My friend, Edna Bradford Ratner, would sooner wear sackcloth and hobnail boots than don a satin gown and high-heeled slippers. And still, no one I know is more gracious, or, in her way, more elegant. What makes this so funny, for someone well-acquainted with Edna, is that so far as frilly or frivolous glamour is concerned, or showy, sham-elegance, she eschews both. Hers is that quality like a fine Scotch, that's best taken neat. It is difficult to describe in English, but closely gotten at with the German word, "schlicht". Schlicht can mean, sober, chaste, mundane or even artless. But regarding Edna, I mean its other meanings, which include un-ostentatious, unpretentious and refined.
Our one and only, Edna Bradford Ratner~!
Certainly to me, or almost anyone she encounters, Edna Ratner is as good a friend as one could ever hope to have. Alas, she does love a little too freely. Fortunately, enjoying as we do, the best of the best, this is the trivial worst, which friends and family, in keen competition for her attention, gladly forebear.
Edna at 80, in fine form!
Halfway between Akron and Cleveland, within the quiet woodland of tall trees outside of Peninsula, Ohio, on Oak Hill, an old picnicing spot favored by knowing locals, sits Edna's house. Low and distended along flat ground backing onto a ravine, it is as harmoniously well-rooted into its surroundings, as is nearby Stan Hywet Hall.
And neither this, nor the Ratners' longstanding friendship with John Seiberling and his wife Betty, are the only connections these structures share. For, for all the derivative historicist styling of the Seiberlings' famous house, like the Ratners', it too has an underlying "schlicht" sensibility, emphasizing a 'hand-made' aesthetic. Exhibiting great reverence for craft, both buildings utilize subtly integrated materials and, wherever possible, introduce art, including in the kitchen.
It perhaps seems counterintuitive, that characterize as Mid-Century Modern, Edna's house can be linked to an idology first espoused in the mid-19th Century. This is because, as much as Sir Edwin Lutyens, Charles Schneider or Frank Lloyd Wright, Max Ratner, Edna's architect and her husband, in the sensitive way he built houses, was a dedicated disciple of the Arts and Crafts Movement.
A Boston native and the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, Max Ratner moved to Oberlin, Ohio in 1947. An idealistic realist, he saw providing well-buit affordable housing as an achievable means of improving the world and his apartments for workers are still viewed as exceptionally humane. In Oberlin he set up an architectural practice with his college friend, Douglas Johnson. Planning several single-storey houses for Oberlin College faculty members, such as Thomas H. LeDuc and his wife Kathryn, among a circle of liberal intellectuals, the pair soon made a name for themselves: demonstraiting how beauty and edifying surroundings need not require vast sums.
Employing a horizontal emphasis, with deep eaves shading clerestory 'ribbon' windows, they called the brick, wood and concrete houses they built 'Contemporary'. None, at any rate, in any way, were like sterile, sculptural, attention-grabbing, machine-made-looking minimalist buildings one generally thinks of as 'Modern'.
A divorced working-mother, with two children, first meeting Max Ratner, Edna was uncertain about becoming re-enmeshed in the conventional limitations then demanded by matrimony. Beyond admiring his heroic stand, as an imprisoned conscientious objector during the Second World War, Max's thoughtful care of his son touched Edna deeply. But she was moved most by the regard he maintained for his ex-wife. The daughter of medical missionaries in China, where her father became a leading authority on the Bubonic plague, Marjory Watson, Max's first wife, suffered from schizophrenia. Severely curtailing the career of this brilliant mathematician, it began with the birth of their son and. Unselfishly, as her illness progressed, Marjory remained aware enough to urge Max to divorce her.
And so, in time, in 1959, Max and Edna wed. Max's son became Edna's, and Edna's daughter and son became Max's. Soon another son and daughter arrived and the melange was further enlivened by orphaned wards, the daughter and son of close friends.
What was it about the 1940's and 50's that made so many people decide to move to the country? Most, disheartened by the Great Depression and war, sought the American Dream, along the lines that Hollywood represented it. Tried by circumstance, accustomed since boyhood to communing it nature in the wilds of New England, Max badly felt an urgency to return to the woods. Whether Firestones and Eatons moving to estates, or clerks settling into trailer parks, many city dwellers had the same idea Max Ratner had when he moved to Peninsula from Oberlin. Maintaining an office in downtown Cleveland, on his own acerage, Max relocated both his family and the center of his architectural practice.
Two stories, the new office actually acted as a kind of home-away-from-home. With his workplace not far away Edna explains how much Max wished to keep his family and their home-life, private and separate from clients, sales reps and business.
Constructed so close to his temporary' dwelling and closer still to where he planned to build the 'ultimate' Ratner residence, the office was designed in such a way, that if un-needed as workplace, it could easily become a decorous house. As one end of the new office was built into the ravine's slope, a strategy often used for private riding arenas and indoor tennis courts on large estates, visually, it's true scale, was successfully minimised. Inside it had an expansive double-height drafting room with north-facing windows, extending over the building's entire width. Two balconies, overlooked the big drafting room. One was a conference room with a massive copper-hooded fireplace. "It inspired a couple of the draftsmen to request its use for their wedding receptions" Edna recalls, "And we were able to put up guest comfortably there, as well." The second balcony room was for secretarial staff. Beyond stood the 'sanctum sanctorum', Max's small private work room, with a full of wall of window, facing north. Here with sufficient isolation for absolute focus, Max could design, compose and work through problems, uninterrupted. Out of town or otherwise occupied, he was happy enough for his children or their friends or grownup friends and their frinds to crash here.
If the life the Ratners devised for themselves was hardly ordinary, then neither was the abode formulated as its backdrop. With calculating skill, Charles Schneider had designed Stan Hywet Hall to appear to have evolved over time, with rooms and extra embellishment added, as required. On Oak Hill , at Max and Edna's house, such a scenario really was played out. Indeed, Max designed quite a different house altogether as the ideal dwelling for his family. It was to have been on a different site and would have overlooked the ravine. The location was leveled and trees and shrubs were planted in preparation. Simultaneous to making these elaborate plans, Max also built a large workshop and this place. With just two bedrooms, it was meant to be a retreat for his first wife's parents. Only with the Watson's decesion to retire in Minnesota, did it become, first, Max's house with his son and then a refuge, 'temporarily', for his new family. As for their ultimate house, with a knowing smile, Edna explains how,"It was like the proverbial shoemaker with bare foot children, somehow, there was never time enough for our own house to take shape."
And so, in rapid succession, a series of radical additions ensued. Prior to Edna's arrival, the meandering east wing's master bedroom, bath and study, had already been added. Of necessity, the study quickly enough, became a nursery. The dinning room, with a sloping roof, down three steps adjoining the flagged patio, was next. Then, the commodious porch was built. Equipped with screens in enormous windows, it was used the year round. But it really came into its own during warm weather, serving as an open-air living room that made air-conditioning unnecessary. Finally, as a place for Edna to do her work as graphic designer in peace, a separate studio-guest house was put up.
A scene of warm weather festivity, is Edna's patio.
The studio-guest house.
Besides these extensive improvements, a shed was also constructed to accommodate tractors, lawnmowers, bicycles and skies, Closser to his office Max built a barn for two horses, one of whom Edna's jumper.
Max's wall of re-cycled bricks at the entrance, is as beautiful as it is utilitarian. Varying colors and the way the bricks are laid, in diapered network, are intrinsically and economically decorative. This wall is a component of the car-port, built as the building's definitive flourish, It is a perfect distillation of everything Max Ratner sought to archive aesthetically, juxtaposing old bricks for the wall, and new concrete for the drive, to achieve a harmonious synthesis. Similarly, dimutive steel post and I-beams, unobtrusively provide supporting 'muscle', that allows the flat, redwood board roof, to appear to float weightlessly.
A glimpse of Max Ratner's brick wall.
Wholly enclosed, much as at Stan Hywet Hall, the foyer at Edna's house offers little hint of the wide-openness beyond its door. Unlike the earlier house, however, with fewer architectural tricks at his disposal, Max Ratner sustained 'suspense', by having the foyer door open onto a mediating passage. There is only a coat closet opposite the entrance. Practically enough, a window near the ceiling of the foyer provides sunlight into the passage during the day and extra electric light into the foyer after dark. But it offers little hint of what's to come.
A convenient place to doff or put on coats and boots, the foyer does offer one piece of evidence of greater interior riches. Small and sparkling, a vibrant mosaic depicts dancing angles. This treasure attests not only to the Ratners' artistic sensibility, but to their gift for friendship: the pivotal role this house played in nurturing fellowship.
Honore Guilbeau Cooke, Max and Edna's longtime friend and neighbor, made the mosaic and a good deal of additional art-work found here as well. Born in Louisiana, she trained as a print-maker at the Art Institute of Chicago.
Welcome!
Honore Guilbeau Cooke
Honore's Transportation in the Valley.
With a widespread reputation as a multi-talented artist, locally Honore is best recalled for Transportation in the Valley, an abstracted pebble mosaic she executed in 1964 for the public library she'd help to found in 1943.
Once inside, at the heart of Edna and Max's house, in the Great Hall-like living room, picturesque views through massive windows leave one, though wonderfully sheltered, within woodland still!
All alone or in a crowd, it's always so nice by Edna's fire!
Desert!
The CuyahogaValley National Park, set up mostly through the efforts of Edna and Max's neighbor Congressman John F. Seiberling, is the pride of all of Peninsula. Covering 33 thousand acres, it even encompasses Edna's house. Already the agreement Max made, has meant the loss of his handsome office. As for his and Edna's house in the woods, Edna may live out her days there. But afterward, it too is slated to be demolished.
Everywhere one looks, in the kitchen or dining room, Honore's handiwork is much in evidence.
And for many reasons, this truly seems a pity. The Great Hall-like living room, delightful for a tet-au-tet over a fireside glass of port, is equally cheering during a large dinner party. Whether on the porch, or in the top-lit, pottery-filled kitchen with its mosaic counter and a cherry sink cover, dining, in the brick-walled dining room, or exploring, in a book-lined hallway, taking two steps up, and three steps down, in a house which seamlessly, faithfully, follows the terrain, what wonderful times are had, what a whole lot of good living has happened in Edna's house.
The empty dining room is a great place to work
A Holiday spread put out in the dining room.
Understandably enough, Edna is a grand cook!
Primarily it's Edna's house's significance as a work of exemplary architecture that makes tearing it down unwarranted and mistaken. Any number of old buildings are being preserved by the National Park Service, to better relate the story of North Eastern Ohio's glorious past. But what documents the 1940's, 50's and 60's? As much as any Greek Revival farmhouse, from the 1830's canal era, or several modest Italianate house from the period in the 1850's when the railroad arrived, Edna's house, a lovely structure, eminently embodies a particular time, place and way of life.
To me, the fate of Edna's friend Honere was far happier. Living just a few month shy of her hundredth birthday, Honore Guilbeau Cooke, exited the earth in fine form. Edna, her devoted friend was with her. At 99 she had hardly slowed down at all and they were hiking in the park, at the edge of a ravine. Fallig 40 feet, like a blue-jacketed Chagall figure floating off into space, she died. Hearing Edna's news, I burst into uncontrolled laughter? Is it just possible that she understood, that in addition to my admiration of a 99-year-old even being in a position to secumb, by falling into a ravine, while on a hike, that I was also thinking of her?
A step down, leads to the east wing.
How wonderfully Max managed to bring the outside indoors.
Books, in profusion are a joy at Edna's house!
Sea-foam green tiles are proof enough that Edna's house is from an earlier era.
A vigerous, curious and sprightly 82, my dear friend drives to, and fro, between New York and Ohio, as if the distance between them were triflingly negligible. I, as someone rather disinclined to visit Fort Greene from Harlem on the express subway, can only marvel at her determination. I certainly do stand in wonderment, after reports that she's been shoveling snow from the roof.
Edna is saddled with a divine, but exactingly burdensome house, one that's hell to maintain on a fixed income. Generous to a fault, she has always given due consideration to the value of money. This is why heedlessly, Edna undertakes, by herself, projects around her house, reasonable people would regard as requiring a crew of ten.
How will it end? Will Edna Ratner, at 99, fall blissfully into a ravine in the park? It's a far greater likelyhood than her breathing her last in bed, asleep, in her Mid-Century Modern house in the woods. Should she emulate Honore in this way too, and should I outlast her, I hope, as she'd wish, that I'll find the heart, to laugh out loud!
Some wonderful history here, both regional to greater Akron and architectural. I realize that there are these agreements with homeowners in the CV National Park. However, perhaps you (and Edna) could persuade the powers that be, through local and state preservation channels, that this home has architectural merit from its era (eg. Max Ratner) and that it would make a fine home for a park-related office, nature center, visiting artist's studio, etc. You are absolutely right that certain homes built in the past fifty years have merit -- of course, fifty is still the magic number with the National Register and if this home is now fifty years old (which I'm guessing that it is?) you might have even more architectural history heft to your argument towards its preservation. Edna seems like a wonderful woman and you are fortunate in your friendship.
All best, Catherine Seiberling Pond
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Posted by: Joni Hamper | 03/02/2013 at 04:38 PM