That’s a really neat looking house.
Jackie Gleason’s Round House
THE MANY TALENTS and accomplishments of Jackie Gleason would put him out of the ordinary class of home builders. And Round Rock Hill, his new home on the outskirts of Peekskill, N. Y., is just that—out of the ordinary. Built on top of a hill in the center of nine acres of dense woodland, the house provides the comedian-composer-actor with “a pattern for living and working” — it contains his office and a broadcasting studio as well as his home.
Everything about the home is round. There’s an eight-foot round bed with a built-in television set in the ceiling above it; a round shower room in glass and tile; round and semicircular rugs and furniture. Even the stairways curve to match the curve of the outside walls. In the center of the round living room is a huge triple fireplace. The studio room focuses on a grand piano.
The house is built on three levels across the 175-foot front elevation. Glass walls everywhere look out over the wooded hills.
THEY’RE PLANNING Your Home in the Sun
ARCHITECTS at Princeton University have come up with a three-step system for designing your home of the future. They see such a house properly oriented to the sun, and plan it with the sun constantly in mind.
• The first step is to position the house on the site. In the architectural lab, a basic model of the home is placed on a movable board. A powerful light bathes the board in “sunlight.” The model then is moved to positions corresponding to the angles of the sun at the house site. Through such experiments the architects determine the best position of the house on the lot.
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That is one ugly house of the future. What were they thinking with those slab doors on the third page? “How can I make my house look like a prison?”
A HOUSE OF MAGIC
By Thomas E. Stimson, Jr.
IN JACK FLETCHER’S new home, the windows close themselves whenever the wind blows hard for more than 15 seconds. They close automatically, too, when a rainstorm starts or when the outside temperature drops too low for comfort.
Guests never trip over the wires to a floor lamp in Fletcher’s living room. The floor lamps in this “House of the 21st Century” have no electric cords. Their fluorescent tubes, in fact, could be burned out and still operate perfectly when placed over certain spots on the living-room floor.
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This house is just incredibly cool. I wonder if it is still standing. What’s really amazing about the design is that it still looks quite modern. I don’t think that a 40″ Plasma screen would look at all out of place in that living room.
Architect Builds Modern GLASS HOME
THE open spaciousness of a country manor, captured in a 5-story house but 19 feet wide and set in the heart of crowded New York City is the latest architectural miracle to be wrought by the use of glass blocks.
From the outside the narrow structure, designed and built by Morris B. Sanders, architect, is impressively beautiful. Inside all idea of confinement is lost. Through a clever method of arranging the furniture close to the wall an illusion of space is created which is further heightened by the perspective-destroying glass walls. The rooms seem to extend indefinitely.
Recessed shelves, bookcases, and cupboards add to the roominess of the interior. In many cases metal furniture was used.
I would love to live in a house with a giant handle on top. It would make life so much easier for God when the rapture comes!
Will We Live in Vacuum Bottles?
by John L. Raymond
What is a vacuum bottle house? It sounds fantastic, but science is developing a new type of house with vacuum walls, adapting the principles of the familiar thermos bottle, which will be so perfectly insulated that one ton of coal will do the work of nine. Some day you may live in one!
IN HIS fascinating book, “The Time Machine,” H. G. Wells looks forward to the day when man, in an awkward attempt to survive a dying sun and a frigid and dreary earth, will take to the ground to live like ants—an idea which does not flatter the ingenuity of scientists who have been working to develop the perfect house, in which comfort is assured regardless of outside temperatures.
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Ultra-Modern Homes Promise Better Health and Comfort
A NEW architectural age is dawning! Proof of this is seen in the strange new types of homes which are springing up throughout the country, presaging the day when we will be living literally in glass houses.
Our faithful old wooden and stone dwellings are primitive and unscientific, not so very far removed, so far as comfort and convenience is concerned, from the caves in which our half-human ancestors dwelt, say exponents of the new housing era. Bouncing health and inexpensive comfort are the goals towards which home designers are striving. No more muggy rooms on torrid summer days; no more dry, over-heated rooms on cold winter days. Plenty of health-giving sunlight shining through glass walls and plenty of terrace space for sun bathing and al fresco dining.
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Would you Live in a Stainless-Steel Igloo?
These heavily insulated steel shells are a new approach to the housing problem. Low in cost and portable, they give a wide flexibility of layout.
By FRANK ROWSOME, Jr.
YOU can’t make an electric light just by perfecting a wax candle.” So says Martin Wagner, Harvard professor and internationally known architect, in explaining how he conceived the unique igloolike houses shown on these pages.
Most modern prefabricated houses, Wagner asserts, are at the same stage of development that automobiles had reached when their builders were trying to make them look like buggies. In his opinion, a steel, plywood, and plastic house that is produced in a factory should not merely imitate wooden, carpenter-built houses. Instead, it should make full use, in form as well as construction, of new materials and new techniques.
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