House of the Week

Knollwood

Another Shutze classic. Built in 1929 for the Kiser family, it's in the same neighborhood as last week's house of the week. This one is unbeatable...






















It's for sale. Listing here.

In honor of the Pink month of October, interior photos of the Pink Palace

The pink month of October is winding down, but my last post of the month is in honor of all the brave women who face breast cancer, the doctors and nurses who treat women with breast cancer and the researchers who search for a cure. I give you the interiors of the Pink Palace, previously posted about here, designed by Neel Reid, Philip Shutze and the firm of Hentz, Reid and Adler. This is the Calhoun house in Atlanta, also known as Trygveson.

At right are doors in the living room, also called the ballroom.


detail from the entrance hall or loggia


Allyn Cox mural from the entrance hall


settee below the mural in the entrance hall


main stair detail in the entrance hall


the living room, also called the ballroom


detail from the living room


another set of doors in the living room


the library


magnificent library ceiling designed by Neel Reid and Philip Shutze


dining room mantel and plasterwork medallion of Michelangelo


view of the mantel with chandelier in the dining room


an upstairs room over the porch - I love the coloration of the plaster

This wonderful house is for sale, listed by Beacham and Co. - click here to see the listing.


Have a great weekend everyone!

all photos by Whitehaven

I stand corrected! On the Pink Palace....

I hate to eat crow - but when you have to, you have to. Roby Robinson, grandson of the Calhouns, contacted us to correct the mistakes in the story told about the Pink Palace. I have edited the post, but the gist of it is that the house was a collaboration between Neel Reid and Philip Shutze, who was a junior draftsman on the job. Need Reid was the primary designer and traveled to Italy several times on buying trips for the house. Shutze was surely involved but not at the level that he later claimed at the end of his life. I stand corrected and now we know the real deal.

House of the Week - The Pink Palace

The Calhoun house with my faithful tour companion sitting in front.


photograph above by Van Jones Martin

It had to be this house. My daughter and I went on the Beacham and Co. sponsored Special Olympics house tour yesterday, and this was the feature house - The Pink Palace or Trygveson as it was named by the Calhouns (the name "Trygveson" comes from the Welsh version of the last name of Mary Guy Trigg, wife of Andrew Calhoun, the original owner), designed by Neel Reid and Philip Shutze. There seems to be much debate about the design credit on this 1923 beauty, which was owned by the Calhoun family. So, let me tell you the story. (I have edited this post after hearing from the son of Louise and Roby Robinson).


The view from the motor court, photography by Van Jones Martin

In 1919 the Calhouns hired the architecture firm of Hentz, Reid and Adler to design their house on Peachtree Rd. Philip Shutze was in Europe studying at that time. The first set of plans for the house were not as Italianate (Shutze did not work on those) and the Calhouns never built that house. They instead bought 100 acres of land on West Paces Ferry Road and by that point Shutze had returned from Europe. In 1922 he then took on the design of the Calhoun house with the rest of the design team at Hentz, Reid and Adler and it was this revised version of the house that the Calhouns built. It was based loosely on the Villa Allegri Arvedi in Cuzzano, Italy , which Shutze had visited in 1919.


Villa Allegri Arvedi


The Calhoun house in the 1920's as seen from W. Paces Ferry Rd, from American Classicist by Elizabeth Dowling


Villa Allegri Arvedi

The Northern facade of the Calhoun house is based on the Villa Gori, near Siena. Illustration by Paul Giambarda below. In her book American Classicist, Elizabeth Dowling descibes the garden facade as "exuberant baroque." "Numerous photographs of the Villa Gori appear in Shutze's scrapbooks" (p.70).




The house stayed in the Calhoun family until 1958, when its owners, Roby and Louise Calhoun Robinson, sold the house to the Thornwell family. The Thornwell family lived there for more than 50 years. When the house was sold to the Thornwells it only included 3-4 acres of land, the rest of the land was sold to developers Gene and Jerry Cates who developed Pinestream and Pinemeadow Rds.

I asked my grandmother, who grew up in Atlanta and was a good friend of the Calhouns and Robinsons, whether she thought the house was designed by Reid or Shutze, and she said that there has always been a debate about the architect. Roby Robinson, son of Louise and Roby, has told us that Reid was the primary architect on the house, with Shutze as a junior draftsman on the team. Apparently late in his life Shutze claimed that the house was solely his own, but this was in fact not true. Neel Reid, not Philip Shutze, traveled to Italy several times to purchase furniture for the house.

Yesterday at the house tour, I had the pleasure of meeting Elizabeth Meredith Dowling, author of American Classicist, the Architecture of Philip Trammel Shutze. She and I chatted about the house. When writing her book about Shutze she spoke with a decorator who helped Shutze on the house. He remembered seeing Shutze up on a ladder hand applying the tint to the exterior stucco. The house was a Hentz, Reid, Adler Atlanta version of an Italian Villa.






























This magnificent house is currently for sale. The listing is here. Will have more photos of the house later this week.

Unless otherwise specified, photographs by Whitehaven.

House of the Week - Shutze Beach House

Southwind



I noticed this house immediately from the beach, but had no idea that Philip Trammel Shutze was the architect. When my godmother gave us a driving tour of the island she told me this was "Aunt May's house" and that it was designed by Shutze. Of course I jumped out of the car and starting taking pictures. Later I got the whole story on the house, called Southwind, and the wonderful woman who lived there.




Southwind in 1938, photo by Gottscho-Schleisner

May Patterson Abreu (1891-1976)was from Atlanta. In the 1920's she worked at the interior design firm of Porter and Porter in Atlanta to help her family financially. She married James Goodrum in 1926. Sadly he only lived two years after they were married. May met Cuban born architect Francis Abreu at Sea Island and they were married in 1938. Francis Abreu designed many homes in Florida in his early years as an architect, but he is best known for his commercial and public buildings. He designed Eugene O'Neill's house on Sea Island. In Atlanta Francis and May lived in the Shutze designed house on W. Paces Ferry that was the Southern Center for International Studies, or the Peacock House.

Southwind was May's beach house - Shutze was the architect. May commissioned the house when she was still married to James Goodrum. Shutze used the stucco architecture of Bermuda as the design precedent for the beach cottage even though most of the architecture on the island was either designed by or inspired by Mizner and his Eclectic Spanish style. In American Classicist, Elizabeth Downling says of the project: "This new model employed the canted walls and peculiarly Bermuda-esqu stepped roof, which effectively break from Mizner's use of the Spanish precedent. For interior and exterior detailing, Shutze used a scallop shell motif to refer symbolically to the seaside location." (p173)



Southwind garden entrance, 1938


Garden entrance today










Southwind
The living room in 1938, you can see the shell motif at the cornice.

From the Abreu Charitable Trust website:

"After their marriage, they were active members of Atlanta society during the 1940s and 1950s and were staunch patrons of the arts. May enjoyed the opera, arts and the symphony, while Francis preferred golfing, hunting and fishing. However, while Francis may not have shared May's love for cultural events, he did attend events to be social. May and Francis lived on West Paces Ferry Road in the home that is now headquarters for the Southern Center for International Studies.

May was an active participant in many charities in Atlanta, supporting the Atlanta Humane Society and the American Red Cross, as well as individual citizens. After the Depression, May provided several people with financial assistance to help them get back on their feet. One day when walking down Peachtree Street in Atlanta, May saw one of these people look at her and cross the street to avoid repayment. At Christmas, she sent "paid in full" messages in her Christmas cards to all who had received money from her with the simple message, "Merry Christmas."

May established the Francis L. Abreu Charitable Trust in her will to honor her husband. Today, the Trust carries on the tradition of giving begun many years ago and continues to benefit the Atlanta area arts and cultural programs, education, health associations, human services, children and youth services."

The house is currently under renovation - which is great news for all of us who love historic buildings and good architecture. Shutze of course planned the gardens as well as the house. The garden is directly behind the house and one enters the house through the garden. There are several raised bed, walled planting areas with stone paths. At either end of the garden sit two guest houses.





One of the guest houses.


At the North end of the gardens and house is this building now being used to store garden tools.


View of the south side of the house.







What fun to find such architectural history at the beach!