Palm Beach Moderne

DecoVS.

Moderne

The streamlined style of Art Moderne evolved from Art Deco. By the 1930s, the aerodynamic designs of industry came to replace the detailed ornamental designs associated with Art Deco.

Art Deco Characteristics:

smooth stucco wall surface

vertical emphasis from tower or other projections zigzags and other geometric and stylized motifs

Moderne Characteristics:

smooth stucco wall surface and flat roof horizontal emphasis from grooves, lines, balustrades curved corners glass block and round windows

Art

Deco

Art Deco celebrated the advent of the machineage building—it was another step toward a modern future that embraced geometric and naturalistic forms. The term came from the 1925 Exposition des Arts Decoratifs et Industrials Modernes in Paris. Although the United States did not participate in this exhibition, it greatly influenced North American architects and designers. There is some intersection between Deco and Moderne—for example, Marion Sims Wyeth’s Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, which is both streamlined and ornamental.

Wyeth & King’s Norton Museum of Art (1941)

Design Streamlined

As technology advanced, the sense of speed was expressed through everything from commonplace household objects to modes of transportation. Early proponents of streamlined design were industrial designers such as Walter Dorwin Teague, who designed iconic radios, cameras, and buildings for the World’s Fair, and Raymond Loewy, designer of Studebaker cars, the classic Coca-Cola bottle, and the Greyhound Bus.

Raymond Loewy 1938 Studebaker, courtesy Hagley Museum and Library

BelfordShoumate

Belford Shoumate didn’t want to be confined to any one particular architectural style. He is recognized for his artistry and the ability to bring his illustrative pastels to life. After studying architecture at the University of Pennsylvania under Paul Phillipe Cret, where he also was an Assistant Instructor in Design, he worked for Joseph Urban in New York City as a color specialist. Urban greatly influenced his work, especially in his interpretation of the Moderne style and use of color to define space. He then worked for Carlos Schoeppl, known for his elegant Miami estates, for one year before arriving in West Palm Beach in 1936.

“Back then I was very much influenced by Joseph Urban and the New School of Social Research. I appreciated Urban’s use of color and the success he was having with color at the World’s Fair. We architects all joined right in with him. We were all caught up in color and form back then.” —Shoumate, 1988

Fore and aFt, 1937

Designated as a landmark 1986

The avant-garde Fore and Aft has the presence of a ship overlooking the water on North Lake Way. L. Phillips Clarke and Edgar S. Wortman, who designed many Deco homes in Lake Worth, were the architects of record. Shoumate was the lead designer who provided all of the drawings for Clare Murray and Ada Davis Stecher, who founded the Palm Beach School for Girls.

Peruvian avenue residence, 1937

Designated as a landmark 1994

A few months after Fore and Aft was completed, Shoumate became a registered architect and designed a diminutive house for Jack M. Davis, the manager of the Hotel Mayflower. The residence is similar to Fore and Aft, with scalloped details and porthole windows, but on a smaller scale. By the end of 1937 Shoumate also designed a Deco night club in West Palm Beach.

aPartment Building concePt

Shoumate drew hundreds of untitled conceptual drawings in his signature pastels. This Moderne building includes corner mitered windows, porthole windows, and a flat roof.

Belford Shoumate (1903—1991)

[Above] Detail of Fore and Aft, featuring the V8 symbol. [Below] Shoumate and his beloved Studebakers.

UrbanJoseph

Joseph Urban was born in Vienna and studied architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna—under prominent architect Otto Wagner, he later established himself as an architect as well as a book illustrator and theatrical designer. In 1911 he immigrated to the United States to become the designer of the Boston Opera Company. After the company went bankrupt, he began designing sets in New York for the Ziegfeld Follies and the Metropolitan Opera. He also worked at Randolph Hearst’s Cosmopolitan Productions from 1919–1924, where he designed film sets. He was the first art director to design Moderne sets, such as Enchantment (1921)—the first American movie to feature modern interior design—and The Young Diana (1922). Urban was able to open his architectural studio in New York with the money he made designing sets.

Urban contributed to the boom time architecture in Palm Beach by designing extravagant buildings that defied classification. His work has been described as Moorish Deco, Mediterranean Revival with Hispano-Moresque details, and simply “Urbanesque.” Three of his extant designs opened in 1927: Mar-a-Lago (redesign), the Bath and Tennis Club, and the Paramount Theater.

“America doesn’t have to fake. You will have here an architecture which is national and unique, particularly in your huge cities.”

—Urban, 1926

[Above] Urban served as the “advisor in coloring” for the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair “A Century of Progress.” He developed a palette of color combinations for each structure, including Paul Phillipe Cret’s Hall of Science, courtesy University of Chicago Library.

[Above] Urban designed what is believed to be the first International Style building in the United States—the New School for Social Research building (1929–1930) in New York City, courtesy Joseph Urban Archive, Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University.

Artwork

Moderne forms made their way into the States through film sets such as Urban’s The Young Diana, courtesy Joseph Urban Archive, Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University.

• Paramount Theater drawing, courtesy Joseph Urban Archive, Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University.

Joseph Urban (1872–1933)

[Above] Aquatint by Donald Douglas of Urban’s Bath and Tennis Club, courtesy Joseph Urban Archive, Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University.

VolkJohn

John Volk was born in Graz, Austria, and immigrated to New York City at the age of nine with his family. Volk studied architecture at Columbia University and apprenticed with H.P. Knowles, a Masonic architect in New York. In 1925 he relocated to Florida during the real estate boom, and he opened his own practice there in 1926. He was commissioned to design over 2,000 projects during his 60 years of practicing architecture in Palm Beach.

“When the market crashed and the Depression followed, there wasn’t a client in sight who wanted to build the elaborate Spanish house. Everyone was broke. Those who weren’t didn’t want to make a show of their money.”

—Volk, 1972

White caPs, 1935

Designated as a landmark in 2013

Volk designed White Caps for James and Adeline Moffett. James Moffett was the first Federal Housing Administrator (FHA) under the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration. Earlier that year, the FHA presented the exhibit “Modeltown & Modernization Magic” at the California Pacific International Exposition in San Diego. The exhibit sought to educate the public about the benefits of the National Housing Act, and Moffett spoke about the importance of visualization when it came to policy. For his own home, he knew that Volk could envision a progressive design that was suitable for the oceanfacing site.

hatch s dePartment store, 1936

One year later, in 1936, Volk implemented the Moderne style again when he renovated Hatch’s Department Store on Clematis Street in West Palm Beach. Bernard Henry Kroger, an American businessman who created the Kroger chain of supermarkets, commissioned Volk to transform an existing Beaux Art structure. Volk stripped away all ornamentation and created a sleek modern façade.

havens shoPs, 1941

When County Road was widened in 1941, John Thomas Havens asked Volk to redesign the façades on his shops on County Road from Royal Poinciana to Sunset. Volk applied the same Moderne treatment he gave Hatch’s to the buildings that wrapped around each corner, with different styles to the shops in between. The New Deal era “Modernize Main Street” campaign may have influenced Volk’s design.

[Above] John Volk (1901–1984) [Below] Modeltown, FHA exhibit, courtesy Library of Congress.

[Above] Eleanor Neves Cosden was the interior designer of White Caps, and the wallpaper in the bar was designed by Bemelmans, the artist best known for his illustrations in Vogue and the children’s book Madeline.

Maurice Fatio was born in Geneva, Switzerland. He studied at the Zurich Polytechnic School under Karl Moser, a proponent of Modernist architecture, and obtained his degree in architecture in 1920. At the age of twenty-three, he arrived in the United States and worked for Harry T. Lindeberg designing country homes. In 1921, he formed a partnership with William Treanor, and they proceeded to open a Florida office in addition to their New York practice.

MauriceFatio Joseph

“There are no traditions to follow here, if one wants to get away from the colonial style wooden house. And one is forced, for the Americans who don’t want modern art, to become eclectic, and to take one’s inspiration from the best examples of the best periods of each European country.”—Fatio, 1921

mañana Point, 1934

Fatio designed Mañana Point with owner Grover Loening, a German aircraft manufacturer who graduated from Columbia University with the first ever degree in aeronautical science and who was part of Orville Wright’s original design team. Loening and his wife Marka went to the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair “A Century of Progress” to study the Moderne architectural style. They were inspired by the Illinois Host Building and brought their ideas for a simple structure made of new materials back to Fatio. The house on North Lake Way was non-symmetrical, based on cubic forms, and was filled with streamlined furniture.

The Reef, 1936

Designated as a landmark 1990

Fatio designed his second Moderne residence on North Ocean Boulevard for Vadim and Josephine Hartford Makaroff, an heir to the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company (A&P). Although modern in execution, the symmetrical classical elements of the house were rooted in architectural history. Marjorie Oelrichs, a socialite also known as “Bubbles,” designed the interiors in a contemporary style. The living room featured replicas of the French modernist designer Jean-Michel Frank’s furniture and a stacked-glass console table by Eyre de Lanux.

la Folie monvel, 1936

Designated as a landmark 1990

The French artist Bernard Boutet de Monvel asked Fatio to design a geometric folie, a French term used to describe eccentric structures. This was not Monvel’s first octagonal space: architect Louis Süe designed an octagonal dining room for Monvel’s home in Paris. The folie on Hi Mount Road was inspired by the pair of octagonal pavilions Süe designed by for the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts in 1925. It does not fit the traditional Deco or Moderne mold; however, it is a fine example of Fatio’s interpretation of these styles.

out oF Bounds, 1940

Designed for Theodore Buhl and his wife Anastasia Reilly, a Ziegfeld Follies dancer, of Grosse Point, Michigan. Out of Bounds was the couple’s second home and the third house to be built on the Island Road development. The unique brick veneer sets it apart from the other Moderne designs. Worrell’s decorators designed the interiors with a palette of bleached woods, Lucite, and muraled mirrors. Modernist Janet Darling Webel was the landscape architect.

“The house is a perfect example of the adaptability of modern architecture to tropical climes.” —Palm Beach Life, 1941.

[Above] Fatio, George Huntington Hartford, and Grover Loening at Morrison Field, courtesy Historical Society of Palm Beach.

[Right] The Reef living room, interior design by Marjorie Oelrichs.

[Left] Mañana Point living room: “One of the most desirable features of the modern style to the owner is that in the interior of the house he can get every piece of furniture and every convenience exactly where he wants it.”—Loening, 1936

Maurice Fatio (1897–1943)