“Sally and I are again toying with the idea of building a house,” begins a letter from James Kirkpatrick dated February 8, 1954. “You will recall that you looked over the rather grotesque plans that were made up for us by a local architect at some substantial cost,” he continues, “and I in turn recall that upon looking at the plans, you indicated they were not for us which we both certainly agreed with.”
The recipient of the letter, and “you” in question, was none other than George Nelson, husband of Sally Kirkpatrick’s college roommate, Frances “Fritzi” Nelson. And so in this unassuming correspondence between family friends begins the story of a rather remarkable home. Over the course of the next four years, Nelson, along with his associate Gordon Chadwick, would execute a highly personalized design—a home tailored to the members and lifestyle of the Kirkpatrick family. This itself is not remarkable—it could be said of any architectural commission. What makes the Kirkpatrick House so special—then and now—are the universal qualities that transcend the specifics.
The main entrance to the Kirkpatrick house leads into a common living/dining area. The arc of recessed, dimmable lighting in the ceiling once traced the outline of a custom sofa Nelson designed for the space. It was sold by a previous owner of the home.
The dining area on the opposite side of the living room features upholstered Eames Wire Chairs and a Nelson Table—both customized to a lower height. Corner recreated the pendant light based on original drawings and photographs.
The best Nelson designs, be it a clock, chair, or in this case, home, share that same elusive trait. His view of design allowed for both modular system and mannerist quirk. As an “architect in industry” (as he categorized himself in the introduction to the 1948 Herman Miller Collection catalogue), Nelson was responsible for creating—and making salable—consumer goods. In the Kirkpatrick House, it becomes clear that this mentality affected his practice of architecture in equal measure. A product had to be unique to stand out in the market, but it also had to appeal to a wide array of people to be successful. Even in the execution of this private home for personal friends, Nelson’s brand of modernism embraces this duality fully.
The Kirkpatrick House is also remarkable in that it was designed and built during what was arguably the pinnacle of Nelson’s career. To paint a picture of his expansive interests and engagements at the time, in 1954 he had recently co-authored four books (Chairs, Living Spaces, Storage, and Display), was leading the operations of his eponymous industrial design and architecture offices, and also serving as Design Director to Herman Miller, design consultant to General Electric and Howard Miller, chair of the Aspen design conference, advisor to the school of fine arts at the University of Georgia, and consultant and exhibition designer for the United States government. If Nelson alluded to the “architect in industry,” this flurry of activity is more like the “architect as industry.”
The galley-style kitchen cabinets are all original and were repainted to match Nelson’s specifications using the Container Corporation’s Color Harmony Manual.
Corner was able to acquire most of the original living room furniture selected by the Nelson Office, including these Herman Miller sofas. The fireplace and hanging plants are lit by skylights above.
The Nelson Office designed fireplace accessories for Howard Miller.
Still Nelson found time to work out a design in the months that followed. In July of 1954, he sent Kirkpatrick an enthusiastic note: “We have completed some preliminary sketches and are beginning to get rather steamed up about some of the possibilities.” The letter describes elements of the plan, including “a private 2-story apartment which can be completely closed off from the rest of the house.” This he describes in greater detail: “To get some fun into the house we have set up the living room end as a 2-story cage using a lot of glass, with your bedroom sitting on a kind of bridge above part of it. Obviously, there is no sound barrier between living room and master bedroom, but it was assumed that if the bedroom was being used, the living room would be out of action. The feeling of open space one would get this way could be kind of wonderful.”
The suspended bedroom, bookended by double-height volumes, does indeed give a wonderful feeling of open space. At one end, skylights illuminate a kiln-like freestanding fireplace and hanging planters. At the other, a huge bank of windows opens onto the bedroom balcony and living room.
“Obviously, there is no sound barrier between living room and master bedroom, but it was assumed that if the bedroom was being used, the living room would be out of action.”
- George Nelson
A staircase with treads cantilevered from the redwood wall and suspended by a bank of ceiling-height balusters.
Designed as a playroom but now used as a TV room and office, Corner decorated this room with a mix of Eames and Nelson pieces including the EOG and Coconut Chair.
An original Nelson CSS system is outfitted with a Rek-O-Kut record player designed by the Nelson office and paired with an Eames Wire Chair-Contract Base.
“To put it mildly, Sally and I were thrilled with the house plans and the appearance of the model,” Kirkpatrick replied. “We did nothing for two nights after but sit on the porch and talk about it in all of its ramifications.” In a humorous indication of the era, the note continues, “Sally brings out the woman’s practical aspect of the window cleaning required for as much glass as is anticipated, both internally and externally, but no doubt there are also answers to that problem.”
Windows also flank the south and north elevations. On the second level a string of four modest bedrooms all offer views to the north. The upper and lower hallways to the south are lit by double-height windows, offering something of the character of a greenhouse. A staircase with treads cantilevered from the redwood wall and suspended by a bank of ceiling-height balusters almost comes off as showy given the low-key character of the design.
Nelson didn’t rely on natural light alone. Borrowing a trick from Alvar Aalto’s Baker House dormitory at MIT, he placed exterior lights directly over the skylights above the fireplace and the second floor game room (where they are the only windows). Spotlights are also situated at regular intervals below the extended eaves of the roof, providing a kind of intermediate lighting for the exterior and interior. In the low-ceilinged family room, a semi-circle of low-voltage lights operate off an industrial-scale rheostat and offer an intimate glow.
“Sally brings out the woman’s practical aspect of the window cleaning required for as much glass as is anticipated, both internally and externally, but no doubt there are also answers to that problem.”
- James Kirkpatrick
The second floor hallway connects the office, bedrooms and master bedroom and boasts an open well that offers a glimpse down to the first floor and augments the greenhouse feel of the double-height windows.
The faithfully restored color palette in each rooms illustrates the bold pairings specified in the original design by the Nelson office.
Corner styled the first and second bedroom in an array of vintage Herman Miller pieces like the Nelson Thin Edge Bed, an Eames Molded Fiberglass Rocker, and a Poul Kjaerholm PK20 lounge chair which was in distributed by the company briefly in the 1970’s.
Naturally, the Nelson office also provided a scheme for the home’s interior design. In a letter from 1955, Nelson writes, “We are using your house as a kind of guinea pig for our furniture projects, and we are going to try to work out all the furniture for the house without recourse to stuff now in production. The beauty of this scheme is that the furniture design gets paid for anyway out of the furniture budget, and we can obtain the finished samples at a cost which would be no greater than that of production items. If this doesn’t add a great deal of entertainment value to the interiors, I would be greatly surprised.” When the home was completed three years later, Nelson’s aspirations for customized furnishings hadn’t fully materialized, but his office did devise a one-of-a-kind sofa for the family room (that unfortunately no longer is with the home). Intended to sit directly below the ring of dimmable lights, the semi-circular sectional featured table surfaces and storage, and, with the home’s many built-ins, shares an undeniable affinity with Nelson’s work at Herman Miller.
In fact, it was thanks to the house’s many, covetable archival pieces that the Kirkpatrick House was rediscovered and restored. A long-time collector of vintage Herman Miller furniture, the present-day owner, Dave Corner, found the home nine years ago, after coming to see the owner about possibly buying a set of rosewood dressers in the master bedroom. “I asked him point blank to call me first if he was ever considering selling the house,” Corner recalls. “A year later I got the call.”
Now after almost a decade of dedicated research and work, Corner has fully restored the Kirkpatrick House, even down to Nelson’s original color scheme. In contrast to the relatively modest scheme and materials, Nelson’s office devised an outlandish color scheme that presages the acid-fueled palette of hippie Haight-Ashbury by a decade. Interior designers, Robert Rohrich and Delores Engle of the Nelson Office, used 20 different colors, and selected up to four colors per room, playing surfaces and planes off each other with unlikely pairings. In a 1957 letter to the Kirkpatricks, Rohrich offers a word of caution: “In regard to this color scheme, please check with your two sons to see of they have any violent reactions to the colors for their bedrooms.”
The long, light-filled hallway leads into the master bedroom.
Vintage rosewood Thin Edge cabinets and a custom floating desk line one wall of the master bedroom. The Nelson Miniature Chest was the first vintage Herman Miller piece Corner collected. “I couldn’t afford it at the time, but I just had to have it,” he recalls of the late 1980’s purchase.
Conceived as a 2-story apartment that could be closed off from the rest of the house, the suspended master bedroom opens onto a bank of floor-to-ceiling windows in the living room.
The original plans labeled every surface, from kitchen drawer to bedroom wall, with a mixed code of letters and numerals, but there was no corresponding rubric. Scraping away at the walls or working from old snapshots wasn’t a viable option, and Corner searched for six years before uncovering the answer. He then came across The Container Corporation’s Color Harmony Manual, a leather-bound book offering a scientific approach—“Taking the Guesswork Out of Color"—and page upon page of saturated hexagonal color chip arrangements denoted by both letters (for the hue) and numbers (for the brightness). With the proverbial Rosetta Stone in hand, Corner easily went about repainting the home, but was shocked by some of the combinations—“I’m not sure what they were thinking with this bright green door next to this redwood wall,” he jests. For his efforts, Corner now inhabits a designated local landmark and the ultimate environment in which to live and enjoy his collection of vintage Nelson and Herman Miller designs.
In one of Kirkpatrick’s early letters to Nelson a comment stands out for its clarity: “We are not so much concerned about the appearance of the outside,” he writes, “as we are about the livability of the inside.” In many ways, “livability” is one of the words that best sums up Nelson’s work. To Nelson, design wasn’t some kind of theoretical, intellectual exercise—it was a way of seeing solutions to problems people faced. It was a service. Throughout his career, Nelson advocated solutions—from seating to city plans—that would improve the way people lived. He constantly searched for a better way to do things—and spared no contempt for the thoughtlessness and failures he identified in the world around him. Ultimately, Nelson may be better remembered for quirky clocks than practicing architecture, but on a wooded lot in Kalamazoo, powerful evidence of his vision lives on.
“We are not so much concerned about the appearance of the outside as we are about the livability of the inside.”
- James Kirkpatrick
An exterior view into the living room and master bedroom above.
A leafy drive and lush landscape surround the Kirkpatrick House.
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