By Mildred F. Schmertz, FAIA
ARCHITECTURAL RECORD

It is not widely known, except among New England’s architectural preservationists, that a collection of little Modernist summer houses built of wood lies within the boundaries of the Cape Cod National Seashore. At the end of World War II, on the stretch of land between Truro and Wellfleet on the Outer Cape, leading international architects Marcel Breuer, Serge Chermayeff, and the Boston architects Nathaniel Saltonstall and Oliver Morton began building thoughtful and inventive Modernist houses for themselves and clients. Other good, if less-well-known New England architects began to do the same. There are at least 20 of these houses still extant; more, if the criteria for determining aesthetic and historic importance are not too rigorous. For several reasons, these houses are an endangered species, but they are not without friends, including most importantly the Massachusetts Historic Commission and DOCOMOMO, the international organization dedicated to the study and preservation of the built legacy of the Modern movement.

The Cape Cod National Seashore was created by legislation sponsored by President John F. Kennedy and signed into law in August 1961. The Atlantic-facing outer beach, known locally as the “back shore,” runs northward unobstructed 40-miles or so from Chatham all the way to Provincetown. Then, heading south, the national Seashore follows Cape Cod Bay. The park owns little on the bay side, with the exception of a portion of Wellfleet. Between Truro and Wellfleet it connects the ocean side to the bay side. The park comprises 27 thousand land acres that include beautiful beaches and back woodland roads and trails that are for the most part open to the public.

September 1959 was the cutoff date for all new construction within what were to become the park boundaries. Up to then, about 600 homes on privately owned land had been built. Those who built between 1959 and 1961 were forced to sell their property back to the park. The government offered sellers the option of taking less money in exchange for a 25-year lease; once the lease was up, the property would return to park control.

What makes these 44-year-old public/private environmental and recreational arrangements of interest today is their effect on preservation issues. All but three of the 20-odd houses are privately owned and at risk of being sold as teardowns because of the ever-increasing value of the land they occupy. The exceptions include the Thomas Kuhn Cottage designed by Saltonstall and Morton and the Hatch Cottage by Jack Hall. Both were built after the cutoff and are owned, therefore, by the National Seashore. A former wife of the late Paul Weidlinger, one of the most distinguished structural engineers of his day, donated the third residence to the park.

The preservation story of these three houses is at present one of partial success, and it begins with the efforts of preservationist Gina Coyle with the aid of DOCOMOMO. Coyle’s transformation from a year-round house sitter to a leading advocate for the continuous existence of three small Modernist houses on the Outer Cape began when she was asked by Sarah Kuhn to look after her late grandparents’ house. Its ownership had outlived the 25-year lease option but Kuhn continued to occupy the house in the summertime on a yearly lease basis. This arrangement had become more and more untenable because she did not wish to continue to maintain a house that she believed would be torn down once the National Park Service (NPS) laid claim to it. By the time Coyle began to live there, if was in serious disrepair, and it was then that Kuhn chose not to renew the lease and was told to vacate.

Though it leaked and sagged, Coyle had come to love the house for its economy, simplicity, and carefully studied relationship with the surrounding wooded landscape, so she set out to persuade the NPS, under its ownership, to repair and preserve the house for an appropriate use she had in mind. To further her case, she made a survey of 20 Modernist cottages on the National Seashore and documented them to demonstrate that the Kuhn property was not a singular phenomenon but a very important segment of New England’s architectural culture. And she extended her fight to include the Hatch and Weidlinger houses as well.

Bill Burke, the National Seashore’s historian, admits that in spite of Coyle’s efforts, he and his colleagues initially believed the three houses were not historically significant. “But we consulted with the Massachusetts Historical Commission as we are required to do by law before we tear anything down,” he says. “The Commission told us that we were wrong; the houses were indeed of historic importance, and they had their reasons.” It became the NPS’s responsibility to take care of the three houses and, for their protection, keep them occupied.

Today, the Kuhn house has a new rubber-membrane roof and is used in the summer as a residence for graduate students doing scientific work in the park. Ruth Hatch still leases here house from the National Seashore on a yearly basis and will be allowed to live there every summer for as long as she wishes. “When the time comes,” explains Burke, “the immediate concern for the Hatch house will be to keep it well maintained and occupied during the summer months. The park is certainly open to the options of an individual lease, or for a nonprofit use of the house.” Burke reports, however, that plans for the Weidlinger house are still uncertain, as it has major maintenance needs that the NPS must yet address.

While it is clear that the National Seashore can and will protect the historic houses it owns, the privately owned houses remain endangered. David Fixler, AIA, president of DOCOMOMO US/New England explains: “The problem is what real estate is worth now. Some of these houses were built for $5,000 when the land was worth $500. Multiply all that basically by a factor of one thousand. Let us say a little one-room Modernist cottage sells for $750,000. Anyone who has spent that much money on a house doesn’t want it to stay a little one-room cottage, so this is the dilemma we are facing.” DOCOMOMO has studied possible strategies, including the creation of historic districts. Unfortunately, as Fixler points out, these houses are not clustered and, in fact, are totally unconnected: “It takes the better part of a day,” he notes, “To drive from one to another because of the narrow dirt roads. When you are in any one of these houses there is no immediate physical sense of the presence of others.”

Fixler has come to believe that the best guarantee for any kind of preservation is strong local support. It is more important, he claims, than a National Register or State Register approval. And it helps if the house was designed by an architect of the stature of Breuer or Chermayeff, can honestly be deemed a truly significant work of mid-20th-century Modernist architecture, and given landmark status on its own. And sometimes a completely unprotected iconic Modernist home can be saved even after it is purchased for a teardown.  Fixler cites a house by TAC in Newton, Massachusetts. When the new owners applied for a permit to demolish the house, Fixler relates, the city of Newton sat up and told them they could not do it, used and existing demolition delay ruling to slow them down, and gathered public support to successfully save the house.

Fixler advises preservationists to bring all the ammunition they can. “You may not have an ironclad legal case,” he points out, “but sometimes there is just enough local incentive and local pressure so that people realize it is just not in their interest to tear the thing down. But there is not hard-and-fast approach.” Fixler believes strongly that Modernist houses should not be treated as static works of architecture, and if you buy one you don’t have to correctly restore it as you would an Early American house. He argues that it is essential to convince buyers that it is possible to double the size of a house while making it appear to be exactly what it exactly is, a recognizable piece of its original architectural era with contemporary additions. “If you can’t do that with these houses, then they are toast,” Fixler warns. “Given the land values, people are going to want a house that they can make a little more luxurious. People think we preservationists are saying you must keep an architecturally historic house the way it is. This is a peculiar notion that we must disabuse ourselves of.” And the sooner the better if the public is to learn how amenable to enlargement these mid-20th-century Modernist houses can be made to be.

Originally published in Architectural Record August 2005

Mildred F. Schmertz, FAIA, is a former editor in chief of ARCHITECTURAL RECORD