The house at 18 Old Dee Road was set back from the road and nestled into the landscape. (CHC Collection)
Constructed in 1947 for Harold and Anna Ryan, 18 Old Dee Road typified the mid-century International Style residence. Located on a cul-de-sac off Larchwood Drive, the house was a one-story, shed roof, frame structure with vertical wood tongue and groove siding. Fenestration consisted of single glazed wood frame casement and fixed glass units, with a horizontal emphasis. A large brick chimney was positioned near the back of the house. The main entrance was recessed at the center of the façade, and a side entry door was covered by a small shed roof. The house had an unusual trapezoidal footprint that widened from the front façade to the back, in response to the irregular shape of the lot.
The site’s shape, outlined in red, informed the layout of the house. Note the address numbers are different on this plan dated 1952. (City of Cambridge Public Works)View of the back of the house just prior to demolition. (CHC Collection, gift of Peter Wasserman)Floor plan as documented in 2005. The footprint is original except for an addition on the north wall which dates from 2001. (Dingman Allison Architects)
View of main living area with fireplace. (CHC Collection, gift of Peter Wasserman)
The house was the first design by The Architects Collaborative (TAC) in Cambridge. The firm was headed by Walter Gropius, founder of the famed Bauhaus design school in Germany. In 1934, Gropius moved to England as Hitler rose to power. He eventually came to the United States in 1937 with his family to chair the architecture department at Harvard Graduate School of Design. Other TAC partners included Norman and Jean Fletcher, John and Sarah Harkness, Robert MacMillan, and Benjamin Thompson. As the name of the firm implied, there was an emphasis on a team approach to design and a modernist aesthetic that involved clean lines, functionality, and a rejection of superfluous ornamentation. Several partners designed their own homes at Six Moon Hill in Lexington which are still extant today. The firm’s only other residential commission in Cambridge was at 15 Hemlock Road in 1952.
Portrait of partners of TAC, 1952. Left to right, Sarah Harkness, Jean Fletcher, Robert McMillan, Norman Fletcher, Walter Gropius, John Harkness, Benjamin Thompson, and Louis McMillen . (The Architects Collaborative, Arthur Niggli, Ltd.)
TAC went on to design a range of projects around the world including the University of Baghdad, the Rosenthal Porcelain Factory in Bavaria, and the United States Embassy in Greece. In Massachusetts, the firm designed the Harvard Graduate Center, Wayland High School, and the John F. Kennedy Office Building in Boston, among others. Gropius was a part of TAC until his death in 1969. The firm closed in 1995.
Much of the text from this post was provided by the Cambridge Women’s Heritage Project
“Maude Morgan” photographed by Jamie Cope (1993). Gift of Jamie Cope to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in honor of Maud Morgan
Born in New York City, Maud Cabot graduated from Barnard College in 1926 and traveled to Paris to study at the Sorbonne. She did not begin to paint until she was twenty-four, when she met her future husband, the artist Pat Morgan, in the late 1920s in Paris. In 1929, the couple moved back to New York, where she studied at the Arts Student League.
Following her studies, Morgan worked with Abstract Expressionist Hans Hofmann and began to exhibit at galleries in New York. In 1938, Morgan had a successful show at the Julian Levy Gallery, known as a haven for Surrealist art as well as experimental film and photography. During the show’s run, paintings by Morgan were sold to the Whitney Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).
“The Old Mill” by Maud Morgan, ca. 1930-1940. Whitney Museum of American Art, 42.33
In 1940 she and her husband moved to Andover, Mass, where he taught art at Phillips Academy, and she began to teach at the nearby girls’ boarding school, Abbot Academy. The couple had two children. In 1957, Morgan separated from her husband and moved to Boston. A few years later she moved to Cambridge, where she lived and painted for the rest of her life.
Clipping from the Cambridge Chronicle, 2 April 1964, depicting Maud Morgan and her winning painting “Candelabra” from the 20th Annual Spring Exhibition of the Cambridge Arts Association
Morgan continued to exhibit in New York, primarily at the Betty Parsons Gallery, where she was included in joint exhibitions with Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Robert Motherwell, and other notable contemporary artists. Morgan had two retrospective exhibitions, 1967-1968 at the Fitchburg (Massachusetts) Art Museum, and 1977 at the Addison Gallery of American Art.
“Nautique SSX” by Maud Cabot Morgan, 1974. Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, MA, gift of Victoria M. Benedict, 1977.168. This screenprint was exhibited in Maud Morgan: A Retrospective Exhibition, 1927-1977, Addison Gallery of American Art
The addition of an artist’s studio at her 3 Howland Street residence was designed by Yugoslav-American architect Alexander Cvijanovic in 1962.
Proposed Addition to the Residence of Mrs. Patrick Morgan, 3 Howland Str Cambridge, Mass. Alexander Cvijanovic, Designer. June 12, 1962
Cvijanovic was a graduate of the Harvard Graduate School of Design and later became a partner in The Architects Collaborative (TAC) as well as a close associate of Walter Gropius. The studio addition was demolished in 2004.
The artist’s studio at 3 Howland Street in 1965The artist’s studio at 3 Howland Street ca. 2004
Cvijanovic’s wife, Maria, remembers that her husband very much enjoyed working on the project, after which the couple and Morgan became life-long friends. Following the commission of her studio, Morgan gifted the couple one of her paintings–a piece that still hangs in their home today.
Alexander Cvijanovic in his apartment in front of the two pictures of the Amberg “glass cathedral.” This building was the last planned together by Walter Gropius and Cvijanovic, his partner. Photo: Peter Geiger (Mittelbayerische, 2016)
In 1970, after her divorce was final, Morgan spent six months in Africa. She returned to Cambridge and lectured on art at Harvard and MIT and taught at Lesley College’s Institute for the Arts and Human Development.
“Green Hazard” by Maud Morgan (ca. late twentieth century). Lawrence University Wriston Art Center Galleries Collections
According to Morgan’s Getty record, the artist was known as “Boston’s modernist doyenne,” leaving a legacy spanning 80 years worth of skilled and complex works “from abstracts to still lifes and self-portraits as well as collages.”‘
In 1980 a film about Morgan’s art, “Light Coming Through,” by Nancy V. Raine (Producer/Co-Director) and Richard Leacock (Co-Director/Cinematographer) was released. The film premiered on October 21 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and was later shown at MoMA in New York and the Place Pompidou in Paris.
Maud Cabot Morgan, ca. 1950 / unidentified photographer. Robert G. McIntyre papers, 1903-1957. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
In her eighties and nineties, she continued painting, displaying continuing creativity. She received an Honor Award in 1987 from the Women’s Caucus for Art. Since 1993 the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, which holds a number of her significant paintings, has awarded the Maud Morgan prize yearly to a mid-career woman artist from Massachusetts.
Maud Morgan with self portrait, ca. 1990 / unidentified photographer. Robert and Jonatha Ceely papers regarding Maud Morgan, 1976-2000. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution
In 1995, at the age of ninety-two, she published an autobiography, Maud’s Journey: A Life From Art. She died four years later in Cambridge and was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery. An art museum and gallery, Maud Morgan Arts, has been constructed in her honor.
We are happy to announce the addition of 28 images to our CHC Flickr account. These images come from the Lois M. Bowen Collection. Bowen was a Cambridge-based photographer and entrepreneur who owned a camera shop, Cambridge Camera and Marine, in Harvard Square from the 1940s to 1995.
Kodak film cannister owned by Lois M. Bowen, ca 1960s
Ms. Bowen was a freelance photographer for several organizations and publications around Cambridge and Boston, including The Architects’ Collaborative and Architectural Forum Magazine, as well as advertising agencies and admissions publications for colleges and universities.
Cover: “Architectural Forum: The Magazine of Building”, June 1964Pages from “Architectural Forum: The Magazine of Building” featuring the work of Lois M. Bowen, June 1964
Bowen’s work was primarily focused on architecture, but her photographic subjects spanned the Northeast and included documentation of her own life and community.
View of Faneuil Hall Marketplace, Boston, 4 September 1978Contact sheet: images of Strawberry Banke, October 1966
In addition to the photographic materials there are business papers and documents as well as personal correspondence and ephemera.
Interior view of Cambridge Camera and Marine, ca. 1960sInterior View: 14 Old Dee Road in Cambridge, ca. 1960s
