New York Historian and Patron Buys Parisian Landmark
The Maison de Verre in Paris, Pierre Chareau’s most celebrated work, has been purchased by Robert Rubin, a doctoral candidate in architectural history at Columbia University. Rubin, a former commodity and currency trader, bought the 75-year-old house directly from its owners, Dr. and Mrs. Vellay, who is the daughter of the house’s original clients, Dr. and Mrs. Dalsace. Chareau collaborated with Louis Dalvet, a master craftsman, and Bernard Bijvoet, a licensed architect, on the design of the iconic residence, which took four years to build.
The Maison de Verre could not have found a more fitting caretaker. Rubin is writing his thesis on the work of Chareau and Jean Prouvé, and recently rescued a work by the latter, the Maison Tropicale, which was prefabricated in France and constructed in Brazzaville in 1951. In 1997, Rubin sponsored a mission to retrieve the house, the sole survivor among three prototypes, from the Republic of Congo which was then in the midst of a civil war. The Tropical House was installed on the Yale University campus a year ago and was at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles until January. Rubin has donated the house to the Georges Pompidou Center, where it will be exhibited in 2007 as part of a larger exhibition on Prouvé.
Rubin intends to live in the Maison de Verre with his wife, Stéphane (who is French) and their three children. They have kept a residence in Paris since 1981. According to Rubin, the Maison de Verre requires some restoration work, which will not be completed until 2007. “Structurally the house is okay,” he said. “We have to re-do things like the electrical wiring, which is a bit of a project because we’re going to preserve the original system.” All the electrical wires were encased in tubes that were separate from the exposed steel-frame, glass-block structure.
The sale of the Maison de Verre was a potentially sensitive issue given that the house is designated a historic landmark. Dr. and Mrs. Vellay, who are in their 80s, wanted to ensure the house’s long-term preservation and accessibility, according architectural historian Brian Brace Taylor, who wrote a book on Chareau (Taschen, 1992) and introduced Rubin to the Vellays. Taylor lived in Paris for more than 30 years, teaching, writing, and editing MIMAR (which he founded) for a period. He was active with the Friends of the Glass House, a volunteer association that helped the Vellays handle requests for visits and organized guided tours. Now in New York teaching at NYIT, Taylor observed, “The Vellays weren’t interested in the prospect of the house being collected as a curiosity, and they also sensed that a cultural institution wouldn’t know what to do with it.” He pointed to Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoie, which is owned by the French Ministry of Culture, and has sat empty for nearly 20 years, unfurnished and without purpose.
“Rubin is in the unique position of being an architectural historian and having the means to recognize and define a vocation for the house that is appropriate to its history,” said Taylor. “The house should have some life in it, but the right kind.”
“The important thing to me is that the house stay a house,” said Rubin. “If you turn it into a museum or a foundation, it would lose its spirit.” He assures that the house will be accessible to visitors in some manner and he will no doubt document its continuing history fastidiously.
Cathy Lang Ho