Historic New England Protects Important Privately Owned Modern Property

Art Daily, March 8, 2011

LINCOLN, MA.- The Flansburgh House in Lincoln, Massachusetts, is the latest privately owned historic property protected through a preservation easement held by Historic New England and is now the second Modern house to enter its nationally recognized Stewardship Program.

Completed in 1963, the Flansburgh House was designed by the late architect Earl R. Flansburgh, FAIA for his family’s private use. The house is designed around an open interior garden court and was built to illustrate Flansburgh's approach to Modern residential design. It is set on a slightly sloping wooded lot and surrounded by tall pine trees and stone walls built by Flansburgh and his sons. Glass windows and sliding glass doors line the outside walls, and glass walls with open hallways line the sides of the open courtyard allowing light to penetrate from both the exterior and interior of the house.

This preservation easement, donated to Historic New England, by Mrs. Louise H. Flansburgh, protects: exterior elevations and interior features, including room configuration, flooring, woodwork, paint colors, built-in furniture, door hardware, and light fixtures; the exterior of an attached garage; and the garden and landscape features. The preservation easement also prevents subdivision and limit new additions and additional structures.

Earl R. Flansburgh's long and distinguished career in architecture focused primarily on the planning and design of educational facilities, but he also designed one or two private houses each year, although hand-picking both the sites and clients. He founded the Boston firm of Earl R. Flansburgh + Associates (now known as Flansburgh Architects) in 1963 and maintained his Boston-based practice for more than forty-five years. His buildings have received more than eighty regional and national design awards. He served as the Boston Society of Architects (BSA) president in 1981 and received the BSA Award of Honor in 1999.

This is the second Modern house protected by Historic New England's Stewardship Program. The Hoover House, designed by Henry Hoover in 1937, and also in Lincoln , entered the program in 2008. Overall, Lincoln and the surrounding area has excellent examples of Modern houses including Historic New England's 1938 Gropius House, designed by Walter Gropius, which is open to the public year round.

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