Yep.
I spoke with James Ashby, project coordinator for the Dymaxion restoration,
at APT. I believe he said the house is on target for exhibition in 2001,
presumably with the kitchen. There is already a bathroom on display in the
museum. As an intern on the project 4 years ago, I recall the bathrooms,
but not the kitchen. They must have had it stashed away off-site somewhere.
I believe I only saw it in photographs.
A portion of the museum's website is dedicated to the Dymaxion, with a
"Conservator's Journal" updated once a month with progress.
I believe this is the website, if you want to check it out:
http://www.hfmgv.org
- Johnette
----------
From: Met History <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Ding-dong! Fuller Brush Man
Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2000 22:11:12 EST
In a message dated 11/27/00 9:13:20 PM Eastern Standard Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:
> Deb is right about the Dymaxion, though.
> The house was a tension structure which hung on a central mast, designed
to
> be packed up into a giant tube and shipped to your site. If you decided
to
> move, you could disassemble, re-package it, and move it to the new
location.
Or, you could just sell it to the Henry Ford Museum! Sign me, A. Movable
Fast
April 17, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final
HEADLINE: Streetscapes/The Guyon Earle Kitchen;
A Forest Hills Find for Fuller's Dymaxion House
BYLINE: By CHRISTOPHER GRAY
FEELING pretty good after finally junking that rusty, dented kitchenette
unit
with the strange drawers? Then don't read on.
The Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Mich., just bought a similar
kitchenette
that it values at $80,000. The museum found the kitchen in an apartment in
Forest Hills, Queens, and it is looking for another.
The kitchen purchased by the museum was designed by Guyon L. C. Earle, a
Queens developer, in the late 30's. Buckminster Fuller later bought two for
his
futuristic Dymaxion Houses, prefab aluminum structures that the architect
hoped
would revolutionize the domestic landscape.
In late 1946, Fuller's Dymaxion Dwelling Corporation built two prototypes
of
the flying-saucer-like house that had round, revolving closets and a giant
weather vane/ventilator on the roof and that weighed only three tons, a
small
fraction of the weight of a conventional two-bedroom house.
According to Christian Overland, a collection specialist at the Henry
Ford
Museum, Mayor H. Hubert Humphrey of Minneapolis began negotiating in 1946
for
2,500 Dymaxion Houses to solve the city's postwar housing shortage.
Although about 30,000 people inquired about the Dymaxion, internal
company
disputes prevented actual production and William L. Graham, one of the
investors, bought the prototypes for his own family in Wichita, Kan. One was
to
live in, the other was kept for parts.
In 1992 his family donated its house to the Henry Ford Museum, which also
includes among its exhibits a lunar exploration module, a collection of
locomotives and the Wright brothers' house and bicycle shop.
The museum is meticulously restoring the Dymaxion House, scheduled to be
opened to the public in 1995, but it had no kitchen. Tracing original
correspondence, Mr. Overland identified Reynolds Metals as the fabricator
and
Earle as the designer.
EARLE worked in the family real estate firm, which developed the
apartment
house at 6 Burns Street in Forest Hills, across from the West Side Tennis
Club,
around 1920.
In 1939 Earle decided to update the kitchens in the Tudor-style building
with
a new idea he had been tinkering with -- the one-piece, all-metal "One-Wall
Kitchen of Beauty, Quality and Equipment."
When closed up it looks like any other bank of kitchen cabinets. But
inside
the doors and drawers are oven equipment, towel racks, a roll-out
refrigerator,
silver compartments, vents and concealed lighting.
The heat from the refrigerator compressor dried the towels and the
dishes,
and the oven was vented through charcoal filters. Some photographs show the
kitchens concealed by a bank of Venetian blinds.
Mr. Overland says that fewer than 1,000 of the Earle kitchens were
actually
produced, and in December he began searching for a duplicate kitchen, which
he
knew had been installed somewhere in Forest Hills, for the museum's Dymaxion
House.
A research analyst at the Queens Historical Society, James Driscoll,
identified the building at 6 Burns Street (where Fuller occupied an
apartment
in
the late 40's while developing the geodesic dome) as a likely place to find
one
of the kitchens, and contacted the superintendent, Jerry DiMuro. Mr. DiMuro
in
turn led Mr. Overland to the only surviving Earle kitchen left in the
building,
in a one-bedroom apartment that is going on sale later this year.
THE kitchen unit is dingy, dented and painted gray, and it has lost its
refrigerator -- the old freezer compartment is now the liquor closet. The
original dishrack, oven, compressor, handles and other elements are still in
place, but even a kitchen enthusiast might pass it by as yet another prefab
kitchenette, a trendy design goal in the World War II period.
Mr. Overland says the museum will remove the unit from 6 Burns Street
next
month. He won't divulge the purchase price, but he says that reconstructing
the
original kitchen -- which had been their fallback position -- would have
cost
"at least $80,000."
Back in Dearborn, a team of conservators will take five to six weeks to
analyze the original paint finish, replicate missing features, reconstruct
the
refrigerator and even rebuild and, they hope, restart the compressor.
Earle promoted his kitchen extensively in the 40's, hoping to make a deal
to
produce it. But after the Dymaxion project fell through it appears he gave
up
the effort.
Mr. Overland recently got a Dymaxion bathroom in Philadelphia and is
looking
for a second and maybe even a third Earle kitchen, one for parts, and
another
that visitors can actually handle. Anyone with an Earle kitchen for sale may
write him, enclosing a photograph of it, at the Henry Ford Museum, 2000
Oakwood
Boulevard, Dearborn, Mich. 48121.
GRAPHIC: Photos: One of the Earle kitchens in a Forest Hills apartment in
1939.
(The Lincoln Collection, Pennsylvania State University); Modified Earle
kitchen
recently at 6 Burns Street in Forest Hills. (Rebecca Cooney for The New York
Times)
|
