Preserving the Bauhaus Legacy on Cape Cod: Saving Marcel Breuer’s Summer Home

The Cape Cod Modern House Trust has a limited window of opportunity to purchase and preserve Marcel Breuer’s own Wellfleet house. Breuer is one of the 20th-century’s most important designers, and his house is without a doubt the most significant modernist house on the Cape. Though in disrepair, the house is entirely original and the acquisition would include Breuer’s irreplaceable collection of art, furniture, books and photographs which will be archived and made available to scholars and the public.

Please join our call to action–click HERE

The House:
In the early 1940s Breuer drove out to the back shore of Wellfleet to visit his friend Serge Chermayeff, and soon purchased a large plot of pristine woodlands next door. In response to the sublime landscape and his interest in New England vernacular buildings Breuer developed his first Long-House prototype, which became one of his two main house types. A colony of artists and designers grew along the shores of the ponds and beaches which included the Gropius and Saarinen families, Florence Knoll, Alexander Calder, Saul Steinberg, and many others.

Though Breuer traveled the world and moved many times, he returned every summer to his Wellfleet house. His ashes, along with his wife Connie’s, are interred nearby. The house’s contents include examples of Breuer’s iconic manufactured furniture, one-of-a-kind tables, couches, and hand-woven wool rugs designed by Marcel and Connie, as well as books and artworks by Paul Klee, Xanti Schawinsky, Alexander Calder and Herbert Bayer.

The Cape Cod Modern House Trust is now under contract and has a limited window of opportunity to buy and preserve the Breuer house, contents, and the environmentally fragile site. If this effort is not successful, Breuer's house will most likely be demolished for its land-value and its contents will be dispersed. An unimaginable tragic loss should this house be lost. 

You can help save the Breuer house with your purchase of a $150, I SUPPORT THE BREUER HOUSE Ticket, which includes a signed copy of Cape Cod Modern: Mid-Century Architecture and Community on the Outer Cape, by Peter McMahon, Founding Director of the Cape Cod Modern House Trust (CCMHT). All proceeds from this ticket benefit The Breuer House Project. 

The Cape Cod Modern House Trust (CCMHT) was founded in 2007 to collect, archive, and share documentation of the outer Cape’s exceptional modern architecture, restore a group of important, endangered modern houses, and to relaunch them as platforms for new creative work.

Since 2008 CCMHT has partnered with the Cape Cod National Seashore to prevent the demolition of four, Park-owned modern houses that were slated for demolition. The Trust leased these four abandoned houses from the Park, restored them and achieved recognition for all four on the National Register of Historic Places.  The Breuer House would be the first building the Trust would own, and would therefore not depend on future lease negotiations with the Park. As with our other projects, we will fully and accurately restore the house, secure National Register protection and archive its contents. ccmht.org  

$18  General Admission
$150  Includes signed book.

Things to Know
Ages 12 and older.
The entrance to the Annenberg Theater is located behind the Annenberg Theater Box Office, adjacent to the Palm Springs Art Museum's North Parking Lot.
Ample free public parking is available in the multi-level public garage across from the Palm Springs Art Museum.
Handicap parking is available.
This event is wheelchair accessible.
The organizer of this event is Modernism Week.

Event Check-in Location
Annenberg Theater
Palm Springs Art Museum
101 N Museum Dr
Palm Springs, CA 92262
View Map

Photo Credits: CCMHT – CCMHT Archives – Stephan Smith – Walter Sanders