Albert Farwell Bemis Foundation

Albert Farwell Bemis (1870-1936) studied civil engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and received his SB degree in 1893. He spent most of his business career in Boston with the Bemis Brothers Bag Company, serving as president (1909-1925) and then chairman (1925-1934). He founded the Angus Company, Ltd., a jute mill and jute machinery works, in India in 1912. For many years he served as a director of various Massachusetts mills and two Boston banks. Bemis was a member of MIT’s governing body, the Corporation, and of several Institute visiting committees.

Bemis was primarily a businessman; he also became a noted authority on housing after World War I. He established a personal holding company, Bemis Industries, Inc., which included The Housing Company, Atlantic Gypsum Co., Penn Metal Co., Fiber Products, Inc., an architectural partnership, and several other endeavors in the housing field. Building and construction research led to his development of the Cubical Module Method of design, also known as Dimensional Coordination. Bemis Industries supported low-cost housing research. Just before his death, Bemis completed the third volume of his in-depth study of the house, The Evolving House . These books described in detail his conception of the history, economics, and rationalization of shelter.

Bemis’s will established the Albert Farwell Bemis Charity Trust in 1936 to fund research on housing. On behalf of the trust, John Ely Burchard, a vice-president of Bemis Industries, Inc., and MIT class of 1923, conducted a study of existing agencies that supported research in housing. Burchard met with directors of research from the building industry, directors of governmental bureaus and housing agencies, and individual experts and associations. His study provided guidelines for the proposed foundation and assured cooperation between other facilities and the foundation.

As trustees, Bemis’s sons, F. Gregg Bemis, Alan C. Bemis, and Judson Bemis, decided to establish the foundation at MIT because of their father’s involvement with the Institute. The Albert Farwell Bemis Charity Trust’s Deed of Gift, submitted to the Institute’s Executive Committee on June 14, 1938, gave funds to be “…allocated annually to the search for and dissemination of knowledge pertaining to more adequate economical and abundant shelter for mankind for such a time as the usefulness of the aforementioned purposes shall exist, but in no event for less than twenty years; after such a time, to the aid of students by scholarships, student loans or otherwise.”

The Albert Farwell Bemis Foundation became a separate division within MIT, with its director reporting to the president of MIT or his representative. The Institute furnished space for offices and research activities and assumed the administrative and incidental overhead of the foundation’s activities. An advisory committee consisting of prominent architectural and building professionals and a member of the Bemis family provided guidance for the foundation.

John E. Burchard was the first director of the Albert Farwell Bemis Foundation. He was also professor and later dean of humanities. As director of the Bemis Foundation he was succeeded by Burnham Kelly in 1948; Kelly had been the assistant director. The foundation remained a separate division of MIT until MIT’s dean of architecture assumed its direct administration in 1948. The foundation’s major research activities ceased in 1954, with only educational support continuing.

Research program

The Albert Farwell Bemis Foundation’s research aims were:

a) to coordinate existing knowledge and research in material, construction methods, and economics of shelter

b) to stimulate and plan research in various phases of the building industry

c) to provide information for pertinent MIT research projects to the building industry, and to help define the industry’s research requirements for pertinent MIT departments

d) to participate in the Institute’s educational programs.

The foundation’s research projects evolved over the years. Some of these projects are summarized below. (See also the annotated bibliography.)

1938-1940

a) The broad aspects of housing were analyzed, including the development of proposals for planning and housing studies. Specific studies included “A method of analysing the economic distribution of shelter.”

b) A more detailed analysis was conducted on specific housing problems, such as windows, ventilation, plumbing, resins, and effects on construction costs of new methods and materials.

c) The foundation tried to evaluate problems sent to them by other groups. For example, the American Public Health Association asked the foundation to publish a field study of thermal conditions, illumination, and sound control in occupied dwellings.

d) The foundation provided general information and advice to visitors and correspondents. As a result, they established and maintained an information file on building materials and construction systems. The foundation also assisted with the MIT teaching program and public lectures and helped to bring leading building designers, such as Alvar Aalto, Paul Nelson, Antonin Raymond, and Siegfried Giedion, to the Institute.

1940-1945

During this period the foundation was largely inactive, except to maintain minimal administrative operations. They financed the organization of an Urban Redevelopment Field Station in MIT’s Department of City and Regional Planning in 1942.

1946-1954

a) Prefabrication became popular in the US in the 1930s and had a resurgence of popularity after World War II because of grave housing shortages. As a result, the foundation conducted a survey of the prefabrication industry in the US. In part, this survey illustrated the problems inherent in creating mass-produced housing units. This comprehensive prefabrication survey was the best-known project undertaken by the foundation. Through their survey and other sources, the foundation established and maintained extensive files on construction and prefabrication methods used in the US and abroad. At that time, these files were one of the largest information sources available on this topic. Besides written information, the foundation staff interviewed major producers. In an effort to supplement their information on prefabrication in the US, the foundation later conducted a similar survey on an international scale.

b) The foundation commissioned a study of ways to determine long-range changes in housing requirements through social science techniques. The University of Michigan’s Research Center for Group Dynamics studied Westgate, MIT’s married students’ dorm. They conducted a survey of social factors in the home and in the neighborhood when families were obliged to live in close quarters.

c) Eric Carlson conducted a study of the possibilities for mass-production in the cooperative housing field.

d) Herbert Heavenrich investigated the state of housing research in Great Britain.

e) During the 1949-1950 school year, the foundation helped to formulate and to teach the School of Architecture’s Industrialized House course. A special conference on industrial aspects of housing followed the course. This combination of course and conference continued until 1953.

The 1951 conference concerned housing as a national security resource and the program in 1952 dealt with mass-produced housing. The final conference was on the topic of economic development and foreign housing. Conference reports were prepared and distributed by the foundation.

f) The Bemis Fellowship in Housing was instituted in 1951 to attract students of varied backgrounds to the housing field.

g) The foundation helped to establish the Building Research Advisory Board of the National Research Council and the Housing Research Division of the Housing and Home Finance Agency (HHFA) as well as assisting several legislative bodies on building code improvements.

h) The foundation sponsored research for the development of a heat-operated heat pump in combination with a solar energy conductor and assisted the MIT Committee on Space Heating and Solar Energy.

i) Harold Horowitz conducted technical research on the mechanical facilities of the house, including the rationalization of kitchen facilities, the simplification of waste treatment and disposal methods, and other sanitation concerns that would be beneficial for conservation.

j) Victor and Aladar Olgyay worked on a climate and housing research project for the HHFA under the auspices of the foundation.

k) A study of heating and air conditioning systems for housing was conducted by Tamas Vretorisz.

The MIT School of Architecture completed two research projects that were not finished when the foundation’s research activities ceased in 1954:

a) Monsanto Chemical Company commissioned a study of the use of plastics in housing. The report came out in 1955.

b) Retirement Homes, Inc., sponsored a design study of houses for elderly couples.

Termination of the Albert Farwell Bemis Foundation

After the foundation ceased its administrative and research functions, the files were transferred to MIT’s Rotch Library which assumed the responsibility for answering inquiries from the building and housing community that were once addressed to the foundation. MIT’s students and faculty used the remaining foundation funds for research activities in architecture and planning.

From the guide to the Albert Farwell Bemis Foundation records, 1926-1954, (Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Institute Archives and Special Collections)