What's Wright About a Lost House

 
Mid-Century Modernism.  In our acronym-focused world, it's now called "MCM".  

For most of my life, I have lived in a one-story MCM house.  Considering its age and style, our "3-2-2" is average in most aspects, and for my family, that has suited us just fine.

For Americans in general, however, up until recently, the style of our dwelling has not been especially desirable.  It does look dated - straight from the 1950s - and that look apparently was most popular... back in the 1950s!  It also isn't 2-story, which has been trendy for a while.  However, as nostalgia can't help but recirculate designs and themes from times gone by, MCM has enjoyed something of a renaissance lately.

Its heyday ran from the early 1950s through the middle of the 1960s, hence its name.  Because it evolved during post-war America's unprecedented drive into suburbia, it quickly became a favored style for builders developing the invention of the subdivision.  And the longer subdivisions have been around, the more negatively younger and younger generations view them.  

After all, trends are unsustainable - which is literally part of the definition of a trend to begin with.  For some folks, subdivisions quickly became little more than ubiquitous warrens of cookie-cutter tract houses, whether they're two-story colonials, story-and-a-half capes, or single-story ranch houses.  

And true, many suburban subdivisions haven't aged well, no matter their housing styles.

Let's stop for a moment and think about it, though.  After all, most cities are built of subdivisions, too, right?  Only that term hadn't yet been coined.  Long ago, builders sometimes constructed whole blocks of houses or apartment buildings, or maybe a few houses in a row (called "row houses" - duh).  And you have to admit:  Except for the streets of gaudy McMansions elite townies once built for themselves (before they were derisively called "McMansions"), those projects looked cookie-cutter, too.  And they all aged over time - some worse than others.  For decades, even in the best central-city neighborhoods, brownstones and row houses were the housing styles owners were fleeing.  So urbanists who like to scoff at suburbia really can't grouse about subdivisions.  Builders have historically erected whatever they can at the lowest possible price point, whether it's high-density or cookie-cutter or urban or otherwise.

At any rate, not all suburban housing is as bland and dismal as urbane sophisticates like to imagine it as being.  I'll admit my family's longtime home in Arlington, Texas - between Dallas and Fort Worth - doesn't feature an award-winning design, but it's not a tract house, either.  Its floorplan is unique.  It was constructed in the late 1950s by a prominent local builder named Happy King as his personal family's home.  At around 1,700 square feet, it's not large by today's standards, but it features some notable MCM design cues such as a large, open kitchen and two living areas that flow into each other.  Our patio door is about double the width of most, and opens onto wide concrete steps leading down to an expansive patio.  

Like many cities developed during suburbanization's early years, Arlington has a number of subdivisions with MCM homes.  Some of those homes are quite large, and most are smaller than ours.  Many of them have been updated over the years with unfortunate additions and other changes that have diluted and often destroyed their original MCM aesthetics.  But ours has stayed relatively the same, even down to its pocket sliding doors all along its one central hallway.

Unfortunately, one of the most exquisite MCM specimens ever built in Arlington was destroyed by the city a couple of years ago.  The Curtis Mathes house was in a subdivision dubbed "Meadow Oaks," about a mile east of our house.  It sat along the same waterway, Johnson Creek, that also runs through our backyard.  Over the decades, as Arlington expanded from a humble railroad stop to a city of over 400,000 people, storm water runoff has been directed into Johnson Creek at rates that overwhelm it during most storms.  The Mathes house never flooded, but the city decided to take it anyway as part of broader plans for a future linear park.  So all we have of it today are memories and photographs.

It's known for being the home of Curtis Mathes, a name shared by both a father and a son from a family known for manufacturing color television sets, components for Cadillac automobiles, and other electronics.  Curtis "junior" was tragically killed along with 22 other passengers in a bizarre fire aboard an Air Canada jet in 1983 at the Cincinnati airport, a pivotal event in aviation safety which led to several new requirements, including streamlined emergency evacuation procedures.  A remnant of the Mathes company now sells grow lamps specifically for cannabis plants.  They've even partnered with our local college, the University of Texas at Arlington, in studies exploring future uses for cannabis other than, um, "recreational". 

While it's unclear how long Curtis "junior" himself owned the house generally ascribed to him, or how long his sister owned it after his death, or their heirs after them, the property is nevertheless understood to be an architectural legacy of a unique business empire.  

Jane Mathes Kelton was Curtis' sister, and a philanthropic entrepreneur in her own right.  She spit her time between this house and another one in Costa Rica.  Jane commissioned the towering stone sculptures, Caelum Moor, that today grace an Arlington park near stadiums hosting the NFL's Dallas Cowboys and MLB's Texas Rangers.  Coincidentally, Johnson Creek also runs through that park.  Jane's company later developed a sprawling retail corridor along I-20, between Matlock and Center streets.  She named it "Arlington Highlands" in honor of her family's Scottish ancestry.

Built in 1952, the Mathes house had an address of 925 Meadow Oaks, and its last Zillow real estate listing can be found here.  It offered four bedrooms, five bathrooms, and before getting torn down had been expanded over the years to over 4,700 square feet of living space on 1.73 beautifully landscaped acres.

In a city mostly built in chunks of market-rate subdivisions, office parks, and shopping centers, the Mathes house represented something unexpectedly chic.  Not that its MCM design cues can't be found elsewhere in town, but the home's overall style boasted a type of restrained extravagance that the best of MCM tends to capture especially well.

Like most creative processes and philosophies, MCM's core design aesthetic represents something of an evolution of earlier patterns, trends, and standards.  America's Craftsman and Prairie styles, for example, drastically curtailed the use of extensive, elaborate Victorian decoration.  That reduction in ornamentation came to also define classic MCM.  Elements like pronounced roofing overhangs, wide and unpainted wood paneling, gracious porches and patios, and generous windows also extended through all three aesthetics.  

As he honed his career to become one of our country's greatest architects, Frank Lloyd Wright participated in both the Craftsman and Prairie styles while eventually developing his own ethos for residential design that was even more organic and minimized.  Much of the MCM aesthetic came from Wright's design philosophies, although he died mid-way through MCM's heyday.  As residential construction boomed in suburban areas with lot sizes typically larger than those in urban sites, developers discovered many principles of Wrightian aesthetics were easily exploitable for the untold numbers of ranch-style houses and split-levels they were building.

He did dabble in a sort of "tract" housing himself, which he called "Usonian" houses, but Wright's forte was customized residential commissions.  Sprawling, signature properties that were still gracious and warm.  He did not design the Mathes house, but whomever did obviously admired Wright's work.

Wright embraced contiguous living areas and generally kept bedrooms comparatively small.  Who needs a big room in which to sleep?  He disliked boxy spaces, but celebrated fireplaces and claimed the "hearth is the heart" of a home.  He wanted to bring nature and the outdoors indoors, so wide glass doors and windows - even walls of windows - became one of his design cues.  He claimed built spaces should blend in with their natural surroundings, so many of his residential structures are long and low.  He extended the Craftsman and Prairie eaves to help reinforce a sense of closeness with the ground.  He valued privacy, so would often "hide" front doors and other entryways.  All of these "Wrightian" design elements could be found throughout the Mathes house, although Wright also loved circles and irregular angles, neither of which the Mathes house incorporated.

It's not my opinion:  Plenty of biographers say Wright was an egomaniac who enjoyed flouting convention.  So I think he would have particularly admired the Mathes home's swimming pool.  Originally, the property featured a small indoor pool as part of its primary bedroom suite.  Eventually, heirs reworked the suite's bathroom and built a larger, oversized lap pool outdoors.  But not in the backyard, which would have been the conventional location for one.  You see, since the Mathes property runs along a creek, a backyard pool risked possible flooding issues.  

Knowing Arlington's municipal codes and zoning as well as I do, I imagine they had to get a waiver from city hall to do that.  They also probably had to get permission from nearby neighbors, since even today, it could be considered a controversial use of front yard space.  The family cleverly included a tall, massive stone wall in front of their pool, disguising it from the street.  That stone wall also lent to the home's dominant linear quality, and blended surprisingly well with all of the trees also screening the facade.  Fortunately for the family, their property was large enough so that plenty of lawn space still separated their private swimming oasis from the road.

Today, however, all of that is gone.  The swimming pool has been filled in and its stone wall destroyed.  Not a trace of the Mathes house remains.  Just a wellhead for the property's private freshwater source.

At this point, I could launch into a dissertation about the value of historic preservation, or at least a civic appreciation of venerable architecture and aesthetics.  Especially since good examples of original MCM are getting harder and harder to find. 

But instead, I'll simply let these photos speak for themselves.  And hope any future park the city is planning for this site looks even half as nice as this place did - for almost 70 years!

Street view. You'd never know such a splendid house existed beyond that screen of trees.
Such discreet understatement was a hallmark of Wrightian-inspired MCM.

Barely visible in the preceding photo was a massive stone wall that faced the street.
This swimming pool ran behind that wall - in part of the front yard!
But it was still invisible to passersby.

So much Wrightian-inspired MCM going on here, including the walls of windows, low roofline,
a brick wall screening the front door, and wide, shallow steps leading to the door.

Voila! The front door - a design trick popularized by Wright.
The long, low eaves were also Wrightian and Craftsman/Prairie-inspired.

A luxuriant wall of windows, and this wasn't even the main dining area.
Plus a continuous plane of brick as a perpendicular axis,
extending from the interior outward beyond the windows.

More windows. And a broadly exaggerated fireplace surround
to accentuate Wright's "hearth and home" ethos.

Window walls. Everywhere! These look out over the backyard towards Johnson Creek.

Windows even under the kitchen cabinets, along the countertops, looking into the backyard.

 

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TV's Comedy Situation

 

Television.  How much of it do you watch?

I used to watch quite a lot of it.  That was years ago, though.  Back when television programming literally was accessible only via a television set.  You arranged your life to watch your show when your show was scheduled to be on, which usually was only once a week.  None of those programs were available online, because "online" didn't exist.  

The only TV "cable" we ever had...
the wire from our old rooftop antenna
still coiled in a closet behind the fireplace.

My family never had cable or satellite.  We started out with rabbit ears, then one of those spindly rooftop antenna jobs, and now a thin, tablet-shaped black plastic contraption.  Eventually, VCRs did help erode the hold TV schedules had on our lives, but while we still have one, I can't remember when we last used it.

Times indeed change, and the history of television proves it. 

It's mostly a relic from my Manhattan apartment days, but I still have my trusty, boxy cathode-ray JVC "Mastercommand" set in my Texas bedroom.  I bought it at a "Nobody Beats the Wiz" electronics chain store on Broadway, in Greenwich Village, when The Wiz was metropolitan New York's version of Best Buy.  It weighs a ton, but the thing just won't quit.  Maybe because I almost never turn it on!

My parents' TV lineage has been a different story.  They only owned three sets during their 50 years of marriage, and Dad bought each of them from Sears Roebuck, since that's where most people of their generation got their appliances.  Before he was married, my father fancied himself as something of a technophile, whiling away many Saturday afternoons in New York City's fabled Radio Row, where the World Trade Center now sits.  But after he got married and had kids, he and Mom didn't bother with television until my brother and I were in elementary school... and we'd come home asking them why all the other kids knew some "Mr. Rogers" who lived on "Sesame Street"!

Our first TV was a small black and white model.  The next one, after we moved to Texas, wasn't much bigger, but it was a color set.  The last one Dad bought was larger still, but no comparison to the enormous screens most people wanted.  And screen size used to be one of the metrics by which social strata was determined.

Mom and I got our first digital TV only three years ago, after a near-zero deep freeze forced us to go without power for almost 24 hours.  Our home's interior temperature sank into the low 50s - cold enough long enough, apparently, to make that Sears set set literally blow a fuse when I first turned it on after our electricity returned.

(For the record, my Greenwich-Village-vintage television came through that deep freeze just fine.)

The next day, a jovial neighbor across the street asked how we'd fared in our frigid weather, and I laughingly told him about our Sears TV literally emitting acrid smoke.  He invited me over and offered one of his many digital flat-screen models to - as he put it - at least bring us into the 21st Century!

Still, we hardly watch it.  At least, compared to the amount of TV we used to consume.  Mom reads a lot these days, after her daughter-in-law gifted her with a Kindle.  And I guess I've simply lost interest in the medium.  

It's not because I'm too sophisticated or high-brow for pop-culture entertainment, although I do think pop-culture standards have declined considerably since I was a kid.  Some might say TV itself has had a lot to do with that.  Since I don't watch any prime time television anymore, I wouldn't know if there's any good-quality prime time programming on it today anyway!  Maybe there is, but my priorities in terms of how I want to spend my time have changed, and television ranks quite low.

Not that I'm anti-TV.  I'm simply far more deliberate in my use of it.  For example, I still watch some of the classic old sitcoms on those re-run stations.  Sitcoms have historically been my preference for TV viewing, over dramas or game shows or reality shows, with an exception being my relatively recent affinity for Columbo, the 1970s detective show which itself can be quite droll.  I'll readily admit I like the comedy classics because they're not just humorous, they're familiar and nostalgic, two qualities becoming increasingly desirable in our increasingly confrontational age. 

Actually, though, on that score, we tend to forget how controversial some historical sitcoms were during the age in which they originally aired.  They seem innocuous enough now, but the themes they portray weren't universally embraced back in their day.  For example, social pecking orders - both by the wealthy and the under-educated - became a common satirical target on The Beverly Hillbillies.  And equal opportunity for women in The Mary Tyler Moore Show mirrored a major social upheaval for the 1970s.

I doubt it was ever considered controversial, but Hogan's Heroes has become my favorite sitcom.  My brother and I began watching when we were in junior high school.  You can imagine how many times I've now seen each and every episode, over and over and over again.  I don't watch it as much as I used to, but some episodes remain so funny to me, I can still laugh out loud, even while reciting their punchlines by heart.  

Granted, I'm a sucker for the type of slapstick banter Hogan's Heroes supplies in abundance.  Yet despite all its comedic appeal, there are distinct aspects about the show that separate it from the conventional sitcom genre.  For one thing, obviously, being set in a prisoner-of-war camp immediately presents incredible challenges regarding humor.  It takes a lot of creativity to consistently extract relevant content from that scenario to deliver six years' worth of humorous episodes.  

Then there's the complication of being set not in America, but Europe, with an international cast to boot.  Then consider how its second-most-powerful leader among the prisoners, Sergeant Kinchloe, is played by a Black actor, Ivan Dixon.  That alone represented a particularly bold statement for the show's era, spanning 1965 to 1971.  Werner Klemperer, who plays Colonel Klink, was a musician in real life, but he was a classically-trained violinist, not a rock star.  Hogan's Heroes had numerous reasons to end up being a flop.  Yet it didn't then, and hasn't today.

While I don't have a favorite Hogan's Heroes episode, one of them does strike me as particularly compelling.  And it all comes down to one key line, which surprisingly, isn't spoken by lead characters Hogan or Klink, but by Kinchloe.  For a show so reliant on whimsy, the scene is stark, and void of humor, yet it becomes satisfyingly uplifting.

Episode 11, from Season 3, was written by Richard M. Powell, and named "Is General Hammerschlag Burning?"  Kinchloe finds himself thrust to the forefront as a childhood acquaintance of a Black chanteuse now working in wartime Paris, who has managed to secure the trust of the city's Nazi commander.

Although she personally loathes him and his cause, this chanteuse doesn't want to jeopardize the protection she receives from Hammerschlag.  Still, she's piqued by Kinchloe's sudden re-entry into her life, and especially what she considers his naive dedication to the Allied cause.  She is so ambivalent towards the Allies, and Americans especially, because she and Kinchloe are people who Americans haven't historically respected.  How could a Black American risk his life for a country whose society had treated them the way it had?  And how could he expect her to do the same?

Kinchloe's logic makes her think, and convinces her to cooperate:

"You don't understand us... Hammerschlag, you can understand... So just ask yourself a question: Do you want to spend the rest of your life in a Hammerschlag kind of world?"

That's a heavy line for a sitcom, right?

On a lighter note, I can report that I do have a favorite sitcom theme song.  It's a cappella jazz, technically; the airy, poignant "Angela" by Bob James for Taxi, floating along while an iconic Checker cab crosses New York's 59th Street Bridge from Manhattan into Queens.  The combination of such dreamy music with the rhythmic cadence of the bridge's passing structural trusses tends to be mesmerizing, especially in the afternoon sun.  

While its tune hardly fits the typically bubbly sitcom style, in a way, it still scores (get the pun?!) as sitcom theme music because of its irony:  That idyllic tableau I described totally contrasts with the real New York City taxi experience, which almost always is jarring, gritty, and hardly mesmerizing!

For a sitcom theme song with words, I like the far more energetic "Movin' On Up" by Ja'net Dubois and Jeff Barry for The Jefferson's, a show whose early episodes also featured the 59th Street Bridge during its theme song, but with the Jefferson's yellow Checker cab leaving Queens for Manhattan's fabled Upper East Side.

Okay, so I have a fondness for the city of my birth.  At least when it comes to sitcom music.  If you think about it, however, many of the most popular and influential sitcoms were set in New York.  I Love Lucy, for example, literally invented so many standards still used in the modern sitcom it's almost boring today.  Seinfeld, whose incredible writing turned otherwise ordinary experiences into catch phrases.  Then there's The Odd Couple, which like New York itself, is something of an acquired taste.  I started watching The Nanny while living in Gotham, and quickly realized that while a lot of acting was going on, those spandex outfits and gaudy bling worn by Sylvia and Grandma Yetta were not "artistic license".  They literally were what I'd see plenty of grandmothers wearing when I'd go shopping with my aunt along 86th Street in Brooklyn's Bay Ridge!

One of the last grand shows from the "golden age" of sitcoms is Frasier, which isn't set in New York, but features two main protagonists who fancy themselves as being urbane enough to be cosmopolitan snobs.  With fiendishly witty dialog presented in articulate cadence, and irrepressibly goofy subplots rippling throughout the series like earthquake fault lines, Frasier celebrates satire.  It ran from 1993 to 2004, ending 20 years ago, yet in many ways, the show has hardly aged.

I'm particularly fond of at least one scene and one entire episode from Frasier that are timeless in their creativity.  My favorite scene is actually a wordless one-act play from the episode entitled "Three Valentines" and features Niles, superbly embodied by David Hyde Pierce.  It's been years since I've personally ironed anything, but watching Niles try to meticulously press his dress pants (but start a small inferno instead) is five minutes and thirty-something seconds of sheer comedic delight.  Incredibly, Pierce spends all that time - and it flows by so quickly - with hardly any dialog of any kind, save for some impromptu grunts and exclamations.  He ends up presenting a master class in wordless acting that epitomizes the art of unadulterated humor.

My favorite full episode is Frasier's attempt at reproducing a vintage radio theater who-done-it, in "Ham Radio", written by David Lloyd.  I've already told you how much I enjoy slapstick comedy, and this particular show overflows with it.

Almost every other line is a punchline.  Right down to a dyslectic participant in Frasier's on-air shambles of a production who emotively fires off her one and only line:  "Look out - He's got a NUG!"

Think about it, relative to how a dyslectic person suffers from an unfortunate speech impediment.

Ahh... like most good comedy, it gets me every time!

And I got another pun in there too, didn't I?  "Firing off" a line...  

See how humor gets to me?

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