The couple's biggest intervention is invisible. In the Stockmayer house, Gelbin's original elements, restored by Heesakker and Russo, are all around, including the built-in cypress couch with new, custom-made cushions the hanging Wrightian wood dining lamp and wall sconces with new fiberglass-paper shades the original red Micarta kitchen countertops and cypress cabinet boxes with new cypress doors stained to an exact match. Johnson's own work is influenced by the organic architects, particularly Finnish midcentury master Alvar Aalto his interest in "light, landscape and materials," he said, echoes theirs. Living area in the home of Tammy Heesakker and Gregory Russo in Norwich.Even Wright's designs weren't entirely done by him his apprentices did them." More light filters through two skylights.Īsked whether it was accurate to call the house Wrightian when Gelbin was the architect, Johnson opined, "You wouldn't recognize how Gelbin's style is different from Frank Lloyd Wright's.
#Long architect lamp windows#
He designed the decorative arrangement of cypress boards spanning the space between the top of the kitchen wall and the peaked ceiling - an eye-catching construction that Heesakker described as sculpture.Ī light sand-colored, pebbly plaster completes the indoor wall materials - except for glass, which is everywhere: a wall of plate-glass panels stretching across the front façade windowed gable ends an office corner, where two windows meet à la Fallingwater. Other walls in the living area are made of red brick manufactured in a nearby Vermont town, according to Gelbin's papers. Wright's organic architecture favored natural materials, so the walls are made of dark golden-hued cypress wood in wide boards punctuated with narrow battens, all horizontally oriented to emphasize the shape of the house. Inside, the "compression and expansion" typical of Usonian houses, Heesakker noted, is expressed in the way the narrow hallway paths lead from the front door to the open-plan dining and living areas and an office beyond a partial wall.
The couple replaced the asphalt-and-pebbles construction with a rubber membrane edged with metal. Rescue efforts started with the unique roof, which is flat with an asymmetrical central gabled portion - that is, one angle of the gable is longer and lower than the other. On leafless days, Mount Ascutney is visible. Approached from the side via a carport, the long, low structure is built into the hill with the rear length sunk into a four-foot bank and the south-facing front side overlooking a stunning view of the Connecticut River Valley. Heesakker and Johnson, principal and founder of Watershed Studio Architecture, recently gave Nest a tour of the house. The nomination continued, "It easily could have been considered a tear-down, given its poor condition, small size, and valuable property, but fortunately the current owners. The name comes from the acronym for United States of North America. Vermont state architectural historian Devin Colman, who wrote the award nomination, noted in it that the Stockmayer house is "architecturally significant as a very rare and well-preserved example of Usonian design in Vermont." Usonian houses were Wright's compact and affordable version of his Prairie style and the progenitor of ranch-style houses in the U.S. His films have examined the midcentury architecture of Long Island and Southern California, as well as period architects such as Albert Frey and Andrew Geller. In early June, the house was filmed for inclusion in the forthcoming 2023 documentary New England Modernism: Revolutionary Architecture in the 20th Century by filmmaker Jake Gorst. The Stockmayers had engaged Gelbin on the recommendation of their friend Lucille Zimmerman, whose 1951 Wright-designed house in Manchester, N.H., they admired. (Wright died in 1959 Gelbin, in 1994.)Īn address cross-check with the Gelbin archives at the Art Institute of Chicago confirmed that Gelbin designed the 2,100-square-foot, three-bedroom Norwich house for Walter and Sylvia Stockmayer and their two teenage sons. A Wright acolyte, Gelbin apprenticed at Wright's home studio at Taliesin East in Wisconsin from 1949 to 1953 he subsequently oversaw the construction of several Wright-designed homes and opened his own practice in Connecticut in 1957.
Suspecting that the real estate agent had misidentified its architect - she had named someone they'd never heard of - they searched online and discovered it was designed by Allan J. The couple were living in Boston when they saw the Norwich house. The long, low structure is built into a hill.Courtesy of Robert Umenhofer Photography.
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