University at Buffalo Libraries

Finding Aid for the J.J. Polivka Papers, 1945-1959

MS 48

State University of New York at Buffalo. University Archives

Finding aid prepared by Archives Staff, circa 1984, 1997; updated by Erin Verhoef, September 2006.
Finding aid encoded in EAD by Erin Verhoef, September 2006.
Finding aid written in English.
Finding aid prepared using local best practices.

© 2006. State University of New York at Buffalo. All rights reserved.

Collection Overview

Administrative Information

[Description and dates], Box/folder number, MS 48, J.J. Polivka Papers, 1945-1959, University Archives, The State University of New York at Buffalo.

See the Archives' preferred citations instructions for additional information.

Donated by Elizabeth Houdek, Jan Polivka and Milos Polivka, children of Jaroslav J. Polivka, on November 7, 1982, through the good offices of Katka Houdek Hammond, of Buffalo, New York. Additional materials were donated by Katka Houdek Hammond, October 9, 1997.

The J.J. Polivka Papers, 1945-1959 are open for research.

Copyright of papers in the collection may be held by their authors, or the authors' heirs or assigns. Researchers must obtain the written permission of the holder(s) of copyright and the University Archives before publishing quotations from materials in the collection. Most papers may be copied in accordance with the library's usual procedures unless otherwise specified.

Collection processed by Archives staff, circa 1984, 1997.

No further accruals are expected to this collection.

Biographical Note

The internationally renowned Czechoslovakian structural engineer and architect Dr. Jaroslav Joseph Polivka was born to humble beginnings in Prague in 1886. He worked his way through school and earned his undergraduate degree in engineering from the College of Technology in Prague in 1909. He then pursued graduate study at the Federal Polytechnic Institute in Zurich, Switzerland and the Prague Institute of Technology, where he earned a doctoral degree in 1917. After serving in World War I, he opened his own architectural and engineering company and began to develop his skills in stress analysis. He became an expert in photo-elastic stress analysis, a technique that examines small-scale transparent models in polarized light.

Polivka won international praise for his design of the Czech Pavilion at the Paris Exposition of 1937, a collaboration with Czech architect, Jaromír Krejcar. Two years later, he worked with Kamil Roscot to design another Czech Pavilion at the 1939 New York World's Fair. Later that year, Polivka immigrated to the United States and took a position as research associate and lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1941, he and colleague Victor di Suvero co-invented a structural design technique that received a patent for improvements in structures.

It was not until 1946 that Polivka began to work with Frank Lloyd Wright, but once they established a business partnership, the two men worked together until Wright's death in 1959. Architect Ivan Margolius gives an account of the first interaction between Wright and Polivka in his book, Architects + Engineers = Structures:

In 1946 Wright (1867-1959) wrote an article in Architectural Forum about the difficulties he had with the steel company engineers who condemned his Fallingwater house (1934-1937) structural design. Wright wrote to Edgar Kaufmann, his client, saying: 'I should like this box [with this letter] put under the corner stone of your house when the cornerstone is laid. I want this done so that when the house is torn down, 2,000 years from now, people will learn what complete damn fools these engineers are!' Prague-born structural engineer Jaroslav Josef Polivka (1886-1960) responded to the article by sending Wright an enthusiastic letter: 'I am admiring you as an engineer, although, according to a quotation in the last Forum issue, these engineers are complete damn fools. You may be right since the engineers in their structural conceptions are very seldom guided by eternal laws of the Nature ... The average engineer knows only beams, girders, columns and any deviation from his every day tools is considered as unusual, crazy, or dangerous.' The letter brought in return Wright's invitation to Taliesin and opened a professional relationship that lasted until Wright's death. (41)*

Polivka worked with Frank Lloyd Wright on many projects, performing stress analyses and investigations of specific building materials. Although they collaborated on a total of seven projects, only two were actually built: the Johnson Research Tower, 1946-1951 and the Guggenheim Museum, 1946-1959. Frank Lloyd Wright died six months before the Guggenheim Museum opened in October of 1959. Jaroslav Joseph Polivka died one year later in Berkeley, California at age 74.

*Margolius, Ivan. Architects + Engineers = Structures. Chichester, West Sussex : Wiley-Academy, 2002.

Chronology

Scope and Content Note

The collection spans the years 1945-1959 and contains correspondence, notes, drawings and clippings, which document the collaboration of J.J. Polivka and Frank Lloyd Wright.

Projects documented are the San Francisco Butterfly Bridge, the Johnson Research Tower, the Guggenheim Museum, the Morris House, the Rogers Lacy Hotel and the Belmont Pavilion.

Correspondence primarily concerns financial and travel arrangements.

The collection also includes drafts of letters and articles by Polivka including "What's It Like to Work with Wright," "The Aesthetics of Bridges," and "Are Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesins Educational Institutions."

Photograph subjects include Polivka, Wright, family, friends, and students at Taliesin West, as well as project planning.

Arrangement

Collection is arranged by format into six series: I.Correspondence II.Books II.Notes III.Drawings IV.Clippings V.Photographs

Search Terms

The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the Library's online catalog.

Contributors

Subject Terms

Genre Terms