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Present: Cyrus Beer, Nicole Benjamin-Ma, Tom Berentes, Matthew Bronski, Susan Brauner, Gregory Colling, David Fixler, Meghan Hanrahan, Jeffrey Harris, David M. Hart, David Kelman, ark Landry, Ryan Maciej, Patrick Morrissey, Henry Moss, Kate Preissler, Susan Schur, Drew Sondles, Emily Talcott, Olga Vaysman, Sara Wermiel, Gary Wolf, Sally Zimmerman 1. Future Meeting Topics: Henry, Sara, and Matthew encouraged committee members to suggest topics for future meetings and noted that they do want to showcase more project work from within our group during the coming winter. Contact Henry at hmoss@brunercott.com, Sara at swermiel@verizon.net. Also, we would like to introduce a new HRC co-leader, Gregory Colling, AIA. Greg is a founder of Merrimack Design Associates in Amesbury, Mass. You can also suggest meeting topic ideas to Greg at gcolling@merrimackdesign.com. 2. Modern Houses Database Project, Preliminary Findings: Sally Zimmerman and Kate Preissler from the Historic Preservation department at Historic New England (HNE) reported on their process and project status. HNE's Modern House Database Project is only one of several extensive programs managed by this department. Among seventy-five easements that they oversee are Walter Gropius's 1938 house and Henry Hoover's 1936 house in Lincoln. Sally also runs the Historic Homeowners Program supporting private owners of historic properties and interfaces constantly with Lorna Condon of HNE's extraordinary research library and archive. HNE is a regional organization, largely dedicated to interpreting and maintaining its own large collection of historic residences but also using its research base to support advocacy efforts for the contexts of those buildings and properties of comparable caliber. The Rachel Raymond house of 1931 is a sad example of such a house that was lost to preemptory demolition by Belmont Hill School. The Modern House Database Project began about five years ago. Initially, Sally and her colleagues anticipated that a small, core group of architects and significant houses would quickly be identifiable-perhaps ten or fifteen. Sally convened the SHPO's of Massachusetts and surrounding New England states, and later involved architectural historians and preservation advocacy organizations, to help generate and winnow the list. Over 200 names emerged and have been reduced to some thirty designers, each with a constellation of sites. HNE has made three grant proposals to help continue their work. None was successful, but the organization has continued their work and become a clearing-house for Modern house information. Gradually, information is being added to HNE's electronic database and there are hopes for its becoming the primary research platform for architectural historians, regulatory agencies, and practitioners who work on Modern houses. Kate Preissler is an architectural history student at University of Massachusetts in Amherst who has been working on the project. Her research has been centered on Richard Morehouse, John and Sarah Harkness, Walter Peirce, and Ned Goodell. There are pockets of good material (Lexington Public Library's collection on Peacock Farm, for example), but in general this is difficult, primary research terrain. Although there was good coverage of individual houses in the popular press, it was sporadic, ephemeral, and difficult to locate. Sally's current Excel spreadsheets incorporate prior research by Judith Hull with research citations, collections information, and an on-line folder for individual architects. Kate's work includes interviews and increasing emphasis on oral history work. She began with interviews about Walter Pierce and Ned Goodell. It is easy to lose the thread of developmental stories when those directly involved can no longer be consulted. For example, the communal life concepts associated with Peacock Farm were worked out by Danforth Compton before Walter Pierce became involved with the development and its design. Sarah Harkness asserts that she and many of her cohort were undeclared "Socialists" along with Carl Koch, who introduced broad political ideals soon after the War. Paul and Percival Goodman's book Communitas was also influential. [Remember the stories Ned Goodell III told us at a committee meeting in 2008 about the Macarthyite denunciation of his predecessor. These folks were active through or immediately following the Great Depression.] Other aspects of database research are less difficult and less urgent than the oral histories. The database now lists more than 264 architects, but other regions may be even more advanced. As early as 1940, the New Caanen Historical Society began to build an archive on Modern houses. 3. Modern Housing Subdivisions: Preservation Strategies - David Fixler and Henry raised the subject of preserving groupings and once-coherent developments from this period and those following their example shortly afterwards. Some developments were particularly influential both architecturally and sociologically. Six Moon Hill, Peacock Farm, and Five Fields in Lexington, Conantum in Concord, and more incremental development at locations like Snake Hill in Belmont appear to deserve thematic nominations to the National and State Registers. They may also be candidates for LHD designation. Self-consciously significant complexes such as Six Moon Hill are unlikely to be threatened in the short term, while places like Spruce Hill in Weston have been decimated as recently as through the past decade. David and Henry reported on a visit they had made to Nut Meadow Crossing in Concord where interesting, intact modernist houses with Prairie Style influences are about to be replaced unrecorded. Doris Cole among others is keeping an informed and watchful eye on properties in Concord and Pam Fox is similarly involved in Weston. Peter MacMahon of the Cape Cod Trust and FOMA (Friends of Modern Architecture) in Lincoln are constantly involved in research and advocacy for Modern houses in their areas. 4. Symposium, New England Custom Houses of Robert Mills - Gregory Colling reported on a conference in June that dealt with the architecture, technology, and preservation of custom houses designed by Robert Mills in the 1830s. Three of these wonderful granite buildings are extant, including the one occupied by the conference host, Custom House Maritime Museum in Newburyport. The meeting was a fully-subscribed success, and both Greg and Sara Wermiel made presentations, which were well received. 5. Somerset House Tour, July 17 - Robert Olson led a group of about fifteen people through the Somerset Club explaining what his firm's approach to design, restoration, engineering, and construction had been for granite facades, elevator improvements, rebuilding major function spaces (and their roofs), and fundamental redistribution of some building systems that exploited the seams where separate building campaigns met. The quality of spaces, their fine decoration and furnishings, is reason enough to visit the Somerset Club, which was gracious enough to suggest to Robert that he organize the tour.
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