Prox de Rome

Prix de Rome

Annually for the past 23 years an architectural student, "unmarried, a citizen of the U. S. not over 30," has won a Fellowship worth $8,000 to go to the American Academy in Rome and study there for three years. The winner has the satisfaction of knowing that he is theoretically the best U. S. architectural hope of the year, that at the end of his studies he may expect a job in a good architect's office or an instructorship in a reputable school, that he may well become a Great Architect. Among famed U. S. architects who have run washes and prepared esquisses as Prix-winners at the American Academy are John Russell Pope and William S. Covell. Announced last week as 1930 Prix winner was Walter Louis Reichardt, 22, of Los Angeles, who graduates this month from the University of Pennsylvania School of Fine Arts.

Winner Reichardt had, in the opinion of the judges, turned in the best design for the problem: "A church and parish house of a style in harmony with the traditions of early America." Explaining his adeptness with pen and brush, he told newshawks that he had been drawing since he was eight years old. "My father, who is a designer of architectural woodwork, used to give me his drawings to copy. He used to give me $1 for each copy I made. It made me feel pretty important. I didn't realize that his real object simply was to keep me out of trouble."

Of his design said he: "My inspiration for the church spire came from the fine spire of the old North Church in New Haven. I was afraid all through that one of the Yale boys would also work from that, but none of them did." Well might Winner Reichardt have feared the Yale threat, for in the past four years two Yale men from the recently enlarged art school at New Haven have won the Prix de Rome for architecture. Schools with the greatest number of fellowship winners are: 1) Columbia; 2) Pennsylvania; 3) M. I. T. and Yale.

At Rome, Fellow Reichardt will be allotted a studio and quarters at the American Academy. Working on his own he may use the Academy's atelier, but the Academy "is not a school in any commonly accepted sense ... it does not have classes nor offer courses of study. Only . . . winners of the Prizes of Rome are admitted. To these artists . . . the opportunity is offered for the enlargement and fuller development of their knowledge and talents through first-hand contact with the record of the past and in close association with one another. What the Academy offers ... is not meant to be a benevolent assistance to worthy youth, but the means whereby the best talent discoverable may be raised to its highest powers for the elevation of American art."

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