Windshield House by Richard Neutra
But he built another ocean house, too, on the opposite side of the continent. 1936, Richard Neutra got a phone call from a "Mr. Brown of Newport" who was interested in commissioning a summer house. Neutra, the story goes, told his secretary: "Tell him I'll meet him in half an hour." Neutra, unable to fathom that someone would shoulder the then-astronomical expense of calling California from Rhode Island, had assumed that Mr. Brown lived in nearby Newport Beach.
In fact, this Mr. Brown was John Nicholas Brown II, of Providence and Newport, Rhode Island — a member of the Brown family that had been prominent in Rhode Island since its beginning and the namesake of Brown University. This patrician millionaire was an unlikely client of Neutra's — and he would work closely with Neutra on the design of what became known as Windshield House, Neutra's largest residential commission and a truly remarkable house, on the private, old-money enclave of Fishers Island, N.Y., about as opposite a site as California as you are likely to find.
I should tell you the bad news first: Windshield House is gone. Perhaps the house was cursed, because it was destroyed not once but twice — first, months after it was completed, in the devastating hurricane of 1938; second, after being rebuilt, it was burned to the ground on New Year's Eve in 1973, after houseguests left a fire unattended in the den.
Windshield on fire.
During its existence, Windshield House was an oddity on Fishers, an island not known for having much taste for the avant-garde. (Other houses on the island include the shingle-style Wilmerding House, which was the filming location for "Dog's Head Harbor" in The World According to Garp; Firestone House, a Norman affair; and "the Castle," a large stone house with turrets that was commissioned by the Simmons family, who made their fortune in mattresses, which was mockingly called "Beautyrest.")
There was certainly nothing like Windshield on Fishers Island at the time it was built. In fact, at first, the house was considered so large and ugly that it was called "the soap factory" — and when the Browns packed up and left Fishers Island, they could find no buyer for the house, and sold it to the Fishers Island Club for a nominal sum of $1. (The house had cost the Browns over $300,000 — over $5 million today — to build.)
What was unique about the Brown commission was how deferential Neutra was to Brown's wishes and specifications. The Browns were interested in chamber music, and so the house was constructed with a practice room, and a large closet to store Mr. Brown's cello and other musical instruments. There were ample quarters for the Brown's many servants (at least six traveled with the Browns to Fishers Island in the summer), as well as designated rooms for the Brown's children, including a children's dining room (one of Brown's sons, John Carter Brown, would later become director of the National Gallery of Art). Mr. and Mrs. Brown each required separate bathrooms, but they liked to bathe next to each other in the early evening so they could have a chance to chat before dinner — so Neutra put two bathtubs in Mrs. Brown's bathroom. Brown clearly delighted in customizing every aspect of his new house, and Neutra — pleased to have a client with such deep pockets, and perhaps also dazzled by Brown's patrician demeanor, was happy to oblige.
These are the plans of the house, as built:
Second floor plan. Note the two bath tubs in Mrs. Brown's bathroom. There are an unusually large amount of doors in the master suites, which can be explained by the Browns' insistence that each bathroom have a door to a hall so that servants could enter and exit if their attendance were needed — an notion that today seems quite extraordinary.
First floor plan. The clothes drying area was later enclosed and turned into additional staff rooms. Ironically, those unoriginal rooms were the only ones to survive the 1973 blaze.
Basement plan.
The interior of the house featured countless built-in furnishings. In the first-floor guest room, there were even two ultra-modern pre-fab "modular bathrooms," which confounded and fascinated visitors. Other pieces of modern furniture were selected to match the house's style, and some were designed by Neutra himself, including the dining table in the children's room. The furnishings cost some $10,000 — about $175,000 today.
Interiors of Windshield House:
The music room (living room)
The dining room, with the dining terrace beyond.
The den.
The pantry.
The children's dining room.
Second story landing.
The second story gallery. John Carter Brown is watering the plants.
The master bedroom. The dials to the right of the bed let Mr. Brown quickly check the day's sailing conditions.
Mr. Brown's dressing room.
Mr. Brown's bathroom.
Some preparatory drawings of the house:
After Windshield, it was many decades before anyone else attempted to build a modern house on Fishers Island. Ironically, it one of the guests who was staying at Windshield the night it burned down who now owns the lot.
Sources:
Boyl, Robert H. "Island of the Discreet Shudder" Sports Illustrated. September 6, 1964 issue.
Neumann, Deitrich, ed. Richard Neutra's Windshield House. New Haven: Yale University Press (2001).
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