edgewater motel

I never leave the house without the camera now, because there is always the chance of zooming right by a Gutnayer project. Sure enough today, we drove right by one of the motels that is in his drawings.

Now there are many of these little motels all over Chicagoland, but how many are in beautiful shape and are right down the street from the leaning tower of Pisa?

Edgewater Motel, Touhy & Nagle, Niles, IL

We were on our way to Elk Grove Village, where we ate lunch in a Japanese restaurant in an industrial park. It was the first time I ate in a Japanese restaurant where most of the patrons were speaking Japanese. On our way back, we stopped briefly to photograph the hotel.

The restrained Gutnayer eave in action.

structural corrections

temporary posts in the area where rot was found

you can see the two new columns inside the windows directly above the concrete columns

and the busted up sill

The sill of the front window was broken and sagging inward when we bought the house, which was attributed possibly to freeze and thaw cycles over time or poor load distribution around the window. When the carpenters got into the wall around the window, there were some odd choices made about how to carry the loads downward, but the real problem were some rotted members below the window on the underside of the second floor. The window had very little holding it up and a lot pressing down on it. The carpenters are now shoring things up inside. The steel header over the window is now being supported by (among other things) two temporary steel posts that run down to the concrete columns on the first floor. The original solution was aluminum columns under the steel header that ran down to wood, which then rotted out.

original aluminum column on right going down to wood
new temp steel going down to concrete column on left.

The architects asked the carpenters to try to use the temporary columns to lift the weight off the window and sure enough, they got an inch of vertical space back for the facade. They said that the first 3/4 inch was actually pretty easy, and you could hear the house sighing with relief when the weight was lifted off the window and the wall.

peeling away

The carpet has come off the circular stair to reveal these worn treads on the original wood.

 The circular stair with its plywood veneer siding removed.

In the rear you can see the space where the bookshelf was removed  and a temporary column to take weight off the window wall, which had an 'experimental' construction method that needs shoring up and re-thinking before the new windows can go in.

The Master Bedroom with the funky stair in front removed.

The current plan is for this room to have translucent sliding doors along the whole opening.to allow light to enter the living room and to keep some of this openness while giving the bedroom some privacy.

glencoe

So, yesterday I was up in Highland Park, not Glencoe. I have a couple more to visit up there, but the more high rent the neighborhood, the less likely the Gutnayer houses are to have survived. In Glencoe I found two of six today, which is not so great. The two I found today are just a few blocks apart from each other.

 

  

Funny how that evergreen is pruned right to the edge of the eave.

 

  

This house is built with the same brick as our house. All perhaps from one lot? 

highland park

There has been beautiful sun the last couple days, so with a half hour to spare today I sped up to Highland Park to try to track down some of Gutnayer's built projects. Most of his projects in the suburbs are labeled with the client and street name only, so I have to go out and drive around to find them. One address was a maybe: it looked like a well designed ranch house with one pronounced eave, but it was hard to call. One was probably lost (replaced with a new/old french country house) and the other was, well, this.

 

  

  

This eave is redwood. It looks to be in pretty remarkable shape. This house is on a corner site, as are most of his houses. I really appreciate the way the house looks so different from each angle. Also—and I don't know whether this is brilliant or strange—the balance of the house from the outside appears to be a fairly standard ranch.

I have not seen one of these strong patterned eaves in person until today. They appear in a number of his projects, including the original drawings for our house.

 

In the design for our house, the redwood eave was to hold a clerestory window that would let light into the main floor. There were to be two of them, one facing south, the other north (you can see it in this elevation peeking out behind the front clerestory). He instead used seven skylights to light the main floor (or 'sky domes' as he called them out in the drawings: perhaps that was the term at the time). While I have been doubtful that these would look good on our house, I love it on the house above. And think it is well paired with the unique brick pattern. Gutnayer was not shy about detail. I really, really would like to get inside some of these and see how they feel from within.

Plans

So for those of you for whom plans are hard to read, I apologize in advance. These are really hard to read, being photocopies of original plans that are now tiny and pixelated. But, in the interest of explaining my demolition photographs, I think I better give a brief sense of the layout of the house. Since we are fortunate to have both Gutnayer's original design drawings and a quick set of as built drawings, I will show both.

 

original design, main floor J. M. Gutnayer, 1957

To orient you briefly: the bottom of the drawing is the front of the house: the little dots and dashes along the horizontal line represent the window mullions of the ribbon window. The circular stair is how you enter the house from the ground floor. The beds and baths are on the right side of the drawing, with the kitchen/living and dining on the left side. The elements highlighted in blue are the things that changed when the house was built. The only major change was the orientation and scale of the fireplace. His design oriented the fireplace towards the dining room and had a smaller footprint than what was built. Also, he designed a 'skydome' over the circular stair that was not installed.

 

as built plan, main floor, J.M. Gutnayer, 1958

Here you can see the different shape of the fireplace, and also the different orientation of the exterior stair. It was originally drawn to head back to the rear of the house, but was built to move to the front by the garage.  The elements in red are the elements we are removing from the house, the elements in blue are being added. We are removing the stair on the north side of the house (the left side of this drawing) and replacing it with a stair down to the backyard from the lanai. The bookshelf and maid's room walls that interrupted the continuous ribbon window from the inside are being removed to create a very open main room. 

 

from inside maid's room.

 

from the family room, seeing the continuous window.

What will go in the space in front the window? We expect it will be very sparsely furnished, if at all. This floor area is designated un-programmed, lying in the sun, reading the paper, doing a project space.

it begins!

 

here we go!

The dumpster and portapotty are in place, the fence is up, the demo guys are working on the interior today. Design meeting tomorrow, design drawings shortly thereafter.

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.

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.

---------------------------

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?