Nearly eight decades after its construction, the Ford House in Aurora continues to showcase the extraordinary architectural vision of Bruce Goff, a Kansas-born architect whose unconventional designs are experiencing a remarkable cultural resurgence. The house, with its distinctive red curved steel ribs and black coal walls dotted with marbles and glass cullet, sparked such polarizing reactions during construction that owners Ruth Van Sickle Ford and her husband Albert posted a sign reading: "We don't like your house either."
Goff, often called an outsider and rebel in architectural circles, has been described as "the best architect the public's never heard of" and a master of organic architecture whose relentless desire to never copy himself or anyone else has kept him from mainstream recognition alongside Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Sullivan, or Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Starting his career at age 12 and continuing until his death 66 years later, Goff designed more than 500 buildings, most located in middle America.
The Ford House represents one of eight structures Goff built in Illinois, including two in Chicago, where he established a private practice in Rogers Park before World War II and taught at Ford's academy. His eclectic designs—ranging from angular to curvy, futuristic to whimsical—and innovative use of nontraditional materials like glass ashtrays, feathers, sequins, and coal mirror the quirky attractions that became synonymous with Route 66. Architectural historian Charles Jencks once dubbed him "the Michelangelo of kitsch," a description that reportedly irritated Goff.
Like the famous Route 66, which celebrates its centennial next year, Goff is experiencing a cultural renaissance. In 2018, T: The New York Times Style Magazine profiled him in an article titled "The Man Who Made Wildly Imaginative, Gloriously Disobedient Buildings." Three years later, Tulsa, Oklahoma—the city where he began his architectural journey—hosted the inaugural Goff Fest, an annual celebration co-created by a local filmmaker whose documentary about Goff's life and work is scheduled for wider release this winter.
Starting in December, the Art Institute of Chicago will present "Bruce Goff: Material Worlds," an exhibition featuring more than 200 of his drawings, models, and paintings from the museum's extensive Goff collection and archive, donated in 1990, eight years after his death. Co-curator Alison Fisher explained that one of the show's primary goals is introducing Goff to the broader public, noting that he "just really isn't in the mainstream of most people's architectural history education."
Born in 1904 in Alton, Kansas, Goff's family eventually settled in Tulsa, where he drew inspiration from the natural world and Native American tribes. "When you're out in the hinterland, as they say, you're not supposed to have any culture," he told a BBC television crew in 1981. "And there isn't a whole lot of it around except what's native to the area." He described his entry into architecture as accidental, having never heard the words "architecture" or "architect" before his father, after drinking, took him to meet the best architect in town at Rush, Endacott & Rush.
Starting as an apprentice at age 12, Goff was designing homes within two years. His early drawings drew comparisons to Wright, though he was unfamiliar with the famous architect's work. He eventually corresponded with both Wright and Sullivan, asking whether he should pursue formal architectural education. Sullivan advised him he'd "spent his life trying to live down" such education, while Wright's response was shorter: "If you want to lose Bruce Goff, go to school." Taking their advice, he continued learning on the job.
During the 1920s, Goff created at least a dozen buildings in Tulsa, including the 1925 home and studio for his high school art teacher, Adah Robinson, featuring what is considered among the first uses of a sunken conversation pit. Robinson later recommended Goff to assist with plans for the Boston Avenue United Methodist Church in Tulsa. The resulting structure—part Gothic cathedral, part Art Deco skyscraper—features a striking 250-foot central tower with vertical windows between Indiana limestone columns, crowned by a spire of glass and copper sculpted to evoke hands raised in prayer.
The church project created a bitter rift between Robinson and Goff over design credit. While the church credits Robinson as designer and displays her portrait prominently in its center hall, Goff's close friend and fellow architect Bart Prince maintains the building is clearly Goff's work. "He was shocked by it," Prince said of Goff's reaction to the controversy. "He felt he was really being cheated."
When the stock market crashed and the Great Depression hit, Goff defied conventional wisdom by moving to Chicago in 1934 instead of following the westward migration. He worked with artist Alfonso Ianelli, at the Libbey-Owens-Ford glass company, and as a teacher at Ruth Ford's fine arts academy. Fisher notes that "Goff is really the champion of the everyday," explaining that while architecture is often seen as elite, "Goff just was picking materials that were so commonplace. A lot of things he actually just got at five-and-dime shops, and he built at every single price point."
After serving with the U.S. Navy's construction force, the Seabees, during World War II, Goff returned to Oklahoma and joined the University of Oklahoma's architecture department in 1947. Despite having only a high school education, he became department chair within a year and quickly raised the school's national and international reputation while producing what many consider his career's finest homes.
Life magazine took notice of Goff's work, featuring several of his homes in major articles. A 1948 story titled "Consternation and Bewilderment in Oklahoma" mentioned that 14,500 people gathered to view a home he built in Norman for the Ledbetter family. A 1951 Life profile of the Ford House began: "Architect Bruce Goff, one of the few U.S. architects whom Frank Lloyd Wright considers creative, scorns houses that are boxes with little holes." Another 1955 article featured the Goff-designed Bavinger House, which used suspended saucer-like platforms instead of traditional rooms and a roof that spiraled like a helix around a central mast.
Britni Harris, co-founder of Goff Fest and director of the documentary "GOFF," emphasizes his artistic vision: "In architecture now, it's very easy to copy and paste these easy and cheap buildings, and unfortunately, a lot of the cities in the U.S. are being built into these box-like structures. Bruce Goff was not only an architect, he was an artist. He thought about your environment and how that impacts you. He wanted people to grow and be inspired in his buildings."
Goff's career faced a major setback in 1955 when he resigned from the University of Oklahoma amid charges of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. While initially claiming poor health, details emerged of a misdemeanor charge alleging inappropriate conduct with a 14-year-old boy. Goff, who was gay but quiet about his personal life, initially pleaded not guilty but eventually changed his plea and was fined $500. A prevailing narrative suggests the allegation was likely false, resulting from prejudice against a gay man in 1950s conservative Oklahoma.
Despite the controversy, Goff continued his prolific output, moving to Bartlesville and opening an office in Wright's Price Tower before eventually settling in Tyler, Texas. In 1968, when Arizona State University invited him to speak to architecture students despite faculty opposition, 21-year-old Bart Prince defied his instructor's advice to skip the lecture. "Goff's work was really controversial anyway, but especially in the schools because a lot of them thought: It isn't architecture. It isn't serious," Prince recalled. "They couldn't understand it—to them, Goff's work was just kind of fantasy."
Prince and Goff became close friends and collaborators. Prince remembered Goff as "very low key" with "a voice that was low" who "walked like a cat, padding along." He fondly recalled Goff's humor and love of puns, including how he discreetly stashed raw fish in his pocket at a Japanese sushi restaurant to avoid offending staff, and his later addiction to television, particularly "Star Trek," after initially rejecting the medium.
Prince emphasized Goff's client-centered approach: "A lot of architects seem to try to get around what their clients want. They think their clients don't know. Goff was the other way. He never went to try to get a client, which makes him different than a lot of architects. They had to seek him out." Goff would extensively interview clients about their preferences and the building site before developing specifically tailored designs.
Goff died on August 4, 1982, in Tyler, Texas. Two posthumous projects—the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's Pavilion for Japanese Art and the Al Struckus House in LA—were completed by Prince. His cremated remains were interred at Chicago's Graceland Cemetery, the final resting place of architectural giants Louis Sullivan, John Root, Daniel Burnham, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Appropriately, Goff's headstone, with its rounded pyramid shape and single chunk of glass cullet salvaged from one of his destroyed houses, looks unlike any other in the cemetery, reflecting his lifelong commitment to architectural originality.
