This dissertation explores, in a tight focus, the relationship between Aline Louchheim and Eero Saarinen in roughly chronological terms, analyzing their time together in specific categories: personal, semi-professional, professional, and posthumous. Before examining the archive of their correspondence (which is held at the Smithsonian Archives of American Art) and their office rec-ords (which are held in the Manuscripts and Archives section of the Sterling Memorial Library at Yale), this dissertation contains a brief literature review covering the existing relevant literature on fame and publicity both inside and outside the practice of architecture. This dissertation is divided into chapters that correlate to those distinctions, beginning with Chapter 1, which discusses the de-velopment of Louchheim and Saarinen’s personal relationship. Chapter 2 analyzes Louchheim’s key article about Saarinen, and begins to look at the way in which they began to organize an imag-ined professional life, while still corresponding just as much about personal matters. Chapter 3 fol-lows Louchheim to Bloomfield Hills and analyzes three sets of correspondence in an effort to un-derstand the beginnings of her influence in Saarinen’s office. Chapter 4 analyzes the difference be-tween the publication of two of the Saarinen office’s projects: Kresge Auditorium at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) and the Ingalls Rink at Yale University. Chapter 5 analyzes the press surrounding his T.W.A. project in New York. Chapter 6 examines Saarinen’s reputation at the time of and shortly after his death and shows how Louchheim’s effects on his career continued well beyond his death.

This dissertation explores in a more wide-ranging focus the larger context surrounding their relationship in terms of the professionalization of architectural publication—moving from a smaller ecosystem that marked the pre-1950s era and into the world of exclusives and fierce competitive-ness that we occupy now. Louchheim was a central actor in this shift, though she had interlocutors without whom she would not have had such an effect. Part of what shifted in architectural history in the twentieth century is due to Louchheim herself. In a way, this study embraces the “great man” theory of history: the idea that single individuals do have the agency to change entire historical tra-jectories. But in another way, this dissertation explores the larger context of mid-century American architectural practice, the way in which photography began to be valued by publications, the way in which the media shifted from a loose ecosystem to a tightly controlled one. The dissertation as a whole moves from the most intimate readings of Louchheim and Saarinen’s letters to the most wide-ranging historical overview, all in an effort to understand how Louchheim began to change how architectural work was published and what the change in the publication of building projects means for how we look at architecture today.