Lovable Place No. 1
Sustainable buildings must be Lovable, Durable, Flexible, and Frugal. ”The first of the four foundations of sustainable buildings is Lovability, because it does not matter how efficiently the building performs if it is demolished and carted off to the landfill in a generation or two because it cannot be loved. ” - Steve Mouzon
Thank you Steve for your profound observations. I was so inspired after listening to Steve’s interview on Treehugger that I wanted to dedicate a series of blogs to Loveable Places that are often old, inspiring, restful, natural, and places I love to spend time. Odds are these places will long outlast most of our LEED certified buildings of today.
This first lovable place is a Georgian Cottage that I am blessed to stay at while traveling. The photo says it all, no fuss just a perfect proportion, with proper scale, material, and detail. Placed perfectly at the end of a terraced garden on the edge of the wood. I will write more about it’s mother estate and Architect in subsequent blogs.
Jonesborough is Tennessee’s oldest city. For those traditional-minded among us, it also contains some great buildings that have sprung up in the years since its founding. Give it a visit if you haven’t already, it’s worth the pleasant walk down Main Street.
Dulin House, Knoxville, Tennessee
This little known and easily missed house located at 3100 Kingston Pike comes from the studio of one of the most famous residential architects to design a house built in Knoxville. The Dulin House was designed in 1915 by John Russell Pope (1874-1937), a prominent architect from New York. Pope’s main focus in practice was residential, but he completed a number of commercial and public buildings throughout the Northeast, including the Jefferson Memorial and the National Gallery of Art.
The Dulin House closely resembles Pope’s first residential commission, the Jacobs Residence, located in Newport, Rhode Island. Interestingly, the Dulin House was the original home of what is now known as the Knoxville Museum of Art. The museum, formerly the Dulin Gallery of Art, was founded by Mary Katherine Dulin Folger and was housed there from 1961 to the late 1980’s. The 10 year span between Popes work on the Jacobs Residence and Dulin Residence reveals a maturing architect who was refining his style we might now refer to as modern classicism.
The Jacobs Residence, Rhode Island
Pope graduated from Columbia University in 1894 and also studied for three years at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He traveled extensively in Europe during this time and gained his love of Classicism.
Reference: James B. Garrison. Mastering Tradition: The Residential Architecture of John Russell Pope. New York: Acanthus, 2004.