[MassHistPres] Preservation Request Raymond House

[Ttorwig at aol.com]

One of the most important modernist houses in all of New England is 
threatened with imminent demolition (A  bulldozer on the lawn!). The Rachel Raymond 
House (1931) on Park Avenue in  Belmont, Massachusetts, was recently purchased by 
Belmont Hill School, a private school for boys. It  intends to clear the 
site. Eleanor Raymond (1887-1989) designed the house for  her sister after a 1930 
trip to Bauhaus in Germany with her  partner, House Beautiful editor Ethel 
Brown Power (1881-1969). Architectural  Forum in 1931 declared the house as “
probably the first modern house in  Massachusetts.” 
Eleanor Raymond graduated from Wellesley College (1909) and the Cambridge 
School of  Architecture and Landscape Architecture for Women (1919). Among her 
other  innovative designs were houses made of plywood and Masonite, and the 
Peabody Sun  House (1948), a pioneering solar power design. She enjoyed a long 
career in  Boston,  primarily designing residences for clients who were women. 
The Rachel Raymond House appears as Fig. 235 in Built in Boston by Douglass  
Shand-Tucci, and at this Harvard website:  
_http://oasis.harvard.edu:10080/oasis/deliver/~des00011_ 
(http://oasis.harvard.edu:10080/oasis/deliver/~des00011)  
Published works on Raymond include a biography by Doris Cole (1981) and a  
brief catalog by the Institute of  Contemporary Art (Boston), as well as a  
recent Boston University Ph.D. dissertation by Nancy Beth Gruskin. All these  
sources confirm the importance of the house. 
David Fixler, President of DOCOMOMO-US/New England, wrote  a recent op-ed 
about the house: “The house is important for many reasons; its  sophisticated 
relationship to the local topography and landscape, its iconic  modern form, and 
the fact that it was designed by a woman, one of the most  significant 
American woman architects of the early and mid-twentieth  century.  In the 1970s its 
exterior  was substantially altered, though much of the essence of the house – 
including  the major interior spaces and its relationship to the landscape 
has remained –  and it could easily be restored.”   
Please direct polite protests to Richard Melvoin, the Headmaster of  Belmont 
Hill School, at _melvoinr at belmont-hill.org_ (mailto:melvoinr at belmont-hill.org) 
. Copy your responses to J. Christopher Clifford, Chair, Board of Trustees; 
and Roy  F. Coppedge III and Carl J. Martignetti, Co-Chairs, Development 
Committee,  Belmont  Hill School, 350 Prospect Street, Belmont, MA 02478. Belmont 
Hill has been a  preservation champion in the past, moving an 1840 church 
threatened with  demolition to its campus for reuse as Hamilton Chapel. Ask it to be 
a pioneer in  preservation again.