I’m standing on Aramingo
Avenue waiting for a bus when a guy passing on a
bicycle skids to a stop in front of me. The stranger takes off his helmet and
introduces himself: Anthony Campuzano, a Pew Fellow artist with work in the
Philadelphia Museum of Art and PAFA. He also tells me that he grew up in my
grandfather’s house at 40 W. Albemarle Street
in Lansdowne.
I do a double take
and check to see if I’ve been struck by lightning.
My grandfather, Frank V. Nickels was a Philadelphia
architect of some note (his papers are archived at the Athenaeum of
Philadelphia). He designed the house at 40 W. Albermarle Street
sometime in the early 1920s and sold the mansion to the Campuzano family
shortly before his death in 1985. The mansion was a place I visited many times
as a child. I can still recall its Old World charm: the museum
style oil paintings, wall tapestries, hand carved Chinese furniture, a Steinway
piano, shelves of books and an immense bust of Dante Alighieri on the high
living room fireplace.
Anthony tells me he’s been trying to track
me down for a while because he wants me to contribute to an exhibit, Beyond Cold Polished Stones, by artists
with ties to Lansdowne, currently at the 20/20 House. I agree to send him photos
of my grandmother in the living room of 40 West as well an original poem and
some items related to my grandfather’s architectural practice.
At the exhibit’s opening reception, I learn
that one of the legends of 20th Century America visited my grandfather sometime in 1936 or ’37. The
occasion was the negotiation of land rights for the proposed building of Nazareth Hospital in Northeast
Philadelphia.
Because my grandfather was hired by the
Archdiocese of Philadelphia to design Nazareth, he was asked to try to get an agreement of sale from
the owner of the land. Without land rights, the hospital could not be
built.
The owner of the land was the 6’4” tall Hollywood playboy and movie producer, Howard Hughes, who had made a name for
himself in 1928 when his comedy, “Two
Arabian Knights,” won an Oscar. Hughes
had also co-directed the 1930 film, “Hell’s
Angels,” a film about WWI combat pilots starring Jean Harlow. Hughes’ inherited
family wealth enabled him to buy all the combat planes used in the film. A
natural daredevil and pilot himself, Hughes took part in the filmed combat dog
fights in which 3 pilots died.
As Hollywood’s most eligible bachelor, the handsome Hughes had had
affairs with Katherine Hepburn, Ava Gardner, Joan Crawford, Rita Hayworth and
many others. In later years he had the habit of collecting beautiful women with
movie star aspirations. It was his habit to put them up in apartments or small
houses while paying their rent and daily expenses. Initially Hughes may have
shown a romantic interest in these women but over time this interest would wane.
Hughes was content to call them once a month as he continued to send them
checks, sometimes for years. He was also attracted to male stars like Cary
Grant and Randolph Scott but this part of his life was kept secret, given the
tenor of the times. In 1939, two years
after his meeting with my grandfather, he flew around the world and was honored
with a ticker tape parade in New York City.
Let’s go back to 1937 when Hughes piloted his
own plane to New
York and then to
Philadelphia’s Northeast Airport where my grandparents stood waiting for him on the
tarmac. My grandmother, Pauline Clavey Nickels, a former opera singer from Wilmington, was probably wearing one of her big hats, and no
doubt Frank was dressed in his herringbone best.
When Hughes arrived, pleasantries were
exchanged, and then the group went off to a meeting near the grounds of the
proposed hospital. What was said then can only be imagined. No doubt Frank and
Pauline were a little star struck, especially when Hughes accepted Frank’s
offer to go back to 40 West so that he could have a look at his proposed
hospital design.
I wonder if the group had lunch on the way
to the mansion. Did Pauline ask about Rita Hayworth, or did Hughes inquire
about the stern bust of Dante on Frank’s mantelpiece? Did Hughes let it slip
that in two years he planned an around the world solo flight? What I do know is
that both Howard Hughes and Frank Nickels were eccentrics (although grandfather
was not mad), so I’m sure there was an instant bond.
Frank,
one of four brothers and a sister, was born in 1891 to William Bartholomew and
Dorothy G. Nickels of Roxborough. As a young man he was already setting his own
style: he had a penchant for getting his shirts dry cleaned and then carrying
them on hangers on various local trolleys. In 1914, he graduated from Drexel
with a diploma in architecture and after that he established architectural
offices in Center City at 15 S. 21st Street, 225 S. Sydenham Street and later in the Land Title Building. His
concentration was industrial and commercial projects, as well as schools and
churches for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and in the Reading area.
Several years ago I had an opportunity to tour
two of his buildings, 1521 Spruce Street and the Frances Plaza Apartments at 19th
and Lombard Streets. For many years
Frank partnered with architect C.J. Mitchell, whose papers are also archived at
the Athenaeum. Frank split with Mitchell when the latter challenged him in a
bid to design a school for Saint Philomena School in Lansdowne. Somebody who
knew grandfather told me that he never spoke to CJ again.
Frank
and Pauline Nickels raised three children, Frank, Thomas C (my father), and
Joan in the Albemarle mansion. Frank’s bonsai garden behind the mansion was
so famous that local Cub Scout Packs would organize tours of the space.
Both Hughes and Nickels were basically shy
men with loner tendencies. My grandfather was not a joiner. As far as I know he
never was a member of the Philadelphia AIA or the “must do” T Square Club, unlike CJ Mitchell who was a member of
both. Both men had a difficult time controlling their tempers.
At eight years of age while staying
overnight at the mansion I was kissing my grandparents goodnight when
grandfather suddenly pulled me close because he smelled something on my neck. That
‘something’ was grandmother’s talcum powder that I’d dusted myself with after
my evening bath. Grandfather sat me down in a high backed medieval looking
chair and proceeded to scold me for being “a sissy.” I didn’t know what a sissy
was; I just knew that I liked talcum powder. I had never seen grandfather angry
before. The event was so traumatic I was never able to rekindle an interest in
talcum powder after that.
When grandfather and Hughes met at 40 West, it’s
possible that they reviewed the Nazareth plans in the dining room at the long table for 16
situated under a chandelier.
Grandfather’s drafting room was on the second floor overlooking the
bonsai garden and carriage house, so perhaps he and Hughes retired there as
Pauline played a few bars of Chopin on the Steinway downstairs.
“Frank, I like your plans for Nazareth, I really do,” I can imagine Hughes saying. “The
design is modern with a touch of art deco and I like the way the building meets
the sky. There’s something about your design that reminds me of aviation. I’ll
tell you what, Frank. I’m going to give the Archdiocese of Philadelphia this land
for free. You can tell them that down at the Chancery…Now I’m going to fly off
to one of my kept women on the west coast.”
The
truth is, Hughes admired the hospital plans so much he gifted the land to the
Archdiocese at zero cost. Perhaps they sealed the deal with a drink, a toast of
port or a round of straight up Manhattans whipped up by Pauline at the cocktail
bar.
Grandfather must have told this story at Sunday
dinner parties or at Thanksgiving and Christmas years after Hughes had become a
recluse, living as a hermit on top of the Desert Inn Hotel Casino in Las Vegas
or jetting around the world to hole up in other darkened hotel rooms with his
ten inch long fingernails, and long gray hair and beard resembling the monks on
Mt. Athos.
What is amazing to me, however, is that not
long after Hughes’ visit to 40 West he opened the Howard Hughes Medical
Institute. But before that, in 1935, he designed the H1 Silver Bullet, the world’s
fastest racing airplane noted for its sleek modern look. As I checked out
images of the H1, I couldn’t help but think how the plane eerily reminded me of
Nazareth Hospital. How can a plane remind anyone of a hospital? Well, I
can only conclude by saying that the plane had a sleek modern look that
conjured up the “feeling” of art deco.
