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A Mid-Century classic serves a new era.
If you should be walking down just the right street in just the right neighborhood in Chicago, you'll see a sight rare in the Midwest - a perfectly rendered California Modern house. Designed by Edward Dart (1922-1975) in 1956, the house might have been anomalous from other hands, but Dart's sensitive siting and use of natural materials makes this a house at home.
When it was built for the Norman Miller family, Dart's design joined other notable works in the area; Keck + Keck, Frank Lloyd Wright, Paul Schweikher, Y.C. Wong, and H.P. Davis Rockwell are just a few of the other architects and firms who designed nearby houses. Such proximity calls for high design quality, if the result is not to suffer in comparison with its neighbors. Dart delivered exactly that.
Dart gave the steel-framed house a flat roof and ground-hugging horizontal profile; huge windows run floor-to-ceiling and wall-to-wall, sliding open in six-foot sections for ventilation. Dart limited the palette of materials used on the exterior to limestone and redwood, offsetting the glass; wherever an exterior material meets a window, the same material continues inside the house. Unusually for a Dart house, the architect made this project a passive solar design. Its six-foot cantilevered overhangs shade out sun in summer, but the house is oriented so that the winter sun can reach the house through its expanses of glass, helping warm it.
Visiting the house is a series of dramas, sometimes large, sometimes nearly subliminal. They begin in the Foyer, where sensitive guests are often startled to realize that the slate floor is warm, owing to the passive radiant heating system Dart provided for it. A pass-through to the Living Room is cut through a rock wall, so that visitors get intriguing glimpses of pleasures to come. After a few steps downward into a seven-foot-high space, the major drama of the house is experienced: the compression of the entry is released in a fifteen-foot-high Living Room, which has a floating, helical spiral staircase with a finely crafted walnut handrail, as well as glass walls extending from floor to ceiling. The distinctive stair leads to a loft which has its own fireplace, overlooking the room. While the spaces are composed of unornamented planes, the materials used give the house great luxury. Walnut-paneled walls are punctuated with matching walnut cabinetry; the house's doors are walnut, as well. Everywhere the visitor turns, the outdoors comes inside, seen through the generous window area.
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Biography: Edward Dart, Architect
Edward Dart, known as Ned by those close to him, graduated from Yale School of Architecture, where Richard M. Bennett was chairman of the Department of Architecture as well as a professor of design. Dart studied there under Pietro Belluschi, Marcel Breuer, Harwell Hamilton Harris, Richard Neutra, Louis Kahn, Eero Saarinen, Harold Spitznagel, Edward Durell Stone, and Paul Schweikher. Frank Lloyd Wright had a large impact on Dart; Schweikher and Bennett also figured prominently in his career. Dart worked for Schweikher for a time after graduation, then started his own independent firm, during which time he designed the house featured here. Later he joined the large firm of Loebl, Schlossman, Bennett, and Dart, where all but four of his 45 projects were completed. The key figures in that firm, Jerry Loebl (1897-1978), Norm Schlossman (1901-1990), and Richard Bennett (1907-1996), were responsible for the development of Park Forest, one of the first planned post-WWII GI communities. Park Forest came to be recognized as the prototype for new town developments and suburban shopping centers all over the world.
Soon after designing the featured house in 1956, Dart built a house for himself in very similar style and materials, which was published in House & Garden in August 1959 and Architectural Record in November 1960.
Dart was listed in Who's Who in America, and won 18 awards from the American Institute of Architects (AIA), including two (a Distinguished Building Award in 1971 and a National Honor Award in 1973) for his design of St. Procopius Abbey in Lisle, Illinois. He was made a Fellow of the AIA, the highest honors that the organization can bestow, at the age of 44. He built 52 custom houses from from 1949 to 1968, 26 custom churches, several builders' spec house designs, and commercial buildings. The Art Institute of Chicago recently offered a guided tour of several his churches, called Sublime Sanctuaries: The Churches of Edward Dart. The Art Institute also has Dart's archives and drawings in their permanent collection.
Dart designed the "House of the Fifties" for Good Housekeeping magazine, a model house for Popular Mechanics, and won the National Association of Homebuilders competition in 1951. In all, he completed over 100 projects before his unexpected death at the age of 53, while working on Water Tower Place in Chicago, one of his largest projects. Water Tower Place was finished in spite of its then-controversial style and size, and went on to become one of Chicago's landmark buildings and one of the most-loved and most successful mixed-use retail, business, and residential centers. Because of his early death, the world would never get to see more of the humanistic architecture Dart would surely have gone on to design. Had he lived, he would likely have continued his career in the independent fashion he preferred, designing without the politics of big business and commercially-driven decisions of real estate developers which largely drive architecture today.
Chicago Bauhaus and Beyond, a non-profit organization which celebrates and raises awareness of mid-century modern architecture and design, hosted a tribute to Edward Dart at their 1st Annual Gala Benefit Party in November 2004. Information and photos can be seen at: www.chicagobauhausbeyond.org/2004gala
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Much of the house is exactly as it was built in 1956, but a sympathetic addition designed by T. Paul Young was built in 1994, to increase kitchen space and to add a Great Room, a Media Room and more. The addition is seamlessly blended with the original house, using the same materials and levels of workmanship. That is to be expected, since Young's career includes working with Mies van der Rohe, studying and teaching at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), and consulting with Mies' grandson, Dirk Lohan, on the restoration of the Farnsworth House for Lord Peter Palumbo.
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The open Dining Area provides an intimate feeling. A glass wall provides expansive views of the property; skylights let in more natural light. The travertine-topped 1960's credenza holds a Laurel lamp, and conceals hidden delights: a bar swivels out of one side, while the other conceals a refrigerator.
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| The Kitchen was extended in the 1994 expansion, with new cabinetry precisely matched to existing units. Since this is a house for grown-ups, luxury materials like walnut and stainless could be used. Recessed lighting, found throughout the house, keeps the look minimal. | |
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From the Cover: The Great Room contains a 9' sofa from 1963, a Pierre Paulin Ribbon chair, and a marble tulip coffee table by Eero Saarinen. An Arco lamp by Achille Castiglioni accentuates the space, with a textile by Verner Panton. |
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Today, the house combines its original delights with completely new ones. Outside, the landscaping is mature, realizing its full potential. Large trees, including groves of ornamental hawthorns, grace the lot. A koi fish pond has its own waterfall. Indoors, the current owner has filled the house with his extensive collections of Mid-Century furniture, complimenting the architecture perfectly. The kind of modernist furniture most collectors only dream of is everywhere, and none of it is "company only". Edward Dart created a house to live life in to the fullest, and even though his vision serves a new generation, it continues, focused, unclouded, crystal-clear.
The superb workmanship and detailing of the house's cabinetry can be seen
in this view of a Dressing Room.
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| A Master Bath retains its 1956 Crane fixtures, in excellent condition. The rug, with an Edward Fields feeling, is actually new, found recently in a department store. | |
| A Terrace shows Dart's horizontal planes, and the generous window area to be found throughout the house. The vintage outdoor seating is by Woodard. |
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For the owner, this house is a modernist gem found after years of relentless searching and many hours of hard work. He says, "It's amazing that such a great design was ever built in the first place and preserved so well, and I'm honored beyond words to call it my very own dream house".
Click any photo for a larger view.
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Edward Dart, Architect, by Susan Dart, Evanston Publishing, Inc, 1993.
ISBN: 1-879260-09-3
Edward Dart archives at the Ryerson & Burnham library at the Art Institute of Chicago.
House & Garden magazine, August 1959
Architectural Record magazine, November 1960
Interviews with the owner, a previous owner, and T. Paul Young
Please sign my guestbook!
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