Gropius House
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Gropius House
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Gropius House, front view
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| Location | 68 Baker Bridge Road, Lincoln, Massachusetts |
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| Coordinates | 42°25′37″N 71°19′37″W / 42.42694°N 71.32694°WCoordinates: 42°25′37″N 71°19′37″W / 42.42694°N 71.32694°W |
| Area | 5.51 acres (22,300 m2) |
| Part of | Woods End Road Historic District (#88000956) |
| NRHP Reference # | 00000709 |
| Significant dates | |
| Added to NRHP | May 16, 2000 |
| Designated NHL | May 16, 2000 |
| Designated CP | July 8, 1988 |
The Gropius House was the family residence of noted architect Walter Gropius at 68 Baker Bridge Road, Lincoln, Massachusetts. It is now a historic house museum, owned by Historic New England, and is open to the public. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2000 for its association with Gropius, an influential teacher and leader of Modernist philosophy of architecture. The house includes a collection of Bauhaus-related materials that is unparalleled outside Germany.
As the first director of the Bauhaus, Gropius was concerned with combining useful modern technologies with consumer need, while placing equal emphasis on architectural integrity and decorative arts.
Gropius and his family came to the United States after a three-year stay in London, where they had moved to avoid the Nazi regime. Gropius went to Massachusetts to accept a teaching position at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design. Fellow architect and prominent Boston figure Henry Shepley convinced philanthropist Helen Storrow to provide the land and fund both the designing and building process of a home. He designed the home in 1937 and it was built with local builder Casper J. Jenney in 1938. Gropius used his new home as a showcase for his Harvard students as well as an example of modernist landscape architecture in America. He chose the area because of its proximity to Concord Academy which his daughter, Ati, was going to attend. It remained Gropius's home from 1938 until his death in 1969.
Marcel Breuer, a fellow architect and friend of the Gropius family, came to the U.S. shortly after the Gropius family, also to become part of the Harvard design faculty. Mrs. Helen Storrow provided a neighboring plot of land to Breuer, where he could showcase his own design philosophies. Gropius and Breuer assisted one another in the construction of their homes, completing their dwellings in 1938 and 1939, respectively. The Gropius House continues to have many pieces of Breuer furniture on display. The house also contains works by Eero Saarinen, Joan Miró, and Herbert Bayer that were given as gifts to Walter Gropius.
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