Our Days Are Like Full Years

An intimate glimpse into the professional and romantic relationship between Harriet Pattison and the renowned architect Louis Kahn

On a winter day in 1953, a mysterious man in a sheepskin coat stood out to Harriet Pattison, then a theater student at Yale. She would later learn he was the architect Louis Kahn (1901cdash;1974). This chance encounter served as preamble to a fifteen-year romance, with Pattison becoming the architectnsquo;s closest confidante, his intellectual partner, and the mother of his only son.
 
Here for the first time, Pattison recounts their passionate and sometimes searing relationship. Married and twenty-seven years her senior, Kahn sent her scores of lettersndash;many from far-flung placesedash;until his untimely death. This book weaves together Pattisonesquo;s own story with letters, postcards, telegrams, drawings, and photographs that reveal Kahnisquo;s inner life and his architectural thought process, including new insight into some of his greatest works, both built and unbuilt. What emerges is at once a poignant love story and a vivid portrait of a young woman striving to raise a family while forging an artistic path in the shadow of her famous partner.