Ely Jacques Kahn - Kahn and Ayn Rand

Kahn and Ayn Rand

As part of her research for her novel The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand spent a half year in 1937 as an unsalaried assistant to Kahn in his offices in his 2 Park Avenue building, where he mentored her on the profession of architecture. She is quoted by the editor of her posthumously published journal notes as later saying about Kahn: "As a type, he was Guy Francon. He was so much the socially acceptable architect. He was abler than Francon, and he was modern — within careful limits. But his career was strictly dominated by Francon methods. And he had that manner — very elegant and charming."

As argued by Frank Heynick, the summary quote by Rand does not do justice to Kahn's work, nor, based on Heynick's study of Rand's posthumously published journal notes, correspondence and other references, to her own respect for Kahn and his buildings. The fictional Francon had achieved fame in his early forties with an ornate Greco-Roman skyscraper, but had long ceased to do any designing for the large firm he co-owned, instead concentrating on socializing with wealthy clients and potential clients, for whom his chief designer and staff would produce buildings in whatever historicist style they desired. (This was quite the opposite of the uncompromising individualism and innovative genius of the novel's hero Howard Roark, who is based in large measure on the real-life Frank Lloyd Wright.)

By contrast with Francon, Ely Jacques Kahn, although he socialized as needed with clients, was throughout his long career personally involved in designing all the buildings produced by the firm he headed, and those designs often attested to his integrity and innovation in the forms and motifs of his skyscrapers. Although trained – like the fictional Francon – at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, Kahn rejected historicist styles in skyscraper design. His adaptations within New York's legally-mandated set-back regulations included high-rises with resemblances to New World temples of the Mayas, and he variously incorporated features such as thrusting dormers and aerodynamic effects. As for ornamentation, Kahn, who earlier had been inspired by the abstract geometric forms of Moorish and Persian architecture, was, from the mid-twenties onward, highly innovative in adapting the new Art Deco style with polychrome cubist or zigzag motifs reflecting the Jazz Age.

When The Fountainhead was nearing publication, Rand suggested to Kahn that she specifically acknowledge him in an introductory statement. But Kahn modestly – perhaps wary that the novel's theme might prove too controversial – proposed instead that she write a more general acknowledgement to, as published, "the great profession of architecture and its heroes" and to "the architects who gave me their generous assistance."