A. Conger Goodyear House
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The A. Conger Goodyear House is an NRHP listed historic home located at
Old Westbury Old Westbury is a village in the Towns of North Hempstead and Oyster Bay in Nassau County, on the North Shore of Long Island, in New York, United States. The population was 4,671 at the 2010 census. The Incorporated Village of Old Westbury i ...
in
Nassau County, New York Nassau County ( ) is a county in the U.S. state of New York. At the 2020 U.S. census, Nassau County's population is 1,395,774. The county seat is Mineola and the largest town is Hempstead. Nassau County is situated on western Long Isl ...
.


History

The house was built in 1938 in the
International International is an adjective (also used as a noun) meaning "between nations". International may also refer to: Music Albums * ''International'' (Kevin Michael album), 2011 * ''International'' (New Order album), 2002 * ''International'' (The T ...
style. The house was designed by architect
Edward Durell Stone Edward Durell Stone (March 9, 1902 – August 6, 1978) was an American architect known for the formal, highly decorative buildings he designed in the 1950s and 1960s. His works include the Museum of Modern Art, in New York City, the Museo de A ...
, and was owned by businessman and philanthropist
Anson Conger Goodyear Anson Conger Goodyear (June 20, 1877 – April 24, 1964) was an American manufacturer, businessman, author, and philanthropist and member of the Goodyear family. He is best known as one of the founding members and first president of the Museum of ...
. The house has 6,000 square feet of space, five bedrooms and five and a half baths and currently sits on a five-and-a-half-acre lot. The home has been described as "a remarkable balancing act between the austerity of the then·developing high modernism of
Mies van der Rohe Ludwig Mies van der Rohe ( ; ; born Maria Ludwig Michael Mies; March 27, 1886August 17, 1969) was a German-American architect. He was commonly referred to as Mies, his surname. Along with Alvar Aalto, Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius and Frank Lloyd ...
and the warm, site-oriented romantic functionalism of earlier American masters like
Frank Lloyd Wright Frank Lloyd Wright (June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959) was an American architect, designer, writer, and educator. He designed more than 1,000 structures over a creative period of 70 years. Wright played a key role in the architectural movements o ...
." When Goodyear died in 1964, the home was left unoccupied until 1970, when the family donated the house to the New York Institute of Technology for use as the president's house. In 1997, NYIT sold it to Wheatley Construction Company, which had planned to raze it for new development. The
World Monuments Fund World Monuments Fund (WMF) is a private, international, non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation of historic architecture and cultural heritage sites around the world through fieldwork, advocacy, grantmaking, education, and trainin ...
campaigned to save it, starting in 2001, and eventually bought it in 2005. Later that year, the fund sold it to the Modernist design dealer Troy Halterman with constrictive limitations on renovations to the interior and exterior, though the lot was reduced from 100 acres. Halterman never moved in, and sold the house in 2007 to Eric Cohler, an interior designer who spent a purported US$2 million in renovations. The home was sold to art and architecture collector
Aby Rosen Aby or ABY may refer to: Places * Aby, Ivory Coast * Aby Lagoon, a lagoon in Ivory Coast * Abyy or Aby, Sakha Republic, Russia ** Aby Lowland * Aby, Lincolnshire, a village in England, UK * Åby, Norrköping Municipality, Sweden * Åby, Växjö Mun ...
in 2011. It was listed on the
National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...
in 2003.


Importance

In his 1962 memoir, ''The Evolution of an Architect'',
Edward Durell Stone Edward Durell Stone (March 9, 1902 – August 6, 1978) was an American architect known for the formal, highly decorative buildings he designed in the 1950s and 1960s. His works include the Museum of Modern Art, in New York City, the Museo de A ...
wrote:
The site, a barren hilltop, demanded the low horizontal lines of a one-story house. Mr. Goodyear had a fine collection of modern paintings, and I decided to have a gallery serve as a "spinal column" from which all the rooms, with an expansive view to the south, opened, I employed glass walls from floor to ceiling, the ceilings continuing beyond the walls to form wide sheltering eaves. As the house faces south, the eaves were adjusted in depth so that the glass areas were shaded during the summer months, and when the sun was low during the winter months, its welcoming rays penetrated the house through the glass walls.
Of the house's eaves, he wrote:
Not only is the overhanging eave an important practical consideration, but I find it aesthetically mandatory on a house with a flat roof, satisfying visually the desire for certain aspects of the pitched roof so long associated with residential architecture.
Robert A.M. Stern Robert Arthur Morton Stern, usually credited as Robert A. M. Stern (born May 23, 1939), is a New York City–based architect, educator, and author. He is the founding partner of the architecture firm, Robert A.M. Stern Architects, also known a ...
, dean of the
Yale School of Architecture The Yale School of Architecture (YSOA) is one of the constituent professional schools of Yale University, and is generally considered to be one of the best architecture schools in the United States. The School awards the degrees of Master of Arc ...
, told ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'', "It's one of the few great International Style houses by an American architect of the 1930s. It's a great country house as well and surprisingly luxurious in a
Busby Berkeley Busby Berkeley (born Berkeley William Enos; November 29, 1895 – March 14, 1976) was an American film director and musical choreographer. Berkeley devised elaborate musical production numbers that often involved complex geometric patterns. Berke ...
-meets-
Bauhaus The Staatliches Bauhaus (), commonly known as the Bauhaus (), was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined crafts and the fine arts.Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4th edn., 20 ...
kind of way."
The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...
architecture critic,
Paul Goldberger Paul Goldberger (born in 1950) is an American author, architecture critic and lecturer. He is known for his "Sky Line" column in ''The New Yorker''. Biography Shortly after starting as a reporter at ''The New York Times'' in 1972, he was assign ...
, called the Goodyear home "one of the most important houses built in the United States between the two world wars."


Gallery

File:A. Conger Goodyear House, Old Westbury N.Y. Pool.jpeg, Exterior File:A. Conger Goodyear House, Old Westbury N.Y. Interior.jpeg, Interior File:A. Conger Goodyear House, Old Westbury N.Y. Approach.jpeg, Approach File:A. Conger Goodyear House, Old Westbury N.Y. at Night.jpeg, Exterior at night


References


External links


Preservation League of New York State websiteA. Conger Goodyear House, NY (Steven Harris Architects LLP)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Goodyear, A. Conger, House Goodyear family (New York) Edward Durell Stone buildings Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in New York (state) International style architecture in New York (state) Houses completed in 1938 Houses in Nassau County, New York National Register of Historic Places in Oyster Bay (town), New York