Vanna Venturi House
Encyclopedia
The Vanna Venturi House, one of the first prominent works of the postmodern architecture
movement, is located in the suburban neighborhood of Chestnut Hill
in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
. It was designed by architect Robert Venturi
for his mother Vanna Venturi, and constructed between 1962 -1964.
The five room house stands only about 30 feet tall at the top of the chimney, but has a monumental front facade, an effect achieved by intentionally manipulating the architectural elements that indicate a building's scale. A non-structural applique arch and "hole in the wall" windows, among other elements, together with Venturi's book Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture were an open challenge to Modernist orthodoxy.
Architectural historian Vincent Scully
called it "the biggest small building of the second half of the twentieth century.”
Vanna was a feminist, socialist, pacifist and vegetarian with an active intellectual life, reading books mostly on history, current events, and biography. She was born to Italian immigrant parents in Philadelphia in 1893. She dropped out of high school because her family could not afford to buy her a coat, so she was essentially self-educated. She did not marry until relatively late in life in 1924, marrying a fruit and produce merchant, Robert Venturi, Sr. Her only child, Robert, Jr. was born in 1925. Possibly because of her liberal views she perceived herself as an "outsider" and became a Quaker
. Robert, Jr. said "I never went to public school: pledging allegiance to the flag - 'coercive patriotism' my mother called it - was anathema to her." The family made summer trips to Arden, Delaware
and Rose Valley, Pennsylvania
, two communities organized by architect Will Price
who was inspired by the Arts and Crafts Movement
and the then-radical economics of Henry George
. In Rose Valley the family attended plays by George Bernard Shaw
at the Hedgerow Theater.
The family attended the Quaker Philadelphia Yearly Meeting
at the Arch Street Friends Meeting House
.
Robert, Jr. attended a Quaker grade school, then the Episcopal Academy, and later Princeton University
earning both bachelors and masters degrees. From 1954-1956 he was a Rome Prize
Fellow at the American Academy in Rome
. He then taught architectural theory at the University of Pennsylvania
, working with Louis Kahn
. As a professional architect he worked in the offices of Eero Saarinen
, Louis Kahn, and Oscar Stonorov
.
In 1959 Robert, Sr. died, leaving his wife enough money to build the house and live comfortably. The designs for the house by Robert, Jr. evolved over four years, but the architect noted only two indications of disagreement from his client. When the work was about three-fourths complete, she looked at the traditional 19th-century house next door and remarked "Oh, isn't that a nice house." She also rejected the marble floor in the dining area, considering it to be ostentatious, but relented as the house was nearing completion. Along with the Guild House, an apartment house for the elderly, also completed in 1964, the Vanna Venturi House was Venturi's first work as an independent architect.
As a widow nearing the age of 70 as the house was completed, Vanna required that all her daily routine could be conducted on one floor, possibly with the help of a live-in caretaker. Thus the first floor plan contains all the main rooms of the house - the master bedroom, a full bathroom, the caretaker's room, the kitchen and a living/dining area. She did not drive, so there is no garage. Her son, the architect, occupied the second floor, which contains a bedroom/studio with a large lunette window, a private balcony, and a half-bath on the stair landing. The house was also specifically designed for her antiques and reproduction furniture, which she had collected over 50 year.
Robert lived in the house until a few months after his 1967 marriage to Denise Scott Brown
. Vanna Venturi lived in the house from 1964 though 1973, often lecturing visiting architects on architecture and the architect. In 1973 she moved to a nursing home, and died in 1975. The house was sold in 1973 to friends of the architect who continue to maintain it as a private residence.
Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture in which he outlined his own architectural ideas. During the writing he redesigned the house at least five times in fully worked-out versions. A description of the house is included in the book and the house is viewed as an embodiment of the ideas in the book. He states:
Many of the basic elements of the house are a reaction against standard Modernist architectural elements: the pitched roof rather than flat roof, the emphasis on the central hearth and chimney, a closed ground floor "set firmly on the ground" rather than the Modernist columns and glass walls which open up the ground floor. On the front elevation the broken pediment or gable and a purely ornamental applique arch reflect a return to Mannerist architecture and a rejection of Modernism. Thus the house is a direct break from Modern architecture, designed in order to disrupt and contradict formal Modernist aesthetics.
The site of the house is flat, with a long driveway connecting it to the street. Venturi placed the parallel walls of the house perpendicular to the main axis of the site, defined by the driveway, rather than the usual placement along the axis. Unusually, the gable is placed on the long side of the rectangle formed by the house, and there is no matching gable at the rear. The chimney is emphasized by the centrally placed room on the second floor, but the actual chimney is small and off-center. The effect is to magnify the scale of the small house and make the facade appear to be monumental. The scale magnifying effects are not carried over to the sides and rear of the house, thus making the house appear to be both large and small from different angles.
The central chimney and staircase dominate the interior of the house.
The themes of scale, contradiction, and "whimsy" - "not inappropriate to an individual house," can be seen at the top of the stair, that seems to go from the second floor to a non-existent third floor.
The house was constructed with intentional formal architectural, historical and aesthetic contradictions. Venturi has compared the iconic front facade to "a child's drawing of a house."
Yet he has also written, "This building recognizes complexities and contradictions: it is both complex and simple, open and closed, big and little; some of its elements are good on one level and bad on another its order accommodates the generic elements and of the house in general, and the circumstantial elements of a house in particular."
About historical references, the swiss architectural theorist Stanislaus von Moos regards the monumental facade as a recall to Michelangelo
's Porta Pia
, the back wall to Palladio's
Nymphaeum at Villa Barbaro
and the broken pediments to the facade of Moretti
's Il Girasole house (building also cited by Venturi's in Complexity and Contradiction in architecture).
were built in the area. Several residences within a few blocks of the Vanna Venturi House were designed by well-known architects. The entire neighborhood is part of the Chestnut Hill Historic District
on the National Register of Historic Places
.
The Houston-Sauveur House, built in 1885 by architects G. W. & W. D. Hewitt
, is one of many Victorian mansions in the immediate neighborhood. Nearby modern architecture includes Louis Kahn
's Esherick House
and a house in the International Style
designed by Kenneth Day. A bit further away is Cherokee Village, a 104-unit apartment complex designed by Oscar Stonorov
in the 1950s. Venturi worked on this project as a draftsman. Two other houses designed by Stonorov, and the house of Venturi's long-time partner, John Rauch, are near the apartment complex.
The Esherick and Vanna Venturi Houses, invite comparison, having been built within two years and one block of each other by Philadelphia's best known 20th Century architects. In Kahn's building proportion and symmetry bind the building together; in Venturi's the buildings elements appear as fragments of the whole. The Esherick House seems devoid of ornament, the Venturi House has a large, purely ornamental arch on its facade. The Esherick House is essentially symmetric, but the Venturi House contradicts it basic symmetry with asymmetric windows.
, awarded by the American Institute of Architects
to a single project each year that has "stood the test of time for 25 to 35 years." Two years later Venturi was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize
for work that "has produced consistent and significant contributions to humanity ... through the art of architecture." In 2005, The United States Postal Service
featured the house on a postage stamp
in a series of "Twelve masterworks of modern American architecture." Venturi's cardboard and wood models of the house, at several design stages, are in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art
in New York.
Postmodern architecture
Postmodern architecture began as an international style the first examples of which are generally cited as being from the 1950s, but did not become a movement until the late 1970s and continues to influence present-day architecture...
movement, is located in the suburban neighborhood of Chestnut Hill
Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Chestnut Hill is a neighborhood in the Northwest Philadelphia section of the United States city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.-Boundaries:Chestnut Hill is bounded as follows:...
in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Philadelphia County, with which it is coterminous. The city is located in the Northeastern United States along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It is the fifth-most-populous city in the United States,...
. It was designed by architect Robert Venturi
Robert Venturi
Robert Charles Venturi, Jr. is an American architect, founding principal of the firm Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates, and one of the major figures in the architecture of the twentieth century...
for his mother Vanna Venturi, and constructed between 1962 -1964.
The five room house stands only about 30 feet tall at the top of the chimney, but has a monumental front facade, an effect achieved by intentionally manipulating the architectural elements that indicate a building's scale. A non-structural applique arch and "hole in the wall" windows, among other elements, together with Venturi's book Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture were an open challenge to Modernist orthodoxy.
Architectural historian Vincent Scully
Vincent Scully
Vincent Joseph Scully, Jr. is Sterling Professor Emeritus of the History of Art in Architecture at Yale University, and the author of several books on the subject...
called it "the biggest small building of the second half of the twentieth century.”
Client and architect, mother and son
The design of "Mother's House", as architect Robert Venturi frequently calls the house, was affected by Vanna Venturi as both the client whose needs had to be met, and also as the mother who helped develop the architect's talent and personality.Vanna was a feminist, socialist, pacifist and vegetarian with an active intellectual life, reading books mostly on history, current events, and biography. She was born to Italian immigrant parents in Philadelphia in 1893. She dropped out of high school because her family could not afford to buy her a coat, so she was essentially self-educated. She did not marry until relatively late in life in 1924, marrying a fruit and produce merchant, Robert Venturi, Sr. Her only child, Robert, Jr. was born in 1925. Possibly because of her liberal views she perceived herself as an "outsider" and became a Quaker
Religious Society of Friends
The Religious Society of Friends, or Friends Church, is a Christian movement which stresses the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. Members are known as Friends, or popularly as Quakers. It is made of independent organisations, which have split from one another due to doctrinal differences...
. Robert, Jr. said "I never went to public school: pledging allegiance to the flag - 'coercive patriotism' my mother called it - was anathema to her." The family made summer trips to Arden, Delaware
Arden, Delaware
Arden is a village and art colony in New Castle County, Delaware, in the United States, founded in 1900 as a radical Georgist single-tax community by sculptor Frank Stephens and architect Will Price. The village occupies about 160 acres, with half kept as open land. According to the 2010 Census,...
and Rose Valley, Pennsylvania
Rose Valley, Pennsylvania
Rose Valley is a small but historic borough in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, United States. Its area is and the population was 944 at the 2000 census. It was settled by Quaker farmers in 1682, and later water mills along Ridley Creek drove manufacturing in the nineteenth century...
, two communities organized by architect Will Price
Will Price
William Lightfoot Price was an influential American architect, a pioneer in the use of reinforced concrete, and a founder of the utopian communities of Arden, Delaware and Rose Valley, Pennsylvania.-Career:...
who was inspired by the Arts and Crafts Movement
Arts and Crafts movement
Arts and Crafts was an international design philosophy that originated in England and flourished between 1860 and 1910 , continuing its influence until the 1930s...
and the then-radical economics of Henry George
Henry George
Henry George was an American writer, politician and political economist, who was the most influential proponent of the land value tax, also known as the "single tax" on land...
. In Rose Valley the family attended plays by George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
at the Hedgerow Theater.
The family attended the Quaker Philadelphia Yearly Meeting
Philadelphia Yearly Meeting
Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, or simply Philadelphia Yearly Meeting or PYM, is the central organizing body for Quaker meetings in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, area....
at the Arch Street Friends Meeting House
Arch Street Friends Meeting House
Arch Street Friends Meeting House, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is a Friends Meeting House of the Religious Society of Friends . It is the oldest meetinghouse of the Religious Society of Friends still in use in the United States and the largest in the world.Pennsylvania founder and Quaker...
.
Robert, Jr. attended a Quaker grade school, then the Episcopal Academy, and later Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
earning both bachelors and masters degrees. From 1954-1956 he was a Rome Prize
Rome Prize
The Rome Prize is an American award made annually by the American Academy in Rome, through a national competition, to 15 emerging artists and to 15 scholars The Rome Prize is an American award made annually by the American Academy in Rome, through a national competition, to 15 emerging artists...
Fellow at the American Academy in Rome
American Academy in Rome
The American Academy in Rome is a research and arts institution located on the Gianicolo in Rome.- History :In 1893, a group of American architects, painters and sculptors met regularly while planning the fine arts section of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition...
. He then taught architectural theory at the University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...
, working with Louis Kahn
Louis Kahn
Louis Isadore Kahn was an American architect, based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. After working in various capacities for several firms in Philadelphia, he founded his own atelier in 1935...
. As a professional architect he worked in the offices of Eero Saarinen
Eero Saarinen
Eero Saarinen was a Finnish American architect and industrial designer of the 20th century famous for varying his style according to the demands of the project: simple, sweeping, arching structural curves or machine-like rationalism.-Biography:Eero Saarinen shared the same birthday as his father,...
, Louis Kahn, and Oscar Stonorov
Oscar Stonorov
Oscar Gregory Stonorov , was a modernist architect and architectural writer, historian and archivist who emigrated to the United States from Germany in 1929.His first name is often spelled "Oskar".-Early life:...
.
In 1959 Robert, Sr. died, leaving his wife enough money to build the house and live comfortably. The designs for the house by Robert, Jr. evolved over four years, but the architect noted only two indications of disagreement from his client. When the work was about three-fourths complete, she looked at the traditional 19th-century house next door and remarked "Oh, isn't that a nice house." She also rejected the marble floor in the dining area, considering it to be ostentatious, but relented as the house was nearing completion. Along with the Guild House, an apartment house for the elderly, also completed in 1964, the Vanna Venturi House was Venturi's first work as an independent architect.
As a widow nearing the age of 70 as the house was completed, Vanna required that all her daily routine could be conducted on one floor, possibly with the help of a live-in caretaker. Thus the first floor plan contains all the main rooms of the house - the master bedroom, a full bathroom, the caretaker's room, the kitchen and a living/dining area. She did not drive, so there is no garage. Her son, the architect, occupied the second floor, which contains a bedroom/studio with a large lunette window, a private balcony, and a half-bath on the stair landing. The house was also specifically designed for her antiques and reproduction furniture, which she had collected over 50 year.
Robert lived in the house until a few months after his 1967 marriage to Denise Scott Brown
Denise Scott Brown
Denise Scott Brown, is an architect, planner, writer, educator, and principal of the firm Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates in Philadelphia...
. Vanna Venturi lived in the house from 1964 though 1973, often lecturing visiting architects on architecture and the architect. In 1973 she moved to a nursing home, and died in 1975. The house was sold in 1973 to friends of the architect who continue to maintain it as a private residence.
Design
Venturi designed the Vanna Venturi House at the same time that he wrote his anti-Modernist polemicPolemic
A polemic is a variety of arguments or controversies made against one opinion, doctrine, or person. Other variations of argument are debate and discussion...
Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture in which he outlined his own architectural ideas. During the writing he redesigned the house at least five times in fully worked-out versions. A description of the house is included in the book and the house is viewed as an embodiment of the ideas in the book. He states:
Many of the basic elements of the house are a reaction against standard Modernist architectural elements: the pitched roof rather than flat roof, the emphasis on the central hearth and chimney, a closed ground floor "set firmly on the ground" rather than the Modernist columns and glass walls which open up the ground floor. On the front elevation the broken pediment or gable and a purely ornamental applique arch reflect a return to Mannerist architecture and a rejection of Modernism. Thus the house is a direct break from Modern architecture, designed in order to disrupt and contradict formal Modernist aesthetics.
The site of the house is flat, with a long driveway connecting it to the street. Venturi placed the parallel walls of the house perpendicular to the main axis of the site, defined by the driveway, rather than the usual placement along the axis. Unusually, the gable is placed on the long side of the rectangle formed by the house, and there is no matching gable at the rear. The chimney is emphasized by the centrally placed room on the second floor, but the actual chimney is small and off-center. The effect is to magnify the scale of the small house and make the facade appear to be monumental. The scale magnifying effects are not carried over to the sides and rear of the house, thus making the house appear to be both large and small from different angles.
The central chimney and staircase dominate the interior of the house.
The themes of scale, contradiction, and "whimsy" - "not inappropriate to an individual house," can be seen at the top of the stair, that seems to go from the second floor to a non-existent third floor.
The house was constructed with intentional formal architectural, historical and aesthetic contradictions. Venturi has compared the iconic front facade to "a child's drawing of a house."
Yet he has also written, "This building recognizes complexities and contradictions: it is both complex and simple, open and closed, big and little; some of its elements are good on one level and bad on another its order accommodates the generic elements and of the house in general, and the circumstantial elements of a house in particular."
About historical references, the swiss architectural theorist Stanislaus von Moos regards the monumental facade as a recall to Michelangelo
Michelangelo
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni , commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art...
's Porta Pia
Porta Pia
Porta Pia is a gate in the Aurelian Walls of Rome, Italy. One of Pope Pius IV's civic improvements to the city, it is named after him. Situated at the end of a new street, the Via Pia, it was designed by Michelangelo in replacement for the Porta Nomentana situated several hundred meters...
, the back wall to Palladio's
Andrea Palladio
Andrea Palladio was an architect active in the Republic of Venice. Palladio, influenced by Roman and Greek architecture, primarily by Vitruvius, is widely considered the most influential individual in the history of Western architecture...
Nymphaeum at Villa Barbaro
Villa Barbaro
Villa Barbaro, also known as the Villa di Maser, is a large villa at Maser in the Veneto region of northern Italy. It was designed and built by the Italian architect Andrea Palladio, with frescos by Paolo Veronese and sculptures by Alessandro Vittoria for Daniele Barbaro, Patriarch of Aquileia...
and the broken pediments to the facade of Moretti
Luigi Moretti
Luigi Walter Moretti was an Italian architect.- Education and academic career :He was born in via Napoleone III, on the Esquiline Hill, in the same apartment where he lived almost his entire life...
's Il Girasole house (building also cited by Venturi's in Complexity and Contradiction in architecture).
Neighborhood
Chestnut Hill is a suburban neighborhood located within the boundaries of Philadelphia. It was first settled in the early eighteenth century and still has many stone buildings from that period. In the second half of the nineteenth century many Victorian mansionsVictorian architecture
The term Victorian architecture refers collectively to several architectural styles employed predominantly during the middle and late 19th century. The period that it indicates may slightly overlap the actual reign, 20 June 1837 – 22 January 1901, of Queen Victoria. This represents the British and...
were built in the area. Several residences within a few blocks of the Vanna Venturi House were designed by well-known architects. The entire neighborhood is part of the Chestnut Hill Historic District
Chestnut Hill Historic District (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania)
The Chestnut Hill Historic District is a historic area in the Chestnut Hill section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.It was added to the National Register of Historic Places as a historic district in 1985.-Contributing properties:...
on the National Register of Historic Places
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...
.
The Houston-Sauveur House, built in 1885 by architects G. W. & W. D. Hewitt
G. W. & W. D. Hewitt
G. W. & W. D. Hewitt was a prominent architectural firm in the eastern United States at the turn of the twentieth century. It was founded in Philadelphia in 1878, by brothers George Wattson Hewitt and William Dempster Hewitt , both members of the American Institute of Architects...
, is one of many Victorian mansions in the immediate neighborhood. Nearby modern architecture includes Louis Kahn
Louis Kahn
Louis Isadore Kahn was an American architect, based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. After working in various capacities for several firms in Philadelphia, he founded his own atelier in 1935...
's Esherick House
Esherick House
The Esherick House in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is one of the most studied of the nine built houses designed by American architect Louis Kahn. Commissioned by Margaret Esherick, it was completed in 1961....
and a house in the International Style
International style (architecture)
The International style is a major architectural style that emerged in the 1920s and 1930s, the formative decades of Modern architecture. The term originated from the name of a book by Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson, The International Style...
designed by Kenneth Day. A bit further away is Cherokee Village, a 104-unit apartment complex designed by Oscar Stonorov
Oscar Stonorov
Oscar Gregory Stonorov , was a modernist architect and architectural writer, historian and archivist who emigrated to the United States from Germany in 1929.His first name is often spelled "Oskar".-Early life:...
in the 1950s. Venturi worked on this project as a draftsman. Two other houses designed by Stonorov, and the house of Venturi's long-time partner, John Rauch, are near the apartment complex.
The Esherick and Vanna Venturi Houses, invite comparison, having been built within two years and one block of each other by Philadelphia's best known 20th Century architects. In Kahn's building proportion and symmetry bind the building together; in Venturi's the buildings elements appear as fragments of the whole. The Esherick House seems devoid of ornament, the Venturi House has a large, purely ornamental arch on its facade. The Esherick House is essentially symmetric, but the Venturi House contradicts it basic symmetry with asymmetric windows.
Recognition
In 1989 the house won the prestigious Twenty-five Year AwardTwenty-five Year Award
The Twenty-five Year Award is an architecture prize awarded by the American Institute of Architects to buildings and structures that have "stood the test of time for 25 to 35 years", and that "[exemplify] design of enduring significance." The project receiving the award can be located anywhere in...
, awarded by the American Institute of Architects
American Institute of Architects
The American Institute of Architects is a professional organization for architects in the United States. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the AIA offers education, government advocacy, community redevelopment, and public outreach to support the architecture profession and improve its public image...
to a single project each year that has "stood the test of time for 25 to 35 years." Two years later Venturi was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize
Pritzker Prize
The Pritzker Architecture Prize is awarded annually by the Hyatt Foundation to honour "a living architect whose built work demonstrates a combination of those qualities of talent, vision and commitment, which has produced consistent and significant contributions to humanity and the built...
for work that "has produced consistent and significant contributions to humanity ... through the art of architecture." In 2005, The United States Postal Service
United States Postal Service
The United States Postal Service is an independent agency of the United States government responsible for providing postal service in the United States...
featured the house on a postage stamp
Postage stamp
A postage stamp is a small piece of paper that is purchased and displayed on an item of mail as evidence of payment of postage. Typically, stamps are made from special paper, with a national designation and denomination on the face, and a gum adhesive on the reverse side...
in a series of "Twelve masterworks of modern American architecture." Venturi's cardboard and wood models of the house, at several design stages, are in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
in New York.
External links
- Great Buildings, Vanna Venturi House, accessed 2010-11-16
- Vanna Venturi House, Venturi, Scott Brown & Associates, accessed 2010-11-16
- Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates, Architectural Archives of the University of Pennsylvania, accessed 2010-12-08
- Twentieth Century Chestnut Hill, Robert Venturi, Chestnut Hill Historical Society, accessed 2010-12-10