Architect Homes: Jacques Brownson & Bruno Conterato
It’s always interesting to think about the houses that architects create for themselves as one would assume they represent everything they believe in as designers and builders. Arriving in the United States in 1938, German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe advocated a design philosophy that a building and its materials were purely an expression of its specific era, “architecture…can only express this civilization we are in and nothing else.” Two of his students would take that lesson to heart.
The latest chapter in my continuous series on architect residences across Chicagoland takes us to the suburb of Geneva. Surprisingly this town was the home of a number of modernist architects, including Jacques Brownson (1923-2012) and Bruno Conterato (1920-1995), who both studied under and later worked for Mies van der Rohe before they started their own architectural firm together in 1955. These architect-designed dwellings were greatly influenced by their mentor, who served as head of the architecture department at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), where he redesigned the school’s campus with a collection of steel-and-glass buildings, most famously with Crown Hall.
Jacques Brownson, best known as the architect of Chicago’s Daley Center during his time with C.F. Murphy Associates, was a native of nearby Aurora, Illinois. As part of his master’s thesis in architecture at IIT, Brownson constructed a single-story glass and steel house in Geneva between 1949-52, working with structural engineers Frank Kornecker and Ernest Vlad. In June of 1954 Brownson submitted “A Steel and Glass House,” to his professors, in which he explored the architectural possibilities and technical problems that occurred when building his home. He already had experience at “build-it-yourself houses,” using plans from a book published by Popular Mechanics a few years earlier in Aurora in 1946. Before then Brownson had served with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers between 1943-46.
Jacques was quoted as saying he had great pride “in having constructed our own home with our hands.” The sale of their Popular Mechanics’ “Build-It-Yourself” house helped them in the purchase of their wooded property in Geneva. It was part of a parcel of land subdivided by the Reckitt family, adjacent to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fabyan Villa and its forest preserve.
A copycat of both Mies’ Farnsworth House and Philip Johnson’s Glass House, Brownson’s design is more livable thanks to brick infill walls protecting the bedrooms and an ingenious forced-air heating system. The home is held up by its structural steel beams and has no load-bearing walls. As described in the book Modern in the Middle, “The steel-framed roof plate is suspended from four rigid steel girders held up by black steel columns.” By looking at the plan, the architect created “two houses in one” by separating it with a wall between the public spaces in front and the more private side towards the river.
Located between the Lincoln Highway and the Fox River, Brownson’s home is half a mile from the Kane County Courthouse, where a lengthy trial took place when Edith Farnsworth sued the architect over her famous home’s construction costs. During the legal battle Mies was known to be a frequent visitor at the Brownson residence, specifically during cocktail hour. Jacques lived here with his wife Doris Curry and their children until they sold it in 1966, and later moved to Colorado in 1972. You can see more current images of the home here.
Like Brownson, Bruno Conterato was a graduate of IIT and later took over Mies’ architectural firm when he died in 1969 (its name was later changed to Fujikawa, Conterato, Lohan and Associates). Unlike the cult of Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin, Mies’ successors did not practice hero-worship and broadened the perspective of his overall philosophy as described in a 1979 Washington Post article on the 10th anniversary of Mies’ death.
Before studying architecture, Lieutenant Conterato had been a B-17 lead navigator of the 848th Bomb Squadron which flew deep into the heart of Germany during World War II. On these missions Conterato would be in the plexi-glass nose section of the bomber, where he handled the side-nose machine gun. An interesting connection as this future architect would become a protege of German-born Mies, who was forced to leave his homeland in 1937 after the Gestapo closed down the Bauhaus School and rejected his style as not being “German in character.”
In 1968 Conterato built a modernist home for his family, which included wife Emilie and their three sons Paul, James, and Marc. Unlike Brownson’s own steel and glass Miesian house located in a natural setting along the river, this one is situated on a standard suburban lot in the middle of a subdivision. Typical of the era, Conterato’s modernist design has solid brick walls facing the street for privacy reasons, while the back of the home is all glass, perfect for taking in views of the neighboring golf course. It appears to be in better shape than Brownson’s own home, which desperately needs restoration and overall maintenance. You can see more photos, including the interior, of the Conterato residence here.
It’s worth noting that two IIT graduates, Bruno Conterato and Joseph Fujikawa, who’d go on to form Mie’s successor architectural firm Fujikawa, Conterato, Lohan & Associates after his death created their own homes loosely based on his design principles. Both have flat roofs and brick infill walls. While Mies chose to not to live in one of his own austere designs, famously saying he’d rather look out his window and see his work then be stuck inside them. The modernist architect called a 1917 six-story Italian Renaissance Palazzo apartment building home, located just a few blocks from his 860-880 Lake Shore building. He lived there from 1941 until his death in 1969. I hope to write about another one of his students, Joseph Fujikawa and his Winnetka residence, in a future installment of my architect homes series. Stay tuned!