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.

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.

The Ranch House

On my day of checking 15 coffee table books out of the Wilmette Public Library,  I checked out The Ranch House by Alan Hess. I read a fair amount of it tonight, amazed to see at every turn the houses that populate mile after mile of the Chicagoland suburbs I live in. Gutnayer designed many modern ranch houses in this area and did development projects throughout his career.

The architectural historian who came to look at his work described him as evolving from the avant garde to 'builder vernacular'. After reading this book, I don't see that so much as a derogatory characterization as much as a transformation that affected many architects throughout the country in the 40s and 50s. New technology was employed to make these houses easy to build and affordable, and modules were used to speed construction and preparation of building materials. Hess' book is from 2004, so I am not sure how much the dialogue in architectural history has changed since then, but I have checked out some more recent books to read more about them.

One thing I was looking for in 'The Ranch House' was the ways in which the homes had been remodeled and whether they maintained their historical pedigree, such as it might have been. Many of the ranch houses in this book (mostly examples in California with interior shots) had been remodeled by their owners, with sensitive additions made or simplifications done on the interior.  We are just starting to look at schemes with our architects and I was feeling some remorse about losing some of the interior characteristics of the house. But the more I look at our plans, the more I feel that we will be enhancing the character of the original house. And for many reasons, both budgetary and aesthetic, the outside of the house will not change significantly at all.