Embrace Modern

On Facebook this morning we learned from the Gropius in Chicago Coalition that Chicago is moving forward with the demolition of the Michael Reese Medical Center. This will make the city of Chicago, and those running it, the single largest destroyer of Walter Gropius buildings in human history.

Read the article here:
http://www.savemrh.com/news/2009/10/22/alert-demolition-to-begin-immediately-7-of-8-gropius-buildin.html

They are set to build a new “mixed income neighborhood”.

Maybe they could build a something to compliment the on hold Chicago Spire (a giant Wee Wee).

The front. Hydrangas-a-go-go.

When, in 1966, Robert Graham was fresh out of the army and newly married his grandfather made a proposal. His grandparents had some land and, like they had done for his parents before him, they wanted to give him some and help him build a house for both he and his new bride. Robert knew the property well having spent most of his early years running around it with his brother and chose a bedrock outcropping off a small street in northwestern Stamford.

His grandfather had said that he should find an architect but he had no idea where to start. Then he thought of his schoolmate Lewis Bremer, known to the rest of us as L. Paul Bremer US Ambassador to Iraq under President George W. Bush. Mr. Bremer grew up in New Canaan in a now iconic house designed by one Eliot Noyes in the international style. Graham was not a huge fan of that style with its small living spaces and so decided that maybe he could contact Noyes for guidance in finding an architect that worked in a style more to his liking. So he called.

“Noyes was very nice about it”, Graham said, “and invited me over to his office”.

While he was there, Noyes showed the young non-client around Noyes showed him models of both built and unbuilt projects the firm had in the office. One set caught Graham’s eye. Noyes proposed “Wall Houses”. These were houses where two huge walls formed a center corridor of indoor street and off of which the living spaced cantilevered away from the outside of the street like the buildings in the small towns in Italy.

Graham was hooked and the process began.

“Our budget was around $100k for the house but when the project went out to bid we received bids ranging from $200k to over $600k. That’s it, I thought, we’re done.”

But when discussions moved forward with the contractor who would eventually get the contract the cost was cut to about $150k (approximately $1.03m in 2008 dollars).

“This was done by using the stone from the property’s stone walls. “ Graham said.

The den/Dining and lower family room end.

They moved forward and what was supposed to be a nine month project turned in to a year and a half project with the bulk of the time going to planning.  Graham was there almost every day which is one of the reasons that the house remains in what can only be said to be spectacular condition.

“Since I saw it all go together, I sort of became my own maintenance man. I know how it works and where everything is.”

The house is located on an enormous outcropping of bedrock some forty feet above the Mianus River.  The walls themselves are basically “glued” to the rock using concrete and the sheer weight of the structure. There was some initial concern over whether or not it was bedrock or just a really big boulder dumped there during the last ice age. If the later were true then it was conceivable that the weight of the structure could unbalance the rock and it could roll over.  A geologic survey put those concerns to rest. It was indeed bedrock.

The rest of the house is cantilevered using large poured concrete beams that are pretensioned using cables embedded in them between the rebar which also adds strength to the beams. Steel was considered instead of concrete but cost prohibited its use.  

The business end of a couple pretensioners.

When you enter the house from the front porch situated between the two walls you are faced with a bright and airy corridor. Tree tops are clearly visible at the end of the hall though the dining room and den windows. Skylights provide wonderful natural light in the space where the owners have an abundance of plants.

The "street".

Each doorway or stair leading one off the “street” takes you to another wonderful sunlit space with views to die for and, like Noyes 2 in New Canaan, one is surprised by the solitude, the quiet and the tranquility of the space.

Graham has raised three children in the house and some remodeling has been done to update and change a few things.  When possible he used people who had worked with and for Noyes including Alan Goldberg who helped open the kitchen up to the eat-in area.

Stair to the bedrooms. Front door beyond.

What’s next for the house? In the works is a bid for listing it on the National Register of Historic Places, a task one would assume should not be two difficult given its status an example of one of Noyes favorite themes and one echoed in his own second home in New Canaan.

Unlike “Noyes 2” however, there is nothing one would have to “put up with” in the Graham house. Don’t get me wrong, I love Noyes 2 but I would think that running between bedroom and kitchen outside in February would test one’s mettle. Graham House is just a stunning, reasonably scaled work of art, certainly one of Noyes greatest works if not one of the greatest modernist homes in America.

 More Pictures:

The living room from below.

Northeast from below.

The north side from below.

The view from below. Southeast side.

The coi pond in front.

The beams under the kitchen and bedroom wing.

The northeast end of the wall. The den is on top and the dining room is below.

The guest suite which includes closet and bathroom.

The fireplace.

The west end of the living room.

The est end of the living room. Coffee tables by Eliot Noyes.

The dining room from the top of the stair. The deck was added during the design process when the owner, standing on the rock outside looked up at the den windows some 20 feet above and asked Noyes, "How do I wash those windows?" Noyes thought about it a second and replyed, "You really need a breakfast deck right off the dining room."

The dining room from the kitchen door.

The eat-in part of the kitchen. Initially there was a wall where the bar is now. The room was opened and new cabinets created with the help of Alan Goldberg.

The kitchen which is mainly as it was.

Closents are set in to cut outs in the north wall.

The den looking out on to the main corridor with sofas designed and covered by Molly Noyes.

The den with its seamless floor to ceiling windows

This is the view from the den.

On a recent trip to, big surprise, The Gropius House we drove past the Ford House which is nearby. Ford House was built by Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer in 1938-39 for Katharine and James Ford under an arrangement with the benefactor of the Gropius House itself, Mrs. James Storrow. Gropius and Breuer designed the house for the then Associate Professor of Social Ethics at Harvard and his wife Katherine. The couple would later write a watershed book on moderns, Classic Modern Homes of the Thirties: 64 Designs by Neutra, Gropius, Breuer, Stone and Others (Modern House in America).

The House had always been, so we thought, wood sided and unpainted. On previous visits it was indeed sided with what appeared to be untreated or lightly stained cedar or redwood siding (Gropius used Redwood in his house so this isn’t that much of a stretch). This week, a the house was white! White like the Gropius and Breuer Houses nearby. To say we were shocked is an understatement. Was the current owner defacing the historic structure?

2008 vs 2009, the Gropius/Breuer Ford House is now white.

Whitie Ford

Upon speaking to folks at The Gropius House itself our fears were not at all allayed. They seemed to be slightly perturbed as well.

Well fear not. As you can see in this picture from the North Carolina State University Collection, which appears to have been taken some time in the 1950’s or ’60’s, the house has been white before.

Picture of Ford House from c1950

This leaves the Bogner House across the cul-de-sac as the only natural wood structure on the street. Not a bad thing.

If you are like us you love modern. You think that Philip Johnson was a brilliant theoretical architect (and not a bad non-theoretical one too). You want to walk around his compound taking pictures until your poor digital camera starts to emit sad sounds and begins to smoke.

Philip Johnson Glass House photo by Eirik Johnson and used with the permission of The Philip Johnson Glass House.

Take Heart.

The Philip Johnson Glass House and The National Trust for Historic Preservation have created a program for modernsist wackos like us. For a donation of $100 you get, according to the folks at The Glass House;

For a $100 per person donation, you get behind the scenes access to the Glass House, Painting Gallery, Sculpture Gallery, Studio Library, Da Monsta and photography privileges. Also receive the Glass House visitor guide, 20% shop discount, donor recognition on our website

Philip Johnson Study photo by Paul Warchol and used with the permission of The Philip Johnson Glass House.

Sounds like a great way to see the house surrounded by like-minded folks while helping support the project and the property.

For more information contact the Glass House Visitor Center at 203.594.9884 ext 0

Recently you might have noticed that we briefly changed templates (look) here at EmbraceModern and then we changed back.

We did change templates and then after we posted a few things, saw that the stylesheets embedded in the new template where wreaking havoc with our pictures. That’s why we went back to the old look.

We are working on a new EmbraceModern, we just have our web design plates full at the moment with other projects.

SP

It seems that, like the Communist Chinese government before them, that the government of the city of Chicago and its Olympic bid committee are practicing the same scorched earth policy when it comes to “site Prep”.

The Recent Past Preservation Network and The Gropius in Chicago Coalition report that “site prep” has begun at the site of the Walter Gropius designed/influenced Michael Reese Hospital complex. It seems that demolition contracts have already been awarded and that the grounds have been stripped of their Sasaki and Collins designed landscaping.

Before and after shots from the Gropius in Chicago Coalition.

It would seem that, like the little badge “Flexfuel” on a Chevy Suburban, the Chicago Olympic Committee’s assurances that this would be a “Green” Olympics is just there to gain acceptance of the project by a greater number of the people of Chicago.

In our opinion the only “Green” way to proceed is the adaptive reuse of the complex. It is a little disconcerting to hear that even if Chicago is not awarded the games that the land may be sold off to developers. Maybe Chicago could have a line of phalluses like the on-hold Chicago Spire along the lakeshore? Is Michael Reese doomed because it is low and surrounded by, until the recent stripping, green park-like grounds? It could be that we have entered an era where public architecture is about a city standing up on its feet, thumping its chest and declaring to the world, “Oh yeah! You want soma dis!?”.

Mid century modernism doesn’t do that. That is not what the movement was/is about. That’s why we all need to defend it and save examples of it where ever we can.

Today we had the opportunity, daughter away at camp, to go to New York and see the Frank Lloyd Wright exhibit at The newly expanded and renovated Guggenheim Museum.  FLW was sort of our entry point into modern architechure and we were fans of him before we’d ever heard of Eliot Noyes et al.

To be able to see his drawings and sketches in one of his most iconic structures was an amazing experience.

To some modernists Wright’s seemingly endless need for ornamentation makes it possible to dismiss him as a modern architect. Indeed Philip Johnson, who Wright ofetn referred to as “Little Philip” once famously referred to him as “the greatest architect of the 19th century. However the way Wright defined space, the melding of inside and out along with his belief that form does indeed follow function makes him, one of the people who made modernism possible.

You can see, interestingly enough to us anyway, direct correlation between Wright’s Solar Hemicyle House (Jacob’s House II) and Johnson’s Glass House. When I looked at the drawings for Jacobs you can clearly see a house with a lot of glass and a circular brick area housing “private” areas that protrudes through the roof.  Sound familiar? Wright’s house was built in 1944 and Johnson began schematic diagrams for the Glass House in 1945.

You can see many such connections throughout the exhibit. To help us understand how Wright’s designs worked, The Guggenheim has added animations and models, six done by SITU Studios on New York, and they are fantastic. We plan on going at least one more time you should too.

www.guggenheim.org

Now, some random pictures of the museum taken today. Did FLW like circles? You decide.

Guggenheim

You can see the new addition behind it and we have to say that we like it. It is different and yet fits.

Really the only shot you are allowed to take inside. Different from MOMA where you can shoot almost anywhere.

Just a lot of cool shapes that somehow work together

The snack bar is up there somewhere

Did the man like circles? Yes, yes he did. This is the sidewalk out front.

The north end from the west

Guggenheim

Here are some new shots taken last Monday while we walked around Gropius.

The stair

This is a new shot of Gropius House in Lincoln Massachusettes.

Another shot up the driveway.

The service entrance.

The screen porch.

The deck shot from below clearly showing it's Bauhaus Pink wall.

The back showing the shade roof for the living room windows below.

Nephews Tom and James at Gropius.

I have to say, hats off to The New Canaan Historical Society, The Glass House, The National Trust for Historic Preservation, The Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation, The Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism and Building Conservation Associates for the Modern House Survey in New Canaan. I know it is not yet complete and they were pressured in to releasing it early by The New York Times but it is a fabulous resource.

On our own and with help from people at The Gropius House, homeowners and other enthusiasts we have identified over 500 modern houses and structures (We know we have said 300 previously but this morning we actually counted). This is not to say that we have been top them or have pix of them, we just know where they are.

Our concern is that maybe, in the rush to identify modern homes and structures in order to save them, are we diluting their importance? I have read that the Modern House Survey was undertaken in part because of the judge’s decision in the Westport Paul Rudolph House case. The judge ruled that, despite the fact that people were screaming for it’s preservation, there existed no documentation that proved the houses importance. We are not saying that we shouldn’t ID, survey and document mid-century modernism. We think that New Canaan model should be cloned in every town that has more than one house that fits the criteria (are you listening Wilton, Weston, Greenwhich, Stamford….).

Our fear is that as we ID thousands of moderns across the country that the importance of the individual unit my be diminished. We can see a developer saying “Well I can tear this one down, there are three more around the corner.”

What do you think?

We just thought we’d let you know what we have on our plate right now. If anyone has any information, contact info or pix, feel free to pass them along.

If it is contact information for you or someone who owns a house we might be interested in, please send an email to skip[at]embracemodern.com. Please do not post your contact info or that of anyone else in the blog itself.

We are co-ordinating with the owners of Philip Johnson’s Booth House for a tour and pictures.
We are talking (email) with the former owners of Eliot Noyes Horton House in Greenwich which seems to have been demolished some time ago to make way for a “typical Greenwich WOW house”.
We are co-ordinating a time for pictures and a tour of a lesser known Noyes house in New Canaan.
Skip is working on a kids book about Walter Gropius for the Gropius 90/90 event in Chicago and elsewhere.
The TAC cluster in Massachusetts is on our to do list.
The Usonian cluster in New York is on the list too.
As is the Lincoln Massachusetts cluster containing The Big Dig House.
We have located more that 200 moderns in the last three weeks. That should keep us busy for awhile.