What about our house?

We are awaiting approval of our permit, probably this week. We have been working on design with our architects and are hammering out a few details. I will post design sketches once I get their approval. We are really, really excited. I have two searches going on on Ebay: one for kinetic sculpture, which our house will really need, and one for a mid-century chandelier, to replace the crazy one that Gutnayer placed in the dining room. We are thinking about giving some of the furniture that we purchased with the house re-upholstering and cleaning. We discovered that the triangle table, at work in this post, is a Widdicomb (a well known midwestern furniture company) table designed by George Nakashima, who is a University of Washington Architecture graduate. It's not really a small world, it just feels like one.

Keck & Keck

Here in Wilmette there are many traditional houses, many builder ranch houses, and the occasional modern or contemporary house. There are a number of modern houses that is so consistent I started wondering if they were designed by the same firm. While flipping through the local paper, I saw a real estate listing for a Keck house listed essentially as a teardown.  A quick googling of Keck and there is so much interesting history to read about and houses to see. Keck & Keck was a two brother firm. They designed two houses at the Chicago World's Fair. The Crystal House (1934) is considered by some to be a precedent to Mies' famous building systems. The story of the houses built for the Fair ending up in sand dunes in Indiana is quite remarkable. Field trip, anyone?

I have been trying to wait to post about this until I had received Keck & Keck from the library, but I just couldn't. Yesterday we took a trip down to the snowy beach and while the kids were playing on the playground, I noticed this house across the street.

I say notice, but really, I had seen this house many times. I had admired its form and wondered about its colors. Now, having read up a bit on these architects, I am pretty sure this is a Keck house because of the louvers that flank the windows. Keck & Keck were early, perhaps the earliest, designers who used passive solar systems to cool homes. One of the Kecks designed a famous modernist building just two blocks north of our house, called the Miralago, which burned down. These stories about the Miralago are wonderful.

 

I believe that two of Gutnayer's houses are built across the street from Keck houses, one in Wilmette and one up in Winnetka.  I will post the houses and their relationships if I can confirm this.

Why I care

I've been thinking a lot about why, with this move and this legacy, I am now so interested in the architecture around me. Getting pulled in by one architect's projects has gotten me in much more deeply than anywhere else I have ever lived. Seattle and Berkeley, my two former homes, had lots of interesting houses and architects to see, but I never really connected deeply to the architectural traditions of the two places. I knew about Maybeck, Morgan, Ratcliff and Greene & Greene (in Berkeley) because of houses we drove by every day, but I knew little about the modern architects of the 50s. There are some great brutalist concrete buildings in Berkeley, including the University Art Museum, which is seismically unsound now and may not be with us forever. I love that building as a work of art itself. I never sought out the architect's name until recently.

The Puget Sound has a rich tradition of modernism, and a friend of mine is making a film about a number of the significant modernists.  I never drove around looking for their houses, or sought out names of architects and landscape designers, or looked at mid-century office buildings with interest.

I do think there is something about this part of the world: I am looking for books now on development in the 40s and 50s on the North Shore so I can learn more about the builders that worked up here. There is some good stuff to see! At the same time, I will be looking at buildings in my other cities with a lot more scrutiny than I used to. There is so much to learn and document.

I think this story is also part of the reason we extended ourselves and bought the house we are remodeling:

In the late 60s my parents lived in La Jolla, CA in one of the houses in the Triad, a Case Study project by Killingsworth. There are pictures of us as kids running around in dressup in the glass hallways. Drawings of this Triad that are in my favorite architectural drawing book (after Frank's, of course) and learned the houses and their wonderful layout from the plans. When we were down there looking at colleges we drove by the house and saw that it has been ruined: the glass atriums had been roofed over, the house had had a dreadful eave added, and as my mom said, the house was included in a show as an example of what NOT to do with a modern house.  Imagine a bit of a carbon copy of house C instead of what is there...

Here are some pics from  my partner-in-research, Google Maps:

 We lived in House B, on the left with the new added ugly eaves.

My parents' friends Mariane and Stuart lived in House C, on the right. 

Contrary to what it says on the modern san diego site linked above, the houses were designed as a triad that related to each other, and the two that shared this drive really worked that way. My parents tell stories of dinner parties night after night where they would carry the dining room table back and forth between the two houses. My mom said that M&S, who are still close with my parents, were the best neighbors ever!

 

Here is the other house across the street in the Triad, House A.

I totally remember the defeated feeling we all felt, sitting in front of that house on a sunny day in 1985. Pictures and stories of living in the glass house were a major part of our childhood, and we all wanted to see it like it was then. I like to think that that feeling has been sitting inside me, gestating. Being re-introduced to these houses (through teaching and the show at LACMA in the early 00s?) nurtured the sense I have now of wanting to learn about and preserve this architecture.

Ooof, gotta go feed the hungry kids. More soon.

a few more houses in wilmette

 

Third Street, Wilmette. 1970s

So here is a later house that seems pretty interesting. I'd like to see inside.

Forest Ave, Wilmette.

This must be a pay-the-bills house.

The drawings bear out that indeed, Gutnayer designed it in this style. Look at me, I didn't even get out of the car. What a bias!

Pioneer Lane, Wilmette. 1986.

This is a pretty late house for Gutnayer. One thing I like seeing on these houses is the

bronze aluminum windows--Id like to replace our windows with bronze as opposed to silver. This house has a big dome skylight right in the middle of the roof and a central atrium.

Gutnayer's drawings

 

Perspective view of residence, by J. Marion Gutnayer

For the appraisal I photographed typical examples of all the documents that are being donated. I love J. Marion's drawings of his houses, which are usually ink and color pencil on trace, and are found rolled into the tube with the other 6 sheets of plans and elevations. 

 

early 1950's residence in Florida, JM Gutnayer

The trace drawings are more typically elevations like this one with shadows and color pencil and ink additions.

 

Elevation, graphite, JM Gutnayer

Gutnayer designed a new theater for the Second City Theatre company here in Chicago. As far as I can tell this was not built, at least not with this exterior? What is there is much more traditional.

 

Perspective sketch, Gutnayer studio

I am not sure who drew this drawing or what project it is for, but I love it. Gutnayer designed some dorms for a college in Ohio, and I think this might have been from that project. Check out that diver!

The Gutnajers in Poland

I am inventorying the papers so that the appraiser can appraise them and they can move on to new homes. We are applying for a permit now and should hear in about two weeks! So work will begin, and all the papers and drawings will need to move on to new homes.

As part of that appraisal I am counting sheets of paper, which gave me a chance to finally count and gather the many sheets of paper that make up the documentation of Gutnayer's decades-long fight to recover art stolen from his family by the Nazis, and, in particular, an evil opportunistic Dutchman named Pieter Menten. Menten joined the SS in 1941 for what would appear to be the dual purpose of killing Jews and stealing their art.  You can read the brief (and incomplete, especially as it pertains to his art collection) Wikipedia entry on Menten here.

Photo: Berhard top left, and Abe bottom (?)
Map: Rough locations of their galleries on a current Google Map image
addresses from survivor accounts and Wikipedia

Bernhard and Abe Gutnajer were significant art and antique dealers in Warsaw. From what I can decipher from Wikipedia and the documentation in the house, Bernhard and Abe were both killed in 1942: Abel was murdered in his apartment on July 21, the day before a major 'deportation'. I will have to go back and confirm this date but I think Bernard was likely killed at the same time. They both had antique shops in the city, not far from each other. Abel exhibited and important Polish art at the time. One of the paintings stolen from him in 1942 recently came up for auction.

 

Gutnayer on the right, with his parents, brothers, and two unidentified children.

 

Gutnayer tells an amazing story in his affadavits regarding the restitution of some of his father's collection. He joined the Polish Resistance and, posing as an art dealer, went to Menten's home to review his collection. He described seeing portraits of his grandparents in Menten's home, as well as other pieces from his father's personal collection. He declined to purchase anything from Menten. Menten trip through the justice system is disheartening--he spent a short time in prison in 1949 and Holland would not extradite him to Poland to stand trial. From 1950 to 1976, Menten lived the life of a successful art collector and businessman. His trial was reopened in 1976 and he was convicted for only a portion of his real crimes.