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!

Looking in corners and out of the way places

In an interesting juxtaposition, I explored unexpected corners and spaces today.

Starting on the Hartford Belle, a boat sailing 2013-10-05 11.22.14the Connecticut River near Hartford, surprises were there in this pretty unsurprising city.  Who would expect this Russian onion dome on the Colt’s Firearm Factory?

I love origin stories and learned that the name Connecticut is a Dutch-ified version of an Indian word that means “long tidal river.”  Those Dutch!  They came as early as 1614 to explore the 410 mile long river, which runs all the way up to the Canadian border.  The river has a two-foot tidal variation each day, even as far up river as Hartford, 40 miles from Long Island Sound.

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The river is the first of the “Blue Way” program for cleaning up polluted, historic rivers.  Now little commercial traffic travels up the river.   Still, Hartford is prettier from the river than on site.

 

 

The afternoon saw me off the boat and on foot, back in New Haven.  This tour explored the corners of buildings on the Yale campus.  We were snooping out carved spouts and grotesques on “gargoyle-infested buildings.”  In contrast to the guide of the Woolworth Building, this author-architect Mathew Duman defines a gargoyle as a figure-caricature that also works as a channel for rain water.  Grotesques can be inside or on the exterior of a building, but are purely decorative.  No funnels there.  We can watch the architectural historians battle it out, or start our exploration.

2013-10-05 16.49.43What’s fun about the gargoyles around Yale is that they play off of student life, as well as showing dignitaries from its past.  The sense of fun, irony, and satire are consistently present, on all types of buildings.

Here’s a carving from the law school  Can you make out the charismatic teacher and his sleeping students?

 

And Calhoun Hall is named for a man who is shown as a student sleeping over his studies, not as a great benefactor.2013-10-05 15.41.06  Love the monkey grotesque, who seems to single-handedly hold up the building.

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Hilariously, this grotesque with the wooden stone on Bingham refers to a prize awarded to the Yale student who eats the most.

And as a critique on gluttony, two grotesques on Davenport show the roasted fowl and Faust (get the sound similarity?).  They satirize the gluttony of food (fowl) and gluttony of power (Faust).

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The bulldog Handsome Dan is the campus mascot, and bulldogs are all over the place on building facades.  I particularly like the bulldog nerd.

Also a “yale” is a fantastical figure that can resemble a goat, a unicorn, or a hybrid with a human.  It can be embellished with an elephant tail, polka dots, or horns that go in separate directions.  Lots of latitude in portraying a yale around campus.  We saw a baby yale, but don’t get too close!  They’re supposed to be vicious.  Here’s a pair of yales in the bright light of the old art building.

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Don’t look so scary, eh?

Check out more of my favorites in the slide show below.  Don’t miss the screenwriter and the painter (although he is missing his brush)…

What was so great about the tour, too, was being able to go into the locked courtyard of a resident hall.  We got a bell concert, commemorating the new president induction at Yale today, while standing in the Brother’s Immunity (a literary society) courtyard of Branford College.

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I definitely felt like I was in a rarefied place, but really, this is a dorm.  Yes, really.

You can hear some of the bell tower concert in this video of the main courtyard at Branford.

 

 

Here’s some more images for you:

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