Recently, I wrote a bit about Bernard Maybeck, architect extraordinaire. I told how his work at Principia College was largely a lot of concrete work, and shared that my favorite building in probably the whole world is the Chapel there, on the bluffs of the Mississippi.
In this newsletter, I want to share about The Mistake House.
The proportion of my photo is quite off. The Chapel is much larger than The Mistake House. The chapel can hold hundreds of people, whereas The Mistake House would be hard-pressed to even fit, say, 20 people inside it.
Some folks might see the name and think that the house was put on campus as a mistake. But the story of The Mistake House is much more interesting than that, and I thought I would share, because it’s such a fun topic to explore & chat about.
Bernard Maybeck, as I have said, was quite an architect. He came up with all kinds of weird techniques to do the beautiful work that can be seen on the campus buildings.
Because everything was a new technique or experiment he was trying out, and the builders hadn’t done any of these things before, Maybeck decided to make a “Mistake House.” He said, “if you’re going to make any mistakes learning these techniques, make them on this house. You cannot make mistakes on the actual buildings.”
Notice that the roof line is off kilter. The roof line is much shorter on the left than on the right. There are 4 kinds of windows that we can see in this one, 2Dimensional photo. There is brick work, stone work, a different kind of brick work, tiles on a roof and that weird longer roof doesn’t look quite right, either, does it? That’s because the longer roof on the right side was an experiment with thatched roofing! The Mistake House originally had 1 side of a thatched roof! The thatching has long ago fallen off or biodegraded, but the concrete is still there.
As a student on campus, I was never able to go inside this building. I knew the students from countries other than the USA had meetings in there with their faculty advisor, Bente Morse. She was a delightful, clever and creative woman who wore bright, flowy colors. I forget where she was from. Maybe Australia? She had a beautiful accent and I don’t think I ever saw her without a smile on her face. She had the warmest, most genuine & beautiful smile. It was as if she looked at anyone and just loved them for who they were.
I had only one interaction with her. I wore my pale peach colors and my pale pink or light blue or light gray colors. I thought blondes looked best in these pale colors, so that’s what I wore.
She walked by me one day, as I sat on a bench at the main dining hall building (called The Concourse). She was wearing a beautiful bright blue and bright purple caftan and scarf, and probably had on brightly colored blue and purple shoes to match. She always had bright, beautiful colors on. As she walked by, I summoned up just enough courage to talk to the woman that I felt was too fabulous to even notice that I was on campus. I said, “I wish I could wear such bright colors. They are so beautiful.”
She turned and looked at me with her warm eyes and kind expression. She said, “darling, EVERYONE can wear bright colors!” And then she strolled on by, on her way to wherever it was that she was going that day.
That’s the only interaction I ever had with her. And it changed my life. People who have known me for decades probably think of me as someone who is always wearing bright, cheerful, happy colors. They may find it hard to believe that I didn’t used to do that.
But it was Bente Morse who changed the course of color in my wardrobe forever with her one, simple sentence. I love wearing bright colors now - or any color that I want to wear! I no longer limit myself to soft, pastel colors. Thank you, Ms. Bente Morse. Thank you. And: I love you. I never officially met you, but I love you for telling me this and believing in me when I didn’t even think you noticed me at all, as a person. I was wrong. She treated me as she treated everyone she met, probably - with dignity and class and kindness and forthright honesty. And saw me as beautiful, just as I saw her, also, as beautiful. What a legacy to leave as a person.
Anyway, so she was the advisor for the students who came to Principia College from countries other than the USA. There have been many of these students over the years. One of my room mates was from England. There were many students from various countries in Africa like the Ivory Coast, Ghana, Nigeria. We had 2 students on campus from South Africa. They came to the school from the same town. They lived in the same town. But they had never met until they got to Principia College. She was Black, and he was white. Segregation was deep in their country and town. I am still in awe, to this day, how they could both be Christian Scientists, be the same age, same year in school, and have never met until they both met, probably, in The Mistake House, with Bente Morse having all the foreign students introduce themselves to the whole group.
Those two individuals were later voted co-student-Presidents of the student body (in 1993). Later that same school year, Nelson Mandela was voted to be President of South Africa (1994). What a year that was! We saw the desegregation happen between these two students, and Nelson Mandela was across land and ocean on the other side of the world, making decisions to make Black and white folks work together to accomplish bigger goals. A great movie about him becoming President is “Invictus” with Morgan Freemand and Matt Damon. I recommend the movie. It’s one of my favorites.
While I was a student there at Principia College, the stars never aligned for me to go inside the Mistake House, but I know students from other countries held their meetings in there.
When I was at the college just a few weeks ago, for my 30th Reunion, we heard tales of folks who sometimes found the door unlocked when they tried the door handle. My friend, Tricia, and I went to The Mistake House shortly after that, and she tried the handle. She found it was open! So we got to take a little jaunt inside the house, and see what secrets it had long held!
It looked like a little, old-fashioned study hall inside, with a couch and ample room to lounge and read books, and feel like a person in Tudor England or Sherlock Holmes’s day or something of that nature. Maybe someone who has stepped out of a steampunk book, and who believes in steam engines instead of combustion engines could easily find themselves in a story in that little house.
So I was able to grab some spontaneous, almost clandestine photos of the inside. Enjoy!
I hope you have enjoyed this fun journey in to The Mistake House.
I love that Maybeck had the wherewithal to give his builders “permission to fail” - permission to try new construction techniques and fail at them while trying and learning, here on The Mistake House.
What would you do in life, if you knew you were allowed to make mistakes somewhere? Would you try radical new things, concepts, ideas, hobbies, musical instruments, math, engineering feats… ?
I also want to mention that I talk about making Mistakes in my book, “Mere Creativity.” I fail a lot. It seems to often be the only way I learn. I wish it wasn’t so, but that’s how I’ve been my whole life. I failed when I got to Nova Scotia and thought I could camp my way through the Canadian Maritime Provinces in early June. It turns out it’s freezing there at that time of year! No amount of sleeping bags, quilts, sweatshirts, dog sweaters and tent heaters could keep us warm. So we switched to hotels. But we tried, we learned, we changed paths, and found a better way to exist with Canada in June.
Let’s all work at failing something really miserably this next week. I know me - I will already be failing at something. Maybe every day this next week. But I will get back up, smarter than I was before because I made a mistake. And then I will try again until I get something right.
Let’s do this, what do you say?
One last tidbit - a photo of the other side of The Mistake House - a photo rarely taken.
I love it! Yes, mistakes line the path to success. :0)