|
|
As a matter of fact, Jane Wolf stops short of saying her husband Richard is just that. "He likes to do things correctly. He is concerned with the details," she explains, as was Mies who is famous for his dictum "less is more."
The Mies house in Weston that the Wolfs have called home for the past 18 years is one of only three extant in the United States. It was designed by the German-born modernist master and is the only one currently being used as a residence. The other two belong to preservationist groups.
At the outset it is important to put Mies-as he was universally known-in the context of other post World War II masters of modem architecture. That is to say he is right up there with Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright and Philip Johnson.
Like Le Corbusier his career began in Europe. But it was Philip Johnson who originally championed Mies by including his designs in the Museum of Modem Art First Architectural Exhibition in 1932 and, as a result, his work began to be known in the U.S.
In 1956 the two architects joined forces again to design the 38-story bronze and pinkish-grey glass Seagram Building on Park Avenue at 52nd Street in New York. In the design of his skyscrapers, for which he is best known and which are now the pride of modem cities worldwide, Mies made use of contemporary technology and materials such as glass, steel and aluminum, marble and bronze,
At his death in 1969 Ada Louise Huxtable, the venerable architecture critic for The New York Times, wrote of Mies van der Rohe, "His lifelong interest was in the creation of the most perfect product that an infallibly refined taste and progressive technology could produce. His singular aim was the framing of large all-purpose spaces."
This ethos describes the Wolf house perfectly. Although now comprised of three separate but related structures, the original house-now the Wolfs main living quarters-was built in 1955 for Rose and Mike Greenwald on the bank of the Saugatuck River in Weston.
Based on the design of the Farnsworth house-named for its owner-built outside Chicago in the late 1940s, the Weston house is flat roofed with large expanses of glass. Mies himself is said to have come on from Chicago-where he was a business associate of Mike Greenwald's brother Herbert-to supervise construction. Continual visual space was the essence of the house then as it is now.
Longtime Westport resident Ted Gluckman, whose wife Carol is a niece of the Greenwalds, remembers some of the events leading to the construction of the house.
"When Mike saw the design for the Farnsworth project he went right out and bought the property in Weston. He and Rose cherished the house as if it were a museum, even though as construction costs mounted they were forced to use less expensive materials when it came to the interior wood and flooring. The open floor plan allowed for seasonal indoor-outdoor entertaining. Mike even had someone from the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens come out to plan the landscaping."
Richard Wolf enjoys gardening and likes to work alongside the landscaper who is now responsible for the five-acre park-like setting. Since all the walls of the house are glass, the view in any direction-whether towards a stand of bamboo, grey-green on a rainy day in January, a mature but bare-at-this-time-of-year cherry tree looking almost sculpted or, in the near distance, the raging Saugatuck River now racing to meet the Sound-is all part of this design for living.
Jane Wolf, an artist whose pastels and watercolors tend toward harbor scenes and landscapes, describes the view as "heightening our sensibilities. It is a constantly changing scene, like looking at a series of paintings. My favorite time is about four in the afternoon when, on a good day, everything turns to gold. My husband and I have a tradition of giving one another daffodils as gifts on birthdays and anniversaries. As a result there are thousands planted along the riverbank. In spring it is a golden carpet."
In the beginning the Wolfs spent a year making alterations to the house to meet the needs of their family of four. They decided against tampering with the façade,
Richard Wolf points out, but through astute planning they did create two small bedrooms for their then young sons, as well as modifying the master bedroom and bath.
Richard Wolf feels they have enhanced the house, opened it up and lightened the interior by replacing the original paneling with a golden European oak and the floors with travertine marble.
The kitchen, dining room and living room with their window walls are separated from one another by movable storage walls, the ends of which fold back, as in the dining room to form a pass-through from the kitchen for serving. Its center provides storage for glassware, china and other entertaining paraphernalia. The opposite wall conceals an efficient bar flanked by a similar storage system behind the same beautiful wood panels.
Furniture throughout the house, as well as in the adjacent entertaining and guest pavilions-added in 1982 by an interim owner-is classic modem glass, steel and black leather. The additions-the guest pavilion and entertaining pavilion-are sited at an angle so as to be almost inconspicuous from the main house.
Jane Wolf served her Thanksgiving guests in the entertaining pavilion with its self-contained kitchen which, when not in use, is completely concealed. A raised floor and dropped ceiling give the illusion of floating slightly and the glass walls enhance that feeling.
In the guest pavilion the floor/ceiling treatment is repeated and one wonders why any guest would ever leave. Furniture is restricted to a pair of modem steel-and-black leather chairs and an angled mirror. One interior paneled wall hides storage space. The touch of a button gently releases a Murphy bed.
The adjoining bath, completely white tiled, includes a stall shower with a rounded glass door and a three-foot deep Japanese soaking tub.
The Wolfs feel the changes they have made in the house have been done with deference to Mies van der Rohe. A house ultimately is designed to shelter its inhabitants, this house does that and, at the same time, fulfills its role as a clear and true statement of its times.
