The Things

by Donald Hall January 4, 2010

When I walk in my house I see pictures,
bought long ago, framed and hanging
—de Kooning, Arp, Laurencin, Henry Moore—
that I’ve cherished and stared at for years,
yet my eyes keep returning to the masters
of the trivial: a white stone perfectly round,
tiny lead models of baseball players, a cowbell,
a broken great-grandmother’s rocker,
a dead dog’s toy—valueless, unforgettable
detritus that my children will throw away
as I did my mother’s souvenirs of trips
with my dead father, Kodaks of kittens,
and bundles of cards from her mother Kate.

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Reed read this poem in the New Yorker and sent it to me. I spent part of this morning preparing the studio for the arrival of Bill Hasbrouck, who will appraise Gutnayer's papers and things before they go on to their new homes. I found a stash of family photos from Poland that I had not seen before, and pieced together Gutnayer's father, mother, brothers. In a desk drawer we found a beautiful series of albums of Alice Gutnayer's father and family: he was a musician who worked with regional orchestras in Europe, and after emigrating here, in the Midwest. Her loving albums of his life and career are quite rich: there appear to be photos of their trip across the Atlantic, and photos of interesting musicians and artists in Europe that I wish I could identify. As I look at these photos and think about what the 30s and 40s were like for Jews in Europe, I am amazed at their persistent creativity. How vastly different our cultural landscape would be if they had not found haven in America and settled here.

other beauties

These are not Gutnayer houses, but I would love to know who designed them. These two are on the same street, just a few houses away from each other. I drove by them in my search for a house on Kostner in Skokie...never found it.  Golf courses are good places to go modern house hunting...these two are some of the best I've seen.

I saw this one first. It seemed empty at first from a distance, but no,

all the furniture sits under the window line in a sunken living room.

Here's another heavy interesting eave.

Lovely proportions on this house, and pretty stone.
There is an abstract metal sculpture mounted next to the front door.

Lincolnwood

Gutnayer designed at least six houses in Lincolnwood, which is a suburb south of Skokie and east of Evanston.  I found four of them easily because Gutnayer usually built on corner sites. The original drawings listed the two intersecting streets, e voila!. Two of the houses eluded me (picture me in my minivan driving up and down street after street of little brick houses) but I will find them somehow. It is still a pleasure to come across these homes. The eaves are quite a signature and are interpreted differently on many of the houses. I appreciate how the eaves reach out to the street and make the house feel more like a gesture than a weighted down thing. The other beautiful aspect of these ranch homes is the use of color. Gutnayer used color, texture and scale in quite lovely ways.

He did a few of these 'shelter' split levels, where one roof covered the entire home.

This is a fairly conventional ranch layout with the added

garage and then the detailing on the eaves.

 

 

The brick on this facade is quite beautiful, showing a lot of color.

All of these houses seemed to be in good condition which was great to see!

 

 

Lovely eaves and detail again!  I like the monochromatic palette

and the subtle detail. Detail and decoration, good!

Wilmette

We are going to travel north up Sheridan Road into Wilmette to see J. Marion's houses. This house is actually in Evanston, right on the border of Wilmette. To me, this is the most 'modernist' of Gutnayer's houses, in that it does not have visible ranch qualities, and the volume of the house is a simple rectangular form.

The front door detail.

A couple of his houses have these double height doors made of slotted wood,
which is the same wood used on the interior of our house.

The back corner of the house.

 

I was really pleased when I learned that this was one of Gutnayer's houses.

I have admired it since our first visit to Wilmette.

His signature eave (? please correct me if I have the wrong term)

is lovely, as is his use of color and material. The Gutnayers lived in this house

while they built the house we are renovating.

Classic Gutnayer builder ranch, also on Sheridan,

a few blocks north of the previous house.

Later house, 1970s. This house was on the market

when we bought our house. It has a similar door to the Evanston house.

Central Wilmette

This house has a central atrium I'd like to see sometime. (I have looked at plans for all these houses but not been inside them).

 

This is also in Central Wilmette. A later house, 70s or 80s?

Evanston

1420 Chicago, Evanston

Crain & Elmwood, Evanston
designed for/with NAMCO



Grove & Maple, Evanston
designed for/with NAMCO

Chicago & Clark, Evanston
designed for/with NAMCO



Chicago & Greenwood, Evanston

Dobson Street, Evanston
Classic Gutnayer house from the 50s!
Can't wait to photograph this one myself.
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So after driving by many of these projects I have started to go out and photograph them.From going through the drawings with the Wilmette Museum staff and volunteers, we ended up with a spreadsheet of 90 projects and their sites. Where I can I will photograph them, otherwise I will try to use google maps as I did above.

ranch houses and the suburbs

When we first drove through the neighborhoods west of Green Bay Road and North of Evanston, I said, no way. There is no way we could live here! The houses are too much the same, it is too homogenous...I cannot imagine it. Now, after living in West Wilmette, right in the hard core midst of the 1950s development that built miles and miles of Chicagoland suburbs, well, I love it. It has its own quiet diversity, and as I walk Sadie around and around these streets I find lots to observe and think about.  After reading Alan Hess's books, I feel especially drawn to the houses that are unapologetically single story, resting gently on the flat plane of their site in the colors of the land.

Most of the houses in this area are split level ranches. We live in one at our rental, and as you walk around the neighborhood, you see version upon version of the split level.

 

The loveliest of these houses are brick, red or limestone color, with dark trim. A deep eave also gives these houses a bit more grace.

  

Playing with a shed roof helps these houses also seem a bit more contemporary and as more of a departure from a traditional form.

 

These are all within a few blocks of my house. I recently found a cool blog that cataloged some good midcentury buildings and neighborhoods in Chicago using Google maps. Can't wait to visit these. It has inspired me to finish Gutnayer's map with all of his built projects. But first...I'm going to try to visit his projects in this area and photograph them. First up: Wilmette and Evanston.

So I have been thinking a lot about the fireplace wall and did a few quick photoshop perspectives to represent some of my thoughts. Apologies for the low quality of the photographs. I used my iPhone.

I love the light that comes in from the bedroom. I want to keep that entering the main space.

what is this mystery translucent material?

I love these resin products from 3form. Expensive, but so cool.

I added some solid wood to the right of the stone to represent the secret stair, which will be a permanent stair up to the roof, rather than the pulldown that is there now.

 

Here the translucent material reveals the stone a bit, for color and texture.

The connection at the top of the stairs is definitely closed.

 

Here the stone is covered by paneling but there is a peekaboo translucent section into the playroom.

 I tried shelves on this wall but it just felt busy and cramped. I think we also might need to consider embracing our inner pink and not covering up the stone.

The brass planter is off and the circular stair no longer blocks the view to the window. It lines right up!!

Aaaaah....

But now the tall central axis seems too tall.

Any reason it needs to be this tall? cut it off? Take it to the ceiling as one of our extra structural supports?

beautiful steel uncovered in the entry.

Can we keep it revealed?

Here's the crazy marble off the dining room table. Again...maybe embracing our inner pink?

I'll try to find some interesting examples of good design using this palette.

au revoir chandelier

The cast iron pieces that Gutnayer installed in the house left this week. With the help of the state architectural historian Anthony Rubano and Chicago architectural salvage scion Stuart Grannen, we pieced together a bit of the history of the items. The sconces are theatre sconces, hopefully Stuart will find out where from. Gutnayer apparently had four of them, and he took the other two, cut them down and had a base made for the dining room table, which he described as 'turkish bookended marble'. Stuart described the marble on the table as the kind used in building construction, which makes sense given how many leftover construction materials were used in the house! The chandelier was identified by Stuart as probably 1940s, so if it came out of an English Castle (as Gutnayer claimed it did), it must have been a recent purchase. Stuart will pass them on to good homes.

These were still working perfectly with all the bulbs burning after a number of freezing winters.

Harvesting continues!

demo begins

We are doing the 'harvesting' this week, carefully dismantling all the elements in the house we hope to re-use. It is exciting to see the rooms start to become more anonymous. As we took the last furniture and things out of the house, we both started to feel a little sad for the house and its impending transformation from its original state. The harvesting of materials for re-use feels like breaking us in gently.

Interesting to see that framed-in slatted door. It appears in drawings
of Gutnayer's and I wondered where it had been.

 

Kitchen, minus all the cabinets and appliances.
We are taking the walls away...I can't wait to see through this room!

Kitchen from the dining room. Note the beam that lands...where?

The kitchen has a dropped roof, and I think what you see here
above the bit of insulation are the roof planks.
They run the opposite direction from the interior ceiling boards.
Those tongue-in-groove members are about 21/2-3" thick.

 
The lights get a rest after 52 years!
We will re-use all these in the LR and bedroom.

Here are the cabs and the flooring in their temporary home in the garage.
We will reuse some of the cabinets for storage in the basement and utility room.



This is the tongue and groove paneling that lined the kitchen volume.

The likely plan for this is to create a wood surround for the kitchen:

Ooh! Snuck in a design drawing. See the beam coming in from the upper right? That is that same beam from the picture above (the one that lands...where? Now it will land on the steel column). We are getting pretty close on the design, with some really wonderful details I can't wait to share. Friends will note in this view the, ahem, similarity in layout to our old house. The house was essentially lined up in the same kind of configuration as our Seattle house. Take out a couple walls, and voila! As our architect tactfully said, if it worked for you guys before... .