Five Cities Besides Palm Springs Blessed With Fantastic Midcentury Architecture
By: Pauline O’Connor
Original Article Published by Dirt
Over the past couple of weeks, Dirt has been devoting extra attention to properties in the Palm Springs area in honor of Modernism Week, the city’s annual celebration of mid century art, design, and architecture. But while Palm Springs’ pride in its architectural heritage is certainly justifiable, it’s hardly the only city in America that’s got a right to brag on this front. World-class examples showcasing modernism’s signature clean lines, dynamic forms, and integration with nature can be found in abundance in parts of Michigan, Indiana, Texas, Connecticut, and Florida, among other places. Here are five hotspots in particular that every modernist enthusiast ought to keep in mind when planning their next architectural pilgrimage.
SARASOTA, FLA
During the post-World War II housing boom, a group of Sarasota, Florida-based architects that included Paul Rudolph and his partner Ralph Twitchell, along with Victor Lundy, Gene Leedy, and Tim Seibert, began designing and building homes guided by the core modernist principle of maintaining a strong connection between indoors and out, but tailored to the Gulf Coast’s humid climate. They called it “tropical modern,” but today, the style is more widely known as the Sarasota School.
The neighborhood with the highest concentration of Sarasota moderns is Lido Shores. This is where you’ll find the movement’s most famous representative, the “Umbrella House.” Designed in 1953 by Paul Rudolph for developer Philip Hiss, the rectangular residence got its nickname from the innovative shading trellis the architect fashioned for over the roof. Other eye-catching examples include Tollyn Twitchell’s Zig-Zag House, the Hiss Studio by Tim Seibert, St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, designed by Victor Lundy, and the Cocoon House by Ralph Twitchell and Paul Rudolph.
COLUMBUS, IND.
About 40 miles south of Indianapolis, the Midwestern town of Columbus, Indiana, may be small in size, but it’s big on midcentury modern architecture, boasting buildings by such illustrious practitioners as Eero Saarinen, I.M. Pei, and Robert A.M. Stern. The works of these and other major architects were commissioned by industrialist Joseph Irwin Miller, the longtime head of the Columbus-based Cummins Engine Company, who hoped to make the town more appealing to outside executive talent.
Exceptional buildings here include the International Modern-style home Saarinen designed for Miller and his wife, Xenia, which is open daily for guided public tours. One of only a few single-family residences produced by the Finnish-American architect, the Miller House features interiors by legendary textile and interior designer Alexander Girard, who introduced what’s believed to be the first conversation pit in America. Other must-see structures include Saarinen’s North Christian Church, completed in 1964.
NEW CANAAN, CONN.
Connecticut’s standing as a Modernist stronghold is thanks in large part to Bauhaus design school founder Walter Gropius and his associate Marcel Breuer, who fled Nazi Germany in the late 1930s and took positions at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. In the 1940s, Breuer and four of the students he and Gropius mentored — Landis Gores, John M. Johansen, Eliot Noyes, and Philip Johnson — collectively known as “The Harvard Five,” settled in New Canaan and began experimenting with designs that explored the then-new vernacular. Over 100 modernist residences were built in New Canaan in the post-WWII era, the most famous of course being Philip Johnson’s Glass House. Other notable surviving examples include the flagstone-and-glass pavilion Eliot Noyes built for himself and his wife in 1956, and the Frank Lloyd Wright-influenced residence Landis Gores constructed for his family in 1947.
HOUSTON, TEX.
It’s no surprise or coincidence that the city famous for being the hub of America’s space program also boasts an abundance of outstanding space-age architecture. NASA’S selection of Houston as its home base precipitated a significant influx of residents from the science, engineering and aeronautical fields to the area, inspiring local architects to be more forward-thinking and experimental with their designs.
Residential examples of Lone Star modern style are particularly plentiful in the city’s historic Glenbrook Valley neighborhood, but other notable representations are sprinkled all over the town. These include the much-published glass-and-brick Gordon House, designed by Preston Bolton and Howard Barnstone, and the sophisticated single-story home Hungarian-born architect Paul Lazlo produced for Swiss geophysicist Gerhard Herzog in 1952.
DETROIT, MICH.
Just as the space program played a role in Houston’s midcentury housing boom, so did the automotive industry for the Detroit area. Another major factor that contributed to the region becoming an epicenter for the Modernist movement was the Cranbrook Academy of Art. Cranbrook’s first president, Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen, designed most of the campus and attracted some of 20th-century Modernism’s most influential figures, ranging from visiting lecturers like Le Corbusier to students like Ray and Charles Eames.
The Detroit metropolitan area’s landscape is peppered with remarkable work by an impressive roster of master architects. Among its most notable examples are Frank Lloyd Wright’s Turkel House, Lafayette Park, a 78-acre housing development with a collection of townhouses and high rises designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and the Prentis Building and DeRoy Auditorium Complex by World Trade Center architect Minoru Yamasaki.
