Quitethe contrary. What fortune I have I have expended and dispensed in many directions, thus liberating myself from this great burden. I now concentrate on writing and traveling.” She went on to explain that she knew interesting people, not socialites, and assured him that work mattered deeply to her. Finally, she let Le Corbusier know that she would see him again in Paris, “domino volente.”6
A MONTH LATER, Hilary Harris wrote Le Corbusier that the people in charge of the lithographers’ union hoped the architect would reconsider. No one else could realize their dream and do justice to their ide
alism. Wanting to serve the future of humankind and facilitate world peace, the union officials realized that a central plaza was essential. They wondered if Le Corbusier would at least come up with a master plan—even if he delegated the details of the buildings to others. Again, President Kennedy’s name was invoked. His support, as well as that of the mayor of New York and other city officials, was assured. Le Corbusier would be respected in every way: “The leaders of this enterprise respect and greatly admire your need to work without compromise of any kind…. Is it really too late to expunge your bad memories of New York by making this project achievable in complete independence? The directors have asked me to tell you that they would consider this a supreme gift you could give to New York, to the youth of America and to the youth of all the nations who come here.”7 Harris further suggested that if Le Corbusier still rejected the proposal of his flying across the Atlantic to study the site, then Swayduck would gladly dispatch a delegate to Paris.
Although Swayduck himself then made the trip, the New York project never even reached the stage of sketches, but one can imagine what it might have been. Here Le Corbusier could perhaps have realized one of the inventive cityscapes he had designed for a myriad of locations: his ideal of proud skyscrapers standing on pilotis, joyous buildings for sport and human assembly—the type of structure he had first designed for Moscow—and capacious parks. The architecture would have a look of sheer triumph, and the green spaces would have brought a large public into a natural paradise and offered, inevitably, a sequence of splendid framed vistas.
But Le Corbusier never answered. After March 1963, there was no further communication with either Marguerite Tjader Harris or her son.
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