A year after his family purchased the easternmost acres of the former Coolidge farm in West Cambridge, Edward Waldo Forbes built an enormous Georgian Revival mansion on the lot in 1911. An early convert to Modernism, Forbes, an art historian and Director of the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University, allowed his daughter Rosamund and her husband, William Bowers, to build Cambridge’s first International Style house on the grounds in 1935. The introduction of this new design paved the way for M.I.T. physicist Francis Bitter and his wife, the singer Ratan Devī, to commission architect Carl Koch to design a modern house for the couple at the foot of the hill in 1946.
The House
Carl Koch’s design for this house was praised by his contemporaries. Following its completion, the house was written up in two journals, Architectural Record (105:76-83 January 1949) and House & Garden (94:6;127-129 December 1948). The author of the article in Architectural Record described the well-conceived plan, “So in this house we have the straightforward, thoughtful planning that reflects and serves the owners’ individual needs and desires–convenient, cheerful, efficient, informal–but with its own welcome dignity.”
The Bitter House was built as a modern, one-story, single-family house by Koch and his associate Frederic L. Day. The building was composed of cladding of vertical, tongue and groove fir boards on the living room wing. The bedroom wing, positioned for privacy opposite a garden “Plaza” from the living and service wing, was constructed of concrete block and not sided with another material. The entrance door opened into the glass-enclosed garden plaza which was designed around a sculpture by Francis Bitter’s father, Karl Bitter.
On one side of the plaza was the living and service wing, which housed the living room, dining room, kitchen, and basement study. The living room was acoustically designed to accompany Mrs. Bitter’s love of music. Indoor living space continued to the outside with two patios, one off the dining room and the other off the garden plaza. The kitchen was designed for efficiency and included pass-throughs to the dining room and service entrance for the easy delivery of packages. The large, hooded fireplace was the focal point of the living and dining rooms.
On the opposite side of the plaza was the bedroom wing. The master bedroom was designed as a suite with a large dressing area. The guest bedroom had a fold-out bed built into the slope of the linen closet in the hallway.
Unlike some of his later efforts in prefabricated housing components, this design is completely tailor-made to meet the needs of the Bitters: a physicist and a professional musician. Mr. Bitter was an expert in magnetic physics. Under her stage name Ratan Devī, Mrs. Bitter was a performer of Hindu songs and poems and recorded Indian music. Koch considered both of their vocations when designing the residence at 44 Gerry’s Landing. Koch designed the basement as Mr. Bitter’s laboratory and study with plenty of natural light provided by the sloping site on which the house was built. The living room was acoustically designed to enhance the piano music of Mrs. Bitter.
Koch paid careful attention to the smallest details of the house–from the acoustics in the living room to the linen closet to the delivery panel in the kitchen wall. Koch employed the use of twentieth century materials such as linoleum and corrugated Transite in his design.
Development of the Site
The Brown and Nichols boys’ school was originally located on Garden Street. Although the school purchased fields at the base of Coolidge Hill in 1910-12 to use as athletic fields, its classes were not held on the lower campus until late in the 1940s. Brown and Nichols School gradually moved all its classrooms to the Gerry’s Landing campus between 1948 and 1963. The modern residences on the Forbes estate were soon acquired by the school and the Bitter House was converted for use as an art studio.
Higher taxes, fewer domestic employees, and increased density after World War II affected the scale and efficiency of the designs for post-war construction. New technologies in building materials and construction quickly made their way to the private sphere after being developed by the military during the war. Carl Koch’s design intent for 44 Gerry’s Landing Road was a product of the new materials and design ideas of the post-war period. It was built in the same year as Koch’s more famous Snake Hill Houses in neighboring Belmont.
An application to demolish the house at 44 Gerry’s Landing Road was received by the Cambridge Historical Commission on November 6, 1996, and the final application was made on November 26. The applicant, Buckingham, Browne and Nichols School, was notified of an initial determination of significance and a public hearing was scheduled for December 4. Although the Bitter House was found to be significant in part as an example of post-war architecture and in great part due to its relationship to the internationally significant architect, Carl Koch, the building was demolished in 1997. At the time of demolition, the intentionally limited exterior detailing of the modern residence was primarily intact with no evident additions or major remodeling.
