A Brutal Exhibition

If I had to offer a quick opinion about the effect of so-called Brutalist architecture on society, I'd say, "Not so great," and then just as quickly admit that it's a gut reaction.

But maybe I'd change my mind, and certainly I'd have a more informed opinion, if I went to see an exhibit opening in Westport, Connecticut, tomorrow that will explore the question:

Aggregate: Art and Architecture -- a Brutalist Remix is an art exhibition inspired by the 20th-century architectural style of Brutalism, including concrete architecture in the shoreline region of CT. Aggregate explores the impact of Brutalist architecture on society, exhibiting artworks that reflect, evaluate, and expand upon its goals, materials, and mixed receptions.

There's also an interesting speaker series that goes with it, featuring John Johansen, the ancient architect himself and last surviving member of the Harvard Five (as you know, if you're in New Canaan you must bow your head when you say the words "Harvard Five").

The photo here was sent to me by Andreas Kornfeld and is part of the exhibition. It's a shot (I think) of the Yale Art Gallery, which doesn't strike me as brutalist at all -- the Architecture School across the road, yes, but not the gallery.

All the details are here. -- ta

Updating a Modern, Slowing the Tear-Down Trend

Has the tide turned on the appalling trend of destroying modern houses and replacing them with huge and hideous monsters? Impossible to say. What is clear to me though is that we're hearing more lately about modern houses being renovated than about them being razed.

Last week's New Canaan Advertiser has an interesting story about an architect named Mark Markiewicz, who lives in a house on Ponus Ridge Road designed by Frederick Taylor Gates for himself and his family. (Devoted readers might remember that Gates was the architect I'd never heard of in a post from last spring called "Architects We've Never Heard Of" -- indeed, not only had I never heard of him but when Gina was telling me yesterday about him and another house he designed on the other side of New Canaan, I didn't even remember I had written about him. Since I'm already digressing, I should point out that we first heard about Markiewicz's house from his wife, who left us a comment about it yesterday but left it on post about the Glass House; I cut and pasted it onto the right post this morning.)

In the Advertiser, Markiewicz said one of his goals in the renovation was to improve the house so it doesn't become a tear-down, like so many others in New Canaan and elsewhere. Janet Lindstrom, of the New Canaan Historical Society, noted for example that 12 of the 29 houses in New Canaan designed by the Harvard Five architects are gone:

Of the original 29 built by Marcel Breuer, Landis Gores, John Johansen, Philip Johnson and Eliot Noyes, 17 are still standing, two of which have been significantly altered, according to Janet Lindstrom of the New Canaan Historical Society.

However, she also pointed out that the total number of mid-century modern homes in town, including but not limited to those of the Harvard Five, stood at about 120 since the 1950s and that around 100 of those remain, some with modifications.

“There was a period of time that they really were not looked at,” she said. “But with all the attention and celebrity surrounding them now, they are being revalued.”

Note that the Advertiser cites her as saying that about 100 of the original 120 or so mid-century moderns in New Canaan are still standing. Not long ago the accepted figure was about 70. Perhaps this inventory project has served to document that the tear-down phenomenon although bad wasn't really as bad as we all had thought. Does that constitute a tide having turned? Maybe not, but it's nice to see someone expressing an opinion that implies that the mid-century modern world isn't coming to an end.

Markiewicz, by the way, talks a bit about the conflict between the need to renovate and expand a modern house and the obligation to respect the original architect's vision:

Beyond bringing in more natural light via a series of clerestories — upper ribbons of glass that visually detach the space from the roofline — the purpose of the addition architecturally was to work with the existing space “without absorbing it into non-existence,” he said.

“Some of the houses you see being redone end up looking very different from the original,” he added. Of “utmost importance” to him was the need to maintain and complement the qualities of the structure Gates had designed.

“Coming up with a design that both completes it and has its own personality,” he said, was a challenge.

That very issue is going to be the theme of the New Historical Society's Modern House Day in May.

A Bit More on the Tour in New Canaan

The New Canaan League of Women Voters' Peggy Dannerman was nice enough to get back to me this morning with information about their upcoming modern house tour, the details of which were, in true League of Women Voters fashion, discussed democratically among league board members until a consensus was reached about what they could say publicly. Here's what she told me:

I spoke with our League of Women Voter's Board yesterday about your question, and they agreed that we could inform the public about the architects of the homes, but not the names of the home themselves, a policy we have followed in previous tours. Suffice it to say that we have two homes by Philip Johnson, one by Eliot Noyes and one by John Johansen. There are two fairly "grand" homes and two smaller homes.

I'm not sure I'd shell out a hundred bucks to see four modern houses unless I knew what the houses were, particularly since I've been on two New Canaan Historical Society modern house tours that included two Johnson's and a Noyes and I wouldn't necessarily want to pay to see them again. Offhand I don't know how many Noyes or Johansen houses there are in New Canaan, but there are six Johnson's -- the Glass House, the Alice Ball House and the Boissonas House, all of which have been on the historical society tours; the Hodgson House, which was going to be on last year's historical society tour, I think, but was being renovated; and the Wiley House and Wiley "spec" house, which I'm unfamiliar with.

A Visit to an Alan Goldberg House

There's probably no limit to the number of ways you can choose an architect, but during a visit to a realtors open house in Bedford, New York, yesterday (we were invited by the listing broker, a friend who knows of our interest in modern houses), we heard this story about the house we were in:

The owner bought the land in the mid 1980s, five acres or so bordered on one side by a lake and on another by a ravine through which flows the outlet of the lake. He knew he wanted to build his family's house there but he wasn't sure what it should look like, so he began to flip through architecture books. When he came to one with pictures of houses designed by Eliot Noyes, he knew he had found what he wanted. So he made a phone call.

Unfortunately Noyes, whose firm was based in New Canaan and who was one of the Harvard Five, had been dead since 1977. However the person who took the call was the head of the Noyes firm's architecture division, Alan Goldberg. And it was Goldberg who ended up designing the house.

It's a bit big to fit my amorphous definition of a modern, and the roof is peaked rather than flat. The lake views are spectacular and it has a terrific interior gallery (shown here) with native stone walls that were beautiful and Noyes-esque. If you have almost $8 million and can pay almost 35 grand in property taxes a year, it's yours. The listing is here. -- ta

John Johansen's Classic Bridge House In New Canaan Is On the Market for $5 Million

John Johansen's Bridge House, one of New Canaan's truly classic mid-century modern houses, is on the market for $5 million. 

Johansen, of course, was one of the Harvard Five -- in fact he's the only one still alive (Philip Johnson, Eliot Noyes, Landis Gores and Marcel Breuer were the others).

The house, which is on Louise's Lane, a tiny dead-end road near the Pound Ridge border, is called the Bridge House because it spans the Rippowam River, a small stream the eventually drains into Long Island Sound. The Bridge House was built in 1956 and is still owned by the person who commissioned it.

There's surprisingly little about the Bridge House online, and I'll have to go to the library to refer to Bill Earls' Harvard Five book or Christian Bjone's First House book for more, but here's what the real estate listing (by Gillian DePalo, of the William Raveis agency) says:

The Bridge House ... is the culmination of a great modern architectural genius .... The house has expansive walls of glass & gorgeous sunlite rooms; both dramatic and intimate interior spaces, including the gold leaf barrel LR ceiling, the Star, Champagne, Egg and Hourglass Pavilions, and many signature designs executed personally by the architect...

It hasn't been shown on either of the Modern House Day tours I've participated in, and I'm fairly certain it wasn't on the 2001 tour that Gina worked on but I didn't. Johansen spoke at the 2004 and 2007 symposiums that preceded the tours and showed slides of it both times, so he's clearly proud of it. I wrote a long post about the tour and symposium and included much of what Johansen talked about, for my other blog; you can read it here. 

Johansen, by the way, is 91 and lives in Dutchess County, New York, with his wife, Ati, who is Walter Gropius's daughter. -- ta

Tuesday is D-Day (for Demolition) for Philip Johnson's Alice Ball House

The Alice Ball House, designed by Philip Johnson and standing for all to see on Oenoeke Ridge Road in New Canaan, might be demolished in less than a week on Tuesday, January 29.

That's when an automatic demolition moratorium expires (I had mistakenly reported that the moratorium expires on February 15). The house's owner, Cristina Ross, is in a dispute with the town over the use of the property and says the only way she can resolve it is to raze the house. Although many other modern houses in New Canaan have been destroyed, including at least one each designed by the other four members of the Harvard Five (Breuer, Noyes, Johansen and Gores), this would be the first Johnson house to be demolished.



The Alice Ball House continues to be on the market, but Gillian DePalo, who specializes in selling mid-century modern houses for William Raveis Agency, told me on Tuesday that there's no cause for optimism on that front.

Here's what the New Canaan News-Review reported today:

Provided that landowner Cristina Ross submits final paperwork, building inspector Brian Platz said he will hand out a demolition permit. Ross needs to give notice of Connecticut Light & Power shut off and documentation of an asbestos survey and any necessary abatement.

"When the 90 days is up and the owner gives me all the paperwork, then I'll process the application and issue the permit," Platz said in an interview with the News~Review. "Which doesn't mean she has to."

Read more here.

Landis Gores's House for All Seasons Was Torn Down and Replaced by This

Greedy developers and homeowners who show off their wealth and bad taste by buying ostentatious and garrish homes are an easy mark in New Canaan. But just because they're easy doesn't mean we shouldn't aim at them. I used tol ike to walk along Laurel Road in New Canaan because its east side is a rocky ridge atop which sits five white moderns, at least two of which are gems. Nearby is a cul de sac called Soundview Road and the last time I was there, maybe a year ago, I did a double take because I thought I remembered a modern house there, at the top of the hill.

Then a couple of months ago I received an email from Pamela S. Gores, the widow of Landis Gores, one of New Canaan's Harvard Five architects. (She still lives in New Canaan, in the house he designed for them.) She was responding to something I had written about modern houses, sustainability and energy-efficiency:

The House For All Seasons designed by my husband, Landis Gores, included numerous energy conservation features, was demolished last year so that a larger house could be built upon the site.

Of course! That was the house I remembered, The House for All Seasons -- a house designed and built in the 1970s specifically to be energy-efficient. You can see pictures and diagrams at LandisGores.com, here.

What could be more perfect for the early years of the twenty-first century, when we need as much energy efficiency as we can get? And what could better epitomize attitudes in New Canaan, where they almost seem to be proud of destroying modern houses, than that a well-designed, energy-efficient house be razed in favor of this:


TA

Time Running Out on Johnson's Alice Ball House

The Alice Ball House in New Canaan is featured in the In Focus column on the Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation's website. The owner, Cristina Ross, has applied to the town for a demolition permit and, assuming a buyer doesn't materialize soon, can tear the house down on February 15. If it happens, Philip Johnson would join the other Harvard Five architects (Breuer, Johansen, Gores, Noyes) in the ignominious honor of having one of their New Canaan houses demolished.

The House Has Been Demolished: The Harvard Five in New Canaan

I was in a rush when I dashed off yesterday’s post about William Earls, the author of The Harvard Five in New Canaan, and his speaking engagement this week at Waveny in New Canaan.

The full title of his book is The Harvard Five in New Canaan: Mid-century Modern Houses by Marcel Breuer, Landis Gores, John Johansen, Philip Johnson, Eliot Noyes, and Others.

It’s a bit of an odd book because there’s hardly anything written by the author – just a brief introduction and a handful of short captions. But it includes terrific photos of a number of New Canaan’s modern houses, and it reprints a really good essay, called “New Canaan Modern: The Beginning 1947-1952,” written by Jean Ely and published in 1967 in the New Canaan Historical Society Annual.

What also struck me was to see in black and white the partial documentation of New Canaan’s shameful history of allowing significant modern houses to be razed. It is the history of knocking down modern houses and replacing them, presumably, with obnoxious mcmansions (New Canaan allows 18th and 19th century farmhouses to suffer the same fate too, so it’s not just a modern house issue).

Earls has photos of eight such houses:

Noyes house, designed by Eliot Noyes in 1947: “The house has been demolished.”

Kniffen house, by Noyes and Marcel Breuer, 1949: “The house has been demolished.”

Johansen house, designed by John Johansen, 1949: “The house has been demolished.”

Mills house, designed by Breuer, 1949: “The house has been demolished.”

Dunham house, designed by Johansen, 1950: “The house has been demolished.”

Stackpole house, designed by Noyes, 1951: “The house has been demolished.”

Riley house, designed by Chauncey Riley, 1952: “The house has been demolished.”
Goode house, designed by Johansen, 1953: “The house has been demolished.”

It is both eye-opening and sad. -- TA

The Harvard Five

New Canaan gets a lot of attention for its modern houses, and the Harvard Five get a lot of attention for being New Canaan's big-name architects. Bill Earls, who wrote a book called "The Harvard Five in New Canaan," will be giving a talk on the subject on Thursday, January 10, 9:30 a.m. at Waveny, a big, unmodern house in a big park in New Canaan.

Supposedly it's open to the public but non-New Canaan residents sometimes get hassled by the cops when they try to go to Waveny. Details of the talk are here. Someone should pay more attention to non-Harvard Five architects in New Canaan, no?

Great Houses and Houses Architects Built for Themselves

It was fascinating a couple of months ago to hear John Black Lee, sitting in the living room of a beautiful and modest house he designed in New Canaan, say that he thought there were only five great houses in the United States: Fallingwater; the Glass House; a house Lee himself designed and Toshiko Mori updated, on Chichester Road in New Canaan (he called it Lee House number 2); Johnson’s Boissonnas house, and the Kaufman house, which Richard Neutra designed, in Palm Springs (my original post, a longish account of New Canaan’s Modern House Day, is here).

What called it to mind was a list that I came upon recently on a site called LottaLiving.com of 50 houses designed by modern architects for themselves. The houses are from all over and include three in New Canaan – the Glass House, Breuer’s house on Sunset Hill Road, and Eliot Noyes’s house (the other two-fifths of New Canaan’s Harvard Five – Landis Gores and John Johansen – were omitted). Nineteen of the 50 are (or were) in California, six in Illinois, and three each in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Florida. I’ve been in four of the 50: Breuer, Noyes, the Gropius house in Lincoln, Mass., and the Franzen house in Rye, N.Y. Take a look at all 50, here (there are a lot of good pictures). -- TA