Westport Modern: When Cool Was Hot

Three years ago, preservationists rallied to save the Micheels house in Westport, one of Paul Rudolph’s most important works. Ultimately, this battle, which culminated in a lawsuit filed by the Connecticut Trust, was lost. Triumphantly the developer bulldozed the house and replaced it with a “Shingle Style” McMansion—one more tragic loss of an important building.

            It was clear to Michael Glynn, a New York architect, and Morley Boyd, a Westport preservationist, both leaders in the Micheels battle, that the first step in preserving important modern buildings was to find them before the developers did—in other words, conduct a survey. Working with Kim Elstein, an authority on Modern furniture, they searched out houses built from the early 1930s through the 1970s in Westport and Weston. The team made some remarkable finds. For instance, a rare International Style house by Chicago architect Barry Byrne and a large villa, built in 1940, by Ely Jacques Kahn, as well as first-rate work by lesser-known architects.

            A big Moderne house that could have popped out of a Nick and Nora Charles movie turned out to have been designed by Erard Matthiessen, an obscure architect who went on to a notable career in environmental conservation and to have a famous son, the author Peter Matthiessen. Victor Lundy, Mies van der Rohe, Richard Neutra, and Keck and Keck are some of the other architects represented. The survey team also located a house designed by Antonin Raymond in 1941. The owner, unaware of the house’s provenance, had been planning to demolish most of it to build a spec house.

            Boyd, Glynn and Elstein have hung an exhibit at the Westport Historical Society, with photos and information from the survey, as well as photos of the destruction of the Micheels house, taken by photographer Chris Mottalini. The team hopes to do a more extensive search and eventually to place all the buildings on a web site, similar to what was recently accomplished in New Canaan. New Canaan has been billed as the epicenter of modern houses, but based on this survey, it would appear that New Canaan is not unique.

 “Westport Modern: When Cool Was Hot” runs at the Westport Historical Society through May 1. For more information, visit www.westporthistory.org or call (203) 222-1424.

PHOTOGRAPH

caption:  The First Unitarian Church of Fairfield County, in Westport (1961), designed by Victor Lundy

credit:  Michael Jennings Glynn; reproduce by permission only