Midcentury Architecture and Community on the Outer Cape Cape Cod Modern (Hardback) - Common

by Peter McMahon

In the summer of 1937, Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus and a professor at Harvard's new Graduate School of Design, rented a house on Planting Island, near the base of Cape Cod. There, he and his wife, Ise, hosted a festive reunion of Bauhaus masters and students who had recently emigrated from Marcel Breuer, Herbert Bayer, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Xanti Schawinsky and others. Together they feasted, swam and planned their futures on a new continent, all sensing they were on the cusp of a momentous new phase in their lives. Yet even as they moved on, the group never lost its connection to the Cape Cod coast. Several members returned, when they had the means, to travel farther up the peninsula, rent cabins, buy land and design their ideal summer homes. Thus began a chapter in the history of modern architecture that has never been told--until now. The flow of talent onto the Outer Cape continued and, within a few years, the area was a hotbed of intellectual currents from New York, Boston, Cambridge and the country's top schools of architecture and design. Avant-garde homes began to appear in the woods and on the dunes; by the 1970s, there were about 100 modern houses of interest here. In this story, we meet, among others, the Boston Brahmins Jack Phillips and Nathaniel Saltonstall; the self-taught architect, carpenter and painter Jack Hall; the Finn Olav Hammarstrom, who had worked for Alvar Aalto; and the prolific Charlie Zehnder, who brought the lessons of both Frank Lloyd Wright and Brutalism to the Cape. Initially, these designers had no clients; they built for themselves and their families, or for friends sympathetic to their ideals. Their homes were laboratories, places to work through ideas without spending much money. The result of this ferment is a body of work unlike any other, a regional modernism fusing the building traditions of Cape Cod fishing towns with Bauhaus concepts and postwar experimentation.

Genres: Architecture

Unknown Binding

First published July 31, 2014

Reviews

[Lillsa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Informative and inspiring to hear the history of what brought midcentury architects to the Cape, but wish they transitioned to how the style was used more commonly.

[Martha · Rating 5 out of 5]

This deeply researched book gave me a new appreciation for the mid-century dwellings that I've stumbled across many times during my walks on the Outer Cape. These days so many have gone derelict or are in the process of succumbing to the elements, so that they often have a neglected, tired feel. Those that have been kept up offer a glimpse into a time of imaginative use of structure, orientation, and materials that can appear to be very simple, but in reading their history, contain innovative elements and surprises you just have to look for. There is much on the people behind the structures, some architects, some artists or wealthy men with a vision, some of whom had left Europe during WWII and had a connection to the Bauhaus School. Living on the Outer Cape, where you can still read some of these names on mailboxes and driveway signs, the book offers perspective on some of the people who summered here or settled here during the 20th century and on what they brought to the area.

[Carol Kowalski · Rating 5 out of 5]

The authors describe the confluence of a remote Cape Cod setting before the vistas were blocked by pitch pine, the silver-spoon Brahmin Bohemians with their reverence for local building tradition, and the expatriate Bauhaus exemplars that produced a hothouse of modern architecture specimens on Cape Cod between the 1920s and just into the 1970s. Some of them have been restored thanks to the Cape Cod Modern House Trust supporters and the Massachusetts Community Preservation Act. It's stunning to see the photographs and realize how tenuous is our grasp on preserving these important buildings. The writing style is beautiful, at once informed and accessible.

[Lydia · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful book of Cape history from an architectural perspective ("400 years of building for the moment"). Many of the houses were research projects for budding artists or architects, plus it includes great ideas from others who just liked to build, and then, history of those odd folks who inherited land and decided to become chicken farmers to avoid WWII. I especially enjoyed the Kugel/Gips house (1970) by Charles Zehnder with beautiful photos, plans and insight (it was totally renovated in 2009) and the Paul Krueger, Mark House (1966) built with $8000 for a young minister. Now I need the walking tour.

[Eager Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

I little known piece of Cape Cod history is the construction of summer homes by the famous Baus Haus architects after they fled Nazi Germany and some landed at Harvard's School of Design. Well researched, well written and fascinating.

[Flossie]

Cristmas present!

[Grant]

I read half of this in Wellfleet on 4/8/17. It's full of lots of nice gossip about mid-century Wellfleet, as well as interesting architecture.