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Sometimes I’ll start to think about whether Americans care less about books or architecture, and while we do have this sick love of banning books when the ideas within them make us the least bit uncomfortable, at least there’s pushback and the discussion usually makes the national news. When a Marcel Breuer home falls to the wrecking ball in the suburbs, it barely makes a sound unless the New York Times picks up on it. To be honest, thinking about either of those things bothers me, but books can be sought out. Once a building is smashed to pieces, it’s gone and something leaves with it.
And that is the case with the Geller House in Lawrence, NY. It’s gone now, and an important piece of American architecture, not to mention a really great structure, is lost to the rock pile of history. As James S. Russell wrote for the Times:
The Geller house was rapturously covered by the press at its debut because it appealed to an America that was obsessed with making a better life after enduring sacrifices of World War II and the grinding bleakness of the Great Depression. It was “among the most famous houses of the period,” said Barry Bergdoll, a Breuer expert, who teaches architectural history at Columbia University and was the chief curator of architecture at the Museum of Modern Art. Yet it had fallen into a kind of obscurity, well known mainly to aficionados.
The Geller home being destroyed made me think of a few of the topics I covered in The Sprawl. The two that come to mind is what Russell mentioned, about how it represented something to Americans when it was built, that a better life and world was possible. One could make the argument that the Geller house was the future back in 1945, but this isn’t 1945 anymore, and pining over an old structure is sticking yourself in the past. And maybe that’s the case for most other homes, but this wasn’t some prefab structure in Levittown with all the state-of-the-art amenities of the time we’re talking about. But, to me, the Geller also stood as a reminder of a time when we actually believed in the future. Things were bleak in the decades leading up to the home being built, and the Geller was a symbol of possibility, of what could be. We don’t really have many of those these days.
There was another big point made by Russell in the Times piece:
Suburbs often resist local preservation ordinances, especially those aimed at midcentury or later modern buildings. The taste for modernism is not universal, and suburban officials often avoid enacting landmark ordinances that require owners to become unwilling custodians of an important cultural resource.
This was something that shocked me to find when I was writing my last book, and I’m not entirely certain why, because it shouldn’t. I could say that maybe it’s because I grew up in an area full of structures from the late-1800s all the way to the middle of the last century and that they’re part of the landscape. But that’s not really the case. Frank Lloyd Wright’s Booth Cottage in Glencoe, IL. was almost smashed to the ground, and when I was doing the reporting on Kingdom Come Farm for my Town & Country article, I learned that this beautiful property that has a deep connection to one of America’s most famous writers, was also months away from being turned into rubble before the family that owns it today stepped in.
I think maybe the surprise was because I’m a little too hopeful. One of the chapters I received the most criticism for was about a group of locals in Avon, CT. who got together to fight a developer from building more homes on a part of land next to a golf course. I think back and understand the optics of the chapter were maybe not that great considering it was a group in a nice, wealthy suburb in Connecticut trying to save a golf course. Of course, it wasn’t the golf course they were worried about: it was the land next to it and what would happen to the woods, wetlands and wildlife that was of concern. I was interested in that, and also I was trying to show what happens when people get together for a common cause and how the neighbors that got together to stop the development had lived next door to each other and in many cases, had never even met before. I often wonder what would happen if we just talked more. Maybe it could have saved the Marcel Breuer, but that’s really small potatoes compared to what else I think could be accomplished if everybody just talked and worked with their neighbors a little bit more.