Date
1945
Project Types
Furniture
Residential
Location
Lawrence, NY USA
Languages
Dutch
English
French
German
Hungarian
Italian
Japanese
Spanish
People/Firms
A. N. Marquis Co.
Abraham and Straus, Inc.
Agostini, Alfredo
Albers, Josef
Albert, Edouard
Aldrich, Nelson
Allen, Deborah
Allied Chemical and Dye Corp.
American Architect and Architecture
American Designers Committee for French Civilian Relief
American Embassy (Bogotá, Colombia)
Amsterdamsche Bank
Andrews, Wayne
Andruss, D.
Aoyagi, Tetsu
Southeast Elevation
Correspondence 257 browse all »
Drawings 35 browse all »
Photographs 18 browse all »
In November 1944, Bertram and Phyllis Geller commissioned a house in Lawrence, Long Island. Breuer characterized the house as a model prefabricated house, thereby allowing him to circumvent wartime restrictions on construction and cost. He designed a binuclear house with a butterfly roof. The exterior was clad in vertical cedar siding, relieved by large expanses of floor to ceiling windows and fieldstone walls. A long, thin rectangle contained the living and dining rooms, along with the kitchen, utility and maid's room. Another wing housed the bedrooms and children's playrooms. An entrance hall opening onto a porch bridged the two volumes. Breuer also built a separate garage with a guest house and designed the furniture for the house. He created custom built-in cabinets, tables and three basic chair types for the Gellers, including a lounge chair, a dining chair and a stacking chair. The chairs were constructed from laminated plywood by Theodore Schwamb Company, who also manufactured the tables. Irving and Casson built some of the cabinets. The Geller House received very favorable press attention and was the winning design in a competition sponsored by "Progressive Architecture." Breuer built a second house for the couple two decades later.
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