hollin hills: happy experiment
in modernity
by michael sorkin
The late architect and writer Michael Sorkin — one of the most thoughtful and engaging critics of his generation — grew up at 7313 Rebecca Drive in Hollin Hills, where, he once said, his life-long love of architecture was born. After a notable career (reviewed in this excellent article by Kate Wagner in The Architectural Review), Sorkin sadly passed away in March 2020 at the age of 71, from complications related to Covid-19.
In 1999, he shared some memories of growing up in Hollin Hills, and what he called the “lovely dream” of modernism, for the book, Hollin Hills: Community of Vision. Here are some excerpts:
Photo courtesy of The Architectural Review
hollin hills: happy experiment
in modernity
I discovered architecture in Hollin Hills.
Growing up on Rebecca Drive in the1950s and '60s, living behind glass walls, I came to an indelible understanding of architecture and — especially — of its place in nature. This wasn't simply the result of the periodic thunk of birds that — seeing all the way through the house — would crash into the big windows. Nor did it grow out of the memorable morning when, drawing open the drapes, I found three cows, recently escaped from Popkins Farm, chewing pachysandra and treading on the azaleas. My appreciation for architecture wasn't even sparked by the apparitional deer that would appear at dusk in the yard, having wandered up from the wilderness down the hill. But somehow the wildlife fit, pointing up the architectural seamlessness, the fantasy of a flowing space that erased the distinction between in and out.
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“Hollin Hills remains the kind of community so many modernists dreamed of, a beautiful place of social activism, love of nature, and potluck picnics”
Because of its architecture, Hollin Hills was the kind of place where liberals, employing postwar prosperity and financing, were inclined to move. Charles Goodman's architecture appealed to their progressive tastes as, surely, did the sense of enclave, the idea that political values were wrapped up in the environment, that progressivism inhered in those glass walls and sinewy lines of landscape as well as in the mini-soviet of collective parks and activities. I remember for example, the early days when mail was delivered to a single spot and the wives gathered (some social changes had to wait) at midday to collect letters and chat, like the pioneers they were.
Indeed, in those days there was literal wilderness about. From our initially treeless lot atop Rebecca Drive, we had an unobstructed view of the distant Potomac River. Down the hill, down the unpaved road to the dump — scene of legendary childhood adventures — lurked the unknown and unexplored. This sense of wilderness fit well with the influx of "new frontiersmen" of the Kennedy days, people who were willing to live in glass houses. Ironically, those were the days when the CIA was considered a "liberal" agency, and spies abounded. I remember a number of neighbors who worked "for the government" and especially recall the day I answered a knock at the door to find two men in trench coats. Had I observed anything unusual at the house of the spook across the street, they asked — any loud parties, for example?
“one of the striking things about Charles Goodman’s wonderful work is its relaxed relation to the formal canons of modernism”
Horses (and a young Hollin Hiller) at Popkins Farm, 1950s
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I don't know when the first Republican vote was recorded among the Hollin Hills electorate, but, for me, a turning point in those halcyon days was the construction in 1957 of the model aluminum house in "new" Hollin Hills, one of several Goodman designed for Alcoa around the country. The idea of the house dovetailed with the old modernist dream of factory-made housing and elaborated on several aluminum-framed houses built by Robert Davenport, the man who developed Hollin Hills. But the actual item — in its purple vulgarity and exceeding smoothness — seemed a lesser quality of design than the simple stick construction of the indigenous models. New Hollin Hills, in particular, seemed to my snobbish preadolescent sensibility to be a conjunct of arrivistes, flat sites, and much less interestingly detailed houses than the originals on the hill.
One of the striking things about Goodman's wonderful work — exemplified in his wide range of projects — is its relaxed relation to the formal canons of modernism and its anticipation of so many of today's vexatious architectural issues. Goodman's non-dogmatic style is famously visible in the varied roof types of Hollin Hills houses. Eschewing the inevitable uniformity of the flat roofs of the standard modern issue, Goodman included, in ever greater numbers, pitched roofs and those fabulous butterflies, fifty-ish chevrons that were reflected in the most popular piece of furniture of the day, the ubiquitous butterfly chairs that sat (still sit) in every yard.
I was a somewhat orthodox child and was a bit troubled by those pitched roofs. Under the sway of Scandinavianism in those days — fanatical for all things Swedish — I was disquieted by the work of many Scandinavian architects, from Markelius to Jacobsen, who produced otherwise sparkling modernist buildings but with roofs pitched against the snow. My Nordic tastes were also reinforced by the prevailing vogue for "scandinavian modern" furnishings — the closest thing to a consistent formal sensibility my parents ever had — and I particularly remember the forests of well-crafted teak in the living rooms of our neighbors.
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While Goodman's houses can scarcely be described as Scandinavian, they shared with that work a way of thinking about design with consistency, realizing a continuity between nature, architecture, and furnishings, a provocative but never oppressive sense of total design.
Of course, it couldn't last, and to tell the truth, there were many signs of contradiction from the first. Hollin Hills' special character was secured with tenacious and often idiosyncratic attention to questions of curbs and sidewalks (clearly an affront to modernity's Rousseauistic fantasy of the happy state of nature); by the fight against the building of poolside squash courts (recreational preference of the ruling class); and by the vaguely Big Brotherish vigilance of the Design Review Committee (DRC). This harmony was also assured by the clarity and defensibility of community boundaries, the local "other" held at bay behind a buffer of parks and suspicion.
Goodman’s 1957 Alcoa House
“modernism aimed to produce a fresh and invigorating culture of simplicity, sufficiency, and justice”
Our own major border was Popkins Farm, for many years a working dairy, later a kind of Marie Antoinette fantasy, from which the cows were long gone but where neighborhood horses were boarded. The power of Popkins as a boundary, however, declined over time, and with it went much magic. The decline began — for me — with the construction of a huge microwave tower on Popkins' upper field, continued with the regular delivery of a neighbor in a military helicopter (which actually seemed like magic at the time), and ends today — gone the ice skating in the pond — with the sea of fat neo-Victorian houses that appear incongruously over the fence, the architectural "other" out back.
Perhaps the greatest marker of residents' affection for Hollin Hills is the truly staggering numbers of additions built over the years. The variety of these enlargements (another book might be done about them), the activities of the DRC, and the obvious contrasts with the style of surrounding subdivisions were an education in design nuance for me. Most of the additions and houses added by architects other than Goodman were of visibly lesser quality. One of many exceptions that held special meaning for me was a simple house designed by a South American architect on upper Martha's Road, which gracefully bridged its carport and which had a glazed entry through which the distant Blue Ridge could be seen across the Hybla Valley. I remember the beautiful green vase that stood by the window (removed, alas, when the family moved) and especially remember a beautiful daughter.
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Modern architecture, from its beginnings, has made fairly extravagant claims about its ability to influence behavior. Linked to the larger projects of social renovation, modern architecture was claimed by its progenitors to be a key medium for painting the picture of the "new man" who was expected to rise in the revolutionary atmosphere of democracy and egalitarianism. To accomplish this, modernism — the industrial and social revolutions made manifest — aimed to produce a fresh and invigorating culture of simplicity, sufficiency, and justice.
Hollin Hills is one of the truly happy experiments in modernity, a place that — because of the unique conjunction of style and time — remains the kind of community so many modernists dreamed of, a beautiful place of social activism, love of nature, and potluck picnics.
What a lovely dream.
— Michael Sorkin
(The full text of this Michael Sorkin essay can be found in the book “Hollin Hills: Community of Vision”, available here.)
