"Do a little dance, make a little love/Get down tonight, get down tonight/Do a little dance, make a little love/Get down tonight, get down tonight"I felt the need to quote KC and the Sunshine Band. Most likely because I am the biggest dork in the world or because it just looks appropriate. Can you imagine the pool parties your parents had in suburban back yards like this back in the late 70s listening to KC and the likes of Donna Summer, the Bee Gees, Blondie and all the bands you wished your parents (or you) had never ever discovered.
The 70s weren't all about gaudy colors or anything drenched in horrid plaid. The 70s also saw the peek of suburban life and the simple modernist aesthetics that decorate this house designed by architect Ernest Alton "Tony" Grunsfeld III in 1972. It is located in Highland Park a place dotted with very little simplistic designs. Grunsfeld is the son of Ernest Grunsfeld Jr. who designed the famous Adler Planetarium. Like father, like son, both offered great design elements while one embraced the growing the city of Chicago, the otter embracing the grown suburbanism. It is almost a ying and yang path for both that work well together.
8 comments:
My parents? I was in junior high at the time! The stuff's not that old, is it? Maybe it is. :) Probably anyone under 30 remembers it more from the Budweiser commercial with the anthill from 9 or 10 years ago, having missed out on the bazillion times it was (over)played on the radio in the 70's.
Great modernist house, by the way! My folks had a recent issue of Smithsonian magazine (your library probably has it, Didi) that I saw over Thanksgiving that discussed these homes and how fast they're disappearing to make way for your favorite McMansions.
LOL! My mother was a disco freak and hubby loves the oldies as do I so I hear these songs literally all the time on the radio. My favorite is Blondie by the way. Plus I was inspired by watching the TV show Swingtown which I recently bought on DVD. It's set in the North Shore in 1976 and plays much of this type of music. The subject matter may be for adults only but I found it to be a well written complexing drama and it captures the pop culture of the late 70s really well.
I found this house when I was looking through some stuff I collected from the Tribune. I was looking for a home similar to this that I had saved but I could not find it at all. The Tribune publishes a glossy luxury real estate magazine once in a while and apprently this home was for sale probably a couple of years ago. A lot of smaller versians like this can be found in Lincolwood or Skokie or Niles and everytime I drive through some of the residential areas in these communities I am happy when I find a gem and shudder when I see how many McMansions dominate the streets. Most of these houses look like a cheap thril instead of something carefully designed, crafted and planned like most modern designed homes from the 50s-70s period. Whatever happened to consvering space and appreciating the surrounding view? It seems that it has been lost in the bigger homes of the day.
Kenilworth is one suburb battling this very issue. Some advocates in that town are fighting to declaire it a historical entity to preserve many early Prairie houses seen in the village. They are tearing those down at an alarming rate as well. It's all very sad for those of us who still see use in these architectural gems of the past.
How come these tear downs are so common these days?
I wish I knew the direct answer, Mike. I think it is all very complex. I think they are common because it is easy to tear down and build new than to appreciate what is already there or make due with what is there. It is probably a reflection of our throw away society. An interesting tidbit is where my parents come from in the former Yugoslavia, none of the old structures from their childhood have been torn down. The house my father grew up in is still standing even though my uncle built a new house over twenty years ago. This is common for that area. Many old houses not in use still stand. Unfortunately, none are architectual wonders either.
The teardown phenomenom is not new. old Victorian era structures were lost in the middle of the twentieth century because no one thought of preserving or they were considered useless and beyond keeping. It is a sad reality that still exists today.
Grunsfeld himself has replaced some of his early, modestly scaled homes with massive new homes. Check out Crescent Court in Highland Park.
That's too bad. I don't much enjoy grand gestures. I like the simplicity of Grunsfeld's 60s/70s homes. Still it is nice to see him design great homes.
Here's a book waiting to be written- Tony Grunsfeld frequently worked with landscape architect Gertrude Kuh. Her designs are well documented at the Burnham Library, and are beautifully adapted for the low, car-oriented ranch homes that Grunsfeld originally designed. It would be a great project to document those remaining early modern homes with designed landscapes, especially since they're disappearing so quickly. I'm sure Grunsfeld himself could reel off a few names of landscape designers at the time. The hard part is that landscapes generally don't hang around for 40 or 50 years, so it would be alot of archival work in addition to survey.
You are right, Larry, that is a wonderful book waiting to be written. I fear though that it would be as you say, hard to see the landscape condition in the orginal intent. Hiwever, digging inside archives to figure it all out might be a lot of fun. I love looking through archival stuff just hidden away.
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