Hastings Prototype House facts for kids
Quick facts for kids |
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Hastings Prototype House
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South elevation, 2009
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 Location in New York
Location in the United States
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| Location | Hastings-on-Hudson, NY |
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| Nearest city | Yonkers |
| Area | 0.4 acres (1,600 m2) |
| Built | 1936 |
| Architect | Charles Horn |
| Architectural style | Moderne |
| NRHP reference No. | 91001873 |
| Added to NRHP | December 19, 1991 |
The Hastings Prototype House is a unique building in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. It was built in the 1930s in a style called Moderne. This style uses smooth surfaces and simple shapes. In 1991, it became a part of the National Register of Historic Places. This means it's an important historical site.
This house was meant to be the first of many experimental homes. The builders hoped to create a larger community in Florida using the same ideas. But this never happened. The house was very innovative for its time. It used a special way to make concrete panels for its walls and floors. It also had the first gas-fired heating system in Westchester County. Because of these new ideas, the house was even shown at the 1939 New York World's Fair.
The people who designed and built the house were all local. They weren't part of the big design movements of the time. Charles Horn, the architect, never built another house in the Moderne style. For a while, the house was empty and started to fall apart. People even wanted to tear it down. But in the 1980s, a man who grew up nearby bought it. He researched its history and carefully brought it back to life.
Exploring the House and Its Surroundings
The Hastings Prototype House sits on a corner where Farragut Parkway meets High Street. It's in a neighborhood with many homes built in the early 1900s. The area is mostly residential, meaning people live there. There are a few small shops a block away.
The property is about half an acre and slopes up a little. Besides the house, there's also a garage built into the land. This garage is also considered important to the house's historical listing. A driveway curves from High Street to the garage.
Outside the House: Unique Features
The house itself is like a 21-foot cube. It has a steel frame and a foundation made of cinder block. The outside walls are covered with special concrete panels. These panels are 2 by 10 feet in size. The roof is shaped like a bowl and has a drain in the middle. The main entrance is at a curved corner of the house. It has a small porch with a wooden roof.
The windows are mostly pairs of steel casement windows. These windows open outwards like a door. They are on both floors, on either side of the corners. There's a small window above the main entrance. Another window on the first floor helps light up the kitchen. Near this window is a second entrance, which was made for easy access to the garage.
A wide, flat band runs around the building above the second-story windows. Above that is a low wall called a parapet at the roofline. The front porch has a wooden roof with small tooth-like carvings. This roof is held up by four square wooden pillars. These pillars have decorative tops called capitals.
Inside the House: A Look at the Layout
The main entrance is a wooden door that is set back into the wall. It opens into a small entry area with a closet. Three steps lead down to the living room. This room takes up most of the first floor. Stairs to the second floor are in the opposite corner. The floors are made of the same concrete panels as the walls, covered with asphalt tile. The walls are made of plaster and lath. The kitchen is in the back corner, separated by a wall. Under the stairs, there's storage space and where the original heating controls were.
The upstairs has been changed a lot since the house was built. The floors are now covered in ceramic tile. The walls are made of gypsum (like drywall). The original wooden doors have been replaced with new, flat doors. The layout is similar to the first floor. Most of the space is a large bedroom, with a smaller bedroom above the kitchen. There's also a bathroom. The house does not have a full basement, only a small crawl space underneath.
Garage and Landscaping: Blending with Nature
The driveway ends at the garage, which is just north of the house and slightly uphill. The garage is also made of the same special concrete panels. It has a flat roof that slopes to one side. Inside, there's room for one car. A storage bin hangs over where the car's front would be. A window was cut into one of the concrete panels on the side facing the house. It has glass doors and side panels and is now used as a studio.
Stone retaining walls are on the west side of the driveway and behind the garage. These walls create a small open area between the house's kitchen door and the garage. This area is part of the overall design of the property. The backyard has a terraced feel, with the stone wall and garage creating a sudden change in height. Large trees protect the yard and make it feel private. The front of the house also has a slope with many shrubs and small trees. To the south, facing High Street, more thick plants and mature trees shield the house from its neighbors.
The Story of the Hastings Prototype House
This house was the first of what its builders hoped would be many. They wanted to use a new way of building with special materials. But it turned out to be harder to build than they thought. So, it became the only one of its kind. After being neglected for many years, it was saved and restored by someone who admired it.
1929–1934: Growing Suburbs and New Ideas
In the late 1920s, Westchester County started building a system of parkways. These special roads made it easier for people to drive to New York City for work. The Saw Mill River Parkway passed through Hastings-on-Hudson. To connect to this parkway, a new street called Farragut Parkway was built.
When Farragut Parkway was finished in 1934, it opened up the Uniontown neighborhood for new homes. People living in these new houses could easily reach downtown Hastings and the parkway. Hastings began to change from a small river town to a place where people lived and commuted from. Investors started buying land in Uniontown, hoping to make money.
One of these investors was Hamlin Andrus from Yonkers. He was the son of a rich businessman and politician. Hamlin Andrus used his family money to invest in local opportunities, especially real estate. Instead of building houses in popular styles like Tudor or Colonial Revival, Andrus wanted to try something new. He decided to experiment with modernist styles on his land in Hastings.
Modernist architecture, with its smooth surfaces and simple designs, was new to the U.S. It had mostly been seen in places like Southern California or big cities. It wasn't widely known until a 1932 art exhibit. Andrus planned to build several modern houses in Hastings. If they were successful, he wanted to build a much larger development in Florida. He might have thought that using prefabricated (pre-made) materials would make the houses cheaper to build. This would make them more affordable during the Great Depression, when many people couldn't afford traditional homes.
Andrus hired a local architect named Charles Horn to design the first house. Horn had no experience with modern styles. But he managed to create a house that showed the key features of the Moderne style. This style used new industrial materials, smooth surfaces, curved corners, and very little decoration. Inside, the house was designed to use space efficiently for living and sleeping. This matched the idea that buildings should be honest about how people actually live.
1934–1936: Building with New Ideas
Andrus worked with Louis Gelbman, another local businessman and inventor. Gelbman had 16 patents. Together, they developed and patented the special concrete panels used for the house. They poured concrete and cinder into a steel mold that looked like a waffle iron. When dry, the panels were an inch thick. They looked like exaggerated "C" shapes, with six-inch arms. These panels were light enough for two men to carry. They were also very strong; none had fallen apart even 50 years later.
Gelbman's workers put the panels together on site. They bolted the arms of the panels to a steel frame inside the house. This kept the outside walls smooth. The space inside the panels was filled with insulation, often vermiculite, another new material. Plywood panels were used for the interior walls. For the floors, the concrete panels were laid flat. The floor covering, like asphalt tile, was placed on top. The space between the panel arms could be used for pipes and wires. Once the outside was finished, openings for doors and windows were cut.
The steel casement windows were also a new technology. Inside, the house had even more new products. It had fluorescent lighting and one of the first forced-air gas heating and cooling systems in Westchester. The heating was so good that the fireplace in the living room could be smaller. Air conditioning was very new for homes back then. This might have been because Andrus hoped to build similar homes in Florida's warmer climate.
Building the house took longer and was more complex than Andrus and Gelbman expected. Old photos show that putting the panels together was difficult. Workers weren't used to this new method. Also, steps to protect the patent on the concrete panels slowed down the construction.
1937–Present: Decline and a New Beginning
Even though the house's new technologies were shown at the 1939 New York World's Fair, other builders didn't start using prefabricated concrete. They were more familiar with older building methods.
The house was also unpopular with its neighbors. Many felt it looked too different from their traditional homes. Some even compared it to a kitchen appliance. Andrus might have decided it wasn't worth building more of these houses. Charles Horn, the architect, never designed another modern building.
After it was built, the house was sold and lived in for many years. But eventually, it became empty and started to fall apart. Neighbors, even those who had never liked it, wanted it torn down because it looked so bad.
But in 1978, Peter Muckenhaupt saved the house. He was a retired journalist who had watched the house being built when he was a boy. He bought the house and began to restore it. He had to remove the original walls. The broken windows and old heating system also needed to be replaced. "We had to replace everything," he said. "It had to be treated like a brand-new house." The original cork floors and plywood walls upstairs were too damaged. They were replaced with the ceramic tile and gypsum walls you see today.
After the work was done in the early 1980s, Muckenhaupt rented out the house. His family was too big to live there. He researched the house's history. He found enough information to get it listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Once it was listed, he planned to move into the house himself.
