Samuel Glaser

Frederick and Erna Gibbs House // 1936

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Built at a time when Colonial Revival and Tudor Revival styles dominated the suburban landscape of the Boston area and elsewhere, the Frederick and Erna Gibbs House on Chilton Street in the Cottage Farm neighborhood of Brookline, Massachusetts stands out. Built in 1936 for Frederic and Erna Gibbs, the house is said to be the first International style single-family home built in the Boston area, predating the famous Gropius House in Lincoln by a couple years. Erna Leonhardt-Gibbs (1904–1987), a German-born pioneer in the development of electroencephalography (EEG) technology, in 1930, married Frederic A. Gibbs, a neurologist, and would soon-after vacation in Germany, seeing the Modern revolution of architecture there in the interwar period. Upon returning the States, the couple hired architect Samuel Glaser, to design their dream home in the Bauhaus style. Set amongst a street of 1930s Tudor houses, the Gibbs residence stands out for its stark white stucco walls, boxy form, with elongated and block windows. While set behind a tall fence and hedge, the house is a landmark example of the style and appears much as it did when built 90 years ago.

Melnick House // 1935

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Built in 1935 (the same year as the Webber House in the last post), the Melnick House in South Brookline shows how the historically oriented designs of colonial New England converged with the Modern principles brought over from the Bauhaus movement from Germany. The 1930s were an interesting time for residential design around Boston as the two diverging styles were often located in the same neighborhoods. The Melnick House was designed by architect Samuel Glaser for Edward S. T. Melnick and his wife, Ethyle Melnick. Edward worked in Downtown Boston as the assistant division manager at Filene’s department store. Architect Samuel Glaser (1902-1983) was born in Riga, Latvia and at the age of four came to the United States with his family, settling in Brookline. He studied architecture at MIT and started his own practice in Boston a niche as a designer of moderately priced homes, particularly in the expanding suburbs where young Jewish families had begun living. The Melnick home combines the austere stucco walls and lack of applied ornament typical of late 1930s Modern architecture in the Boston area with a hipped-roof main block and flanking wings more commonly associated with traditional style houses of the same period. The home features a vertical glass block window which illuminates the interior stair hall.