OUT WITH THE OLD, IN WITH THE NEW

Just a reminder in honor of New Year's that not everything up here in Maine is old and held together with handmade nails....and because I'm under deadline to finish an article for pay about a lost modernist building with a connection to the early days of Design Research, I give you this intermission.

Peter Aaron/Esto, from New York Times, Dec. 1, 2005

This house, a stone's throw from Dilettanteville, is built of 12 shipping containers, around a central  great room, a project by artist-architect Adam Kalkin.  The interior design is by the estimable Albert Hadley, and needless to say, five years later, it is still one of the most discussed buildings up here.

For a New York Times slide show featuring the container house, click HERE

Brooks photo, Ellsworthamerican.com

Over on Mt. Desert Island, the Gwathmey Siegel designed house for Washington billionaire Mitchel Rales, replacing the shingle style summer house of Washington saloniste Susan Mary Alsop, continues to rise, as do the rumors around it.  Published cost estimates, which began with the issuance of an $18,000,000 building permit are now rumored to be $30,000,000, on top of the $5,000,000 paid for the property.  So far it looks like nothing so much as a small suburban shopping mall with rotunda food  court.  It sure doesn't sit as sympathetically on the property as the old house, and the materials are very pedestrian.  .But of course, sympathetic design is not usually what people who build $30,000,000 houses are after.  They're usually much more about displaying what they can afford, and features that they don't need.  And as you can see, the rugged scenery of Mt. Desert Island is difficult to completely overpower, in the way Gwathmey Siegel tamed all those potato fields on Long Island.  I'll reserve further judgment until the place is finished.  After all, I might be pleasantly surprised.  Not that I think Mr. Rales or his architects care one fig about the Dilettante's opinions.  But you care, don't you?  For the Dilettante's earlier post about this project, Click HERE

Photo by Sandy Agrafiotis, Design New England, Dec. 2010

And over on the other side of our little county, at the gateway to the hardcore Down East region, is this recent work by architect Bruce Norelius.  Interestingly, nearly 40 years ago, when the Dilettante first ran away from home, he lived on this same dusty back road, although unfortunately not in this house, which was not yet a gleam in anyone's eye.  This is the one that I decree to be just right, clean, crisp, subtle, and timeless, attuned to its site on a ledge amidst blueberry barrens with views across to Mt. Desert Island.  For the  full article and many excellent pictures in the Dec. issue of Design New England, please click  HERE

The Dilettante is still under the spell of a friend's New Year's Eve supper party  of fresh shucked Maine oysters, Lobster Newburg, and crisp apple pie, all prepared by and consumed with, excellent company.  I hope you all celebrated in your preferred fashions, and wish you a Happy New Year. Good riddance to 2010.

Modernism in Maine: Exhibits, Prizes, A Marvelous House

In General
When one thinks of architecture in Maine, three tropes come immediately to mind:  The classic and spare early 19th century white houses and village buildings so beloved by the Dilettante; the large shingled summer houses of the rich that occupy much of our 3,000 miles of coastline; and the prefabs and mobile homes that are the homes of necessity for much of the state's population.  But of course, there are many other styles too, from the cardboard corporate Spanish of Taco Bell to a flourishing scene in modern architecture.

 An early 19th century house in Fryeburg, Maine

 Mossley Hall, the W.B. Howard cottage at Bar Harbor, designed by William Ralph Emerson, 1888

The other end of the spectrum in Maine building and housing. 

The Exhibit
I had hoped to run down to Portland today--a nearly 3 hour drive---to view the Storefront for Architecture's exhibit about the last 50 years of modern architecture in Maine, and hear a lecture about same by Philip Isaacson, a Harvard trained lawyer who loves architecture and  is architecture critic of the Portland Press Herald, and winner of the 2010 Maine Prize for Architecture.  Unfortunately, fall chores and commitments made the trip impossible for today, and I will forgo the exhibit until next week, sadly missing the lecture.

 Haystack Mountain School of Crafts on Deer Isle, by Edward Larrabee Barnes

I have never met Philip Isaacson, but have been entertained and educated by his writings about art, design and architecture, including his very grown up children's book Round Buildings, Square Buildings, and Buildings That Wiggle Like a Fish, which I highly recommend for both its wonderful photographs of vernacular and designed architecture, and the perceptive writing about what constitutes great design.

I have however, had several occasions to chat with Mr. Isaacson by phone on other matters of art & history, and by coincidence happened to have reason to talk to him yesterday.  In the course of the conversation, which was about early 19th century woodcuts, he mentioned that his own house, featured in the current exhibit, was also in last month's Dwell magazine.   Naturally as soon as we hung up, I was off to both the Storefront for Architecture website, and to Dwell Magazine's web site. ( I was supposed to be off for work, but I've never met a diversion I didn't like).

Courtyard of the Isaacson House, Lewiston, Maine (Photo by Eric Roth, Dwell Magazine)

The Isaacson House
As a student at Harvard, Issacson studied law, but was fascinated by design, and followed closely what was happening over at the graduate school for design, then headed by Josep Luis Sert.  In the late 1950's Isaacson proposed a project for his own house, a small house on an in-town lot in Lewiston, Maine.  Although interested, Sert ultimately declined, and in 1959, Harvard trained F. Frederic Bruck was commissioned for the job.  For a budget of $25,000 (ultimately $32,000), Bruck produced a small jewel box of a house, functional and spare, with a floor plan that echoed that of the traditional maine farmhouse, rooms arranged around a chimney core.   The house is carefully maintained by Isaacson in its original state.

Philip Isaacson at home in his library (Roth photo, Dwell)

 The Isaacson Living Room, looking through to Dining Room (Roth, Dwell)

The Dilettante's chair obsession is more than satisfied by the collection seen here, including 

Cab chairs by Mario Bellini for Cassina, a pair of Cowhorn chairs by Hans J. Wegner for Johannes Hansen.

I will review the architecture exhibit next week.

For the complete story of the Isaacson House, by Chelsea Holder Baker, and a terrific slide show of photos by Eric Roth, please visit the full article, A Fine Vintage, on the Dwell website by clicking HERE.

Gropius Down East

In 1947, Arnold Wolfers, a noted political scientist who had emigrated from Switzerland. a few years earlier to take the post of Master of Pierson College at Yale, and would later become director of the Center for International Relations, built a summer house on a wild and lovely stretch of ocean front at the end of Naskeag Point in Brooklin, Maine.

View from the West

For their architects, the Wolfers went to Harvard, choosing The Architect's Collaborative (TAC), the socially idealistic partnership formed by Walter Gropius and seven other young architects, including Benjamin Thompson, who was simultaneously remodeling a large summer house for his mother and her partner in nearby Blue Hill (we'll follow the Thompson thread, an interesting story, in a future post).

The entry breezeway, looking out to the bay

Dr. Wolfers and his wife Doris were a cosmopolitan couple, and this house, with its gull wing roof and glass window walls, was radical for the time and place.  Locals and summer residents alike compared the house unfavorably to a factory or a school.  Walls and ceilings of clapboards, painted the gray of a foggy day, further blurred the distinctions between outside and inside.  The house was furnished with examples by the modern masters, creating a seamless aesthetic.

The Living Room

After retirement, the Wolfers moved full time to their Maine house.  The open breezeway was enclosed, the house was doubled in length, adding a new sitting room and bedroom suites.  The Wolfers brought their elegant traditional furnishings and art collection from their Washington house.  Mrs. Wolfers, a fabric collage artist of talent, made the modern house her largest canvas, with wonderful objects from many centuries and cultures--french chairs, Italian brocades, Chinese porcelains, Greek bronzes, tribal rugs, modern paintings, all  playing richly against the modernist framework of the house.  I'm sorry I don't have pictures of the house in that era.  The look recalled the deMenils in Dallas, and spoke wonderfully of a cultivated mind and discerning eye.

 

The height of modernity, 1948.  It was a simpler age.  The floor was red marmoleum.

Embarrassing Personal Anecdote:  Long ago, at a dinner party at this house, we were taking our places at table.  Graceful 18th century candelabra on the Bruno Mathsson table lit the summer evening.  Everything gleamed. The soup had been laid, ready for us to begin.  Across from me was the uber-elegant wife of an ambassador---don't be impressed, he was a Reagan era ambassador to a minor country, one far smaller than his ego---and after helping the lady next to me with her chair, I sat down.   As I did, my tie, an elegant number of whisper light silk from Barney's, took flight and defying gravity for a  moment, gently, gracefully, landed in  the cream  of avocado and pea soup, slid across and landed ,with its soggy green load, in my lap.  I am still haunted by the look of suppressed mirth on the face of Mme. Republican Ambassadress.  I continued to be invited back. however....and always, to this day, hold my tie to my chest as I sit at a table.....

I buy less expensive ties nowadays, too.

All Photographs from House & Garden, May 1948

Modernism in Maine: Clara Fargo Thomas's Fortune Rock

View of cantilvered living room wing at Fortune Rock (New York Times)

Only 7 miles and 10 years separate the gilded splendors of Wingwood House at Bar Harbor ( parts 1, 2, & 3) from this exciting house.  Both were built for wealthy women prominent in their respective worlds, both were designed by Philadelphia architects.  Both take inspiration from a Maine vernacular.  There the resemblance ends. Wingwood looks back to a romanticized past, Fortune Rock looks forward to an ideal future.  They provide interesting case study in the range of architectural aspirations.

 Fortune Rock from Somes Sound (photo from built in USA: 1932-1944 pub. by  Museum of Modern Art )

Fortune Rock was designed for Wells Fargo heiress Clara Fargo Thomas, who had achieved reknown as a muralist and scenic designer.  The architect was famous modernist George Howe, who had started his career with the firm of Mellor Meigs, and Howe, famous for their elegantly conceived, texturally rich houses in the Philadelphia area.  Construction of Fortune Rock started in 1937, making it contemporaneous with that more famous cantilevered house, Fallingwater.  The Thomas house sits long and low at the edge of a bluff, looking out to one of the most spectacular views on the entire east coast, Somes Sound, a fjord-like body of water that splits Mt. Desert Island in two.

Clara Fargo Thomas on the balcony (Down East)

The house is built of vernacular shapes and materials---clapboard, granite, gray shingles, all of which anchor it to its location.  The way these shapes are assembled is almost cubist, and the house's defining feature, a spectacular living room cantilevered out above the sound, give the house its modernist credibility.  For the interior, veneered plywoods were used for all walls and shelving.  Exterior walls were stained gray, the underside of the eaves, and the ceilings were a gray blue that answered the sky.  In the spectacular living room, the lines between structure, nature, and outdoors and indoors were completely blurred.  On three sides, large sliding doors opened out, floor to ceiling, with only a railing at the sides.  The walls were mirrored, with a grid that echoed the panes of the windows, making for a seamless view of the outside. It was impossible to tell at first glance where one began and the other ended.

 Floor Plan and Site Plan (MOMA)

The original intention was that the house be the central building of a larger family compound, a vision never fully realized, although Mrs. Thomas's architect son did build his own very interesting house sitting astride a small cove, looking across to his mother's house in flight above the water.

Living room (Down East)

Living Room (New York Times)

A mural in the dining room/entrance hall was by Mrs. Thomas, showing the wreck of a ship owned by her husband's ancester.  The wreck was off Fortune Rocks in southern Maine, giving the house its name.

Dining room, with Mrs. Thomas's mural of the wreck of the Joseph B. Thomas (Down East)

In the 1980's the house was purchased by a member of the Berwind family.  Nothing could be further from the splendors of his great uncle's palace at Newport.  The Berwinds undertook a sympathetic restoration and re-decoration of the house, by then time-worn.  Missing was Clara Fargo Thomas's spectacular mural from the dining room.

View from Dining Room (Down East)

 Personal Note:  I had dinner here in the 1970's, when Norman Mailer was renting the house from the Thomas heirs.   I was in my early 20's, and very shy in front of the pugnacious celebrity.  After all, he did punch Gore Vidal.....

Dining Room in 1939 (MOMA)

 For readers hoping for literary anecdotes, I remember very little: just that Mailer was very much as one would expect.  That he considered it an interesting cocktail hour entertainment/exhibition to hang his young sons by the arms over the balcony until they yelled (uncomfortable around heights, I could only think about what would happen if his grip slipped), that his children had ravishingly good manners, that the woman named Carol who was living with him was charming, and that he had just publlished Marilyn, and that after all other attempts had failed, he tried to engage me at table in a conversation about Pat Nixon  and how lovely she really was, to which I had very little to add.  How could I have?  I was too engaged by the house, taking in its amazing proportions, planes, and materials---and that view!- to concentrate on Norman Mailer.  Bad dinner guest, I admit, but I mean, really......Norman Mailer or an iconic modern house?  You tell me.

The color photographs of Fortune Rock are from a 1987 article in the New York Times.  Unfortunately, they were damaged in my files, and I was unable to straighten them for good scans.  But they show well how the house's design holds up against contemporary work.

The view south down Somes Sound (Down East)