The Gropius House

The following text is a sidebar to "Modern and Historic," September-October 2007.

The Gropius House

Lincoln, Massachusetts
www.historicnewengland.org
781.259.8098

According to his younger daughter, Walter Gropius was no sentimentalist. What he would have thought of his family home’s current status as a world-renowned tourist site, is not clear. The boxy white structure built in 1938 was meant to be economical and comfortable—not “a monument to the Modern movement,” Ati Gropius Johansen wrote in a 2003 article for Historic New England Magazine. It was her mother, Ise Gropius, who continuously brought visitors into their quintessentially modern abode, built with efficiency under the architectural ethos, “form follows function.” And she gave it to Historic New England as a timeless testament to Gropius’s revolutionary philosophy.

Today, visitors can walk through the open rooms and look out plate-glass windows—meant to maximize passive solar heat and views of the landscape—and feel as if the family were returning at any moment. The furniture, much of it designed by Gropius’s fellow Bauhaus member and Design School colleague Marcel Breuer (who built his own home nearby), is beautifully intact, as are artwork, dishware, books—even Ise’s earrings, on a dressing table.

Note also how the home was set decedely on the land to guard against the north winds, and take advantage of sunlight through a second-floor deck by Ati’s bedroom. Yet the living-room fireplace, not a great heat source, catered simply to familial pleasure, Johansen says, and “the delight my parents both took in sitting before an open fire.”

Courtesy of Historic New England

Click here for the September-October 2007 issue table of contents

Most popular

Government Revokes Harvard’s Ability to Enroll International Students

The move is the latest escalation in the Trump administration’s attacks on the University.

Harvard Responds to Protests

Smaller campus actions draw administrative and online responses.

Is Harvard Antisemitic?

Two reports investigate hatred and anti-Israel sentiment.

Explore More From Current Issue

Publications by Harvard Authors Spring 2025: New Releases

Operatic counterculture, a Passover graphic novel, James Joyce’s biographer, and more

Springtime with Mass Audubon

Springtime with Mass Audubon

Children's Books from Ann Kim Ha

Ann Kim Ha’s poignant children’s books