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The Booth House: Architectural Historical Context

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The Booth House: Architectural Historical Context The Booth House: Architectural Historical Context Philip Johnson’s First House. By Matthew Damora Recently the Damora family was visited at their family home, Philip Johnson’s Booth House, by Robert A.M. Stern, Dean of The Yale School of Architecture, notable architect, and long time friend of Philip Johnson. He told of an outing from the nearby Glass House 20 or 30 years earlier when he was driving thru the countryside with Johnson and Philip suddenly said “do you want to see my first house?” They drove up a long driveway to a secluded site, and there was the Booth House. Not finding the Damoras at home, (Johnson knew Robert Damora as they had traveled in the same MCM circles since the 1930’s) Johnson and Stern looked around a bit and then departed. Johnson had previously built a house for himself in Cambridge, MA. But maybe an architect’s first commission tends to feel more like the “first”. The Booth House was built in 1946 and has been occupied by the Damora family since 1955. The house is exemplary of many Mid Century Modern masterpieces of residential architecture in that it acquired long term inhabitants early in its existence; when you find environment that soothes your soul there is little motivation to move on. Many notable MCM houses, like the Booth House, have largely remained out of the public eye for half a century or more as their owners happily and quietly enjoyed the special environments they provided. (The Booth House has received some attention in the numerous books recently released on the life and works of its very famous architect, Philip Johnson, just prior to and subsequent to his death.) But now that the original generation of owners is reaching advanced years, as the elder Damoras have, a number of these houses are resurfacing to public view as they come on the market. Until recently the Booth House has been one of those hidden jewels. The origin of the Booth House is a story of pre War creative promise, initially stifled by the Great Depression and WWII, finally realized in the torrent of creative activity that conditions and attitudes of post War America made possible. It was also distinctly an originator of its kind. Prior to WWII there was much discussion within the architectural community regarding the development of an approach to residential house design that would make affordable quality environment accessible to the general population. This discourse emphasized a search for economical construction methods, especially thru new and unconventional building technologies. It considered a new maximum efficiency approach to spatial planning for middle class people who live without domestic help; planning intended to de-isolate family members from each other during their normal daily domestic tasks. There was also a desire to integrate nature and the outdoors into the experience of sheltered existence. Though certainly not alone in this train of thought, this approach may have been best and most famously forwarded by Frank Lloyd Wright in his writings on the Usonian House. A few initial experiments were constructed before the War, including Wright’s prototype Usonian house in Wisconsin in 1937, a couple by Walter Gropius with Marcel Breuer in New England following their arrival in the US in 1937, and there must have been a few more from lesser known sources. But for the most part the depression and War put these efforts on hold. (During most of the War a moratorium on private home construction was mandated. While some in the architectural community found opportunities to apply their talents to the War effort, private building was forbidden.) Plus these ideas were just beginning to be disseminated thru architectural schools. Indeed the broader scope of Modern was only just emerging in just a couple of architectural schools in the late 1930’s. The Harvard Graduate School of Design program that started in 1937 under former Bauhaus director Gropius with former Bauhaus student Breuer assisting was the most influential of these early Modern training centers, producing the most famous group of graduates (including Philip Johnson, I.M. Pei, Paul Rudolph, John Johansen, Henry Cobb, Edward Larrabee Barnes, Eliot Noyes, Landis Gores, Ulrich Franzen, Harry Seidler, Page 1 of 3 The Booth House: Architectural Historical Context and John Carl Warnecke). They were exposed to the socially conscious ideology of the early European Modern Movement, particularly the idea that architecture should benefit the masses. However the war delayed the start of the careers of students steeped in these ideas, exemplified by the fact that as the published record attests, none of the Harvard progeny built any commissions until after the war. Following the arrival of peace there was an explosion of building in the USA. Many of the architectural elite found the opportunity to put into reality the concepts they were unable to build during the depression and the War. Modern houses were a pre War rarity. But post war this genre flourished, spurred on by the housing shortage and the newly available technologies developed during the War. And the pre War considerations of the Modern architectural movement in the USA for dwellings modest in scale, construction cost, and maintenance; integrating life indoors with nature outside; maximizing space; liberating the inhabitants from the isolation of the multiple walled off cubicles of traditional housing found an enthusiastic receptive audience with intellectuals returning from military service who were seeking a more simple, informal, unencumbered lifestyle. There were some concentrated efforts that sought to forward what now in retrospect we might consider the Usonian ideal. The Case Study House program in California and Wright’s own Usonia project in Pleasantville, NY were organized examples of such efforts. A more loosely organized, but widely publicized, effort was the Mid-Century Modern community that was built in New Canaan, CT. This town became a particularly important epicenter of Mid Century Modern residential construction after the War with over 100 Modern houses constructed from 1947 thru the 1970’s, making it one of the largest enclaves of Mid-Century Modern residences in the country. In close proximity to New York City, the nation’s largest media center, it quickly became a media darling in print and broadcast, used as a backdrop to sell anything desired to be perceived as “modern”; in 1949 an organized single day tour of 7 of the initial houses drew 5000 people. The early MCM houses in New Canaan were mostly built as explorations seeking solutions similar to what Wright sought with his Usonia Houses, and were largely designed by a group of architects from the Harvard Graduate School of Design under Walter Gropius who descended on the town to build homes for themselves and others after the War. They were quickly dubbed “The Harvard Five”; the professor, Marcel Breuer, and four graduates: Eliot Noyes, Landis Gores, John Johansen, and Philip Johnson. Picking up their lives after the War, these were the first direct lineage Bauhaus disciples on record to build in Northern Metropolitan New York in which New Canaan lies. However the first house was actually not built in New Canaan, but neighboring Bedford, New York: The Booth House by Philip Johnson. His first commission erected in early 1946 (the construction drawings for the house are dated 1/30/46 only a few months after the Japanese surrender in August 1945), the house also predates the start of Wright’s Usonia, Pleasantville community (master plan prepared in 1947) and was constructed concurrently with the first West Coast “Case Study House” by J.R. Davidson, also built in the spring/summer of 1946, but no longer standing. (The next “Case Study House” was constructed in 1947.) It is the first post War construction on the published record in the US by a direct disciple of the Bauhaus emanating from the all important crucible of Harvard with the exception of 2 houses by professor Marcel Breuer built in Long Island, NY in 1945. Depending on the observer, these 2 houses may be too opulent in their materials to be considered of the “Usonian” philosophy. Regardless, the Booth House stands as the first post War house constructed by an American trained Bauhaus disciple, as well as the first commission built by one on either side of the War. The Booth House was built during a narrow span of time when Johnson appeared to be interested in this post War enthusiasm for finding housing solutions for the common man. The house employed unconventional construction for a residence in that period, built of economical concrete block with steel beams and columns; it featured extensive fenestration and a simple flowing open plan. In 1942 he built Page 2 of 3 The Booth House: Architectural Historical Context The Ash Street House for himself in Cambridge as his thesis project for the GSD; it investigated mass production techniques utilizing prefabricated wood panel construction. (As a man of significant means Johnson was able to one up his classmates and actually build the project rather than a model of it. The Ash Street House appears to be the first and only house constructed by an American trained Bauhaus disciple before the war.) His July 1945 Ladies’ Home Journal project house “As Simple as That” (un-built) also addressed housing for moderate income people: it is entirely possible that this article brought Johnson to the attention of the Booths when they were looking for an architect. But by April of 1946 he was considering “A House for a Millionaire with No Servants” – also an un-built project for Ladies Home Journal. Very few later Johnson projects appear to incorporate solutions for economical housing for common people, his Wiley Development Company Prototype House of 1955 being the last.
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