Mister Harrys

THICK woods near South Hadley, Mass., supplied the site for this house which was designed for Dr. Virginia Galbraith, professor of economics at Mt. Holyoke College. The particular delight that Dr. Galbraith wanted was the airy sense of invisible shelter provided by a glass house in the middle of the woods. That, in essence, is what she has—enhanced by a refinement in privacy proposed by her architect.

The house is not large—1,052 square feet of living space, plus a partial basement—but it is large enough for Dr. Galbraith's needs as well as for entertaining as many as seventy-five guests at one time. The main living area, left, has floor-to-ceiling walls of glass on four sides. But the 36-foot expanse of glass at the back of the house, above, faces a 600-acre tract of oak and birch owned by the college and therefore completely secluded. And the front of the house, which is set back 50 feet from the road on a downward slope, is screened by apple trees, dogwood and hemlocks. Because of the trees, Dr. Galbraith says, she never feels exposed. Nevertheless, her architect advised total privacy for the bedroom area—“and my architect,” she agrees, “was right.” Three walls of the bedroom itself are windowless, and although the fourth is glass, it faces a patio with high walls on two sides. But the patio is open to the woods at the back, so that even in her bedroom Dr. Galbraith enjoys the luxuriousness of a house set in the woods.

She was delighted to find that in spite of her glass walls and the rigors of Massachusetts’ winters, the house does not cost a fortune to heat. In winter, when the trees are bare, the sun warms the house so well that the forced-air heating system rarely turns on during the day. In summer, the heavy foliage holds back the sun so that the bedroom-patio area is often 5° to 8° cooler than outside.

Above all, Dr. Galbraith enjoys the elegance and drama of the house and the beauty of its proportions—along with its intimate relationship to the outdoors.

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source: House and Garden Magazine | August 1962

Do you measure bigness in a house in terms of square feet or by the number of rooms? Can a four-room house work and feel like one with twice that many? The answer is yes, when the interior space is handled as skillfully as it is in Mr. and Mrs. Donald Sheff's house in Great Neck, N. Y. The house has exactly four rooms plus a kitchen and two baths. Nonetheless, it fits the young couple's needs and wants like a beautifully tailored glove and gives them 2,050 square feet of highly personalized pleasure.

Enormously energetic, the Sheffs have widely ranging interests that keep them chronically busy both at home and in the business world. They work as a team at an enterprise involving a series of secretarial schools. They entertain often, with pleasure and with distinction, since Mrs. Sheff is a gourmet cook to whom dinner for two is as important as a buffet for thirty. Both she and her husband love flowers and gardening (given the time), bright colors and, almost more than anything, the serenity of spaciousness and the delight of vista.

It took them a long time to pin down what they wanted in a house. Fascinated by architecture, in an unpedantic way, they read seriously on the subject, visited new houses right and left. Armed, finally, with a clear awareness of their values and preferences, they asked their architect, George Nemeny, for a home that would be satisfying to the eye, amenable to their pattern of living and easy to keep up. And Mr. Nemeny, sensitive to their idiosyncrasies, designed them a remarkably simple house that imposes no jurisdictions. Each room is large enough to work as two, and does. All the walls work, too—instead of merely dividing space, they also accommodate floor-to-ceiling storage. Ceilings are 10 feet high (in the living room, a vaulted skylight lifts the eye 2 feet higher) and glass walls extend each room out to a terrace and to the kind of easily maintained landscape that is such a joy to the true, if only part-time, horticulturist.

The simplicity of the house is admirably suited to the Sheffs' highly individual manner of living. "It imposes no pattern of its own," Mrs. Sheff explains. In decorating it, she felt free to indulge her flair for color, and Mr. Sheff was inspired to tackle a number of do-it-yourself projects, including the paving of the terraces and much of the planting. As a result, they look upon the house, not as static shelter, but as an active, wholly cooperative partner in their lives.

The house rests on a high narrow shelf of land near Beverly Hills, Calif., looking across plunging, tree-clad hills to a panoramic view of the valley below. In a certain light, the vista of trees layered with mist suggests a Japanese landscape, a marvelously apt setting for the contemporary architecture with its Japanese detail.

The long narrow plan of the house, its shape determined by the shape of the land, gives every room a spectacular view plus a more immediate outlook on the sparkling pool and its terrace. The same shape made it easy to separate the girls' bedrooms from their parents' by the great living-dining-cooking area. Outside this part of the house the pool stretches toward the back of the site like a lawn of glittering sapphire, and the long porch of rosy beige pebbled concrete extends the indoor living areas to meet it. The low platform or hikie at one end is in fact a continuation of the living room's raised hearth.The bedroom wings have their own outdoor extensions: enclosed sun courts with direct access in each case to a bath dressing room. These prophesy the second life of the house. For when the girls are away, their wing is like a guest house within the big house, offering all the amenities of polished hospitality: self containment, lavish dressing space, the luxury of the pool a few steps outside the door. Even when there are no guests the wing is in continual use, for a third room has been turned into a painting and pottery studio, left, where the girls' mother spends a good deal of time when she is alone.

Nothing more truly expresses the real flavor of the house than the great living area, opposite page. Pervaded by the outdoors, this huge room with its terrace is informal enough to suit the girls and their friends, yet it has enough dignity for their parents' large parties. At the fireplace end, only a low book case separates the room from the hall lined with shoji-doored closets. These conspire with the travertine chimney breast and the end wall of vertical red-wood boards to create an atmosphere of unpretentious elegance. At the other end of the room, the dining area is screened from the hall by a ceiling-high storage wall that includes a bar.Buffet parties are the rule in this house, and the 12-foot-long Philippine mahogany cabinet between the dining area and the kitchen makes a wonderful place to set out the food. Above the cabinet are folding doors that close off the kitchen, below left.

But when these are open, cooking becomes a part of the party, and the guests can watch and sniff dinner as it is barbecued at the tile-topped cooking island. At one end of the kitchen is a high counter facing the sliding doors to the terrace so dripping bathers can hop over from the pool to help themselves to sustenance.The Japanese accent of the architecture is echoed by tiny gardens near the front door and outside the master bedroom. These little plots have the added charm of easy maintenance, another point that predicts a happy future for this house in its second life.

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source: House and Garden Magazine | November 1961

Every house reflects the values of the family who live in it—but none more clearly than a house built for a young family on a young, i.e., limited, budget. Since they can't have everything, everything they put their money into is the result of a considered choice, and the sum of these choices both mirrors and molds their style of living. A shining example is the George Davises' house in Tacoma, Washington. In many ways, the Davises are typical of hundreds of today's young families: Mr. Davis commutes to his business downtown; Mrs. Davis works, too, but part-time and at home; they have two little girls—Kit, $4\frac{1}{2}$ and Gail, 2. Untypical, however, is the fact that Mrs. Davis, who is an architect, designed their house and was thereby able to incorporate her requirements as wife and mother directly into the blueprints with no need to confer with anyone but herself.

The Davises' building budget was $25,000 (which did not cover cost of land and landscaping nor, naturally, include an architect's fee). This money they turned into space (3,238 square feet of it) plus privacy (none of the main rooms face the street) and plenty of places to put things (thirteen storage walls) in preference to a showy array of built-in gadgets and fancy finishes. By using simple materials and the simplest type of construction (post and beam) and capitalizing on the economies of a two-story plan, Mrs. Davis produced a four-bedroom house with space bonuses you rarely expect to achieve on a limited budget: a playroom, a home office and two full dressing rooms. The main floor is divided into three zones: the general living area (A on plan) that embraces dining area and kitchen; the office (B) which is near enough to the living area to double as extra party space; and the bedroom zone (C). The lower floor, which includes the playroom, two bedrooms and a bath will become a separate private domain for Kit and Gail when they are older. But the real key to the house is storage, for it is the storage walls that divide the space in what is otherwise a long, open shell. "Storage" says Mrs. Davis, "is the basic element of design. Its relationship to the family pattern of living determines the plan."