Arion Press editor Diana Ketcham, who was the book critic for the Oakland Tribune, had read that the favorite book of the well-known architect Michael Graves was The Great Gatsby and that he reread the novel every year. Hoyem and Ketcham visited Graves at his office in Princeton, New Jersey....and Graves liked the idea of making drawings for Gatsby. Hoyem told Graves to imagine himself as Gatsby's architect and draw the buildings and grounds, the furniture and fixtures, the landscaping, automobiles, and cocktail glasses of East and West Egg and New York City, and the gas station and pool where characters meet their ends, but none of the characters themselves, who are left to the reader's imagination.

Graves eventually revealed that the story about his reading the Fitzgerald novel every year was untrue. “That was Bob Stern (Robert A. M. Stern),” he told Hoyem and Ketcham, explaining that he did not say so at first because he wanted to do the project anyway.