Whitie Ford

On a recent trip to, big surprise, The Gropius House we drove past the Ford House which is nearby. Ford House was built by Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer in 1938-39 for Katharine and James Ford under an arrangement with the benefactor of the Gropius House itself, Mrs. James Storrow. Gropius and Breuer designed the house for the then Associate Professor of Social Ethics at Harvard and his wife Katherine. The couple would later write a watershed book on moderns, Classic Modern Homes of the Thirties: 64 Designs by Neutra, Gropius, Breuer, Stone and Others (Modern House in America).

The House had always been, so we thought, wood sided and unpainted. On previous visits it was indeed sided with what appeared to be untreated or lightly stained cedar or redwood siding (Gropius used Redwood in his house so this isn't that much of a stretch). This week, a the house was white! White like the Gropius and Breuer Houses nearby. To say we were shocked is an understatement. Was the current owner defacing the historic structure?

Upon speaking to folks at The Gropius House itself our fears were not at all allayed. They seemed to be slightly perturbed as well.

Well fear not. As you can see in this picture from the North Carolina State University Collection, which appears to have been taken some time in the 1950's or '60's, the house has been white before.

Picture of Ford House from c1950

This leaves the Bogner House across the cul-de-sac as the only natural wood structure on the street. Not a bad thing.