The Users of Art: Medieval Metaphor in the Michigan Law Quadrangle.

• Author: Breisch, Kenneth A.

Amplifying a theme she first took up in the Distinguished Senior Faculty Lecture Series at the University of Michigan's College of Literature, Science, and the Arts in 1991, Dr. Ilene H. Forsyth wrote The Uses of Art: Medieval Metaphor in the Michigan Law Quadrangle to explore "the influence of medieval cloisters and monastic metaphors of cloistrality on our academic environment" (p. vii). As a medievalist and Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Art History at the University of Michigan, Forsyth notes that in undertaking such an exploration, she "expected that some of [her] thinking about Romanesque cloisters would inevitably seep through and guide [her] in a search for its secrets" (p. vii). Forsyth also presents us with an extended study in architectural patronage -- in this case, the philanthropic endeavors of William Wilson Cook, who spent more than eight and a half million dollars on the construction of the Michigan Law Quad between 1919 and 1933.(1) "My hope," the author writes in her introduction, "is that my findings may illumine the general subject of patronage in art as I present this case history" (p. 3).

William Wilson Cook, as Forsyth informs us at the outset of her book, remains something of an enigma. Not only did he supervise the entire construction of the Michigan Law Quad from his homes in New York, but he also apparently never set foot in any part of it. When asked repeatedly for a likeness of himself to be used in a commemorative booklet published in conjunction with the dedication of the first of his gifts to the Law School -- the Lawyer's Club, which was completed in 1924 -- Cook declined. In fact, no photograph of this significant benefactor seems to have survived. As Forsyth observes, we seem to possess an equally vague understanding of his persona.

William Wilson Cook was born in Hillsdale, Michigan, in 1858, the fourth son of nine children born to John Potter and Martha H. Wolford Cook.(2) He apparently attended Hillsdale College for a short time and then went on to the University of Michigan, where he received his A.B. in 1880 and his L.L.B. in 1882. Following a brief stop in Toledo, Cook moved to New York City, where, in 1883, he was admitted to the New York State Bar and entered the office of Frederick B. Coudert. Cook later became personal counsel to Nevada silver magnate John W. Mackay (1831-1902) and general counsel to Mackay's Postal Telegraph and Commercial Cable Companies and to the Mackay Companies. He seems, however, to be best known for his work in corporate law, in which he became an authority on railroad legislation and the workings of the Interstate Commerce Commission. He authored a number of books in this field, including his best-known work, A Treatise on the Law of Corporations Having a Capital Stock,(3) which ran through eight editions between 1887 and 1923, as well as The Principles of Corporation Law,(4) published in 1925, and Power and Responsibility of the American Bar(5), published in 1922.(6) In 1927, as Cook was nearing the end of his life, he published the much more controversial American Institutions and Their Preservation.(7)

Cook's philanthropic endeavors at the University of Michigan began in 1910, when he agreed to contribute $10,000 for the construction of a women's dormitory. At the urging of Harry Burns Hutchins -- who had been Dean of the Law School from 1895 to 1910 and who had just assumed the presidency of the University, a position he held from 1909 to 1920 -- Cook helped erect the Martha Cook Building, an exclusive residence for women. In 1915, Cook dedicated this now-much-beloved campus landmark -- along with the idyllic garden that he added to his gift three years after the opening of the dormitory -- to the memory of his mother. York and Sawyer, a New York architecture firm that had earlier planned Cook's New York townhouse and that would later construct the Michigan Law Quad, designed the Martha Cook Building. During this same period, Cook apparently began to consider endowing a men's dormitory as well, which he envisioned in connection with the University of Michigan Law School he had attended.

This second benefaction, which eventually came to fruition in the form of the Michigan Law Quad, took more definitive form in 1919 when Cook requested that the building contractor, Marc Eidlitz, work up preliminary estimates for a "Quadrangle Building." As Forsyth carefully charts, this initial concept, which was originally intended for a site near the intersection of Washtenaw and North University streets in Ann Arbor, was ultimately moved to its present location and metamorphosed into its current form through the complex interactions of Cook, Hutchins, Henry Moore Bates -- Dean of the Law School from 1910 to 1939 -- and the architect, Edward Palmer York of York and Sawyer. Because he was apparently ill with tuberculosis during the years in which the law school was constructed,(8) Cook -- on his doctor's orders -- retired from his New York City residence to his estate near Port Chester. From both of these locations, Cook painstakingly directed the distribution of his gift through his voluminous...