20th century AD

Magazine Antiques, July, 2001 by Mary Anne Hunting

Well before it was finished in 1935, the Richard H. Mandel house (Pl. I) was lauded by the New York Times as "a radical departure from the conventional house in plan, construction and use of materials." [1] Sited on what was originally some sixty acres with dramatic views of the Croton Reservoir (see Fig. 1), this "Modern country house," [2] as it was called in Architectural Forum, is constructed of concrete, steel, and glass following the precepts of the European-born modern idiom. It drew so much attention that by the time it was finished, the thirty-two-room dwelling had been featured in more than ten publications of various kinds--from Architectural Forum (see Fig. 3) and House and Garden (see Pl. IV) to Fortune (see Fig. 1 and Pl. X) and even Vogue. [3] So impressed was the editor of Decorators Digest that he proclaimed, "It is our conviction that the Mandel House will be the yardstick by which the true modern conception of Architecture and Decoration will be measured in the future." [4]

This prophecy indeed came true: in 1957 Life magazine acknowledged the house as a "forerunner" that "helped establish stark interiors." [5] Still recognized today as a superb example of the 1930s international style in the United States, the Mandel house is virtually intact, with more than half of its original furnishings. It has been exceptionally preserved and impressively maintained for the past nine years by its current owners, Eric and Nannette Brill, who helped place it on the National Register of Historic Places in 1995. [6]

Significantly the Mandel house grew out of a close collaboration between the New York architect Edward Durell Stone, who later designed the Museum of Modem Art (1939) and the now-controversial building at 2 Columbus Circle, both in New York City; the designer Donald Deskey best known for his art deco interiors at Radio City Music Hall (1931-1932) in New York City; and the client Richard H. Mandel, also a designer and an heir to the fortune of the Chicago-based Mandel Brothers department store (1855-c. 1960), who lived in the house until the mid-1950s. [7] Stone and Deskey had met while working together at Radio City Music Hall--Stone as the chief designer of the theater and Deskey as the interior design coordinator of the entire space. [8] Stone recalled that Deskey introduced him to Mandel, who was then one of Deskey's associates, [9] and that Mandel subsequently asked him to design the house: "He was interested in a good business arrangement and I was interested in undertaking my first modem house, so I wo rked for forty dollars a week." In addition, Stone observed, the commission allowed him to become an architect in his own right. [10]

According to Deskey, the collaboration between the three was instrumental to the success of the house. He wrote, "Modern architecture, perhaps more than other styles demands this collaboration." [11] Although Deskey was listed only as an "interior decorator" in the New York City directory of 1934 and 1935, he clearly played a larger role in the conceptualization of the design, judging by three contemporary records that note, respectively that he "cooperated in the plans for the architecture"; was "co-designer and decorator"; and was "interior architect." [12] Mandel's own contributions are not known, but that he was actively involved is confirmed by a contemporary account, which noted, "the owner of the house...labored continually with the other two in arriving at the total architectural solution." [13]

Despite this close collaboration, the design is not as "radical" as the Times claimed. For example, while the living room, library, and hall, which could be separated by curtains, signal the then-new open plan (Pl. XI), the rest of the house is logically broken down by function into smaller, distinctly enclosed spaces, following earlier traditions.

Admittedly "enamored of the sleek mechanics of the International Style," [14] Stone used the Mandel house commission to experiment with the modem vocabulary that had been codified just a year earlier in the Museum of Modem Art's landmark 1932 international style exhibition, of which Henry-Russell Hitchcock (1903-1987) and Philip Johnson (b. 1906) were the curators. The exhibition clearly left a deep impression on Stone, who later reminisced, "I know of no single event which so profoundly influenced the architecture of the Twentieth Century." [15] Characterized by asymmetrical geometric volumes, a regularity of details, and an absence of ornament, [16] the Mandel house also exhibits a number of prototypically American features--smooth horizontal wall surfaces covered in white stucco, expansive ribbon windows, flat roofs, a functional plan, and integrated interior and exterior spaces.

Although the Mandel house created "excitement in architectural circles," it was not "the first house in the east in the International Style," as the architect claimed. [17] Nor was it "the first modern house in the International Style...to be designed by a U.S.-born architect" as Time magazine declared in 1958. [18] For the international style was already a firmly entrenched expression in the United States with a number of successful examples in the New York region. [19] Nonetheless, in the opinion of the architect Robert A. M. Stern, the Mandel house was "the most important example of the superficial application of the International Style to follow the MoMA show...one of its most elaborate exemplars, though not necessarily one of its purest." [20]