The Aluminaire House

Wallace K. Harrison’s 11-acre estate was a , but it was also home to another Modernist masterpiece, the Aluminaire House. 

Albert Frey and A. Lawrence Kocker designed the Aluminaire House in 1931 for the Architectural League Show in New York.  Erected in just 10 days, it was the first all-metal, pre-fabricated house in America. 

It was meant to be a prototype for affordable housing.  According to a March 8, 1987 New York Times article, “The Aluminaire House was designed with a different goal—to prove the applicability of modernist theory to middle- class housing, to hold out the promise of a light, airy, open new world.” 

After the 8-day exhibition was over, Wallace K. Harrison purchased the house for $1,000.  The house was disassembled and moved to his Round Swamp estate where it was reassembled.  Because the architects designed and built it specifically for an indoor architectural exhibition, the house had no heating system and many of the walls were left open for viewing.  Harrison therefore installed a steam heating system and strengthened and finished the walls. 

As we learned last week, Harrison expanded his home in 1940 and added a new wing. As a result of this addition, the Aluminaire House had to be moved from its original location to a new spot on his estate.  The new location was on top of a hill, and so the columns and ground floor had to be removed. 

The Aluminaire House became the Harrison’s guest cottage, and was used often.  As reported in the November 1992 Historic Preservation News, H. Ward Jandl wrote in his book Yesterday’s Houses of Tomorrow: “Over time the third- floor garden terrace was enclosed to accommodate an additional bedroom, the double-height space was filled in, and other equally unsympathetic alterations were made.  Most of the exterior panels lost their shininess, many became dented, and some were replaces.  The Aluminaire’s last tenant was evicted for non-payment of rent in 1986.” 

Despite being listed on the National Register of Historic Places in December 1985, the fate of the Aluminaire House was in question by July 1986, and it was listed on the Fall/Winter 1986 SPLIA list of endangered places. The then owners of the Wallace K. Harrison estate filed for a demolition permit for the Aluminaire House.  At the time, the owners of the Harrison estate were subdividing and developing the property into four lots known as Laurel View Estates. 

According to a September 20, 1986 Newsday article, “pleas for its preservation have been arriving at Town Hall since an application for its demolition permit was filed….”  Copies of these 75+ letters are on file in the Town Historian’s office, and included letters not just from residents, but from leading architects all over the country and the world. 

The demolition permit was filed because under the new subdivision the Aluminaire House was located on a two-acre lot which, under zoning laws, could only serve as home to one residence, therefore, by keeping the Aluminaire House a new owner could not build a new house.

Two days after that article was written, on Sept. 22, 1986, the Huntington Historic Preservation Commission decided to recommend the Aluminaire House for local designation, which would protect it from demolition.  The public hearing for the Town Board to vote on the possible designation was set for March 10, 1987. 

Unfortunately the records in the Town Historian’s office do not explain what happened regarding that public hearing, though they do include a Newsday article from April 30, 1987 which states that the Town “put off action on the Aluminaire House… and said it would set another public hearing on designated the three-story Aluminaire House… as a town historical site.  It announced the delay after the former Town Supervisor Kenneth Butterfield, representing the house’s owner, said a required advisory report form the Town Planning Department and the Huntington Historic Preservation Commission had not been filed.” 

While this battle over designation was going on, Jon Michael Schwarting, the then chairman of the New York Institute of Technology’s School of Architecture, fell in love with the house and “quickly convinced the Town of Huntington, the estate owner, and college administrators that everyone would benefit if the house was dismantled, moved to their Central Islip campus, and reconstructed by students,” according to the November 1992 Historic Preservation News. 

The college then applied for a state grant from the Department of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation for $99,000 to move the house from Huntington to Central Islip.  The property owner would donate the house itself to the school.  According to a June 18, 1997 Newsday article, its designation status was still pending at this time and Albert Frey, the architect who built the Aluminaire House, then 83, was excited at the prospect of students getting to use the house as part of their study. 

Newsday announced on August 30, 1987 that New York State had awarded $131,750 to NYIT for the disassembly and relocation of the Aluminaire House.  By 1988 the house had officially become part of the curriculum for NYIT architecture students who used it as a case study for their design workshop class. 

According to a July 10, 1988 New York Times article, “After research into the history of low-cost and mass-produced housing, the students documented, measured and drew the Aluminaire House in both its present and original conditions, and then began systematically disassembling the building in stages—beginning form the inside.”

By March 8, 1990 The Long-Islander was reporting that the following spring the dismantled house would be removed from NYIT storage and reconstructed thanks to a $70,000 grants from the state. 

On April 9, 1992 the New York Times announced that the house would be on view until, “April 30 at the New York Institute of Technology campus in Central Islip, LI.  Visitors can see the house’s framework and drawings and photos of the original…. It will take three years to rebuild the three-level house.  The students are doing it themselves, and [they’re] carefully documenting the process.”

Frances Campani, associate professor of Architecture at New York at NYIT, told me, “The ideas the house embodies, and the process of reconstructing the house, were wonderful educational tools.”

She also provided all of the following information:

“Work continued on the house with both student and professional labor.  The work was paused for lack of funding in 1996.  In 2006 NYIT discontinued most of its academic programs at the Central Islip Campus, including Architecture.  Students and faculty transferred to the Old Westbury or Manhattan campuses.  The land where the Aluminaire House is located is for sale.  The Aluminaire House Foundation was formed in 2010, to relocate, restore and maintain the Aluminaire House as a museum.  NYIT has agreed to transfer ownership of the house to the Foundation."