Louis Philip Trutter Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

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A. You haw where it is? Take East Lake Drive. . , Q. Want to tell me later? A, Oh, I forgot, we're still going on. Q. So what else have you done that you've been happy about? A. Oh, eighty or ninety or a hundred schools all over the state of Illinois in thq baby boom days. Q, So you were known for your schools? A. That was the principle work in the 1950's which was fine. Q. Did you have a certain design or a rather a formula for your plans? A. Actually in the early '50's we really got into problems because the war was pn and there were restrictions on the steel we could use on buildings if you could imagine that. y e don't think of that, so we developed a method, these one story buildings, and we could use bb timbers. I mean we could get these great ten by eighteen or twelve by sixteen timbers that werq twenty four or twenty five feet long, and then they were tre~ted, salt treated, and then we put I them on four foot centers instead of steel beams for roof. We could have a little bit of steel. TwQnty five percent maybe, so we had to save that for the gymnasium and these were classrooms here we used all wood and then they made big sheets of, not flexicote. If you were to take exc sior, very course excelsior and mix it up with cement and you put it in forms about four inches 'ck. Four feet wide, and eight feet long, and when that poured cement set up it was stiff soli and yet the excelsior left swirls and designs on the ceilings, see, so that was your acoustic for the classrooms, so we could take these eight foot pieces and the beams were on four foot cen s so you could take one sheet and go across a beam to the next one, so you had covered eight eet with a beam in the middle supportive. Then with the next one, you'd stagger them back and rth, and so you I had an acoustical ceiling and you had to. . . Q. Well, you were very innovative? A. Oh , I had some good partners too. I teamed up with a guy from Lincoln whose father was one of the first, he was number six in the state of Illinois. The sixth registered architect. He was Joe Deal and he and a partner of his designed the courthouse, the county courthouse in Lincoln. It's still thereand going strong. Q. Are most of the pieces you've done still +sting? A. Oh, yeah, yeah. ff
Q. What was the last thing that you did? A. It takes a lot of thought. I'm not sure. There were some nice houses but. . ,the houses were fun but about all they did was to pay the rent and the telephone bill. Q. Were they easier? A. No. Q, Did you have a formula for them?. What style were you? Bungalow? A. Whatever they wanted. I tried to please the clients in that I didn't force except on some lady who'd come into me and say, "Phil, I've seen some of them very much and I want you to do one for us and I've got some ideas very big folder and it's full of all the stuff they had pulled £rom House Garden, Better Homes and Gardens, books that they got on House this one and that one and the other one and that's when you get think, ' Now this living room I love, this is wonderful, and this room is just about what we need and so on,' and you take all put that into a house that will meet the budget, of course. : Q. And their approval. A, And their approval. And so, my first conversation then would be after I fo 6 nd that out, "Have you looked around at the existing houses that were already built that could be emodeled to suit your requirements, otherwise you're going to spend a year or a year and a half f decisions and decisioqs and decisions of what color here, what kind of light fixtures there, w at kind of tile do you want and so on and so on and so on." Q. So what became of that? A. They said, "No, we'll go ahead on our own." I never talked any of them out of it, and so it was always compromise, compromise, compromise. I did my bast to put their houses. . .and then I'd interject some of my own ideas to make their's work better and they usually would buy those. Q. Then how did you charge them when they kept changing and compromising, changing a d compromising? A. That's one of the headaches because you'd make sketches, they'd sketch you to death and you'd charge them six or eight percent. Q. So what would you say were your fondest memories of architecture for yo*? And would you do it again? t
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University of Illinois at Springfie
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ARCWES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF UINOIS
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CATALOGUE Trutter, Philip Louis (19
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Q. We'll get to that. A. . . .but b
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almost an apprenticeship or somethi
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ecently that a female teacher can b
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I skin and the other, he got a comm
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know, more or less today, I don't h
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Q. Did you finish high school there
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Q. That's why you're so good at jig
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the Art Association (Recollection o
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Q. Who were 'all' of you? Bunch, an
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A. Dhg this time, that was Watman's
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A. Except I didn't because a couple
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A. I wouldn't be surprised. Mother
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I can't remember if we talked about
Page 34 and 35: Q. What else do you think the kids
Page 36 and 37: A.. Yeah. It was better than the jo
Page 38 and 39: Q. So things are changing because t
Page 40 and 41: Q. So they changed hands and famili
Page 42 and 43: Q. Rope, and they used to take it o
Page 44 and 45: i Q. There are some wonderFu1 pictu
Page 46 and 47: establish where the shoreline would
Page 48 and 49: Q. With Lake two, they have no plan
Page 50 and 51: Q. What's it like driving around to
Page 52 and 53: Q. Did you attend? Do you remember
Page 54 and 55: 1 I A. Yeah I suppose. With six foo
Page 56 and 57: And that was quite an art, taking I
Page 58 and 59: Q, No, but do you have a picture of
Page 60 and 61: mean there were other things but it
Page 62 and 63: Q, It was cheap in those days. The
Page 64 and 65: slice in it and that's the way the
Page 66 and 67: Q. Have you been back there? A. Whe
Page 68 and 69: they had a little English, and say,
Page 70 and 71: they discovered all these caves wit
Page 72 and 73: this trip we took the girls on for
Page 74 and 75: in theaters and. ..do you want to h
Page 76 and 77: Q. Now this is where you began to s
Page 78 and 79: do it over, hunt for another rule t
Page 80 and 81: "Come on down to the breMast shop.
Page 82 and 83: A. Not until a couple of months lat
Page 86 and 87: A. Not the way it's done today. It'
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Louis Philip Trutter Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

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