Alum Spotlight

ALUM SPOTLIGHT Peter McMahon ’75

Beginning in the late 1930s, Massachusetts’s Outer Cape, with its beaches, pinewoods, kettle ponds, and salt marshes, attracted a wave of European artists and architects seeking refuge from rising tensions in Europe. These creative minds — including the likes of Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer — built a community for themselves, tucked in the pinewoods of Wellfleet. Today, there remain over 100 midcentury modern houses in the area — several owned by the National Park Service, were left abandoned for decades — standing as relics of this important artistic movement.

In 2007, Peter McMahon ’75, founded the Cape Cod Modern House Trust (CCMHT), an organization founded “to collect, archive, and share documentation of the outer Cape’s exceptional modern architecture, restore a group of important, endangered modern houses, and to relaunch them as platforms for new creative work.” He is the co-author of Cape Cod Modern: Midcentury Architecture and Community on the Outer Cape (Metropolis Books, 2014)

Photo: Antoine Lorgnier

Your work and interest in modern architecture is filled with connections and ties back to CSW. Can you talk more about that?

My mother, Alice McMahon, who taught at CSW for many years, is an art historian so she was a formative influence on me. In addition, while I was a student at CSW, there were a number of friends and connections whose presence in my life helped guide me towards this path.

Sam Ogden ’75 lived with his family in Marcel Breuer’s house in Lincoln, and then my good friend Nicholas Thompson ’75 and his brother Benjamin Thompson ’77 were the sons of architect Ben Thompson, who worked for Walter Gropius and later went on to start Design Research and The Architects Collaborative. Interestingly, a number of my classmates’ parents were also founding members of the Architects Collaborative. (Editor’s note, These include: Norman and Jean Fletcher, parents of Jon Fletcher ’64, Judith Getman ’63, Jeremy Fletcher ’66, and Jeff Fletcher ’77, and John and Sarah Harkness, parents of Fred Harkness ’74, John Harkness ’74, Timothy Harkness ’69, and Alice Harkness ’71). So as a kid, I was spending time in these incredible houses, though I didn’t fully grasp the significance at the time.

I was also fortunate to be able to take two semesters of architectural design as a student at CSW, which was rare for that time. And then a short while after graduating, I spent some time working for Dan Schmid ’73 including being a carpenter on an addition to the Breuer house. More recently, the CCMHT fully restored the modern and abandoned Kohlberg House in Wellfleet, former home of David Kohlberg ’76 and his family. In my private practice, I undertook a twoyear re-building/restoration, with Dorothy Straight ’75 (past CSW board member), of her vintage modern house in Newbury, MA.

That’s a lot of CSW connections!

It is! I think some of this stems from the fact that CSW is part of a long history of progressive education, similar to what came out of the Bauhaus, which was all about connecting the arts to other subjects.

How did you come to learn about Cape Cod’s modern houses? lots of New York City writers, painters, architects, and scholars.

After graduating from architecture school at Boston Architectural College (BAC), I went to New York for 13 years and came back to the Cape after 9/11. I’ve been going to the Cape every summer since I was born, and I started working on a restoration of my family’s house. I wasn’t really meaning to stay, but was asked to help curate an exhibit of modern houses in the area. That exhibit was in 2006, and at this point, I knew a lot about the houses, but I don’t think anybody really knew the full picture. That first show was really the tip of the iceberg. I started tracking down people who were still around to provide oral histories, many of which could be traced back to Gropius, Breuer, and others from the Bauhaus. Back then, Wellfleet was a real cultural nexus with A large part of the modernist ambition was to integrate human with nature. How does this ambition manifest itself in the homes you work on?

The houses are very small compared to what people expect these days. There’s no lawn, no garage, and there’s a complete non-interventionist attitude towards nature. They don’t try to alter the pristine landscape. All of the houses are very different from one another — some are concrete block, some are light wood, some are flat on the ground, some are high up off the ground, but as a whole, they mostly have open floor plans, lots of glass, and amazing views. And they usually have big outdoor living spaces because these were summer houses and they were meant for hosting

Photo: Raimund Koch

Top: Hatch house exterior Bottom: Hatch house interior

outdoor festivities. The kitchens and bathrooms were small, but the houses were always in spectacular locations. And because they were built in a national park which froze development, you can still see the same views as the original occupants.

How have the threats of global warming and rising sea levels impacted your work?

The whole Cape is really on the front lines of global warming, and you can see the effects all over. We have one house on a bluff over the ocean, but I think we’ve still got about 20 to 40 years’ worth of land before it falls over. In terms of the building, we do what we can to make them more efficient. All of these structures are on the National Registry of Historic Places, so we can’t alter the materials that you can see, but we try to insulate what you can’t see. We will occasionally try to alter the terrain to keep the water out in subtle ways, but we pretty much try to stick to the original. I have to say, all of the houses are very cleverly designed in regard to their sites.

How can others get involved?

We rent the houses to modern architecture fans in the summer — anyone can access dates and availability on our website — and then we do an artist/scholar residency in the off-season. We also do Sunday tours in the summer — usually every other Sunday — and we always have an Open House and other events and lectures. We also have a number of partnerships with architecture schools, and even one area high school.

To learn more about the Cape Cod Modern House Trust, visit ccmht.org. For info on Peter’s design practice go to pm-design.org

Photo: Raimund Koch

Top: Kugel/Gips house exterior Bottom: Kugel/Gips house interior Opposite: Weidlinger house exterior

BECOME A COMMUNITY PARTNER

This fall, as part of our PACE curriculum, we are proud to introduce our new Community Engagement program, an innovative way to challenge our students to develop and show mastery in skill sets that they will carry throughout their lives, while also serving the communities we all live in.

Through the Community Engagement programming, students will have the opportunity to partner with individuals, groups, and organizations to identify challenges, create innovative solutions, and effect meaningful change.

WE ARE ACTIVELY SEEKING ORGANIZATIONS — NON-PROFITS, FOR-PROFITS, AND NGOS — TO SERVE AS PARTNERS FOR THE 2019-20 PACE PROGRAM.

If you or someone you know works for an organization that might benefit from such an exchange, we invite you to contact Jordan Clark ’05, Director of Community Programs for Equity and Inclusion, at jclark@csw.org. Once we have a list of potential organizations, we will reach out with more detailed information on how to get involved.