Crane House Tours

June 10, 2019 In Events, News

Crane House Tours

On June 29th, a2modern will be hosting tours of the Crane House. Built for Florence and Richard Crane in 1954, it was the first commission for Ann Arbor architect Robert Metcalf, who went on to design over 60 midcentury modern homes in the area.

Considered a novelty at the time, the Crane House immediately attracted the attention of neighbors, journalists, and Dr. Crane’s colleagues at the physics department, who soon supplied Metcalf with additional commissions.

The house is built into a hillside with expansive dining and living room windows facing south from the second floor. Behind the house to the north the second floor is at ground level and leads through sliding glass doors to a private, trellised patio.

Metcalf worked closely with the Cranes to provide them with a beautiful, functional home. One requirement was that the house be designed so that the three teenage children would have a place to play music and entertain their friends without bothering their parents. The second floor master bedroom, located at the western end of the house, included a built-in desk and a dressing area for Florence. The children’s three bedrooms were placed at the eastern end of the house. The central area of the second floor included the kitchen, dining and living areas.

Florence Crane was Ann Arbor’s first female City Council member and was politically active at the local, state and national levels. Richard Crane interacted with other notable scientists including Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, and Edwin Hubble, and was awarded the National Medal of Science by President Ronald Reagan. Many of the original science displays at the Ann Arbor Hands-on Museum were designed and built by Dick Crane.The common areas were accordingly designed for frequent social interactions. Friends, neighbors, and visiting dignitaries enjoyed the modern open floor plan, the floor-to-ceiling windows, and the comfortable family setting. Robert McNamara and other local intellectuals joined Florence here for her book club meetings.

In 2012 the Elerts acquired the house and started an extensive restoration effort. The updates include a kitchen remodel (approved by Metcalf), all new windows, landscape improvements, a new geothermal HVAC system, a new roof, and a new back patio.They were awarded a Rehabilitation Award by the Ann Arbor Historic District Commission in 2018. The Crane House recently appeared in Michigan Modern, Designs that Shaped America by Amy Arnold and Brian Conway. The Elerts enjoy hosting tours for architect students from the University, and home tours by various local and national organizations.

The main entrance on the first floor, which contains the garage, utility room, family room, and study are joined to the main living area by a graceful foyer which leads to a redwood paneled hallway. The hallway connects the second floor living areas which open from it to the higher ceilinged rooms and to the private patio behind the house.

Tickets can be purchased at a2modern.myevents.com.

May 28, 2019 In News

Yamasaki in the Cultural Center Tour on June 29, 2019

Minoru Yamasaki, Detroit’s best-known midcentury architect, left his mark all over the city. This tour, offered once per summer to the public, explores Yamasaki’s legacy in Midtown and the Cultural Center, including stops at Wayne State University’s magnificent McGregor Conference Center and reflecting pool. Kathleen Marcaccio is the tour guide.

Sat, June 29, 2019
10:00 AM – 12:00 PM EDT

 

January 25, 2019 In News

Mid-Century Modern Midland has a New Mobile App

Our friends at Mid-Century Modern Midland (midcenturymidland.org) have created a cool new mobile app. To download the app, go to Apple App Store or Google Play Store and type Mid-Century Modern Midland.

“Midland, Michigan has over 400 Mid-Twentieth Century Modern homes, churches, commercial, educational and civic structures woven throughout the city. Due to the quality and concentration of these structures, Midland is recognized as one the most architecturally significant communities in the United States.

Beginning in the early 1930s, Alden B. Dow, F.A.I.A. introduced modern architecture to Midland, Michigan. As part of the
Mid-Twentieth Century Modern movement, Mr. Dow challenged thinking and helped to redefine how we design and use buildings. His
innovative, functional and dynamic work inspired designers and architects like Francis Warner, Jackson Hallett, Glenn Beach, Robert
Schwartz, and others, to create modern structures that are integrated into the Midland community.

Mid-Century Modern Midland, committed to documenting, preserving and celebrating Midland’s architectural heritage, has created a mobile app to share this unprecedented collection of Mid-Century Modern structures.

The app allows you to search any Mid-Century Modern structure in the City of Midland and gives you a photo and documented information about it. It introduces you to the architects and designers who contributed to Midland’s architectural landscape.

It offers a number of predetermined tours, but also allows you to create your own customized tour. The app will then route you to the structures you selected.”

November 13, 2018 In News

Mid-century Exhibit in Milwaukee

If you find yourself near Milwaukee, WI over the holidays (September 28, 2018–January 6, 2019) you might want to check this out.
Serious Play: Design in Midcentury America explores the projects of over 40 designers who advocated for playfulness and whimsy within their creations for corporations, domestic interiors, and children. The exhibition presents play as a serious form of inspiration, experimentation, and problem solving. In midcentury America, such playful design occurred against the backdrop of a booming consumer market and as a counterbalance to Cold War–era anxiety. Furniture, toys, textiles, films, posters, ceramics are among the objects featured.
Visit this Milwaukee Art Museum exhibit link for more information.

 

September 24, 2018 In Books, Events

Yamasaki Lecture

On October 10, 2018 at 7 PM there will be an event at the downtown Ann Arbor District Library. The event is free and no sign up is required to attend.

Dale Gyure, author of Minoru Yamasaki: Humanist Architecture for a Modernist World will present a power-point illustrated lecture on Yamasaki.  Best known as the architect for the infamous Twin Towers, Yamasaki was based in Detroit for much of his career. His local work includes four unique buildings on Wayne University’s campus, the Michigan Consolidated Gas building in downtown Detroit, and the Chelsea, Michigan high school. Gyure teaches architectural history and theory at Lawrence Tech and is the author of many books on architectural subjects.
Born to Japanese immigrant parents in Seattle, Minoru Yamasaki (1912–1986) became one of the towering figures of midcentury architecture, even appearing on the cover of Time magazine in 1963. His self-proclaimed humanist designs merged the modern materials and functional considerations of postwar American architecture with traditional elements such as arches and colonnades. Yamasaki’s celebrated and iconic projects of the 1950s and ’60s, including the Lambert–St. Louis Airport and the U.S. Science Pavilion in Seattle, garnered popular acclaim.
 
Despite this initial success, Yamasaki’s reputation began to decline in the 1970s with the mixed critical reception of the World Trade Center in New York, one of the most publicized projects in the world at the time, and the spectacular failure of St. Louis’s Pruitt-Igoe Apartments, which came to symbolize the flaws of midcentury urban renewal policy. And as architecture moved in a more critical direction influenced by postmodern theory, Yamasaki seemed increasingly old-fashioned. In the first book to examine Yamasaki’s life and career, Dale Allen Gyure draws on a wealth of previously unpublished archival material, and nearly 200 images, to contextualize his work against the framework of midcentury modernism and explore his initial successes, his personal struggles—including with racism—and the tension his work ultimately found in the divide between popular and critical taste.

Dale Allen Gyure, Ph.D., is Professor and Associate Chair of Architecture at Lawrence Technological University in Southfield, Michigan, where he teaches classes in architectural history and theory. Dr. Gyure’s research focuses on American architecture of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, particularly the intersections of architecture, education, and society. His published works include the books Frank Lloyd Wright’s Florida Southern College (2010), The Chicago Schoolhouse, 1856-2006: High School Architecture and Educational Reform (2011), Minoru Yamasaki: Humanist Architecture for a Modernist World (2017), and The Schoolroom: A Social History of Teaching and Learning (2018), as well as numerous book chapters and articles. Professor Gyure has served on the Boards of Directors of the Society of Architectural Historians and the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy, and is a current member of the Michigan Historic Preservation Review Board.

 

August 17, 2018 In Events, News

Winningham / Saffer Open House

On September 9, a2modern will host a tour of the David and Ann Saffer’s George Brigham-designed house.

This expansive single-level home nestled in the northeastern corner of a six acre property provides a maximum of privacy with spectacular views of gardens and forest. The present owners, David and Ann Saffer, enjoy “the long views” both inside the house and out across the lush and level grounds.

saffer house-1

Mid-century Modern architect George Brigham designed this house for an elderly client who asked for two wings for bedrooms, an indoor conservatory, and a screened porch, identified in the plans as “the terrace.” The Saffers have enhanced the sensitivity of this house to its orientation in the natural setting by adding a trellis-covered patio onto the terrace, by enlarging the existing skylights and by adding a large skylight above the dining area. They have made the house a most beautiful platform for entertaining.

Arriving by car, one first sees the two-car garage and a covered walkway to two separate points of entry to the house: the main door by the master bedroom wing (west end) and farther down an access door to the kitchen. An axial corridor runs the full length of the house from master bedroom to kitchen/food preparation area along this side of the house. Entering the central core of the house there is one long and quite wide room, gently lit by clerestory windows along the north roofline. The wide floor to ceiling fireplace sets the scene of a large gathering space that is flanked by the dining area, the terrace and the open patio on the east. In the other direction expanses of glass invite one to saunter to the conservatory area (now a conversation spot) and the courtyard between the bedroom wings. The Saffers have placed in this outdoor courtyard a fountain that is audible from the master bedroom and the library.

This is not a simple ranch-style house. The generous interior dimensions of conservatory space, fireplace area, dining area, terrace area and patio area respond to the client’s needs for accommodating gatherings of many people. Equally, the views out onto the grounds and the forest create a sensation of being in nature. A highlight of the house are the eaves and the overhangs left open so as to mediate the sunlight without blocking it. These overhangs are created by the ceiling beams extending beyond the walls of the house, and while unobtrusive at first the effect is pleasure at a friendly presence.

There are many striking design features and designed-in amenities in this largely original Mid-century Modern house. A great new feature involves the tile floor covering from conservatory to the terrace. Its quiet sandstone and ochre colors unite the entire entertaining space in a single sweep and add to the feeling of openness, serenity and naturalness already induced by the design of a gifted architect.

Tickets can be purchased at a2modern.myevents.com.

June 8, 2018 In Events, News

Concordia University Campus Tour

On Sunday, July 8th, a2modern and Concordia University of Ann Arbor (CCAA) will offer a tour of the CCAA campus flanking Geddes Road on the banks of the Huron River near US-23.  The tour will feature  several midcentury modern (MCM) structures including a classroom / administrative building, the library, and the Chapel of the Holy Trinity, a midcentury gem reminiscent of Eero Saarinen’s 1964 North Christian Church in Columbus, IN.  Tour guests will also have an opportunity to meet and mingle in the Earhart Manor that now serves as CCAA’s administrative center.

image6

Earhart Mansion

CCAA was founded in 1962 as Concordia Lutheran Junior College on a 187 acre site on the grounds of the former Earhart family estatein NE Ann Arbor.  CCAA commissioned architect Vincent G. Kling and his Philadelphia, PA firm to design the campus buildings.  Kling, who studied at Cornell and MIT and had worked for Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, headed what became the largest architectural practice in Pennsylvania in the 1960s and ‘70s.  He was an AIA Fellow and received multiple national and local AIA awards.  He is best known for his large Philadelphia projects including the multi-building Penn Center and adjacent Love Park, the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, Lankenau Hospital and the US Mint, but he also designed several MCM residences in the area.

Concordia was dedicated and opened to students in the fall of 1963.  Campus buildings clearly exhibit a midcentury modern design aesthetic and MCM features, including shed-style pre-cast concrete roofs, simple unadorned materials, and large windows connecting the inside to the exterior.  They contrast nicely with the Earhart Manor (designed by Detroit architects Smith, Hinchman, and Grylls, architects for many U of M buildings) and its classic but simple limestone edifice and elegant details like its slate roof, copper eaves and Pewabic ceramic fountain and bathroom tile.

image3The Chapel of the Holy Trinity, a gift of Michigan Lutheran church congregations, was designed with three sides so that its tall spire would cast its shadow over each of the academic buildings, reminding students, faculty and staff of the college’s primary purpose.  It was completed in 1964.  The chapel features multiple ‘faceted glass’ windows executed by the French artist Gabriel Loire; Barbara Krueger, a specialist on stained glass, will be there to answer questions about them. We hope you can join us on our tour of this notable MCM campus in Ann Arbor!  Tickets can be purchased here.

June 5, 2018 In Books, News

Albert Kahn in Detroit – Presentation and Booksigning by Michael Hodges

This event will be held at the Traverwood Branch Library event space on Thursday, June 21, 2018 from 7:00 to 8:30 PM.

Building the Modern World: Albert Kahn in Detroit, by Michael H. Hodges (Wayne State University Press), tells the tale of the penniless German-Jewish immigrant who never went beyond elementary school, yet at his death was one of the world’s most-famous architects. In this lecture and slide show, Hodges will discuss Kahn’s seminal contributions to modern architecture, his staunch defense of the Detroit Institute of Arts’ Diego Rivera murals when they came under attack, and his role in laying down the industrial backbone for the Soviet Union as chief consulting architect for the first Five Year Plan.

AUTHOR BIO

Michael H. Hodges is the fine-arts writer at The Detroit News, where he’s worked since the early 1990s. Building the Modern World: Albert Kahn in Detroit is his second book. His first, Michigan’s Historic Railroad Stations, was named one of the best books of 2013 by the Library of Michigan. Books will be available for purchase.

June 5, 2018 In Books, Research Articles

“Albert Kahn in Detroit” by Michael Hodges

Book Review by Grace Shackman –
Albert Kahn “almost single handedly invented modern architecture, saved Detroit’s Diego Rivera Murals, and guaranteed Allied Victory in World War II” according to Michael Hodges in his recently published book Albert Kahn in Detroit: Building the Modern World.  Kahn (1869-1942) was responsible for over 2,000 buildings-houses, factories, skyscrapers, commercial buildings, and public buildings including much of the University of Michigan.
Hodges builds good cases for these three claims. Kahn is considered an inventor of modern architecture because his factories, with their big windows and open interior space made possible by using reinforced concrete, were an inspiration for the modernist pioneers in Europe. The second claim is based on the fact that Kahn knew and liked Diego Rivera. While many of the important people in Detroit disliked his murals, Kahn defended them, most notably to Edsel Ford who was paying for them.
The third claim is based on the amount of building Kahn did for WWII including many tank plants, arsenals, airplane engine buildings, giant aircraft factories, and designs for new military bases for the Pacific and Atlantic operations. Added to all this, his firm was responsible for building 500 factories in the Soviet Union in the 1930s. Hired ostensibly to build tractor factories, the Kahn people were suspicious that it was really for something else when the Soviets insisted the floors be built stronger than needed.  Indeed the factories were used to make tanks, which the soviets used in World War II, forcing Hitler to divide his troops to fight on two fronts.
All this Hodges explains and much more, writing in a style that feels like he is talking to the reader, not as the omniscient narrator, but as a friend sharing what he knows. And he carefully footnotes, so people can trust what he is saying.  The research was challenging because Kahn left a limited paper trail, mainly letters to his family and occasional newspaper interviews and was not the sort of person to brag or philosophize. But reading everything else he could find about Kahn and talking to people who knew him (Hodges spent 3 1/2 years on the project), rounded out a consistent picture of a man who was a workaholic, more concerned that his buildings did what they were designed for than for fame or recognition.  Time after time, his clients cited their appreciation that they got exactly what they wanted, on time and under budget to boot.
Kahn was well respected in his lifetime and received many honors.  “At the time of his death the architect was world renowned,” says Hodges, but then seemed to vanish, appreciated only in southeast Michigan.  But Hodges ends the book on a happy note. “In a development that would doubtless please the architect, the unexpected urban revival that sprouted in Detroit ….has meant that any number of Kahn’s buildings, which enjoy considerable cachet in the local real estate market, have suddenly seen new life.”
Hodges, who lives on Mulholland (his house was on the Old West Side Homes Tour in 2014), commutes daily to Detroit where he covers fine arts for the Detroit News.  At one time he seriously considered a career in architecture.  However, he says his real joy is taking photographs, which surprisingly he took for the book using only his I phone.  When he found that hiring a helicopter was affordable ($350 an hour, not nothing but he was afraid it would be much higher) he took aerial photographs of some of Kahn’s buildings.  His present day photos are interspersed with historic ones, many loaned to him by the Albert Kahn Associates who have pictures of the buildings when first built.  He’s been giving readings at various locations, so keep watch for ones in the Ann Arbor area.