Samuel Glaser

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.

Temple Kehillath Israel // 1922

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Built five years before the Temple Ohabei Shalom in Brookline, the Temple Kehillath Israel on Harvard Street employs a similar architectural aesthetic of the Byzantine Revival style. The Jewish community of Brookline had grown significantly since the early 1900s, reaching a population of 4,000 by 1921. The congregation which constructed this temple had temporary quarters in a building at Harvard and Thorndike streets. By March 1921, it was decided to build a temple, and in 1922, the cornerstone was laid for a building which would cost an estimated $150,000 and have a capacity for 1,000. Plans submitted by architects architects Albert MacNaughton and George E. Robinson showed the large structure with space to build outbuildings as the congregation was expected to keep up with growth.

In 1948, an Art Deco Community House, designed by Samuel Glaser, was constructed of stone replicated the materiality of the temple, but with Modern features, a connector addition was added in 1958. The congregation is currently in the midst of a huge building campaign, which began with the exterior restoration of the temple building, followed by a modernization and restoration of the interior. In 2019, the 1948 Community House was razed to make way for an affordable housing development, called the Brown Family House.

Max Katz House // 1947

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One of my favorite homes in Brookline has to be the Katz House, located on Kent Street, opposite the Longwood Mall. The home was designed and built in 1947 by Samuel Glaser (1902-1983) was born in Latvia and at the age of four came to the United States with his family, settling in Brookline. He attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, graduating with an architecture degree in 1925. Glaser worked in the New York architecture firm of Clarence Stein before returning to Brookline by 1933. He established his own firm in Boston, seeking a niche as a designer of moderately priced homes, particularly in the expanding suburbs where young Jewish
families had begun living. Glaser is a relatively unknown architect who could design iconic Tudor homes as well as Contemporary Modern homes. His most notable building (that gets the most traffic) is the Star Market built over the Mass Pike, just west of Boston, that building was possibly the first to build using air rights over a street.

The Modern home was built for Max Katz, a Lithuanian-born businessman who founded the Merchant Tire Company in Boston in 1922. He likely met Glaser at the nearby Jewish Temple on Beacon Street.