Fallingwater author, Toker, approaches art history his own way

Franklin Toker wore a blue and yellow tie.

He wore a blue and yellow tie — and a gray… Franklin Toker wore a blue and yellow tie.

He wore a blue and yellow tie — and a gray jacket.

Toker, 59, a professor of history of art and architecture at Pitt, moved to the front of the room before giving out the last copy of a student essay his class was set to critique.

“Let’s start correcting this piece of garbage,” he said.

Several errors later, he burst.

“What the hell is this?” he remarked, voice rising in mock agitation. “You have to be fanatical in your own editing.”

As the author of four books and more than 30 articles, Toker knows about editing, and he expects more from his students.

“Students don’t think they are as capable of original research as I think they are,” he said.

In his class, “Approaches to Art History,” he’s working with students on a book that will chronicle the “builders of Pittsburgh.”

Toker employed a case-study method in one class to examine Henry Clay Frick. He worked with the door open, the quiet of the Frick Fine Arts building spilling in.

Digital slides were projected on an enormous screen. Toker targeted a laser pointer on spots of interest. He pieced together the history of Pittsburgh through Frick’s life, in less than an hour.

“Oakland is the second founding of Pittsburgh,” Toker said, later adding, “Cleveland is the totally unacknowledged model for a lot of Pittsburgh.”

Toker moved to the side of the screen. His thinning, charcoal hair pulled away from the light as he delivered other tidbits from days passed.

He talked about Frick being “seduced by New York,” and leaving the City of Rivers before his legacy was fully established.

Recently, Toker advanced further toward a legacy of his own. Appearing on C-SPAN2’s “Book TV,” he discussed his work, “Fallingwater Rising: Frank Lloyd Wright, E.J. Kaufmann, and America’s Most Extraordinary House.”

Wearing a bright orange tie, Toker told the tale of a past-prime architect, a merchant magnate in a city of industrialists and the house that would forever link them.

Toker later described himself as more “straight arrow” on the show than he normally is. “I don’t usually hold to the script,” he said.

Back in the office, he pulled out a working copy of his book, putting it on an awkwardly large wooden desk.

“I didn’t know the totality of it all,” Toker said about his days before research. He dropped under his desk to unplug a coffee pot.

The jacket of his book called his work an 18-year effort. He described that as “true and not true.”

In 1985, Toker accepted an offer to speak on Fallingwater, but other projects kept his attention divided.

No one should work on only one project at a time for an extended period of time, according to Toker.

“God help you if you are,” he said.

In 1998, Toker kicked into high gear after he’d seen Fallingwater cut open to have its cantilevers repaired a year earlier.

“It takes a lot of ego,” he said, “to make that step.”

If Toker has an ego, it wasn’t born overnight.

At age 11, he showed an interest in art history and amazed his parents by recalling a slew of impressionist painters’ names from an exhibit he visited with his aunt.

At 16, he discovered architectural history while “angling for a summer job as a tour guide” in his native country.

Toker, who speaks English, French, Italian, German and Hebrew, was born in Montreal, Canada. He graduated from McGill University at the age of 19, before earning degrees at Oberlin College and Harvard University.

A man once chastised for refusing bourbon from a museum director, Toker keeps a Diet Coke in his fridge.

That’s not all.

“I’m never without sneakers, suspenders and tie and jacket when I teach, or any other time except when I’m working out,” he said.

Toker married an American he met in Italy. He now has three children.

He also holds the distinction of being “the first non-Italian to teach art history at the University of Florence,” according to his resume.

An expert on early Christian architecture and a Pitt faculty member for more than 20 years, Toker’s latest work thrust him into the forefront of Fallingwater authorities.

But not to be confused with the monuments, relics and artifacts he studies, Toker asserted his technological evolution.

He hasn’t used conventional slides since 1997 and, what’s more, Toker communicated extensively through e-mail during the production of his most recent work.

“I never met my publisher, editor or agent until the book came out,” Toker declared with a smile.