Greene Jones Mid Century Modern Interiors and Renovation
A "MCM" residence on the National Historic Register is renovated.

I have a passion for mid century modern houses and 1950s design.  I feel very fortunate that I had the opportunity to work on a wonderful National Historic Register residence designed by architect Terry Waugh in the 1950s.  We really wanted to honor this talented architect’s work by treading carefully.

The project’s scope consisted of:

Selecting tile and redesigning the pattern for two bathrooms’ showers, selecting floor tile for a powder room and one bathroom; selecting appropriate paint colors for 5 different rooms, finding a mid-century modern fabric for 4 fine vintage Edward Wormley chairs, and finding a diaphanous fabric for a future room divider curtain.

Both bathrooms and the powder room had either crumbling 4″ x 4″ white wall tile, asbestos floor tile or both.  A major constraint for the main bathroom was existing blue floor tile installed by a previous owner (which had to stay due to cost).  In both main bathrooms, the 4 x 4 white shower tiles were falling off the walls into the tub, leaving gaping holes into the substrate.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This project became a good link between our intention to both honor architect Waugh’s original intentions in the design and also keep the project affordable for the owners.

As a starting point we selected an inexpensive cream subway tile to use as a “field tile” in both main bathrooms.  We felt the horizontal proportion of the tile worked much better with the style of the house than the square did.  But each bath would then get an accent band of a different color accent tile, so that they would have their own identities.  The proportions and layout would be the unifying factor.

The accent band in the main bathroom is a bluish-green glass ashlar tile.  We chose this because the current owner serendipitously found the old specifications by architect Waugh mentioning his original intention to have a green Carrara glass tile in the bathrooms.  This was never installed, presumably due to expense. Carrara glass was manufactured from the 1920s through the 1950s, its heydey being the art deco era.  Carrara glass was a product also known as  ”pigmented structural glass” made by the Penn-American Plate Glass Company.  A similar product was called Vitrolite, made by Libby-Owens-Ford Glass.  One can still find Carrara and Vitrolite at architectural salvage shops.  We researched using it,  but the cost (including very high shipping costs due to the heavy weight of the glass) were not in the budget for this project.

However, we still wanted to honor Waugh’s intent.  So we decided to recall his desire for Carrara glass by using a greenish blue glass ashlar tile as an accent band and datum line in both bathrooms.  Wall recesses were designed off the datum line.  The patterns in both bathrooms were designed to have precisely the same proportions in field tile, accent band and recesses.

After the tile was installed, we chose paint colors.  As a color lover,  I admire the owners for not fearing color, especially deep rich tones.  Warm earth colors fit the era and the Frank Lloyd Wright influenced house.  For the powder room, we used a persimmon red.  For the first bath (with the blue tile accent) we chose a buttery yellow to add warmth.  For the second bathroom, we selected deep gold with charcoal.