Property of Mr. and Mrs. Bert Geller, Lawrence, Long Island | Architect: Marcel Breuer

Three small boys, the oldest of them seven, are indirectly responsible for the plan of one of the most successful modern houses built since the war. At Lawrence, Long Island, the house which architect Marcel Breuer created for Mr. and Mrs. Bert Geller's family, and most of all for their three children, is a cogent case for the modern approach to design.

This is tomorrow's house built today. It is important because it is brand new thinking, realized in wood and stone. Its architect is a realist. He knows that children are noisy and that parents want quiet, so he has planned a house where two generations can live intimately but not in a heap. He understands that servants are scarce, so he has geared the house to require a minimum of upkeep. Hungarian- born Breuer understands the American passion for the sun, and has at his fingers" ends all the accepted tenets about indoor-outdoor living. He is sensitive to the qualities of materials, knows how simple things like fieldstone and cedar siding. when they are juxtaposed, can set each other off excitingly. He works in restrained, natural colors, interrupting them suddenly, sharply, with flashes of primary reds, yellows and blues.

All of these factors, taken separately, do not in themselves equal an important house. It is the way in which they have been interrelated which is the secret of the success of the Geller house. As if he had used a pair of giant scissors, Marcel Breuer has taken what is at heart a two-story-and-basement house, cut its stories apart and set them in a spreading, wing-like pattern on the soil of Long Island. This is a complete departure from the old-fashioned bungalow, where bedrooms radiated at random from the main living rooms. Here, the living-dining-service floor is in one wing; the family's floor is a separate unit connected by the entry hall; carport, storage room and guest bedrooms are in a building of their own, adjacent to the main house. Mr. Breuer's own, technical description of the plan is that it is "bi-nuclear, composed of two distinct entities, with a satellite building."