Visiting the Glass House, Part 3

Because he was a famous architect, the completion of Philip Johnson's attracted a lot of attention in the press at the time.  A number of publications since then have called the gatherings that occurred there a '20th Century Salon' - since they featured other prominent arts and culture figures from the mid-century era.  

The story goes that there is a cigarette burn on one of the Mies pieces in the living room - courtesy of Andy Warhol (this will not be the only Warhol reference in today's post, by the way).  Our group toured the main house and had a walk around the grounds.

While we were in the house, Mary and I couldn't help notice a few similarities between the place and our beloved Hawksbill Cabin.  One example is the brick flooring that ends at the line of windows, as it does at our house - although here, there's a bit of lawn outside, and at the Hawksbill Cabin, the view continues to the brick terrace, progressing off into the wilderness of the hollow below.

Our tour included many of the other buildings on the property.  I won't highlight them in this post, but would refer readers back to the Wikipedia article for more information.  However, here is a view from the living room, looking out to the pond and a couple of the follies there.

The original 11-acre estate was developed over the course of 50 years or so, with small structures such as these scattered throughout.  I can imagine strolling about these grounds and enjoying the little projects as I came upon them - a very relaxing juxtaposition to life in the city.

Johnson lived here with his partner David Whitney.  They collected a lot of art, including this Warhol portrait of Johnson, and built galleries for the paintings as well as the sculptures.  These buildings are on one side of the grounds, so we enjoyed a walk through the fall colors, mostly hickory trees, over to them,

There was an installation by a Japanese artist in place at the time that periodically framed the main house in fog.  Our visit took place on a sunny day so the feature was a bit incongruous - I would have liked to see it under an overcast sky to appreciate it differently, evoking a naturalist frame of mind.

As we progressed towards the end of our tour, we visited Johnson's library and studio, a small building set away and across the field from the main house.  There on a drawing table I saw some of the tools he used laid out precisely, at the ready, should someone come along and need to roll out some construction drawings and work on a detail.  Nothing doing, though, and eventually my thoughts turned to the thought that most of that work is done on computers now anyway!

Finally, our tour ended, and the group made our way by shuttle back to New Canaan.  The group all parted ways, and Mary and I hopped on the train, bound for our next stop, New York, where we planned to spend a couple of nights sightseeing from a home base in Chelsea.  I'll get to those posts next.

Visiting the Glass House, Part 2

The main objective of our fall weekend trip was to visit the Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut. Some of Mary's college friends had arranged a tour and the plan was for the group to convene there as a group from all over the northeast.  Over dinner at one of her classmate's house on the night of our arrival, we got caught up on some of their alumni business and talked about the plan for the next day.

We had traveled up by train from Alexandria - we walked to the station, caught a regional, and rode all the way to Connecticut, where we had to make a switch to a commuter line for four stops.  It would have made for a long day, but since the visitor center for the Glass House was walking distance from the station in New Canaan, if the scheduling worked out we probably could have done this whole trip in one day.  It's a shame, but I doubt you could do something like that in other regions of the US.


The Glass House was designed to be a weekend residence by architect Philip Johnson, who built in on an 11 acre property in 1948.  His architecture practice was in the city, but the story goes that the building was inspired by Mies van der Rohe after Johnson completed an exhibit on his work at MOMA in 1947.  In any case, besides the modern aspects of the house, it was an early experiment in the use of industrial materials, such as steel and glass, adapted for private residences.

A side note...Hawksbill Cabin was completed at just about the same time frame - they broke ground on the property and completed the foundation at Thanksgiving, 1948. While we have learned that the family that built our place drew their inspiration from Frank Lloyd Wright's Usonian houses - especially the Pope-Leighy house that was built a few years earlier in Falls Church, Virginia.  Although that is the case, the modernist features of expansive glass fenestration and open plan interior are common features of all three residences.

For today's post, I wanted to focus on the experience and photos of the house itself.  The next one will include a few photos of the interior and the other buildings on the site, which has been expanded by the National Historic Trust from the original 11 acres to now include about 200 acres of wooded property.

Cabin Lore: Another Look at the Wirkkala Fixture

After the light fixture in our guestroom was featured in last month's Atomic Ranch, and I posted about it here, there were several requests for a better scan of the letter.  The purpose of this post is to oblige those requests - but I am also going to put up the scans from Mary's research into the auctions mentioned in Atomic Ranch's response to her letter. 

Here's the scan of Mary's letter to Atomic Ranch, and their response.

The response makes a reference to two auctions for similar fixtures, and Mary sleuthed them down.  I've taken the liberty of scanning her results and fusing them into images I can use on the blog.  The auctioneers' data is included for future reference - I know we get readers that share our interest in modern design, so these might be useful to them.

First, here is the Wright auction that was referenced:

The Wright auction features an image of a similar fixture, along with details of how they were signed.

We had a brief conversation with Kevin Thompson back in 2008 and asked him about the fixture.  He told us about his parent's enthusiasm for Scandinavian design, and thought they bought these from a Scan store in the 1960's.  He remembered the colored shades, and that the round bulb in ours was a replacement.

Here's the second auction from Quittenbaum:

Here's the Quittenbaum auction, which is probably a better depiction of what our fixture looked like.

It would be a real treat to see these in person - and it would be lovely if the original shades and all three bulbs had survived.  For one thing, they'd be valuable - since the auction estimates ranged from $600 to $3,000, back in 2008 and 2010.  

But that's how it goes.  Instead we have a great bit of Cabin Lore to enjoy!

The Letter to Atomic Ranch

We've been reading Atomic Ranch magazine for a while now - it's a great resource for midcentury modern furnishings and architecture, and Hawksbill Cabin was designed within that context.

One of the furnishings that conveyed with the house is a light fixture that we kept in the bedroom.  We've been puzzled by it, and have even thought about changing it out in the past.  At the end of the day, our senses got the better of us and we've kept it - with the thought we would look to repair it, if that is possible.

We have a bit of "cabin lore" on the fixture, from Kevin, who grew up here - he said it was probably bought from Scan Design or a similar store in the 1960's, when they were building the addition.  He thought it had colored shades in the old days, and confirmed that one of the bulbs had been replaced.

The Atomic Ranch post confirmed that it is a designed piece (Tapio Wirkkala designed them for Idmin Oy) - and even the two hourglass shaped bulbs are designed pieces.  They referred us to a couple of auction sites to watch for parts, such as bulbs or shades.  Those included:

• www.liveauctioneers.com
• www.wright20.com

It was good to have our instincts on this confirmed, we'll have to keep working on the restoration.

(Info about the edition of Atomic Ranch the letter appears in is here:  http://www.atomic-ranch.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1&products_id=64)

The Bench, In George Nelson Style

You ask about the bench?

At last, during the summer, we added the iconic slat bench to the entry way of Hawksbill Cabin.   It complements some of the other midcentury-styled pieces, which you can check out by clicking on the blog's "Midcentury Modern Furnishings" label at the end of this post.

We also have a Vassily chair, that Wirkala light fixture in the bedroom, and some bar chairs to complement our new bench.  Not to mention the little house itself, which was built in the late 1940's with an addition in the late 1950's.

The bench was originally designed by George Nelson, one of America's foremost modern designers, a compatriot of the Eameses.  The Wikipedia article on Nelson includes the following quote:

"Most people think that George Nelson, Charles Eames and Eliot Noyes invented industrial design. That is, of course, an exaggeration. George did it without any assistance from the other two." -- Bill N. Lacy, FAIA

So maybe, buying this bench so I can sit down and put my shoes on by the door makes me some kind of design snob.  You are entitled to your opinions, but I'll clarify that I found this on eBay - I didn't get it from Herman Miller or Design out of Reach, this time.

It does look good in this spot though, doesn't it?

Snow Trouble - part 2

Our roofer Alan tells us that attaching the flashing to any kind of masonry chimney is difficult, but attaching it to a stone chimney can be especially problematic. I’ve posted in the past about some of the challenges we’ve had with the chimney at the Hawksbill Cabin – during heavy or driving rain, sometimes we’ll get some water on the surface of the chimney inside the living room, and we did recently on one of the warmer days when there was snow melting up there on top of the chimney.

Alan has been good about coming out to check up on the flashing sealer and even has reapplied it once. His visits always conclude with the invitation to “come on up on your roof to check this out!” I demurred while there is snow up there but I’ve gone up there most times to follow-up with him in the past. Here’s a post about the last visit - http://hawksbillcabin.blogspot.com/2009/10/up-on-roof.html .

After he came out in the fall to reapply sealer, we had Jesse come over to work on the flat concrete surface at the top, to make sure we weren’t getting rain coming down from up there on the inside, appearing again on the outside of the chimney once it got below the roof of the chimney. Earlier Jesse had re-pointed and done some additional work on the chimney, as described in this post: http://hawksbillcabin.blogspot.com/2008/10/chimney-cap-repair.html .

We’ve talked to some other folks about potential solutions, as Alan outlined one for us and we wanted to double back for a second opinion with some historic preservation specialists Mary knows. I even have some little hand-drawn sketches of this solution, but they didn't scan well so I can't post them. (Note from February - there is a photo of the new flashing solution in this post:  http://hawksbillcabin.blogspot.com/2010/02/chimney-chore.html).  

The approach that they have proposed involves sawing into the masonry to a depth of an inch or so, then inserting the flashing edge into this line. The flashing would then be bent down at 90 degrees, running to the roof surface (the existing flashing layer would be left in place and this new layer installed over the top of it.) A small fold would be made at the roof surface and the flashing will extend another four to six inches over the surface. Then a mechanical attachment would anchor the new flashing to the chimney, in addition to the normal sealer that is applied.

The advantage of this solution is that once water hits the chimney, it will either be forced into the flue, where it will harmlessly evaporate, or it will be forced outside, running harmlessly across the roof to the gutter. That's how we hope things will work, at least.

If this flashing solution doesn't work, we still have two potential solutions to try. The first is a chimney cap, which is shown in the photo here - scanned from the cover of Atomic Ranch magazine, Fall 2009 edition (back issue at http://www.atomic-ranch.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1&products_id=33 , this is the "Dansk Weinerbrod" article, and note roof line, etc., and similarities to the Hawksbill Cabin!). I've shied away from this alternative because Mr. Thompson left an inscription "1949" up there (one of three such inscriptions we've found - another at the base of the chimney says "Thanksgiving 1948" and a small concrete repair in the back of the house says "1999.") - but this may be moot due to some later repairs that obscurred the 1949 date.

The other, and ultimate last resort solution, will be to apply masonry sealer to the stone work. I'm satisfied that we have two steps to go before we get to this one though. I hope the new flashing solves the problem.

It is a true home-owner dilemma, in any case.

"Buy one or two to beautify your home..."

It’s funny that our last two home improvement purchases have been made in pairs – one by me, and one by Mary. I’d like to start out talking about mine.

Here they are, carefully positioned on the couch. I bought these two, hologram-certified, Coleman camo thermal pillows to use around the Hawksbill Cabin during the winter for warmth. Apparently the foam filling is designed to retain body heat and they are useful in hunting blinds, ice fishing camps, and the like. I’ll mainly use them sitting in my folding chair out on the brick terrace on cold mornings and evenings. But they do fit right in with the living room color scheme, don’t they?

The second purchase was these two bar stools that Mary found at an antique store in Alexandria. They fit the era of our other furnishings, although they are later in the Mid-Century time frame. We replaced two cheap stools that we had gotten at Wal-Mart with these. They are quite a bit more comfortable even though they are an inch or two lower than the others.

Rejuvenated Kitchen

Jesse and his team made short work of the kitchen remodel, and our simple galley kitchen is transformed. Here is a photo with the new cabinets and coutertop installed, and a second of the sink area and new faucet set-up.

With these improvements and the new dishwasher, combined with the refrigerator and stove that were there, we have an updated kitchen that will serve us well.

Mary went through and removed the old shelf liners from the existing cabinets. Doing so may have removed the last vestiges of mildew that was left from the old kitchen.

The old kitchen - before we bought the place - was the source of the damage that ended up requiring us to replace the roof. Here is a reminder of how serious the situation was...the kichen would be in the lower left hand corner of the main house. The entire roof system had to be replaced due to water damage and termites.

In any case, it's good to be on the other side of this problem!

Tuesday Morning Countertops

Writing Tuesday noon.

The new Formica Boomerang countertops were delivered this morning. Here is a quick post with photos; I’ve had them laid out in the living room while we wait for Jesse to come by and take a look. He is scheduled to get started sometime this week – I’m hoping it’s a job that won’t take long.


These are views of the countertops lying on the floor, and close-up views of the no-spill edge and back splash; these were taken so I could send them to Mary for her approval. Modern technology is a marvel, ain’t it?

One more thing to do today – the new dishwasher is scheduled for delivery and installation. Could be any minute now!

The Kitchen Plan is Coming Together

Over the weekend, thanks to Chris, we got our “new” kitchen cabinets out to the Hawksbill Cabin. Installing these is one of three elements of the kitchen remodel that should be complete this week.

I am writing this from the brick terrace; I hadn’t expected to post much this week but I just got the news that our dishwasher is on the way and the installation is going to be done much earlier than expected (they told us to expect it as late as 7pm tonight).

Here are some “before” pictures of the galley kitchen. The stone wall is where the recycled cabinets will be hung; we are also replacing the Home Depot stock counter tops with some in the Formica Boomerang pattern, which I posted about last week. Our current plan is to paint them “Wooden Spoon,” the color most of the kitchen surfaces have been done in.

Mary asked me to line up the cabinets on the floors (note they are upside down here), despite all the careful measuring we thought there might be something with the angles, widths, and heights, there just might be something misaligned and we wanted to see that before we put them up. In Mrs. Barclay’s old kitchen, these were not all on the same wall like they will be at our place. As you can see here, they are pretty well aligned, enough that I don’t think the little mismatch will be noticeable when we put them up.

While we're on the topic of renovations - part 2

Today, finishing up on a couple of posts about our pending kitchen remodel at the Hawksbill Cabin…

On our block in Alexandria, there are two other houses that have the same exterior profile as ours. At one time, we thought this might be a series of the same kit house, but closer inspection and analysis reveals this isn’t so – for one thing the interior rooms would be in a similar layout and the dimensions would be precisely the same. So the developer here, in 1929, basically designed the three houses pretty much to order, and they very substantially inside.

We had befriended one of the other owners, Mrs. Barclay, who had lived in her place since the 1940’s. Mrs. Barclay would visit our house on our January 1 open houses, and we’d take her on a little tour of the place. She would delight herself by pointing out the little differences in where the walls were, the arrangement of the bathroom, things in hers but not in ours, or vice-versa.

She always offered that we could come for a similar tour of her place, but sadly, she passed away this spring, and we never took her up on it.

Our realtor arranged for us to have a look at the place when it went on the market. We remembered Mrs. Barclay’s description of her kitchen, last remodeled in 1954 or so. Visiting her house brought back fond memories of our friendship with her and her visits to our place, and as we looked around we realized that there were a lot of opportunities to remodel and modernize the home she had loved for so long…not a challenge we were ready to take on, however.

So the house went on the market, and within a week or so, it had three competing offers (I’ll reserve the details for a future post), with the successful one an all-cash deal at the offered price. We subsequently learned about the remodel plans the new owners have, and we offered to let them look around ours if they were looking for ideas.

We also remembered the kitchen in Mrs. Barclays – custom cabinets, likely built and installed by her late husband.

Given the mid-century heritage of these, in the back of our minds we thought we might like to save them to recycle into some future project if they became surplus.

Sure enough, the new owners decided not to use the cabinets. We’ve decided to use the wall cabinets - shown in these photos - as part of the kitchen remodel. The Hawksbill Cabin kitchen is galley-style and short on storage, so these will double what we have in there. We will mount them on the stone wall above the sink, under the new windows. Their “streamlined” shapes will fit right in with the new countertop and mid-century style of the house.

We also have the two base cabinets. No plan yet on what to do with these.

Butterfly Chairs

Last winter when we took a walk in the woods next to the pool and behind the house, we found three buterfly chair frames. Earlier I showed Mary's restoration in progress, as she sanded, primed and painted the frames. We found a place on-line where the seat covers were on sale, and picked up three blue ones.

Here they are, proudly on display after their restoration. They are actually going to spend most of their summers down by the pool.

In taking a second look at these, I have to make a note of how great that newly re-laid brick terrace looks! This is the basketweave pattern; and the random discolorations in the brick give it great character.

Bringing the outside in

By way of an update, when we visited last week, Jesse had completed the brick terrace portion of the outdoor projects. The work included smoothing out and patching the gravel foundation for the terrace and relaying the bricks. Next steps include putting in new steps down to the pool and clearing out the planter at the base of the retaining wall, then repointing that wall.




These first two photos show the front door - a heavy dutch door, and the view out towards the terrace from the main room of the cabin. The floor of the main room is also brick, laid in the same herring bone fashion. It was a tenet of midcentury modernism to bring the outside in, often with walls of windows that opened to the outdoors. Although our windows don't work the repetition of the brick pattern accomplishes this.




Here are a couple of views of the newly relaid terrace, first looking out to the yard and drive. That's Sofie at the end, settling down for a nap - this is the spot where she saw her first deer, so now she spends a lot of time keeping vigilant from there.

The second photo looks in the same direction, showing our outdoor breakfast set up and the wall of windows in the main room.

About those butterfly chairs

Last winter, when the leaves were off the trees and all the critters were hibernating, we took a walk around our lots and into the surrounding woods. In an overgrown junk heap near the pool and woods, we found the frames of two butterfly chairs, and later found a third that had been carted off into the woods near Beaver Run.

It turns out that these chairs were frequently used in the 1950s and 1960s and became a symbolism of modernism because of their minimalist design and "form over function" theme. According to Wikipedia, they were designed by an Argentinian named Jorge Ferrari Hardoy in 1938, and were based on an earlier wood-frame design that used a similar hammock or sling concept for seating.

We rescued the three chairs, deciding that recycling them back into usage by the pool would save us some money and also fit in with the Midcentury Modern concept we have maintained during the restoration of the cabin.

Here are two photos of the repairs in progress. We've found a web source for the fabric slings and will be placing an order for that in a few weeks...as the pool comes on line we'll have these chairs up and ready for lounging.

Big Project Number 2 for 2008

A second big project getting underway at the Hawksbill Cabin is to upgrade the insulation in the back part of the house, which I call the addition. The name may not be accurate, it may have indeed been built at the same time as the “original” stone portion – we just don’t have any records. We are also making progress on the pool repairs (http://hawksbillcabin.blogspot.com/2008/04/pool-plan.html ), and will have the brick terrace and stone retaining wall repointed as our final big effort this year.

The scope of the project involves installing R12 or better insulation in the ceiling, and covering it over with new tongue and groove paneling. Mary has specified that the paneling in this part of the house be whitewashed, as the ceiling is currently painted white and we want to retain that character. Here are a couple of the areas that we will be working on with Jesse: the guest bedroom, the master, and the hallway.

Of note in these photos is the light fixture in the guest bedroom. I don’t have my notes handy for this post, but this is a mid-century design piece, a legacy of the house, that was done by a Finnish designer who was active in the 30’s through 50’s. The round globe is not original, and we guess the hourglass shaped bulbs are custom and will be hard to find, but we are saving this.

We will ultimately have insulation blown into the walls as well to improve the weather-tightness of this part of the house. There will be recessed lighting in the hallway. And a final step will be to panel over the mirrored wall in the master bedroom, another throwback to the 50’s, although this one is not something we’ll save.

A final note, the “oriental screen” wood carving that is installed over the hallway closet. The wall here does not extend to the ceiling, so this decoration adds detail interest as well as facilitates ventilation into the guest room. We’ll be saving it during the rehab – here’s a close-up of the Mt. Fuji area. Obviously: Made in Japan.

Wassily Joins the Family

The cabin was built in the early ‘50’s, so as often as we can, we hope to be able to use mid-century modern furnishings in it. It is one of the fun aspects of the place, to try and decipher what influenced our builder, and then to try and imagine what the earliest furnishings looked like.

Our friend Barbara visited this weekend, and offered us this Wassily chair, which we sincerely appreciate. Here is a description of the chair from an unsourced commercial site…

Marcel Breuer designed the Wassily Chair in 1925-26 while he was working at the Bauhaus in Germany. The Wassily Chair was not designed for the non-objective painter Wassily Kandinsky, despite popular belief; Breuer's design was inspired in part by the curved tubular steel handlebars on his Adler bicycle. Kandinsky had admired the completed design, and Breuer made an additional copy for Kandinsky's personal quarters. Chrome plated steel tube frame. Saddle leather seat/back/arms.

Also, Mary gave me this fire pit over the holidays. When I considered these things over the last few years, I imagined that you put a pile of firewood in them and set the blaze, but that is really not the case…you can’t load ‘em up and start an inferno. But I bought one of those fake logs made out of sawdust and wax, and that made for quite a cozy little situation out there during my initial use of the fire pit - looking forward to more of this.