now you see it now you don't

We were up in Deerfield, IL (west of Highland Park) for a birthday party dropoff yesterday and so I grabbed my list and camera before we left the house. Sad results mostly: the streets we visited had many new houses intermingled with 50s ranch houses, which is the sign of teardowns. Since Gutnayer only listed the street and not the address in most cases, we can only guess where the houses might have been.
We did find one though, and as usual its a thrill to come around a corner and see one of his signature eaves.

That's Reed on the right, on his first house scouting mission.

This house is currently a rental and had a for sale sign on it. When I jumped out of the car and started taking pictures, a guy walked out of the neighboring house and said he owned it, but it isn't for sale: the sign is for the new construction that will go up in its place.

You can see the redwood pattern on the eave that has been painted over.

This house was on a nice big lot and had big windows on both sides of a sunken living room. I wanted to go in but babies were sleeping so we couldn't see the inside. I am going to contact the developer and see if I can get inside before it gets torn down to take some pictures and hopefully salvage some Gutnayer details.

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.

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.

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.

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.