Projects by Name

The Ferry Cooperative Dormitory was the gift of Dexter M. Ferry, Jr., whose sister and daughter both attended Vassar. He also had numerous family connections to Breuer. His son, W. Hawkins Ferry, studied with Breuer and Gropius at the Graduate School of Design from 1937 to 1939, and just a few years earlier, Breuer had built a house for Ferry's daughter, Edith Ferry Hooper. The Ferry Cooperative Building was to be the first modernist building on campus and generated significant debate as a result. The trustees finally approved the design although not the intended site near the center of campus. Instead, the building was moved to a site behind the main building and away from the residential quadrangle. Breuer's resurrected his earlier unbuilt design for the Nurse's residence at Long Beach Hospital. An entrance hall connected volumes containing the dining room and lounge, on one side, and the office, laundry and faculty apartment, on the other. Stairs led up to the dormitory rooms, housed in a rectangular brick structure supported by steel pilotis and oriented perpendicular to the ground floor volumes. The dormitory façade featured a corrugated asbestos-cement sunshade, and the roof of the entrance hall served as a sun deck. The residents saved money on room and board by doing their own cleaning and cooking. Breuer also furnished the house with plywood furniture from Thonet, Knoll and Herman Miller along with some custom designs.