Greene & Greene: The Blacker House

Thomas A Heinz & Randell L Makinson, photography by Brad Pitt

Editions

Review

The work of architect brothers, Charles Sumner and Henry Mather Greene is at last being acknowledged for its contribution to the development of the domestic environment in the United States during the 20th Century.  There is evidence of this in Phaidon’s major survey of their careers (Greene & Greene) as well as in this monograph on the house they built for Robert R Blacker in Pasadena, California.  This proved to be the brothers’ most significant commission and it resulted in one of the most beautiful and important private residences in America, rivalled only by Frank Lloyd Wright’s ‘Falling Water’.

Authors Makinson and Heinz, architectural practitioners as well as academics, give us a brief summary of the careers of the gentlemanly brothers and the family background of their enlightened patron.  They then embark on a detailed account of the planning of the house, and of the construction (1907-1910), and then write of its decline and of the subsequent plundering of its unique contents, before dealing finally with the extensive five year renovation of this, the largest and most splendid Greene and Greene masterwork.

Co-author Heinz provides the principal photography while Brad Pitt - yes, THE Brad Pitt - contributes what he calls “an interpretive photographic essay” [prétentieux, lui?? - Ed.] consisting of ravishing images, using I suspect, infra-red techniques, and focusing on details which reveal him to be as useful behind a lens as he is in front of it. [We've got the message.] - review by Stewart Grimshaw