Video: Glenn McCord House (unbuilt) - North Arlington, NJ

[DavidC]

Another gem by Hugo:

Glenn McCord House - North Arlington, New Jersey - 1948 - Unbuilt - (3:53)


David

[SDR]

Four years after the McCord design appeared (or didn't, as the case may be), the Richard Davis house was born. Is the color scheme of Avila and Vinzani's McCord model inspired by that of the Davis house ? In either case, was red and white the color scheme Wright proposed for the design ? I must confess that red and white (or, in fact, red and light gray) seems unWrightian (or is that inOrganic ?) to me; hard rather than soft, cold rather than warm.

But in this photo of Davis the body appears not white but pink, which somehow restores repose to the thing.

https://the-travel-life.com/this-1952-f ... marion-in/

Closer to McCord in design is the Sol Friedman house, also of 1948. There's no doubt about warmth here, with stucco and stone in earth colors. The conical tent, with an umbrella-spoke ceiling, is absent here, as well---an improvement, in my view.

http://prod-upp-image-read.ft.com/d670e ... cf89602132

Nevertheless I am glad as always to have another unbuilt Wright design see the light of day. Thank you again, gentlemen !

S

[jay]

Nice work!
What an exhilarating entry, winding along the house like that...!
I was surprised to see headers above the doors. I believe the vertical dimensions might be off in the model.
Typically Wright used 8 inch CMU stacked 10 high, giving his signature low-ceiling height of 6'8...
It looks like this model uses a 12 block stack (as seen at the fireplace), which would give an 8' ceiling.
I'm not seeing that height in the drawings:
https://library.artstor.org/#/asset/285 ... 7519855901

[Roderick Grant]

The ceiling in the Sol Friedman House is very low around the fireplace. The window wall in a FLW house would never be 8".

What is needed in this presentation is a cat sleeping on the concrete floor. A former owner of Friedman had a cat that loved the warmth of the floor, at least until the owner was forced to switch to radiators when the original heating system failed.

[SDR]

"The window wall in a FLW house would never be 8"." I guess you mean 8' ---and "not less than 8' " ? I don't want to put words in your mouth . . . but I do want to comprehend your statement.

S

[Roderick Grant]

If you are confused by such a typo, you have serious problems, SDR.

[SDR]

I'm sorry, but I still don't know what is meant by "The window wall in a FLW house would never be 8'." There are many window walls in Usonian-era houses which are over 8 feet in height. So, did you mean that no such window wall would be less than eight feet, or more ? The two-sentence paragraph is unclear to me; I'd like to understand you.

S

[Roderick Grant]

Well, OK, we can change the subject ....

Obviously, there are many instances where window walls in general are much taller than eight feet (I shall spell it out to avoid the "). In the sort of intimate houses like McCord and Friedman where the exterior walls are low, what FLW tended to avoid was eight feet specifically. It's a sort of 'dead zone' architecturally, at least to Himself. He would go as low as 6'6", possibly lower at the Taliesins, but he would avoid that particular height, especially in post-Prairie houses.

There is one window wall that has an 8' floor-to-ceiling measurement: Freeman. The corner windows in the living room are 16' from bottom to top, exactly eight feet of which are in the living room with the rest below in the bedrooms, which have 9'4" ceiling heights. But, as Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."

[SDR]

Thank you !

S

[DRN]

As I sat reading this tete a tete about what Wright would never do with a window wall height, I looked up and counted the block courses in front of me. The sum of the French doors+transom bar+transom glass at Sweeton’s window wall equals 12 CMU block courses or 8’.
I’ll send a pic to SDR.

[SDR]

DRN's photo:

[Roderick Grant]

The height of Sweeton ceiling begins at the eave at lintel height and rises continuously through the clerestory windows to the living room ridge. At McCord, the slope of the living room ceiling begins at the outer wall at the lintel level of the windows with a horizontal extension outside for shade. Notice aerial view of the roof design. That the clerestory panels at Sweeton have no trim where the glass meets the ceiling emphasizes that the slope of the ceiling is continuous to the eave line. about the 6'8" height of the doors plus a couple of inches. Completely different from McCord.

[jay]

Always a favorite topic––the vertical dimensions of Usonians...

My first thought was the Rubin house, which I remembered as having "yes-taller-but-not-that-tall" window walls.
Those read at 8'9:
https://library.artstor.org/#/asset/285 ... 7872543806

Goestch-Winckler shaves off an inch, coming in at 8'8:
https://library.artstor.org/#/asset/285 ... 7872725809

Lloyd Lewis gets interesting, at 8'3:
https://library.artstor.org/#/asset/285 ... 7873018759

And Euchtman says 7'7:
https://library.artstor.org/#/asset/285 ... 7873665724

Edit: I read Euchtman wrong, the window wall is 8'8

[SDR]

This drawing represents the combined work of Eifler, P H Davis, and SDR. Where I got those numbers I cannot presently say. I probably scaled them from the presumably accurate elevation drawing, using the 13" vertical module (via a siding board-and-batten count) for the lowest altitude.

[bustardalmost]

Well, OK, we can change the subject ....

Obviously, there are many instances where window walls in general are much taller than eight feet (I shall spell it out to avoid the "). In the sort of intimate houses like McCord and Friedman where the exterior walls are low, what FLW tended to avoid was eight feet specifically. It's a sort of 'dead zone' architecturally, at least to Himself. He would go as low as 6'6", possibly lower at the Taliesins, but he would avoid that particular height, especially in post-Prairie houses mario games

There is one window wall that has an 8' floor-to-ceiling measurement: Freeman. The corner windows in the living room are 16' from bottom to top, exactly eight feet of which are in the living room with the rest below in the bedrooms, which have 9'4" ceiling heights. But, as Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."

A cat napping on the concrete floor is required for this presentation. Friedman's former owner had a cat which preferred the warmth of the floor until the owner was forced to move to radiators when the original heating system collapsed.