Date
1939
Project Types
Furniture
Interior Design
Residential
Location
Lincoln, MA USA
Languages
Dutch
English
French
German
Hungarian
Italian
Japanese
Spanish
People/Firms
A. N. Marquis Co.
Abbot, I.
Abraham and Straus, Inc.
Agostini, Alfredo
Albers, Josef
Albert, Edouard
Aldrich, Nelson
Allen, Deborah
American Architect and Architecture
American Designers Committee for French Civilian Relief
American Embassy (Bogotá, Colombia)
American Standard
Amsterdamsche Bank
Andrews, Wayne
Andruss, D.
View from Garden
Correspondence 262 browse all »
Drawings 25 browse all »
Photographs 9 browse all »
Helen Storrow, a wealthy Boston-based supporter of modern art and architecture, paid for Breuer's house in Lincoln, MA., along with houses for Walter Gropius, Walter Bognar (another architect from Harvard's Graduate School of Design) and the sociologist James Ford. Breuer's simple house consisted of three volumes and a separate carport. The first volume was a screened porch that could be sealed off for the winter. A door in a curved fieldstone wall containing the fireplace lead to a double-height, trapezoidal living room/study with floor to ceiling windows on one side and a tongue-and-groove wood wall opposite. Lastly, a two-story rectangular volume clad in vertical wooden siding contained the dining room and kitchen on the ground floor and bedrooms on the mezzanine level. These rooms were reached by a staircase that disappeared behind bookcases opposite the fieldstone wall. Paired columns supported the roof beams of the porch and the cantilevered roof of the living room. Similar columns were used to support the roof beams of the Chamberlain Cottage porch a few years later. Breuer filled the house with built-in cabinets and movable furniture of his own designs, including Isokon long chairs and nesting tables. A mobile, designed by Breuer's friend Alexander Calder and given as a wedding present, was eventually hung from the ceiling of the living room. There were some problems with the heating system and some windows leaked. Breuer had the option to purchase the house but never did.
SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES
Copyright Syracuse University Libraries 2019