LOUIS ISIDORE KAHN and HIS THREE FAMILIES

Besides this video, here is a link to a short article from VANITY FAIR about the HYDE PARK ON THE EAST RIVER architecture to be...
VANITY FAIR : ARCHITECTURE : THE STUNNING HYDE PARK ON THE EAST RIVER designed by LOUIS KAHN

LOUIS KAHN : DESIGN MUSEUM SITE : RESUME

"Kahn’s private life was equally turbulent, marred by financial difficulties but also by secrecy. He remained married to Esther, with whom he had a daughter, Sue Ann, but had two more children, born to women with whom he conducted long and passionate love affairs. Kahn had a second daughter, Alexandra born in 1954, with Anne Tyng, a young architect who worked for him in Philadelphia, and a son, Nathaniel, born in 1962, with another collaborator, the landscape architect Harriet Pattison. Years after Kahn’s death, Nathaniel made a documentary film, My Architect, about his father.

Just as Anne Tyng made an important contribution to Kahn’s 1950s buildings, Pattison arose his interest in the relationship of architecture to its location and landscape during the 1960s. This was one of the most magical elements of the Salk Institute, perched on a cliff above the Pacific Ocean, and was equally important to Kahn’s 1960-65 campus buildings at Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania, the 1967-72 Exeter Library in New Hampshire and 1968-74 Yale Center for British Art. Striving for perfection, Kahn’s development during this period culminated in another US masterpiece in the 1967-72 Kimbell Art Museum at Fort Worth in Texas, which is still regarded as an extraordinarily inspiring and empathetic environment for painting and sculpture."


Louis Kahn : Design Museum Site for full article...

LOUIS KAHN : ARCHITECT : ONE WIFE AND TWO MISTRESSES : ANN TYNG and HARRIET PATTISON : MISTER AND MISTRESSES OF THE MONTH : JANUARY 2013

I recently watched a DVD called "My Architect - A Son's Journey" and surprise!

It wasn't just about the architecture, but about a genius of a man who had a "complicated" personal life which he was rather private about, architect Louis Kahn who studied at the University of Pennsylvania and later taught at Penn and Yale.

His two mistresses, Ann Tyng and Harriet Pattison, were educated women who were also architects and worked with him on projects. With them he had a child each, and one of those children, his only son Nathaniel, made the documentary film in 2003 about his father. His search was for understand of the man who had fathered him. While many famous architects made commentary about Louis Kahn as an architect in this film I found the mistresses and the meeting of the children most interesting. It's not clear to me for how long these educated and dedicated women worked before or after having their child, who bought the houses, or what their finances were. It's implied that Kahn was financially involved with all of them.  They resided in the Philadephia area.

Splitting his time between three families, Kahn was too busy with his career, which included travel to far off places, to be a father who saw much of his children. He also made some promises he couldn't keep like that he would leave his wife and come and live with one or the other.

In this case, "Love Triangle" doesn't describe the relationships.

These women had children when having a child while single was a scandal lived as single mothers all their lives.

With Ann Tyng, Louis had a daughter named Alexandra, born in 1954. To avoid scandal at the time, Ann was sent to Rome to have her daughter. With Harriet Pattison, he had Nathaniel. (I don't know the story about how Nathaniel got the surname Kahn.) Kahn's wife Esther and his daughter with her, Sue Ann, lived several miles from Nathaniel, who born in 1962, and his mother and Sue Ann's mother never crossed paths until Louis' funeral. (Louis died at age 73.)
The Rabbi who officiated at Louis' funeral didn't know he had a son.

NEITHER MISTRESS EVER MARRIED ANYONE.



C 2013 Mistress Manifesto / Missy Rapport   All Rights Reserved including International and Internet Rights