[MassHistPres] Preservation Request Raymond House

[Marcia Starkey]

It seems to me that this is an exceptional opportunity for the Belmont 
School to address, rightly or wrongly, the opposition to separate gender 
schools on the grounds that they undermine equality, especially by boys and 
young men. While buildings can teach many important lesssons, it isn't 
always this possible to do so in a gentle way. Marcia Starkey, Greenfield
----- Original Message ----- 
From: <Ttorwig at aol.com>
To: <masshistpres at cs.umb.edu>
Sent: Friday, October 20, 2006 12:25 PM
Subject: [MassHistPres] Preservation Request Raymond House


>
> 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.
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