‘Crystal symbol of a new faith’

The Gropius House (1938) in Lincoln, Mass., an affluent Boston suburb. Walter Gropius (1883-1969), founder of the famous German design school the Bauhaus, designed the house, now a museum, as his family home after he came to teach architecture at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design after fleeing Nazi Germany.

“Together let us desire, conceive, and create the new structure of the future, which will embrace architecture and sculpture and painting in one unity and which will one day rise toward Heaven from the hands of a million workers like the crystal symbol of a new faith.’’

— Walter Gropius

Historic New England says:

“Gropius House {now a museum} combined traditional elements of New England architecture—wood, brick, and fieldstone—with innovative materials including glass block, acoustical plaster, chrome banisters, and the latest technology in fixtures. It features furniture designed by Marcel Breuer and fabricated in Bauhaus workshops. With the family’s possessions still in place, Gropius House has a sense of immediacy and intimacy.’’

Bauhaus meets New England

The house in the affluent Boston suburb of Lincoln designed by famed German-American Modernist architect Walter Gropius (1883-1969). He and his family lived there from 1938, after fleeing Nazi Germany. He taught in the Harvard School of Design.

The house was influential in bringing Bauhaus-inspired designs to the U.S. but Mr. Gropius dIsliked the term “International Modernism” that was applied to the house:. "I made it a point to absorb into my own conception those features of the New England architectural tradition that I found still alive and adequate."

He wrote in April 1919, in “The Bauhaus Proclamation”:

“Together let us desire, conceive, and create the new structure of the future, which will embrace architecture and sculpture and painting in one unity and which will one day rise toward heaven from the hands of a million workers like the crystal symbol of a new faith.’’