The House of Kuhn, By the Water
Name
Helmreich_The house.pdf
Size
438.4 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
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Author(s)
Helmreich, Stefan
Date Issued
November 2012
Journal
Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences
Publisher
University of California Press
Citation
Helmreich, Stefan. "The House of Kuhn, By the Water." Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 42, no. 5 (November 2012): 521-526. © 2012 by the Regents of the University of California
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Thomas Kuhn’s one-time vacation home in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, is a modest modernist box. Built in 1960 by Nathaniel Saltonstall and Peter Morton, and empty since the 1990s, it is now in some disrepair, here and there sagging and waterlogged. It remains, in spite of wear and mold, legible as an exemplar of Cape Cod modern, a Bauhaus-meets-Frank-Lloyd-Wright architectural style that adapts the sharp lines of modernism to the scrub and pitch pine landscapes of the Outer Cape, a thin neck of land fronted on its east by the Atlantic Ocean and on its west by the Cape Cod Bay. Walking through the Kuhn cottage in May 2012, guided by architect Peter McMahon—head of a nonprofit dedicated to restoring mid-century modernist homes—I was taken, no surprise, by the house’s structure.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Anthropology Program
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1525/hsns.2012.42.5.521
