Merry Meeks

The lecturer raises his pointer to a stereopticon view of Chinese buildings. In a crisp, piping voice he exclaims: "And I said to him, as one Occidental to one Oriental, 'May I visit your pagoda?' And he said to me, as one Oriental to one Occidental, 'You may.' " Three hundred undergraduate eyes closely follow the pictures, 300 ears the discourse. The pagoda is visited, described, its structural and esthetic significance intelligibly explained.

The lecturer, Dean Everett Victor Meeks of the Yale School of Fine Arts, demands plenty of attention and reading in his course in architectural history, demands fat noteboks with multitudes of clipped illustrations. It is not an easy course. Yet it is crowded, relished. Probably even more satisfying to Dean Meeks is the fact that since his coming to the School of Fine Arts in 1916 it has become, in competition with nationwide art schools and ateliers, the most successful prize-winning institution in the country. Yale students have taken the annual Prix de Rome in painting, most coveted award to young daubers, for the past five years (TIME, May 20).

Last week Dean Meeks heard that Burton Kenneth Johnson, 22, son of a Chicago dentist, had won the 1929 Prix de Rome in Architecture--third to be given to a Yale student in the past five years. True, Architect Johnson first went to Yale last fall, after four years architectural study at the University of Illinois, where he won honorable mention in last year's Prix Competition. But the honor of tuning him to prize-winning pitch was Yale's.

There were 47 participants, seven finalists after preliminary competitions. The final project called for a giant art centre with galleries, auditorium, offices, library, studios. Architect Johnson rendered a rectangular two-story building with a Doric portico, a serene, traditional design with much unadorned wall space. He wins a prize valued at $8,000--including residence and studio for three years at the American Academy in Rome, transportation funds, a yearly stipend of $1,500.

Much credit for Yale's triumphs must go to Dean Meeks, who has built up the faculty and student personnel of his school. He is 50, a roly-poly little man with a swarthy moon-face, merry squinting eyes, black mustache and knobby goatee--a small Sultan in mufti. A native of Mount Vernon. N. Y., he is an alumnus of Yale, studied architecture at Columbia University and in Paris. He worked as a draughtsman with the famed firm of Carrere & Hastings. In 1914 he began practicing for himself, still executes an occasional design. He is a bachelor, an epicure.