By way of beginning my research on the Founder's Era, I am reading Dearest of Geniuses, Sandra Katz' biography of Theodate Pope Riddle. To this point (I am seven chapters in and have reached 1914), I have learned a few interesting tidbits. I didn't know Mrs. Riddle had had several commissions prior to building the school, one of which, Dormer House, looks very much like the school. This matters primarily in that it seems to belie the old yarn that AOF looks as it does in tribute to Mrs. Riddle's surviving the sinking of the Lusitania. Indeed, Katz suggests it was during a 1910 visit to England that TPR was inspired by the architecture of the Cotswolds; if that is the case, it cannot be that she awoke from a post-Lusitania coma in a small red sandstone village in the Cotswolds and then built the school as an homage to that village and her survival.
I am looking forward to reading the section on the Lusitania episode, and I am wondering what other Avon myths this book debunks. (It is not entirely fair to characterize the school-looks-like-where-she-woke-up story as an "Avon myth" in the sense that I do not believe anyone actually thinks it is true; it IS a great story...)
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