Docomomo in New Haven

Docomomo had its day today.  All over the U.S., preservation groups were leading Docomomo tours.  So what is Docomomo?  “Documentation and conservation of bulidings, sites, and nieghborhoods of the modern movement.”  Read that as modernist architecture from the mid-20th century.

Walter Malley house, 1909, designed by Grosvenor Atterbury

Walter Malley house, 1909, designed by Grosvenor Atterbury

In New Haven, land of great architecture, New Haven Preservation Trust took on the awesome duty of touring us to see modernist residential architecture.  And where better to visit that elegant St. Ronan Street?  Wait?  What?  Yes, among those classic beauties, crafting the first “streetcar suburb” in the area, are emblems of modernity.

2016-10-08-14-21-23After the Civil War, when New Haven became an industrial powerhouse, estates were built in the country outside New Haven on St. Ronan Street.  Yes, St. Ronan is walking distance from much of Yale, but that just shows how small New Haven was at the time.  Eli Whitney was among the notables to build leafy green estates here.

By the 1920s, with a wave of modernism, the estates were broken up into small lots.  Streetcars carried people the easy distance to downtown jobs.

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Adolph Mendel house, 1913, designed by R.W. Foote

Adolph Mendel house, 1913, designed by R.W. Foote

 

 

 

 

By the 1950s and ’60s though, like so much of the country, car culture created real suburbs, and neighborhoods like this one were in radical decline.  Large houses were converted to rooming houses.  Lots were subdivided again with urban renewal and back filled with smaller homes.

Architecture students graduating from Yale were building experimental houses on these small lots.  Established architects, like H.W. Foote, who designed stately homes like the Adolph Mendel house above, shifted to constructing modernist designs.

Jose Delgado house, 1959, designed by Gualtier & Johnson

Jose Delgado house, 1959, designed by Gualtier & Johnson

Houses like the Jose Delgado house applied a California philosophy to the modernism.  Low pitched roof lines overhang garages placed near the street.  Behind the garage, the private part of the house opens onto garden spaces behind, melding the indoor and outdoor spaces.

But having the garage up front “deadens the streetscape,” we were told.  That’s why traditional houses with front porches will hold a place in people’s hearts.

It’s all a tradeoff.

 

 

Mrs. E.H. Tuttle house, 1956, designed by E. Carleton Granbery

Mrs. E.H. Tuttle house, 1956, designed by E. Carleton Granbery

 

You can see an earlier California design again in the Tuttle House from 1956.

 

 

 

 

 

Stanley and Margaret Leavy Residence

Stanley/Margaret Leavy house, 1967, designed by Granbery, Cash & Assoc.

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Piet Mondrian, Lozenge Composition, 1921

My favorite was the Leavy house.  I just love the geometric lines and blocks of color, reminiscent of a Mondrian painting, and what must be bright, open interior spaces.

Dr. Leavy saw patients in the home originally.  Now, the patient area is rented out as an Air BnB.  Let me know if you stay here!

 

Robert/Judith Evenson house, 1979, designed by Kosinski Architecture

Robert/Judith Evenson house, 1979, designed by Kosinski Architecture

By the 1970s, architects were concerned with energy conservation, as we can see in the solar-designed Evenson house.  Skylights allow heat to radiate through the space, heat water, that then circulates through radiator piping to heat the house.  Heavy walls and small windows provide solar gain, too.

The eclectic architecture of the St. Ronan area shows a pattern of architectural history in towns and cities replicated across the country.  The desire to build large homes in traditional, European styles gets intermixed with a robust American modernism.  Eye candy all!

Guns to Apartments

I’m still musing on how I feel about two recent tours and guns pervading every aspect of our lives.  During the Hartford Blooms Garden Tours, I went to the top of the onion-domed Colt Armory–the day after the Orlando shootings.

Having passed the notable landmark so often on the highway, I was both curious and a bit repulsed.  No one else on the tour seemed to make the connection to Orlando.  So I decided to just experience and listen, not share my dis-ease.

We took an elevator almost to the top, only having to climb one flight of stairs.  Then we walked through an industrial, attic-like area to the stairs to the cupola.

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Yes, the view was interesting, as our guide told us how Sam Colt needed the nearby Connecticut River for transporting raw materials and manufactured guns.  She explained how important the horse at the top is to people in Hartford, who clamored, when it was removed from the building, for its return.

Still, I felt restless, just wanting to go back down and get out of the building.

The fact that the factory now has been converted into apartments seems weird and ironic to me.

Who would want to let guns so palpably into the space where they nourish, refresh, restore, and relax?  Their home?

My presumptions were challenged again, with today’s tour of the International Festival of Arts & Ideas and its tour with New Haven Preservation Trust of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company.  I have been curious about this site and the transition to living spaces, curious enough to overcome my distaste.

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Yes, at its peak, 30,000 people worked here.  Yes, they produced washing machines and sporting equipment, as well as rifles and ammunition.  And yes, the factory buildings are being converted to office and apartment spaces.

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Yes, I support adaptive reuse and get excited when old buildings find new energy.  Yes, the restoration has preserved a historic character combined with modern sensibilities.  Yes, wonderful Susan Clinard has created art from the wood no longer usable, now hanging on the walls and above the old fireplace (as seen above).

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But somehow, I would rather leave the ruins (knowing that’s not good for New Haven).

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A reminder that guns are not so central to every aspect of our lives.  Or leave some of these dilapidated messes as a balance, a reminder that some things are better left in the past.

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I asked one of our guides about bad juju, cleaning the energy.  He didn’t know what I meant.  He commented on how Winchester labor and workmanship are being celebrated with new life in the old building.  They discovered and restored this ceiling mural from a 1904 wing.  Reinforcing the complex’s past.

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The apartments feature original wood with those fashionable industrial finishings.  And the place is 90% occupied.

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Obviously, many people don’t feel the same way I do.  They aren’t put off by the ground water contamination and hot spots, the lead and asbestos (remediated, of course), the years of water accumulating in derelict structures.

They can look beyond whatever history happened here and throughout Connecticut (Remington was manufactured in Bridgeport) that led to guns, guns, guns, everywhere, all the time.

Maybe I should be celebrating the conversion from guns to apartments.   I just don’t know.  What do you think?