ABOUT
The Cape Cod Modern House Trust (CCMHT) was founded to collect, archive, and share documentation of the outer Cape’s exceptional modern architecture, restore a group of important, endangered modern houses, and to relaunch them as platforms for new creative work.
HISTORY
The Outer Cape comprises a unique landscape of beaches, pine woods, tidal marshes and glacial ponds imbued with a brilliant quality of light that has drawn artists and writers since the nineteenth century.
Starting in the late 1930s, the Outer Cape attracted some of the prime movers of modern architecture, including architects Marcel Breuer, Serge Chermayeff and Olav Hammarstrom and engineer Paul Weidlinger, who built houses for themselves, their friends and their clients. Walter Gropius, Xanti Schawinski, Konrad Wachsmann, Constantino Nivola, the Saarinen family and Florence and Hans Knoll all either rented summer cottages or were frequent houseguests here. The vibrant community also included artists Gyorgy Kepes and Saul Steinberg as well as numerous writers, academics and their students.
This group of international refugees and their friends made a home for themselves in the secluded pine woods of Wellfleet, Truro and Provincetown; many are even buried here. This collection of creative people believed in the power of design to improve the human condition and to integrate man with nature. They applied those principles equally to the great projects they undertook in the world beyond Cape Cod and to their own cottages, which were sometimes made with salvaged material, Homasote and driftwood.
The Cape's modern architects enjoyed a lifestyle based on communion with nature, solitary creativity (designing, painting, writing) and communal festivity. Their houses embody this ethos with their blurring of indoors and outdoors, their isolated studios and outdoor spaces for evening parties. Serious work took place there, and ideas were often exchanged during long walks in the woods or while wading in a pond.
The tradition started in 1937, when Gropius and a close circle of his Bauhaus faculty and friends spent the summer on a small island at the base of the Cape, reprising their communal European holidays and trying to plot a new life for themselves in their adopted land. From there, the members of the group spread out to transmit their revolutionary teachings, but they never lost their connection to this place.
CCMHT
Legislation was introduced to create the Cape Cod National Seashore in 1959, and for the next two years, while the seashore legislation was being debated, over one hundred houses were built within the park boundaries, including seven significant modern ones. When the legislation passed in 1961, freezing all new development, the homeowners were bought out and the new houses were slated for eventual demolition. The seven National Park Service (NPS) -owned modern houses fell into administrative limbo, where they have languished ever since, most of them empty and deteriorating.
The Cape Cod Modern House Trust (CCMHT) was founded in 2007 as a grassroots organization with the mission of preventing the demolition of this group of significant modern houses owned by the National Park Service (NPS) on outer Cape Cod, and of renovating and repurposing these structures as loci for creativity and scholarship, as well as locating and archiving all available related materials. The more than 100 modern houses in the area represent a little-known cultural asset we all share. CCMHT has leased and restored four of these abandoned, federally owned houses ( the Kugel/Gips house, 1970, Charles Zehnder, the Hatch Cottage, 1962, Jack Hall, the Kohlberg House, 1960, Luther Crowell, and Weidlinger House, 1953, Paul Weidlinger) , and has begun using them to house for an off-season artist/scholar residency program.
Through tours, symposia, collaborations with schools of architecture (e.g., the Wentworth Institute, Harvard’s Graduate School of Design,) and its residency program, CCMHT strives to bring fresh thinking to regional problems of gentrification, lack of affordable housing, moribund employment for young people, the need for off-season cultural tourism and coexistence with a fragile environment.
We have sought to make an impact through physical restoration of the derelict houses by catalyzing a wide range of people to see the value of their local, modern legacy and by reintroducing the ideas embodied in the work of these experimental, eco-sensitive visionaries who built these houses.
When the idea arose of seeking long-term leases and repurposing the buildings, the NPS, the town and a critical mass of volunteers and supporters all had to “buy in”. CCMHT’s major funding has come from the Community Preservation Act, a state/local mechanism that requires majority approval in town meeting. Thus we had to build a consensus that the houses themselves were worth saving.
Due to our efforts, most stakeholders have come to feel pride in their connection to the story. Many private owners of modern houses in the area are now maintaining and restoring them. Even those local residents who are not convinced that the buildings are historically significant see them as a draw for much-needed cultural, off-season tourism. Our modern-house tours and open houses consistently draw large crowds. For more on our residency go to: https://ccmht.org/residency
We have worked closely with the NPS on a fifty-house context study with National Trust nominations for all seven of their modern houses. We also worked with the town to develop a six-month “stay of demolition” list for all modern buildings we have identified.
In doing research of the book Cape Cod Modern (part cultural history and part tectonic analysis of the local modern houses) we have collected a great deal of primary source material, including oral histories, photographs and drawings from the descendants of the modern architects, many of whom still live here. Walter Gropius's daughter, Ati, for example, lived in Wellfleet year-round and taught Josef Albers’s Black Mountain College paper-folding classes at the town library.
Central to our project is the idea that buildings and landscapes bear cultural memories and ideologies. Our goal is to extend the usefulness of these buildings in their extraordinary landscapes, to use the buildings and the tradition of free-thinking problem-solvers to nurture new creativity and address contemporary issues.
PEOPLE
Peter McMahon
Founding Director
Peter McMahon is Founding Director of the Cape Cod Modern House Trust (CCMHT) and co-author, along with Christine Cipriani, of Cape Cod Modern: Mid-Century Architecture and Community on the Outer Cape (2014, Metropolis Books), winner of the Historic New England Book Prize, 2015.
He was co-curator of “A Chain of Events: Modern Architecture on the Outer Cape, from Marcel Breuer to Charles Jencks” at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum in 2006 (Winner of the International Association of Art Critics, New England Chapter, First Place Award for Architecture and Design, 2006), which was the precursor to founding CCMHT.
Since then Peter has lectured widely at Harvard Graduate School of Design, Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, The Crowley Theater, Marfa, Texas, the (COAC), Docomomo, Girona, Spain, and The Architectural Association, London, among others.
His design firm PM Design focuses on sustainable modern architecture and restoration of mid-20th century buildings. Peter’s summer house in Wellfleet has been published in House Beautiful and Outside Architecture. Info at pm-design.org.
Previous design experience includes positions at Peter Gluck and Partners Architects, New York, Team Architects, New York, and Hickox Williams Architects, Boston. He also taught design, drawing, and music in the New York City public schools for five years and has been a mentor at Provincetown High School in furniture design and construction.
Peter graduated with a B.ARCH from the Boston Architectural Center. He spent childhood summers in Wellfleet in a house designed by local modernist Charlie Zehnder and has lived in Wellfleet full time since 2003.
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Jenny Monick
President
Jenny Monick is an artist and educator living in Brooklyn, NY. Her interest in architecture and historic preservation began early, growing up in the Midwest in a 1930's house designed by Carl Gage. Association with CCMHT began in 2014 with house stays, and has expanded to programming development and serving on the board since 2019. Jenny also works at the Wild Bird Fund, a non-profit dedicated to advocating and providing services for New York's avian inhabitants. She has a BA in Anthropology and Comparative Religion from Barnard College and an MFA in Art Writing from the School of Visual Arts. She also attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.
Virginia Adams
Virginia H. (Ginny) Adams joined the board in 2012 and served as Secretary/Clerk for 10 years. She is a Senior Architectural Historian at The Public Archaeology Laboratory, Inc. in Pawtucket, RI, where she manages architectural history and multi-disciplinary research, and documentation and planning, as well as regulatory projects involving historic buildings, structures, landscapes, and archaeological resources for public and private clients throughout the Northeast. She has led the PAL research and study team for many modernist buildings and landscapes in the Northeast, including the Mid-20th -Century Modern Residential Architecture of Outer Cape Cod National Register of Historic Places thematic nomination for the National Park Service. A similarproject in Connecticut included a statewide survey and context, with individual National Register listings in New Canaan. She received her B.A. and M.A. from Brown University and teaches in the Historic Preservation, Master of Design Studies program at The Boston Architectural College.
Michele Yeeles Board Clerk
Michele Yeeles is the co-founder of Y Studio, a design practice with a focus on socially and ecologically sensitive spatial design. She has a multidisciplinary educational background with a B.A. Hons in Footwear Design, an M.B.A. from Babson College, and an M.Arch from The School of Architecture at Taliesin. She was also on the team of the Graham Foundation and served as Student Treasurer and Student Representative to the School’s Board of Governors. Michele serves on the Board of Governors of The School of Architecture, founded by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1932 (TSOA) and has been a CCMHT board member since 2009.
Amanda Robinson
Amanda “Mandy” Robinson was raised in a small village near Henley, England. She moved to New York City in the 70s, then to Wellfleet in the late 1980s. Always interested in real estate and architecture, Mandy has lived in a rental, a condo, a co-op, and finally built her own house in Wellfleet, where she and her family have lived for over 35 years. In 1998, she established her own real estate company, Cape Shores Real Estate. She is a valuable asset to the Wellfleet community, connected to homeowners and the local workforce, helping many locals find and secure housing, and helping homeowners with their needs. She joined the board of CCMHT in 2023, and has been a long time contributor to and volunteer for the Jimmy Fund Pan Mass Challenge, as well as Wellfleet’s Mustard Seed Kitchen and the Wellfleet Historical society.
Rick Handman Treasurer
Rick Handman is a recent retiree after 30 years of service to the Massachusetts Port Authority. He held positions in management, operations, information technology, and most recently in Treasury. He holds a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and a Master of Business Administration from Nichols College. Handman currently volunteers for Meals-on-Wheels, American Red Cross, The Trustees, Mass Audubon, and the Mass Oyster Project, has been in Wellfleet since the 1980’s, and joined the CCMHT board in 2023.
Rob Warren
Rob Warren works as an independent land conservation consultant. He recently stepped down after eight years as Managing Director of Conservation for The Trustees of Reservations, America’s oldest operating land trust, where he was responsible for all aspects of land conservation and conservation restriction stewardship. A graduate of Oberlin College with a focus on plant ecology, Rob worked for a decade as a Boston cabinet and furniture maker, returning to his conservation roots in 1990. He worked for 10 years with the MA Department of Fish & Game, followed by 14 years with the Massachusetts Chapter of The Nature Conservancy, moving to The Trustees in 2014. He is also spending more time on design/build projects in wood and metal.
Tracy Neumann
Tracy Neumann is a Connecticut-based historian, writer, and editor. She is Editorial Content Manager for Historic New England and editor of Historic New England magazine. Previously, she was an Associate Professor of History and director of the public history program at Wayne State University. She is the author of a book and several articles on urban history and co-edits a book series on urban history for Cambridge University Press. She is a member of the National Council on Public History Professional Development Committee, sits on the international advisory board of Urban History, co-directs and is treasurer for the Global Urban History Project. She holds a BA in History and Russian Studies from the University of Michigan, an MA in Historic Preservation Planning from Cornell University, and a Ph.D. in History from NYU.
STAFF
Melissa Yeaw
Administrator
Caitlin DiGiacomo Administrator
Betsy Bray
Tour Leader
ADVISORY BOARD
Mary Anne Agresti
Chair, Boston Society of Architects, Cape and Is. Chapter Principal, The Design Initiative, Hyannis MA
Aaron Binaco
Art director, photographer and founder of AAB Studio
Linda Brown
Architectural curator
Peter Chermayeff
Architect
Malachi Connolly Architect, filmmaker
Kenneth Frampton
Ware Professor of Architecture, Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, Columbia University
Silvia Kolbowski
Artist
Diana Murphy
Producer and editor of design books
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
For their assistance and support we would like to thank:
The staff at Cape Cod National Seashore
The Town of Wellfleet’s Community Preservation Board and the voters of Wellfleet for their support
Sarah Korjeff, Cape Cod Commission
The Provincetown Art Association and Museum
Mary Daniels, Archivist
Gilly Hatch and the Hatch family
Thanks to the Provincetown Community Compact who acted as our fiscal sponsor before we incorporated.
Thanks, also, to all the volunteers who have generously given their time and support for the project.