🏛 Obsessing over details
Appreciating the masterful craftsmanship that brought an architect's vision to life
Greetings from seasonably-cold Maryland. 🥶 I’m still thinking about the sweet synchronicity I wrote about in my last post. The empathy lesson conveyed by Rabbi Brous in her story has stayed with me all week. Today’s post about a beautiful place goes out in honor of new subscriber
whose Substack is full of beautiful places.My mother gifted me with a love of architecture early on. She never met a historic house she didn’t want to tour. We explored billionaire “cottages” in Newport, Frank Lloyd Wright houses, castles—her tastes ran wide. I’ve marveled at Jefferson’s ingenious Monticello, seen George Washington’s wooden teeth at Mount Vernon, overlooked the manicured geometry of the gardens from the massive ballroom at Vaux-le-Vicomte. Recently, I took the White House tour. It may be tiny compared to the castles of Europe, but there’s plenty of room for momentous events.
Architects obsess over details. We dream of clients who invite us to unleash the full force of our vision and talent. It’s a rare treat to visit a building that fully embodies the artistic side of our profession. Peter Bohlin’s Ledge House is one of those places. The house, sited on a wooded hillside in the Catoctin Mountains of Maryland not far from Camp David, is in the process of being donated to the University of Maryland. About a month ago, I was lucky to accompany some colleagues and students on a field trip.
When Ledge House was first built thirty years ago, I never dreamed I’d see it in person. I pored over the monograph, inspired by the way it nestles into the rugged forested hillside, the exquisite details of stone and wood and glass.
When I quit my job to go solo, my husband designed and built me a desk, inspired by the bath vanities in Ledge House. I’ve spent many creative hours at that desk. It was so long ago, I’d forgotten—until I saw those vanities.
When I designed an earth-sheltered passive solar house, I drooled over Ledge House’s details as I tried to bring some of that beauty to my work.
Ledge House is at the level of a Pulitzer- or Nobel-winning novel. Something to aspire to, knowing I will fall short and that’s okay. It took three years to build and had no budget. The builder, Greg Currey, is a salt-of-the-earth guy from central Maryland who told us after reviewing the drawings, he turned down the job. “I have no idea how to price this,” he told the architect. They wanted him, so they asked what it would take. He returned with, “Pay me [this much] every two weeks for as long as it takes, and I’ll do it.” Sold.
Greg has been caretaking the house for all the years it’s existed. He reseals the fir rafters, chases away woodpeckers who attack the cedar logs. He repaired the screen porch trashed by a bear after guests left garbage out there, rather than in the house per the explicit instructions. A different bear clawed hell out of the logs trying to get inside another time.
As we stood outside taking in the artfulness of the house, Greg told us that the architect, Peter Bohlin, wanted it to seem like an abandoned rock quarry where someone came along and built a house. Greg said that, to him, it feels like a tree house. Both metaphors work.
I remarked on the smell when we walked in. Greg asked me what the smell was, said he’s so used to it he doesn’t notice it anymore. I wanted to say, “wood,” or “stone,” (the place is packed with both), but it wasn’t either. After thirty years, even cedar loses its tang. Fir’s scent fades. I said it smelled musty, then immediately knew that wasn’t right. Though surely there was a fine layer of dust on everything. The house smelled lonely, but I kept that to myself. Who says things like that?
One of my colleague-friends asked Greg if he ever had to figure out how to build some aspect of the project. He said, “All the time.” And she said, “So you’re as much the author of this house as Bohlin.” He didn’t seem to see it that way, but maybe his modesty cloaked his pride. I asked if he ever thought he’d painted himself into a corner and that’s when he told the story about quitting. Or, rather, refusing to take the job.
Just two examples reveal how committed everyone was to do what it takes to realize the vision. The cedar logs were cut from an island in Lake Michigan, and the crew to assemble them also traveled from Michigan. The photos of them, in one of dozens of albums of construction photos, could easily fill a beefcake calendar. The stone came from Lake Champlain in fifty-plus truckloads, hauled up the winding mountain road to the site. Because of their great weight, the interior stones had to be craned in place and set before the roof was framed. This backwards construction schedule left the wood floor framing exposed to the elements—not an ideal situation that led to more problem-solving.
Everywhere, I saw detail after detail after detail. It was overwhelming. The exuberant attention lavished on how materials meet reveals an artful love of the craft. Some of it tends to the precious and verges on overwrought. Overall, it’s marvelous extravagance. I found myself poring over the construction photographs, cheering the craftsmen on, appreciating the opportunity they had to pour their craft into such an insanely lavish project.
Another delight was the students’ awe, their focus, the sketches they drew, to see them pointing things out to each other, asking questions of Greg or their professor. I always appreciate when young people are fully engaged in a real place, instead of glued to their screens.
Architecture has always captivated me—first as a tourist, then as a student and finally a practitioner. There’s ever more to see, more to learn, more to try. Design is a baffling, mystical creative process. The whole enterprise involves a wide diversity of people with many skillsets. It’s a humbling endeavor that, at its best, is worth the effort. I’ll be honest, I do harbor mixed feelings about it as a profession, given that it’s trapped within our wasteful, elitist culture.
I grew up with stories of visionary architects who bullied their clients to get their way. The iconic projects we studied and admired were often designed by quite flawed human beings who stopped at nothing. “All good architecture leaks” may work for starchitects, but real clients are unhappy with a leaky building.
The letters Frank Lloyd Wright exchanged with his structural engineer while working on Fallingwater would give a liability insurance agent a stroke. Wright knew better, his engineer was an idiot, and the house was built with those glorious cantilevers, exactly as the architect wanted. And it began to fail almost immediately. Thanks to an $11.5 million restructuring engineered by Robert Silman Associates between 1999 and 2001, it once again stands solid. You might be tempted to conclude that Wright was such a visionary, he foresaw structural possibilities that did not yet exist in his time. Sadly, the reality is more mundane:
“The most surprising thing about Fallingwater's fate is that it could have been prevented. The problem, as Mr. Silman and others who have looked at the structure say, isn't age but Wright's failure to put enough steel reinforcing rods into the concrete—despite strong admonitions to do so. Wright's reasons for under-reinforcing the structure aren't clear, but seem related to his lifelong aversion to being told what to do.” ~ NYT, this article
A friend once said to me, “Architecture is for the 1%.” That rings true for many projects I’ve been involved in, although I wish it didn’t. Ledge House is certainly in that category. But if the owner hadn’t had the money to build it and the desire to do exactly as his architect envisioned, all those craftsmen would have missed the peak experience of working on that house for three years. Not to mention countless pleasant experiences for the owner’s family and friends (bears notwithstanding). And the meaningful afternoon we spent exploring the house, looking for all the world as if it grew there in the Maryland forest.
I feel like you’ve opened a world (architecture) that I didn’t know I took for granted.
I love the way your writing braids nature and architecture together in nearly every post. The two are are inseparable which I think I knew but didn't fully appreciate until I started following your writing. The Ledge House is such an incredible feat of engineering -- the size of those stones! Thanks for sharing the story behind it.