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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