In the late 1930s, a revolution in the college-level teaching of architecture began at Harvard University. Spurred by the spread of the International Style in Europe and the ravages of the Great Depression, architecture students at Harvard began to question the relevance of the very traditional education they were receiving. University administrators and faculty joined in.

Time was ripe for a bold new approach. In 1935, Harvard recruited Joseph Hudnut from Columbia to chair the department of architecture.

Hudnut, who was enthusiastic about the International Style, came to Harvard prepared to enact major reforms. Within one year, he created the Graduate School of Design (GSD), combining architecture, landscape architecture, and urban planning into a coordinated curriculum. After another year, he recruited Walter Gropius, the founder and leader for a decade of the innovative Bauhaus school of design in Dessau, Germany, to head Harvard’s architecture department. The year after that, he brought Gropius’ protégé Marcel Breuer to the faculty.

For the next 15 years, Harvard churned out talented, zealous young architects who spread the gospel of the International Style. In addition, GSD faculty and graduates joined forces to develop clusters of what would become known as Mid Century Modern housing in the small, sleepy New England towns of Lexington, Massachusetts, and New Canaan, Connecticut.

Lexington, Massachusetts

In 1945, Walter Gropius established The Architects Collaborative (TAC), partnering with a half dozen architects whose education at Harvard he had overseen. Among its early projects, TAC created two surprisingly modern neighborhoods in the town of Lexington—settled in 1642, the place where the first shots of the American Revolution were fired on its famous commons. At the time these developments occurred, Lexington had a population of 17,000 people and was full of Colonial, Greek Revival and Saltbox homes. There were few other modern homes in the area except for several in nearby Lincoln, including the first one in New England designed in 1937 by local architect Henry Hoover, and another designed by Gropius for his own family in 1938.

In 1947, TAC purchased a 20-acre tract to build new modern homes for themselves and other university faculty and professionals. TAC was committed to the collaborative principles that were being taught at Harvard. All planning and design were to be based on consensus among the partners, and the property was owned by a corporation with each lot having two voting shares, plus two for Gropius, who continued to live in Lincoln.

They divided the site into 26 parcels, with the goal of designing homes in the $10,000-$22,000 price range. They also set aside land for open space and a community pool. The individual partners drew straws to determine who would get what lot, and they were all involved in reviewing the designs for each home.

The 25 houses they built were one to two stories, with vertical wood siding, flat or butterfly roofs, large windows, and had small individual bedrooms and large communal areas. They were nestled in the land, conforming to the ter
rain of each lot. A 
design review committee oversaw further 
development. Where 
possible, innovative 
industrial components
 were incorporated into 
the homes, such as
 plexiglass skylights made by the same factory with the same materials used for transparent bomber noses and turrets during World War II.

The Six Moon Hill neighborhood has been a great success. None of the houses has been torn down. In addition to the TAC partners, many eminent academics have lived there, including two Nobel Prize winners. The design review covenant was renewed in 2002, with only two opt outs, and the neighborhood was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2016.

But where did the name come from? TAC bought the property from a man who had been a dealer in the Moon motor car, a model made in St. Louis during the first two decades of the 20th century. In a barn, they found what they thought were six Moon cars and used that as their name. When they later discovered that one car was a Franklin, they kept the name anyway.

Five Fields (1951-1959)

TAC next decided to develop speculative housing. They bought the 80-acre Cutler Farm to develop 60 homes, and set aside eight acres for common open space and a community pool. They first developed 20 sites to provide a stream of income, offering three basic house plans, with shallow pitched roofs, vertical wood siding, and large windows. Later, plans were available with flat or shed roofs, and they designed ten custom homes with no garages or carports. Houses cost between $20,000 and $36,000. TAC held design review authority in the neighborhood for the first two decades. Again, it was a success.

NEW CANAAN, CT.

In 1946, Marcel Breuer left Harvard to 
establish his own architectural practice in New York City, settling in New Canaan. One of his students, Eliot Noyes, was already living there, and three more followed—Landis Gores, John Johansen, and Philip Johnson, each with his own practice. New Canaan had a population of only 8,000 people

The Harvard Five in New Canaan (1947-1966):

The Harvard Five, as they quickly became known, soon made their presence felt by building boldly designed, elegant Mid Century Modern homes. They were scattered throughout town rather than being concentrated in distinct neighborhoods. Their work soon drew other architects as well, and by the time demand for these homes tapered off, approximately 100 had been built, of which 20 have been demolished and four are on the National Register of Historic Places.

Perhaps the most noticed home by a member of this group is the Glass House, designed by Philip Johnson based on a similar design by Mies van der Rohe for a home in suburban Chicago. Mies van der Rohe was another Bauhaus product who migrated to Chicago in 1938. The Glass House has hardly any interior walls, and its exterior is all glass. But there were other notable designs, particularly by Breuer himself, with each architect establishing a distinctive style.

ORIGINS

The Harvard Graduate School of Design proved to be an ideal vehicle for Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer to inculcate the values and methods of the International Style. Its graduates became even more fervent advocates of this new gospel — behold the revolution!

Walter Gropius (1883-1969), born and raised in Germany, got his first job in architecture with Peter Behrens in Berlin, along with two young colleagues who would also become famous modernists, Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier. He fought in World War One, was seriously wounded, and awarded the Iron Cross twice. In 1919, he founded the Bauhaus, first in Weimar, then in Dessau, where he designed the campus. The Bauhaus was dedicated to the idea that architecture should unify art, crafts, and technology into a complete work of art. Each of its courses featured two instructors, an artist and a craftsman, to symbolize this unity. Gropius left in 1928, and the Bauhaus was closed under increasing pressure from Hitler in 1933 by its last director, Mies van der Rohe.

The Harvard that Gropius arrived at in 1937, was by no means the first American school of architecture. That was established in 1868 at M.I.T. By the time Harvard’s was created in 1895, eight others existed. All taught a curriculum based on the practices at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, emphasizing design based on the Classical architecture of ancient Greece and Rome: its approach was to decide on the appropriate Classical design to copy, then fit the activity inside.

However, Harvard established the first urban planning curriculum and the first professional degree in landscape architecture. Hudnut and Gropius combined the 
three disciplines into one 
innovative program, creat
ing student teams rather 
than individual stars com
peting with one another, 
and emphasizing the nuts and bolts of architectural practice: Define the need, choose ‘honest’ materials and methods, and a beautiful building will result. Traditional art appreciation and architectural history courses were moved to the undergraduate curriculum.

Marcel Breuer (1902-1981), born and raised in Hungary, got his architectural training at the Bauhaus and became an instructor there. Where Gropius was more of a theoretician and advocate and was not that interested in designing homes, Breuer designed more than 60 over his career. He believed in separating the private bedroom areas from the more public communal areas into separate volumes, connected by passageways or linked at odd angles. His homes tended to be elevated above the land, on high foundations or pilotis with bold cantilevers, and he used a wide variety of materials, including local fieldstone. He also designed furniture.

Arriving in America in 1938, he both taught at Harvard and worked briefly as a partner with Gropius before setting out on his own. Later in his career, he became much more well known for his dramatic Brutalist designs in raw concrete of churches, libraries, museums, and offices.

CONCLUSION

With Gropius departing in 1952, and Hudnut retiring the next year, the GSD lost its sharp focus in advocating the International Style. During their tenure, a stunning cohort of architects and landscape architects were educated there, including Dan Kiley, who worked with Charles Goodman at Hollin Hills.

But the International Style lived on, and not just among GSD graduates. Even in Lexington, two M.I.T. architects developed the 57-home Peacock Farms neighborhood. Indicative of the persistence of this style is the Big Dig House, built on the last lot at Six Moon Hill in 2006, incorporating 600,000 pounds of recycled material from the massive project to underground an elevated highway in Boston’s North End.

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