Entries from April 1, 2007 - April 30, 2007
Primer: A Recipe for Architectural Charm
Look at charming buildings anew to understand how they captivate you
A charming building can take my breath away, 
Harpswell housemuch as the Harpswell, Maine cape did when my husband and I first drove by it. The red colonial (see below) is another charmer. It has often been featured on the Secret Garden Tour in Newport, Rhode Island. The little bungalow (also below) is dear to my heart too, in part because it’s my parents’ house in Connecticut, and because of its storybook hominess.
Katie Hutchison
Yin Yu Tang
Imagine disassembling an antique house of roughly 5000 square feet in
southeastern China’s Anhui province, shipping it to the eastern United States, then preserving and reassembling it in Salem, Massachusetts. Sound unlikely? Well, that’s how Yin Yu Tang, the Chinese house at Salem’s Peabody Essex Museum, got here. The Yin Yu Tang that you tour today in Salem stood originally for two-hundred years in the rural village of Huang Cun in the Huizhou region where it housed a merchant’s family for generations.
Gropius House
This 1938 Modernist landmark home designed by Walter Gropius
view of front (of Bauhaus fame) for his family in Lincoln, Massachusetts is surprising. In its time it was lauded by architectural critics and academia as hot, cutting-edge design. Today, well, touring the house reminds me of discovering at your twentieth high school reunion that the cool guys who were so intimidating, vigorous, and full of bluster as teenagers are now tired, balding, and completely benign.
Hancock Shaker Village
With an impressive array of 20 buildings of various function, shape, and size, the Hancock Shaker Village in Pittsfield, Massachusetts is a slice of Shaker
heaven -- architectural heaven that is. I have a natural affinity for antiques; I grew up in an early 1800’s colonial with an old dilapidated barn out back. Yet I think the spare, simple forms of these Shaker gems speak to those with Modernist upbringings as well. The Shakers espoused a purity of self and spirit that manifested itself in a purity of form and function, free of unnecessary ornament or complication.
More spring/summer 2007 house diversions
Consider These Additional Upcoming New England House Museum/Tours and Related Diversions
The Glass House by Philip Johnson (New Canaan, CT) opening to the public in July, 2007 www.philipjohnsonglasshouse.org
Brimfield Antique and Flea Market Shows (Brimfield, MA) July 10-15, 2007 www.brimfield.com
Nantucket Garden Club Annual House Tour (and gardens too!) (Nantucket, MA) August, 2007 www.nantucket.org/gardenclub
