In the recent Oscar-winning film The Brutalist, Hungarian-Jewish architect and Holocaust survivor László Tóth escapes to America in the late 1940s, arriving as one of many poor, past-less foreigners to the residents of his new environment. With the exception of his cousin Attila who immigrated earlier, no one is aware of his celebrated talent back home until he finds a patron in wealthy industrialist Harrison Van Buren. Tóth and Van Buren’s lives are triumphantly and tragically intertwined from this point forward, and while both characters are fictionalized amalgamations of notable real-life counterparts, The Brutalist presents a realistic example of how Bauhaus-educated artists influenced the aesthetic zeitgeist in America during and after the World Wars—and most importantly to us, right here in Jacksonville.
Bauhaus Beginnings
Founded by Walter Gropius, the Bauhaus was an art school that operated in Germany from 1919 to 1933, which taught the concepts of geometry, utilitarianism, and simplicity in design and produced the International Style. Renowned architects of the school, in addition to Gropius, include Hannes Meyer, Mies van der Rohe, and Marcel Breuer (who designed the Breuer Building in New York), among other artists such as Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky, whose works on paper reflect a shared ideology that spanned continents.
The Bauhaus designed in 1925 by Gropius in Dessau was the school’s second headquarters. Photograph by Fabrice Fouillet. “How Bauhaus Redefined What Design Could Do for Society” by Nikil Saval, 2019.
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.
Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.
Influences on the Jacksonville Landscape
Parallel to its counterparts in Europe affected by the devastation of war, the landscape of modern Jacksonville is largely shaped by the widespread reaction to the Great Fire of 1901. Architects and builders, not unlike fictional Tóth, flocked here from all over the country to assist in the reconstruction effort, leaving their mark on the city with diverse, hybrid-style homes that make our urban core visually extraordinary. We are fortunate to have post-1930s, Bauhaus-inspired architectural examples all over town—not just International Style, but also Brutalist, Art Moderne, and Mid-Century Modern; however, only one special structure in Riverside Avondale, featured on this year’s Home Tour, exhibits strong International Style qualities.
As described in Jacksonville Magazine (page 16), who’s featuring the RAP Home Tour this month, the 1940-built masonry home at 3022 St. Johns Avenue on Bourbon Alley expresses an abundance of International styling from the stuccoed concrete exterior and curved walls to the horizontal grooves and originally flat roof. The peaked roof you see today was added at a later time. According to the definitive source, written by practitioner Philip Johnson and architectural historian Henry-Russell Hitchcock in 1932:
In the constructions of Perret in France the use of ferroconcrete led to a visible articulation of the supporting skeleton with the walls treated as mere screens between the posts. Thus in the different countries of Europe before the War the conceptions of the International Style had come independently into existence… But it was in America that the promise of a new style appeared first and, up to the War, advanced most rapidly.“
The International Style: Architecture Since 1922
Kassel, Germany.
The International Style in Florida
The Brutalist is uniquely broken into three chapters for a film, even inserting a short intermission as seen in live theatre, and with very little stretch of the imagination, they also echo three major themes of the International Style in America: “The Enigma of Arrival” (diaspora across the Atlantic), “The Hard Core of Beauty” (striking minimalism of design and materials), and “The First Architecture Biennale” (cultural ubiquity and perpetual appreciation).
The International Style in America was primarily utilized for large, commercial buildings and modular apartment housing from 1930 to the mid-’50s (making our private residence at 3022 St. Johns Avenue all the more singular!) due to the economy of materials like concrete, glass, and steel; the emphasis of volume over mass; and the restraint in decorative elements.
In The Brutalist, a conversation between Tóth and one of Van Buren’s contractors, Mr. Woodrow, is telling:
Woodrow: With all due respect, afford the materials?
Tóth: Sir, concrete is sturdy and cheap.
Woodrow: Concrete? It’s not very attractive…
Tóth: Fortunately, the building’s aesthetic is not yours to resolve, Mr Woodrow.
Over time, urban visionaries developed offshoots of the purist Bauhaus principles, appropriating the painstakingly stark and stripped-down International Style, to advance derivative movements such as Art Deco and its less ornamented Art Moderne, Brutalism, and Mid-Century Modern where form follows function in popular culture all the way up through the 1970s (think Don Draper’s office in Mad Men or the eternally fashionable Eames chair). While lacking the decorative flourishes of the “revivals”–Mediterranean, Gothic, Tudor, etcetera, the International Style and Bauhaus offspring are far from artless as masterpieces of refinement and ingenuity.
Other examples of Bauhaus-inspired architecture in Riverside Avondale and throughout Jacksonville you can see for yourself include an International Style apartment building on the river in San Marco, built the same year as 3022 St. Johns Avenue and bearing a striking resemblance to its stucco exterior and curved edges;
International Style apartment building, built in 1940 according to the Duval County Property Appraiser’s website, on the river in San Marco.
the Brutalist Mary L. Singleton Senior Center downtown at 150 East First Street; the Art Deco Orange State Oil Company Service Station (now European Street Cafe) in Avondale at 2753 Park Street; and the Art Moderne Lane Drugstore (now Don Eduardo Cocina Mexicana) in Riverside at 2665 Park Street.
Want to learn even more about the historic architecture of Riverside Avondale? You’re warmly invited to the 51st annual RAP Home Tour on April 12-13! Want the access-plus experience? We hope to see you at our kickoff soiree, the Twilight Party, on Thursday, April 10, at one of this year’s tour homes–2965 St. Johns Avenue. All proceeds benefit the mission of Riverside Avondale Preservation to enhance and preserve the architecture, history, culture, and economic vibrancy of the Riverside Avondale historic neighborhood. Learn more and purchase tickets here!
