Ideas for my classes at the IED
Gropius died in 1969, and his wife decided 10 years later to donate the house to the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, now Historic New England. The Gropius House opened as a museum in 1985, two years after Ise's passing. In 2002 the house was designated a National Historic Landmark.
Our last view of the house is of the second-floor terrace, looking west; the opening from the spiral stair is just out of frame to the right. Here we can get a better glimpse of the wood siding that covers the house. We can also see a house that Gropius and Breuer designed for Breuer on the same land from Helen Storrow.
A canopy reaches out from the north facade at an angle, as if to grab people from the driveway. About halfway up the path to the front door is a glass block, a stark separation from the vernacular materials that Gropius used. A glance around the wall reveals the spiral stair leading to an opening in the exterior wall, what is one of the most intriguing aspects of the design. (A spiral stair on the front of a house? Where does it lead?)
The approach to the house is via a driveway that comes from the northeast. This angle presents a very International-style appearance of the house's planar white walls, ribbon windows and asymmetry. Yet some vertical lines can be sensed when looking closely at the sunny east facade. Instead of whitewashed concrete block walls — as was the norm with many modern buildings in Europe — Gropius used white vertically lapped siding on a wood balloon frame. (The steel columns in the previous photo show that the structure is a hybrid in parts.) Gropius found inspiration with the traditional building methods and materials of the region, all the while creating something different from the norm.
The west side is anchored by a brick wall that contains the fireplace for the first-floor living room. The house's sculptural qualities are most pronounced in this view, where we see the roof overhang propped upon slender pilotis as well as the trellised terrace and a screened porch on the back of the house.
Architectural historian Kenneth Frampton describes the house in his analysis: It is "more sculptural than most photographs suggest. ... [It] is a dynamic spatial composition." We've seen the primarily closed north (entry) side of the house; here we see the south side, which invites the sun in through larger windows and is carved for the second-floor terrace.
The land that Gropius was provided is near Walden Pond — Historic New England, which now administers the house, gives this direction to it: "Route 126 South past Walden Pond." The immigrant architect supposedly discussed Thoreau in writing about the house in terms beyond physical proximity to the pond. The house is surrounded by an apple orchard and other trees. It takes advantage of this context through large windows and terraces, perhaps a modern interpretation of Thoreau's communing with nature.
Gropius was able to build the home for his family through the generosity of Helen Storrow, a wealthy Boston matron, who offered him the land and a loan. Gropius worked on the house with Marcel Breuer, a colleague from the Bauhaus; the two would work together until the early 1940s. Here we see the north elevation, with the front door below the canopy and behind the glass block wall. A spiral stair leads to a second-floor terrace.
Forty-five years of care by the Gropiuses and periodic restorations by Historic New England mean the house and its original furnishings are in great shape and worth seeing in person.
Q