New book shows LI as a Modernist sandbox
Edward Durell Stone built this Old Westbury house for A. Conger Goodyear, a former general and a conservative businessman. The house is an example of the Modernist design on Long Island. Credit: Ezra Stoller
When Caroline Rob Zaleski was asked to do a survey of Modernist buildings on Long Island, she had a pretty good idea of what she might find. As a preservation advocate, she was already familiar with the radically inventive architectural style that had excited traditional America beginning in the 1930s.
She would poke around some archives, she thought. Maybe discover a few important structures. And that would be that.
Ten years later, she is still amazed at how things turned out. "The whole thing just kind of snowballed," she says. "I found more and more leads and more and more properties."
The result is the soon-to-be-released "Long Island Modernism: 1930-1980" (Norton, $80), a 336-page coffee-table book with stories and pictures detailing some of Modernism's most pioneering and elegant examples. By the time she was finished, she had found not just a handful of buildings but 500 structures ranging from dazzling, glass-enclosed residences to institutional wonders that look like whimsical fortresses.
Few people are aware that Frank Lloyd Wright designed a home for a couple in Great Neck, the first house he built east of the Great Lakes. Or that Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, a former director of the Bauhaus school, one of the most influential currents in Modernist architectural design and a leader of the Modern movement in Europe, converted a barn in Huntington into a weekend residence.
What she found was that a significant number of the Modernist trailblazers -- 25 architects are in the book -- left their mark on Long Island. The project was funded with a series of grants under the aegis of the Society for the Preservation of Long Island Antiquities.
"Modernism" is an architectural style that lasted from about 1930 to 1980, the author says. Its main elements included simplified forms with little ornamentation, along with an emphasis on function. The movement tried to assimilate the era's modern technology -- things like metal, reinforced concrete and factory-made parts -- into buildings for specific purposes such as family life or social interaction.
"It was eclectic," Zaleski says. "It was trying to find a language to suit the machine age and the automobile age. For example, once large pane windows came into use, you could bring the outdoors inside. There was a deliberate relationship between the indoors and outdoors. What it definitely was not about was looking back toward old Europe or the American Colonial period."
Why the concentration on Long Island? Timing and opportunity.
Influences such as the 1939 World's Fair got people excited about suburbia and a modern lifestyle, she says. At the same time, architectural luminaries had settled in places such as Manhattan, New Haven and Boston because that's where the clients were. Long Island had open land in beautiful settings -- and newly constructed bridges and highways to get to it.
"It was the perfect laboratory," Zaleski says.
The book is presented in a series of narratives about the architects and their clients. These were often improbable relationships, Zaleski says.
"What made a Brooklyn man with his wife, Julius and Anne Abeles, who owned a fledgling meat freezing company, call up a well-known architect and ask for a custom-designed house? And why was A. Conger Goodyear, a former general and a conservative businessman, moved to ask Edward Stone to build a modern house in Old Westbury, when all of his neighbors had Beaux Arts mansions?" she says.
Some of the book's most stunning examples were the works of Philip Johnson, a co-designer of the New York State Pavilion for the 1964 World's Fair in Queens. The residence he built for a jet-setting couple on Lloyd Neck -- who sometimes hosted Sophia Loren -- included a dramatic living room made up of floor-to-ceiling windows positioned 70 feet in the air, over an embankment. Later owners renovated the home so much that the original design has been lost.
This is not an unusual situation, Zaleski says. About a third of the Modernist structures she researched had been demolished, and another third drastically altered. The last third exist in relatively good condition. She says she hopes the book will raise awareness about these historically important structures so they will be preserved for the future.
Three generations enjoy this Modernist home
"He said, 'How do you want to live?' " says Beverly Hanson, known as "B."
The couple was so taken with the architect's philosophy that they hired him on the spot. He immediately took out a sketch pad and began translating their ideas into a plan.
"I was very moved by that question," says B Hanson. "I told him I liked the arts, music, the outdoors and that I wanted to have lots of children."
The house he built for the Hansons in 1951, on four acres in Lloyd Harbor, was the response. The Modernist structure includes a sweeping butterfly roof and an interior focused on the outdoors. Aside from minor renovations mindful of Breuer's style, it remains true to its original design.
"There's a simplicity to this house and also an elegance that I find engaging and comforting and beautiful," says Blake Hanson, B Hanson's son, who grew up there along with his sister, Polly Hanson Greenberg. He and his wife, Lenore, moved back to the house in 2009 with their two children. His mother moved back to the home three months ago.
The home has been featured in magazine and newspaper articles and on tours. "We've had so many visitors say, 'You know, I don't like modern architecture, but I love your house,' " B says.
Among other touches were radiant heat in the floors and passive solar flagstones warmed by winter sunshine streaming in through 8-by-8-foot windows. Breuer designed the carport so it could be enclosed for more living space when the family grew. Which is exactly what happened. The renovation was handled by Blake's father.
All and all, it was a good plan, according to 87-year-old B Hanson, who has spent six decades, off and on, in the home.
"I think I'll end my days here," she says.
