Back in Caroline Rob Zaleski’s book Long Island Modernism 1930-1980 (W. W. Norton, September 2012), the preservationist documents important modern buildings — many of them residences — made by 25 architects. The book is part of a larger project in which she surveyed over 500 buildings by 78 architects to the Society for the Preservation of Long Island Antiquities.
The eight-year project (10 in terms of calendar years, however, two of those were spent actively working on the preservation of two buildings on Long Island) covers the years when, as the author describes it, “the vast majority of the great property and much of Long Island’s farmland were subdivided, which makes way for a tidal wave of suburbanization.” The chosen jobs, therefore, show highlights from this period of time, as much of the new architecture at the time was fairly unremarkable, be it public or houses buildings.
In a book launch hosted by the NY/Tri-state chapter of DOCOMOMO, a team focused on the preservation of modern architecture, the author described her novel as a social history, such that it goes beyond the merely formal areas of these buildings. Obviously, when dealing with Long Island, social equates with connections and money. The conversation was filled with intriguing anecdotes — just one or two recounted in this Ideabook — which comprised some well-known names along with the social circles that they inhabited.
This Ideabook appears at five of the houses in Zaleski’s book, similarly describing their designs and the tales behind them.
Long Island Modernism 1930-1980 – $80
The Leonhart House designed by Philip Johnson graces the cover of the coffee table-size book. The glass box recalls the architect’s own home in Connecticut but raised on stilts and hitting the water. Given the timeframe which the book covers, not all of the buildings are so high-modern. As will be observed, they are as diverse stylistically as are the personalities of the architects and their customers.
Rebhuhn House (1937), Frank Lloyd Wright
A quick search online for the home that Frank Lloyd Wright designed for publisher Ben Rebhuhn would appear to show that the design falls into the architect’s Usonian phase. But Zaleski asserts otherwise, describing it as Prairie style, provided that it was a fairly conservative design. (It had been carried out around the time of Fallingwater, a daring design that put Wright back into the spotlight, but the architect felt he would have difficulty building a modern home on Long Island.) And it was more expensive than the cheap Usonian houses at the time.
This photograph is awaiting the living space from the garden. On the ideal edge of the photograph is a sculpture by Ben’s wife, Anne, that had been a sculptor but allegedly sewed the red cape which Wright famously wore.
The inside of the two-story residence is bright and open. Each area on the ground floor is associated with the exterior via expanses of double doors, and now we see the double-height space of the library and living area beyond.
The relationship between Wright and the Rebhuhns was intriguing, especially in regard to the conviction of Ben and his nephew for distributing obscene books (ancient sex-ed novels, really).
Wright wrote to a federal judge to dismiss the case, and later visited his client when he served his 18-month prison sentence a few years after the home had been compete. A few decades after Ben and his nephew established Horizon Press using 16 publications by or about Wright.
This last view of the home is looking 180 degrees from the previous photograph, revealing the library and living area from the primary entry.
Geller House that I (1945), Marcel Breuer
Of the four houses by Marcel Breuer contained in the book, two of them are for Bertram Geller, who had gone into the family’s shoe business after studying city planning. Geller was attracted to Breuer, who had been an architect with Walter Gropius, the dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Design in the time. The modern home that Breuer made for Geller’s family did not endear them to their Long Island neighbors, but architects and the architectural press praised the home’s ingenious design; it had been appointed House of the Year by Progressive Architecture.
The view of the home’s exterior shows the main home, which is composed of two large rectangular volumes. Not observable is a detached guest home which also houses the garage. Round the exteriors, full-height expanses of glass alternative with non ribbon windows.
Through time Breuer is becoming as well known for his furniture because for his architecture. He supplied the Geller House together with his own designs; noticed are chairs, a couch and a desk, all with a similar language of curved timber.
As stated, the home’s exterior features regions with large expanses of glass. They coincide with rooms where light and view are important, such as the living room shown here. Yet the facade is sensitive to how lots of lighting isn’t always wanted: The top third of the wall uses louvers to cut back on sunlight, and the bottom third uses frosted glass for solitude.
This photograph shows the guest house and bedroom with its ribbon windows. The stonework, observable in the previous photograph as the wall and fireplace, is used as a foundation for your own guest home and as a wall extending out of it.
Geller House II (1969), Marcel Breuer
Two years later, when Breuer did very small residential work due to bigger commissions, he made an exception to the Geller family plus a second home near the initial one. Breuer’s design is dramatically different than his previous house, opting for a parabolic arch-shaped concrete roof over a square plan of concrete and stucco walls.
Compared to the first Geller home, the facades of the concrete home are more expressive. In a narrative that Zaleski recounts, Geller requested Breuer for advice on hanging a painting from the living area of the first home, to which the architect responded with commissioning Jackson Pollock to create a painting to get a custom wall divider. In that home, artwork was separate but incorporated into it via design. In the second home, the architecture is the work of art, its facade recalling a Mondrian painting framing views of the Atlantic beyond.
Mary Griggs and Jackson Burke House (1961), The Architects Collaborative
As its name suggests, The Architects Collaborative was an architectural practice where hierarchy was eschewed in favour of camaraderie. Started by six young architects along with their mentor Walter Gropius (known to many as the father of modern architecture), TAC had accomplished some modern houses in the Boston area before Mary Griggs commissioned them to style her home on Long Island. She was a childhood friend of TAC’s David Thompson, having grown up in the same neighborhood in St. Paul, Minnesota. Even with TAC’s collaborative mission, Thompson suitably took the lead on the completely modern house.
The Japanese attributes of the home’s landscaping are evident in the previous picture and more so in this view in the south-facing dining area.
Gropius actually suggested to Griggs that she visit Japan to examine their gardens, having just returned from a lecture tour there. She went, and the trip had a strong influence on the home and on Griggs — she returned to Japan over 30 times. She was engaged to book designer Jackson Burke around the time of that first trip, so the few commissioned TAC to add rooms to the home.
Shogo Myaida is accountable for the courtyard garden design, which functions very well with the plan of the home.
The Japanese influence extended to the artwork that supplied the home. The Mary Griggs Burke Collection of Japanese Art was exhibited in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and is thought to be one of the best private collections of these artwork outside Japan. The living space, shown here, includes an Edo-period display that Frank Lloyd Wright had purchased for Taliesin in Spring Green, Wisconsin.
Spaeth House (1956), Gordon Chadwick and George Nelson
George Nelson is a household name, thanks to his many articles and publications championing modern design, stamped with his name that marketed through Herman Miller showrooms, and to some lesser degree his architectural practice. This last piece is likely “the least important of his professional pursuits,” since Zaleski clarifies it, so it is not surprising that nearly all of the designs were performed by his spouse Gordon Chadwick. One such endeavor is a home for Otto and Eloise Spaeth, who used some of their fortune (in an aluminum company) to collect artwork. (They toured a number of it on the U.S. in “The Spaethmobile,” a converted school bus)
Chadwick’s design for the Spaeths is much more akin to the postmodern compared to modern, as the previous photograph and this one exemplify.
As opposed to a flat-roofed, glass box including others in the book, the architect derived a form that appears vernacular to Long Island, the Shingle Style — nonetheless with some interesting divergences.
The square seats on the shingle-faced gable-end in the previous photograph are a case in point. Another is the undulating shingle wall on the other side of the home. All these undulations relate to bay windows which project both on the ground floor and in the floor above.
This perspective of the dining area shows one such bay window, which overlooks the shore as it affords the dining table and chairs a little more floor space.
Saltzman House (1969), Richard Meier
Today Richard Meier is known for buildings composed of white glass and metal, together with the occasional piece of stone. One glance at this home in East Hampton and that attribute applies. But while the geometrical rigor and play of light on white surfaces can prevail, the earlier house of which this is a part was built primarily of wood and is far significantly more budget-minded compared to large-scale, international commissions that he copes with now.
Renny and Ellin Saltzman, a designer and fashion editor, hired Meier after reading some pieces on the architects in the New York Times Magazine.
The land between the shore and the Saltzman House is inhabited by Chadwick and Nelson’s Spaeth House. Thus, to capture water views, Meier needed to build up. As Meier notes from the book, “You can not see the ocean until you get onto the next floor.” The main home, which is connected to the smaller guest house by a bridge, is a complex composition of outside spaces and openings. It looks like an abstract composition placed upon the flat grassy website, opening itself up for views and sunlight but also recalling the architecture of Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye.
Zaleski describes the inside as an “indoor promenade architectural — to use the language of Le Corbusier — [it] provides a circuitous route up through the construction to the ultimate destination, the ocean views”