John and Alice Fullam House
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The John and Alice Fullam Residence, designed in 1957 by modernist architect Paul Rudolph, is located in a rural part of Bucks County,
Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...
, in Wrightstown Township, approximately northwest of Newtown and west of the
Delaware River The Delaware River is a major river in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. From the meeting of its branches in Hancock (village), New York, Hancock, New York, the river flows for along the borders of N ...
. The house is situated on a ruggedly hilly, densely treed, almost lot that was once part of an old logging trail. The Fullam Residence was listed to 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 v ...
in 2019.


Description

The two story, three-bay, stone house is sited on a steep hillside overlooking the junction of two tributaries of Jericho Creek. The house reflects the vernacular of the area, being constructed of local Pennsylvania field stone and is built into the hillside, similar to a Bucks County bank barn. Rudolph made an alternate design for the Residence where the walls are executed in poured in place concrete, and in the drawings outlines self registering forms to make the walls in a series of poured layers. An oversized stone patio on the southwesterly elevation anchors the house to the hillside offering views of the creeks below. The flagstone patio runs across the entire front of the house and extends beyond the exterior walls on both sides. Dramatic large windows fill almost the entire southwestern elevation; overlooking the creek, this wall of windows is sectioned into three bays by prominent stone buttress-like thick walls that extend beyond the windows. When viewed from the side, the building is in the form of a
trapezoid A quadrilateral with at least one pair of parallel sides is called a trapezoid () in American and Canadian English. In British and other forms of English, it is called a trapezium (). A trapezoid is necessarily a Convex polygon, convex quadri ...
where the southwest and northeast elevations are tapered with a wider base with a seven degree slope. The roof is distinctive, formed by a series of four horizontal diamond shapes supported on pillars, appearing to float above the structure, with scuppers that protrude horizontally between each ridge. The spaces between the diamonds, the supports and each buttress-like structure are filled with three
pentagon In geometry, a pentagon (from the Greek πέντε ''pente'' meaning ''five'' and γωνία ''gonia'' meaning ''angle'') is any five-sided polygon or 5-gon. The sum of the internal angles in a simple pentagon is 540°. A pentagon may be simpl ...
al clearstory windows, giving the roof the illusion of floating above the walls.


History

The residence is the earliest example of the sculptural architecture that would become Paul Rudolph's signature style, often labeled as a “
Brutalist Brutalist architecture is an architectural style that emerged during the 1950s in the United Kingdom, among the reconstruction projects of the post-war era. Brutalist buildings are characterised by Minimalism (art), minimalist constructions th ...
” because many of his designs were executed in raw concrete. His most noted commission was the Art & Architecture building at
Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...
in New Haven, Connecticut completed in 1963. The Fullam Residence predates the A & A building, was begun in 1957 and completed in 1959. At the request of the owners, John and Alice Fullam, the design was never published and remained unknown in the Paul Rudolph Portfolio. In 2004, the original owners became concerned over the fate of the house, reading that many Rudolph structures were being destroyed and through their concern for preservation they made the Rudolph Foundation aware of the commission's existence.''A Paul Rudolph-Designed Midcentury Is Rescued From Obscurity and Finally Completed''
Retrieved 2019-04-13


References

^ "Fullham Residence, Newtown, PA, 1959 , Paul Rudolph & His Architecture". prudolph.lib.umassd.edu. Retrieved 2019-04-07.


External links

* {{commons category-inline, John and Alice Fullam House National Register of Historic Places in Bucks County, Pennsylvania Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Pennsylvania Houses completed in 1959 Paul Rudolph buildings Houses in Bucks County, Pennsylvania