Irving Kane Pond

In 1879, Pond moved to Chicago to pursue a career as an architect. He worked as a draftsman in the offices of his former teacher, William LeBaron Jenney, and worked as the head draftsman in the office of Solon Spencer Beman during the construction of the planned Pullman community.[4] While working with Beman, Pond was an ardent supporter of the Pullman planned community, he later acknowledged the resentment of Pullman residents that the town was anachronistic and represented some form of medieval barony.[10][11]

Some of Pond's earliest works as an independent architect were for clients in his home town of Ann Arbor and nearby Detroit. As early as 1882, he designed "a modest but commodious home of stone and brick" on South State Street for Dr. Victor C. Vaughan. Pond later pointed to the designs of the old mantels in the Vaughan house which "foreshadowed his future works."[12] He also designed Ann Arbor's Ladies Library Association Building (1885) and the West Physics Building for the University of Michigan, built in 1887 and destroyed by fire in 1967.[13] In 1887, he renovated the Detroit Opera House, increasing the seating capacity to 2,100 and relocating the auditorium to the main floor.[14]

In 1886, Pond and his brother Allen Bartlitt Pond (1858–1929) formed their own architectural firm in Chicago under the name Pond and Pond.[1][2] The brothers continued to operate the firm for more than 40 years, and their buildings are considered to be among the best examples of Arts and Crafts architecture in Chicago.[15]

Hull House Entrance to Quadrangle

Auditorium and Coffee House at Hull House

Arched entrance to City Club

The Pond brothers gained their greatest acclaim as the architects for Jane Addams's Hull House. Their father's work as warden of the state prison had sparked an interest in social reform and the settlement house movement. Allen Bartlitt Pond was the assistant superintendent of the Armour Mission,[16] an educational and healthcare center, when Jane Addams came to Chicago in January 1889 looking for a building in which to open a new settlement house.[17] The two became friends and were riding in a carriage when Addams saw an old two-story brick house on Halsted Street.[18] Addams took a lease on the house, which she named Hull House after its original owner, and hired the Ponds to put the old house into shape.[19][20]

Between 1890 and 1907, the Ponds were the architects for the Hull House as the project expanded rapidly.[21] The first building they designed for Hull House was the Butler Art Gallery. Built in 1891, the Butler Gallery was situated on the same lot as Hull House. It consisted of a reading room, an exhibition hall that was "the last word in design and lighting for those days," and a studio above.[20] Numerous other building projects followed, including the original coffee house and gymnasium in 1893, the Children's Building in 1895, remodels and additions to the original building in 1895 and 1899, the Jane Club in 1898, a new Coffee House and Hull House Theater in 1899, the Hull House Apartments and Men's Club in 1901 and 1902, the Woman's Club (Bowen Hall) in 1904, the Boys' Club in 1906 and the Mary Crane Nursery in 1907.[22] The Pond brothers were affectionately known by residents of the Hull House complex as Allen the "deep Pond" and Irving the "wide pond."[23]

One of Addams' biographers wrote that the "Pond brothers did it all, harmonized everything," and described the scene when Irving Pond attended Addams' memorial service in 1935:

Irving K., at Jane Addams memorial services in the Hull House Court, when Doctor Gilkey said, 'if you seek her monument look around you,' looked round also with tears in his eyes but pride in his heart; the visible memorial to Jane Addams was also a visible memorial to the Ponds.[24]

The only surviving building from the Ponds' Hull House complex is the 1905 dining hall, a simple Craftsman style building that was designated as a National Historic Landmark in the 1960s.[25][26]

The Ponds also designed club houses and settlement houses for other social reform organizations, including the Chicago Commons settlement house building (1901), the Northwestern University Settlement House (1901), and the City Club of Chicago building (1910). The City Club building, noted for its "gently curving limestone arch that ties together the windows of the second floor," is today operated as the John Marshall Law School.[27] When the City Club building opened in 1910, it was considered a symbol of the reform movement:

The new building embodied the soaring expectations of the reform movement, as well as providing the material comforts of a middle-class social club. Its two-story dining-lecture hall, complete with balcony and private eating chambers, accommodated over two hundred for the weekly luncheon talks on social and political issues of the day. ... Architect and club member Irving K. Pond declared that 'every line of the building illustrated some phase of the uplift movement.'[28]

Architectural drawing by Pond and Pond for the Oregon Artists Colony.

Oregon Public Library designed by Pond and Pond (1908).

Pond was also a leading member of the Chicago arts community in the late 19th and early 20th Century. In 1898, Pond was one of the founders of the Eagle's Nest Art Colony near Oregon, Illinois.[29] Pond and eleven others, including his brother Allen Pond, Lorado Taft, Hamlin Garland, Ralph Clarkson, Horace Spencer Fiske, leased a plot of land on a steep ridge with "craggy rocks" and gnarled cedars overlooking the Rock River.[30] The Pond brothers designed the home that was built for the colony, and the group spent their summers at the colony with other sculptors, painters, writers, architects, naturalists and kindred spirits.[30]

The artists colony became integrated with the Oregon community, and the Pond brothers undertook several significant architectural projects in the Oregon area:

• Oregon Public Library. In 1908, the city of Oregon built a new public library based on a design by Pond and Pond and with funding from Andrew Carnegie. The Ponds' design has been described as having a "commodious and pleasing" interior with an exterior of white brick and Elizabethan-Gothic architecture.[31] One of the unusual features of the design was a two-story art room in which artists from Eagle's Nest displayed their works and offered instruction to local residents.[32]
• The Soldier's Monument. In 1916, the city commissioned a monument that included sculpture by Lorado Taft and an elaborate marble exedra by Pond and Pond.[33]
• Lowden Residence. The residence of Frank Lowden, Governor of Illinois from 1917 to 1921, was another Pond and Pond design. The house is located several miles south of Oregon on the Sinnissippi Farm.[34]

In 1907, Pond was also one of the founders with Hamlin Garland of the Cliff Dwellers Club (originally known as the Attic Club and later the Little Room), a private club in Chicago for professionals engaged in the fine arts and performing arts. In its early years as the Little Room, the group was described as "an exclusive organization consisting of creative individuals of like temperament joined together for relaxation."[35] Pond served as president of the Cliff Dwellers from 1934 to 1935.[4]

In recognition of his contributions to architecture, Pond became a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects in 1900 and served as president of the American Institute of Architects from 1910 to 1911.[2] He also represented the U.S. government and the AIA at the International Congress of Architects at Rome and Venice in 1911, delivering addresses at both.[1] He was also a founder of the Chicago Architectural Club and served as president of the Illinois Society of Architects.[1]

Purdue Memorial Union by Pond and Pond

Unless otherwise mentioned all were designed by Pond and Pond

Pond's best known buildings include three National Historic Landmark structures located in Chicago — the Hull House dining hall[25][26] the Lorado Taft Midway Studios,Alice Sinkevitch (2004). AIA Guide to Chicago. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p. 452. ISBN 0-15-602908-1.[36] and the Frank R. Lillie House (1904).[37][38] Other notable Pond designs include the Freer House (1898) in Ann Arbor, the American School of Correspondence building (1906–1907) in Chicago, the federal building in Kankakee, Illinois, the Michigan Union (1919) built on the site of Pond's boyhood home in Ann Arbor,[39] the Purdue Memorial Union (1924) at Purdue University, the MSU Union in East Lansing, Michigan, the Kansas Memorial Union at the University of Kansas, the Park Ridge Public Library, the Michigan League in Ann Arbor, the Omaha Apartments in Chicago, the Kent Building in Chicago (1902), and the Toll Building in Chicago (1908).[40]

Highland Park Club House designed by Pond and Pond.

American School of Correspondence by Pond and Pond

As early as 1892, Pond became known as one of the "earliest modernizers in architecture."[41] The Art Institute of Chicago, where Pond's papers are housed, said of the firm: "While Pond and Pond were best known through their work for social service organizations, they designed a wide range of buildings — social, religious, educational/academic, residential, governmental, and civic — mainly in the Chicago area and the Midwest. They were known for detailed brickwork, asymmetrical massing, and distinctive decorative detail, producing fine examples of Arts and Crafts and early modern architecture."[21]

In 1905 a 15-page article in the Architectural Record by Pond and illustrated by his designs was published.[42] Pond described his views in it about architecture as an art:

Architecture is an art, and as an art, it does not consist simply in piling up forms, old or new, but is a means of expression. ... If architecture is an art and art consists in the expression of life, then that is neither architecture nor art which merely reproduces, even in new combinations, the old forms because they were once the accepted forms. That is a phase of archaeology and is unworthy of living architecture. ... However, the old ideas are not to be spurned and the old forms are not altogether to be cast aside when they contain the spark of life ...[42]

Pond's article was viewed by some as a criticism of those in the Prairie School who overemphasized the horizontal over the vertical. In this regard, Pond wrote:

In architectural composition, as in music, order is comprehended in rhythm. Rhythm is expressed in the flow of part into part, of mass into mass, in the appearance and reappearance of certain proportions which are made to exist between the subordinate masses and between these masses and the dominant mass; between all the parts of the perfect whole. Without order there is no architecture; without rhythmic composition no vital architecture can be. That is the highest architecture in which rhythmic action of the structural forces becomes apparent. Vertical forces in action, by the law of gravity, tend to work in right lines; horizontal forces, acted upon by this same law tend to work in curves. ... It is not enough that the rhythmic movement be in horizontal direction only, but there must be a rhythmic flow vertically as well. The result of these combined movements should be that of unity -- simple in its effect though complex in its harmonies.[42]

Apartment House for Jas. G. Miller

Academy House at Lake Forest

In the AIA Guide to Chicago, the Ponds are identified as part of the "circle of young architects", including Frank Lloyd Wright, that was responsible for "transforming the concepts of the Arts & Crafts movement into the indigenous Prairie School."Alice Sinkevitch (2004). AIA Guide to Chicago. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p. 272. ISBN 0-15-602908-1. Pond was a contemporary, and in some ways rival, of Wright in the Chicago architectural scene of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. Both were members of the Chicago Architectural Club and served as judges and participants in the Club's annual competitions.[43] One biographer of Wright noted that Wright was insulted when the American Institute of Architects in 1912 commissioned a study of midwestern "progressive architecture" and instructed the investigators to examine the work of Louis Sullivan and Pond, but not including Wright.[44] In a letter to Lewis Mumford, Wright expressed his dislike for the "truly-old" Pond:

Yesterday someone told me that truly-old I.K. Pond took exception to your 'Sticks and Stones' because you weren't a 'practicing architect.' What 'practicing architects' know anything at all of architecture anyway, -- even if they could write about it? Certainly not he. He's a dried herring, hanging beneath the eaves or Architecture.[45]

While progressive in his approach to architecture, Pond was not as revolutionary as others in the Chicago school of his day. Architect Stuart Cohen, FAIA, noted that, while the Pond brothers' architecture departs from traditional architectural styles, they "did not break radically from such stylistic forms" but sought instead "to create a modern American architecture without rejecting architectural stylistic traditions, but simplifying them through the emphasis of geometry and the inherent quality of building materials and construction."[46]

In 2009, Pond's autobiography, written in the two years before his death, was published by Hyoogen Press through the efforts of Chicago architect David Swan.[46] At the time of the autobiography's release, architecture historian Robert Bruegmann opined that the Pond brothers "have remained relatively obscure because they didn't fit in with narratives that wished to see Chicago architecture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries as a prelude to European modernism of the 1920s."[46] Nevertheless, Bruegmann noted that "Chicago architecture was always a great deal more than that" and expressed his satisfaction that the publication of Pond's autobiography "should go a long way toward bringing back into focus one of America's most interesting and important architectural practices."[46]