THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART —
WOMAN’S HOME COMPANION EXHIBITION HOUSE
Gregory Ain, Architect
Joseph Johnson and Alfred Day, Collaborating
[Gregory Ain] Museum of Modern Art: THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART — WOMAN’S HOME COMPANION EXHIBITION HOUSE. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1950. First edition. Printed stapled self wrappers. 20 pp. Ten photographs and 2 black and white illustrations. Four page Furnishings Price List laid in. Contents uniformly vertically creased. Wrappers lightly soiled and contents handled, but a very good copy.
Also included a defective copy of [Marcel Breuer] Museum of Modern Art: THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART BULLETIN. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1949. First edition [MoMA Bulletin, Volume XVI, No. 1]. Printed stapled wrappers. 12 pp. Center four page spread missing. 7.25 x 9.25 MoMA Bulletin devoted to the demonstration house designed and built by Marcel Breuer in the Garden at the Museum of Modern Art in the Spring of 1949.
7.25 x 9.25-inch stapled softcover book with 20 pages devoted to The Museum of Modern Art—Woman's Home Companion Exhibition House, 14 West 54 Street, New York, from May 17 – October 29, 1950. In 1950, a glass-walled house spent a few months in Manhattan. Skyscrapers loomed over its flat roof while it was on exhibit in the Museum of Modern Art’s garden. The installation, designed by the architect Gregory Ain and co-sponsored with Woman’s Home Companion magazine, was meant to inspire creativity on a budget for residential subdivisions. According to the museum’s brochure, a system of movable walls “conveys an illusion of spaciousness” in the two-bedroom building. Its flexibility and expansive windows offered “a view — to the future.”
In 1948, the Museum of Modern Art initiated a series of model post-war houses by well-known architects exhibited in the museum's garden. Marcel Breuer's house was the inaugural design and was open to the public between April 14 and October 30, 1949. Gregory Ain followed Breuer with his sophisticated speculation house in 1950. The program was this discontinued and the fate of the Ain Exhibition House was a mystery that remained unsolved until 2021. But that is another story.
The Museum issued this press release on May 19, 1950 titled “EXHIBITION HOUSE WITH SLIDING WALLS OPENS MAY 19 IN MUSEUM GARDEN”
A 3-bedroom exhibition house designed by Gregory Ain will open to the public in the Museum Garden, 14 West 54 Street, on May 19. The house was built by the Museum of Modern Art in co-operation with the Woman's Home Companion to demonstrate that good modern architectural design is possible in the speculatively built house, which is the kind lived In by most American families.
The outstanding characteristic of this one-story house is the sliding walls and panels which make It possible to use rooms for different purposes. The living room, dining area, parents’ bedroom and kitchen can be opened up to form one living area. Similarly the children’s rooms can be used as one large bedroom-playroom or as two separate rooms. This flexibility eliminates the small box-like rooms usually seen in small homes.
The house was planned as one of several similar houses in a subdivision of lots approximately 60' by 120’. The two-level roof and irregular setback on the street facade avoid the flat monotony characteristic of so many real estate developments. Rooms are planned so that no major windows face neighboring houses.
The exterior of the house is finished with striated Douglas Fir Plywood. On the street side a trellis continues the horizontal line of the garage roof and the main roof and also ties the two wings of the house together. On the garden side a glass wall shaded by a deep roof overhang makes the terrace continuous with the living room.
THE LIVIKG ROOM is unusually spacious for a medium-sized house. The sliding panels and walls make it possible to open up this area into a large living room extending the entire depth of the house and with a glass wall 32* long en the terrace side of the house. The center of interest Is the end wall formed by the chimney which is faced with ottoman brick laid in block bond. The raised soapstone hearth can be used as a coffee table. The neutral shades of the plywood paneling, gray floor tiles used throughout the entire house, and the various grays of painted surfaces form a backdrop for the bright color accents of paintings, fabrics, books and accessories.
THE DINING AREA is separated from the living room by a 4.5’ high storage cabinet. Sliding panels above the unit make it possible to close off this area. The glass-topped dining table and chairs with thin metal legs contribute to the feeling of spaciousness.
THE KITCHEN, which is L-shaped, contains standard equipment as well as laundry appliances. Large corner windows overlook the garden, A door opens directly into the garage.
The PARENTS' BEDROOM is separated from the living room by a sliding wall and also has a separate door to the terrace. The adjacent dressing room has two large closets and a dressing table with soft lighting around the mirror of a type used in theatrical dressing rooms.
The CHILDREN'S ROOMS which can be used as one large room or two separate rooms are paneled in oak plywood. Bamboo shades are used at the windows. The rooms are warmly lit by florescent strips over the windows and above the beds. In addition there are two ceiling lamps on pulleys. The floor cabinets in the play areas have a large variety of storage shelves for toys and clothing.
STORAGE SPACE, in addition to the closets in each bedroom and in the kitchen, is provided by closets in the short hall connecting the baths and in the long hall connecting the children’s rooms with the front entrance. There is also a large closet at the front door. Other storage space is provided in the garage.
CONSTRUCTION is conventional wood, frame. The house is built on a concrete floor slab designed for radiant heating coils. Exterior siding, sheathing and all interior wall surfaces are of plywood. Gypsum board panels have been used for the ceilings, plastic tiles for the floors. Most of the glass is fixed, but each room also has an operating sash for ventilation.
ARCHITECT Gregory Ain of Los Angeles designed the house in collaboration with Joseph Johnson and Alfred Day. He is one of the few modern architects with experience in building moderate priced housing developments. In 1940 he obtained a Guggenheim Fellowship for low-cost housing research, and his buildings have received numerous awards In nationwide competitions.
COST estimates vary for different parts of the country and according to choice of finishes, etc. As one house in a development, estimates range from $15,500 to $19,500, The house has l,420 square feet excluding the garage.
"An architect's work is a step to enhance the quality of living." — Gregory Ain
Gregory Ain, FAIA, (1908 – 1988) was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1908, but it was in Los Angeles that he studied architecture at the University of Southern California from 1927 – 28. His impulse to study architecture came from an acquaintance as a youth with R.M. Schindler's Kings Road house, and his dissatisfaction with his Beaux Arts training determined him to work in the office of Richard Neutra. Combined in all his early work, which is his finest, are Neutra's repetitive windows and monoplanar surfaces and Schindler's broken planes and accommodation of shell to plan.
Ain's interest in group housing for middle- and low-income families began in his 1937 Dunsmuir Flats, his most frequently published work. The best known view is of four staggered two-story whicte blocks, the ceiling levels defined by continuous ribbon windows; not seen are the private porches and patios. The panel-post construction was an early effort to reduce cost, followed in 1939 by prefabricated plywood walls for a model house.
In 1940 Ain received a Guggenheim Fellowship to continue his researches in low-cost housing, and throughout the 1940's he designed, with the participation of clients, a number of projects for attached and detached housing that were notable for site planning and innovative floor plans. Few were built because lending agencies opposed multiple ownership. One of the several schemes to be built was the 1948 Avenel housing for a musicians' union whose members worked in films. The twenty attached units were broken into two blocks for a shillside site, alnd private patios off the living rooms face the view.
For his more elaborate houses he borrowed freely from the flexible plan of his low-cost housing, and in most cases the alcove sleeping room became a library or guest room. Ain also adapted many contractors' practices for large or small houses to save construction time and reduce cost. Aside from Irving Gill, Gregory Ain was the first architect in California to refine and dignify the low-cost house.