Renovation Goes Crazy

tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/07/sign-of-the-times-when-renovation-means-erasing-the-past/?smid=tw-share&_r=0

Hello Everyone:

A person's home is his or her castle, right?  I'm being rhetorical.  So it would stand to reason that a person can do whatever they want to their house, including erase whatever history the house possesses and build something entirely new.  I ask you, is that always the right thing to do?  Would radically altering or demolition an older home in order to create thousands of square feet of empty space be the right thing to do?  This is the subject of a recent blog post by Harry Mount, "Sign of the Times, When Renovation Means Erasing the Past."  In the post, Mr. Mount points out while Victorians abhorred "horror vacuii" (fear of empty space), for first time in history, the nouveau riche across the globe have embraced the empty space.  To achieve this look, historic architecture is being destroyed either by demolition or renovation gone wild.

Photographs of the Henry F. du Pont Mansion
Before (left) and after (right) renovations
tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com

In order to achieve this "minimalist" look, historic architecture is falling victim to either demolition or renovation gone wild.  One useful example is the beachside mansion once owned by Henry F. du Pont.  The property began its life as an elegant  Georgian mansion in the Hamptons.  In the eighties, Barry Trupin, a financier later convicted of tax evasion, bought the stately property and gave it the most garish makeover.  Mr. Trupin added a twenty-foot waterfall to the back of the house and installed an indoor shark tank (!) and a private burro zoo. He also added turrets and a mansard roof that would've made the cast of Twilight feel quite comfortable.  Along comes couturier Calvin Klein, he of the minimalist look, transferring his fashion aesthetic to architecture.  Mr. Klein reportedly spent $75 million on the property and at least three architects.  First, Mr. Klein tried to remodel the Trupin disaster before throwing up his hands and razing the house four years ago in order to build the ultimate glass box.  What was that about people living in glass houses?  The glass box required a $350,000 life-sized model to demonstrate to Mr. Klein that a beach passerby could actually peek into his shower.  Needless to say that bushes were planted post haste.

173 Perry West
wirednewyork.com

Speaking of overexposure, this seems to also be feature of a set of three glass towers designed by Richard Meier along the West Side Highway in Manhattan.  Rita Schrager, the former wife of hotelier Ian Schrager, tried to install curtains in her apartment, contrary to building rules.  The actor Vincent Gallo, in protest, supposedly readied a sign that declared "Rita Schrager is a whore."  Mr. Gallo planned to tape the sign to his window in the neighboring tower but changed his mind at the last minute.

The glass box represents the final era of architectural history, the erasure of history.  Every pediment, pinnacle, pediment, entablature that decorated some of the best-known period styles, gone.  The glitterati of the Gilded Age: the Fricks, the Morgans, and the Astors, knew better.  A brownstone in Manhattan might feature Greek Revival or Federalist design motifs; a cottage in Newport, Rhode Island might resemble a Renaissance palazzo; a French chateau or an English country house all featured design elements that respected the historic period it recalled.  Harry Mount complains that contemporary glitterati want houses as interchangeable in appearance as mass retail outlets.  From the tone of Mr. Mount's complaint, he appears to long for the academic period style revivals that defined American architecture for much of the nineteenth century.  Interestingly, while the Fricks, the Morgans, and the Astors were building their odes to historicism, a new generation of architects were developing a new design aesthetic that was based in the new techniques and materials developed in the Industrial Revolution.  The steel and glass box came out of this new architectural aesthetic.  British actor Rowan Atkinson (Mr. Bean) has jumped into the radical renovation fury with his plans to replace a classical thirties-era house with a glass box designed by, wait for it, Richard Meier.

Thurloe Lodge
thetimes.co,uk

The renovation gone wild craze has also been reported in London.  In Kensington, West London, the new owners of Thurloe Lodge, a Victorian Home once owned by Mark Birley the owner of famed nightclub Annabel's, want to tear it down and rebuild a bigger house. You'd think that Thurloe's 6,000 square feet would have enough room, with five bedrooms, a separate cottage, garden, and two garages? Even when the houses aren't taken down, the interior are ripped apart, turned into endless voids.  Case in point, Roman Abramovich, the owner of Chelsea Football Club.  Apologies to my British readers who are Chelsea FC fans.  The Russian oligarch bought all nine

Roman Abramovich's House Lowndes Square
dailymail.co.uk

apartments inside two stucco-fronted mid-nineteenth century houses in Lowndes Square, around the corner from Harrods.  Mr. Abramovich received planning permission to knock down the interior walls, combine all nine units, and install an interior swimming pool. Thank goodness for project delays which caused Mr. Abramovich to put the houses on the market with the renovations on hold.  Hopefully the new owner will treat the houses with a little more love and care.  I'm not a sentimentalist or anything like that, I just think that older homes deserve a little more respect and be turned into some vanity project.

Roman Abramovich's House Chelsea
dailymail.co.uk

Mr. Abramovich was not deterred.  In Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, a lovely and historic eighteenth century riverside terrace in London, once home to James Whistler, Mick Jagger, and Keith Richards, the Chelsea FC boss got permission to connect three houses together worth about $150 million as part of a $15 million scheme to gut the place.  I hate to sound like a sexist but ever notice how it's always men that undertake these types of grand schemes?  Just saying.  Then, suddenly last summer, he decided to sell those houses too.  Hence the problem with the international elite, they frequently don't live in the houses the own, often buying and renovating them as investment properties.  Not that there's anything wrong with flipping houses.  Harry Mount laments that they never get the personal touch that make each one unique not do they accumulate the things that represent the long-term love.

Rowan Atkinson's house: current
dailymail.co.uk

If you absolutely must tear apart a house, you risk losing the building's overarching aesthetic, rail Harry Mount.  Mr. Mount states, in a not entirely true statement, that houses from previous centuries weren't built with mix-and-match architecture with free floating interiors.  I would not hesitate to point out Brighton Pavilion with its mix-and-match references to "Asian" architecture.  Rightly, he points out that the interiors and exteriors were designed to complement each other.  This still hold true

Rowan Atkinson's House-model for proposed design
heart.co.uk

today.  Mr. Mount uses the example of the British terraced houses which were built in the manner of Andrea Palladio's palazzo in Vicenza, Italy.  The exterior window heights matched the interior room dimensions.  Earlier versions featured a "piano nobile," "the grand floor" used for entertaining and showing off.  The interior details were all carefully designed to harmonize with the window proportions. Take those elements away and you destroy the harmony of the building.  Same can be said for the pre-World War II buildings, I'm thinking of Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye (1929).


Finally, Harry Mount admits to the fact that houses change in accordance with form and use.Yet he cannot help carrying on about some of the renovation disasters in the making.  While Mr. Mount makes a case for respecting the historic old homes, he fails to realize that history cannot be encased in amber. If you want to freeze history, then a house museum might be the way to go.  What Mr. Mount fails to acknowledge in his article is that are historic home owners who have treated their residences with the love  and respect they deserve.  His focus on renovations gone wild makes for fun reading but fails to give an accurate picture of historic home restoration.

One final note, Tower Records still needs your help.  Please go to http://www.change.org and sign the online petition.  Also email Council Member Stephanie Reich at sreich@weho.org to let her know why this building should not be demolished to make way for another high-end mixed used development.


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