When The Lions Come

During the last half of the 20th Century architects became the unwitting victims of professional change. Like action in a repertory stage company, the scripts of acceptable styles ranged from Classical to Deconstructivistic. The roles of the architect bounced from creative genius to marketing flack and back to creative genius. The client list changed from patrons of the arts to bottom-line real estate developers. An architect remembers, describing those years between the Great Depression and the Millennium, moving from a New England childhood to adult years in the West with clients, cohorts and contractors that varied from saints to scoundrels.