Warner House

This house was built for a machinist friend of Goldberg’s, and its design was similar to that shown in the earlier New Town Calumet Planning proposal. This three-bedroom house featured concrete block walls, thermopane windows, radiant heat, and curtains of glass fiber cloth.

Living and dining spaces were divided by a floating bookshelf, with high windows for privacy. Overall dimensions were 30x37’, without the garage, expandable by replacing one window wall. The house was published in Concrete Masonry Pictoral and reportedly was a 1951 Architectural Forum prizewinner.

“He was my automobile mechanic whose children were having psychiatric problems—he had a boy and a girl—and they were growing up and had shared one room ….but they were at an age, I think five or six or seven, when they were beginning to have problems of sharing so much without privacy. He came to me and he said, “Help me”. This was what I was trying to do….. the house got built in 1947 and I replicated some of the thinking with the houses I built out on Drexel Boulevard.”

Described as an experiment in low-cost housing, the roof was made with 4” thick cedar decking, which gave structure, insulation and finish in the one material. During construction, there was major disapproval of the design from the neighborhood and community members even prevented delivery of materials. Goldberg stated “bankers could not visualize investing in this kind of home before it existed”.