Hometown Hero
Dow Chemical put Midland on the map, but architect and local scion Alden B. Dow made it the most modern town in Michigan.
If the great Wrightian strain of American modernism is about stitching a structure seamlessly into the landscape, Alden B. Dow is its most committed tailor, an architect who ardently took his small, Midwestern hometown as his cloth and thread.
An heir of the Dow Chemical fortune and a pupil at Taliesin, Dow (1904–1983) lived most of his 79 years in Midland, Michigan. Over the course of a career that spanned five decades, he completed over 100 buildings there.
Alden B. Dow and his wife Vada at home in the 1930s.
Dow’s reputation and reach, however, were broad. An international architecture prize in 1937; coverage in Time magazine in 1949; and the designing of the low-cost, quickly built city of Lake Jackson, Texas, in 1943 drew considerable attention to the great modernist of central Michigan.
His real love was Midland, however. Architecture was the medium through which Dow helped express what it meant to be an American in the middle of the 20th century. But perhaps even more telling of this fortunate son’s everyman values, his scores of designs in Midland feel like one continuous act of civic pride.
Home and Studio
Dow’s masterpiece is undoubtedly his home and studio in Midland. Designed in 1933 to be built in stages, the sprawling manse seems to rise out of a pond, its green copper roof and bright-white, geometric form seemingly birthed by the landscape. It’s a nearly perfect evocation of a guiding Dow dictum, “Gardens never end, and buildings never begin.”
A screened-in porch overlooks the pond and sports furniture by both Harry Bertoia and Dow himself.
Photo by: Balthazar Korab
As for the family spaces, a sense of play abounds. One of Dow’s beloved model trains runs on a circular track overhead in a sitting room; the downstairs bursts with color and holds a small theater; and the main living and dining rooms are vibrant, open rooms with ample space to display the treasures of the family’s travels.
The home is an object lesson in Alden B. Dow as innovator. In 1938, Dow patented one of his preferred building materials, the Unit Block, and used it to great expressive effect. Comprised of cinder ash residue from the coal furnaces of Dow Chemical, these rhomboid cinder blocks give the home its earthbound, horizontal gravity, while simultaneously shooting up in playful spires and chimneys.
Most dazzling in the studio, a canny balance of modernist form and Dovian wit, is the submarine room. Built eighteen inches below pond level, it has a bright-pink ceiling, and the water just outside the windows refracts dancing light onto the white walls.
Midland Modern
The Whitman House.
Whitman House St. John's Lutheran Church.
Shortly after his time at Taliesin, Dow came to national acclaim with his 1934 Whitman House for a former mayor of Midland. A fine example of Dow’s Unit Block construction, the house and the Dow Studio won the Grand Prix in residential design at the 1937 International Exposition of Art and Technology in Modern Life in Paris. The other architecture winners? The Empire State Building and Rockefeller Center.
A deeply spiritual man, Dow was well suited to design sacred architecture. His 1953 St. John’s Lutheran Church places the altar at the center of the building with the pews, social spaces, and even the octagonal arrangement of the peaked skylights radiating out like a Lutheran rose.
The Dow Test House (Carras House).
Dow Test House (Carras House)
The Unit Block was only the beginning of Dow’s material innovation. For the 1961 Dow Test House—a design laboratory of a kind—the architect used a prefabricated panel made of sandwiched plywood and Styrofoam as the primary building system. The house was also used to test several Dow products, including plastic clerestory windows and a failed concrete additive called Sarabond. Eventually Dow’s daughter Barbara and her husband Peter Carras moved in.
The Lower Pond Bridge at Dow Gardens.
Located near where the Dow Home and Studio abuts the Dow Gardens (the massive public gardens the Dow family gave to the citizens of Midland) the dramatic red geometry of the 1974 Lower Pond Bridge shows how his travels in Japan exerted a lifelong influence on Dow’s work.
For an extended look at the work of Alden. B. Dow, please view our slideshow.
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Great article. I'm very fortunate to have worked for Mr. Dow from 1971-1973 and for the firm from 1988-1995. I think he is one of this country's overlooked Architects.
This article really seems to capture Mr. Dow's spirit! Well written.
Thank you for this article and slide show! There are so many modern gems in Michigan; I'm thrilled to see some of them showcased in Dwell. I've posted a couple of photos of the Mary Dow house in Saginaw, MI (designed by Alden B. Dow for his sister) on the Preservation Saginaw Facebook page. The house was incorporated in to the adjacent church community center in the 1980s but it still retains many of its original features. Feel free to wander over and check it out! https://www.facebook.com/pages/Preservation-Saginaw/168236589872605
I owned the Whitman house from 1968 to 1971. I was in mid renovation when transferred. The house was a delight, the expense outrageous!
Charles, Frank, Brenna, and Tim, Thanks so much for your remembrances of Dow and love of his work. Visiting the Home and Studio was an incredible experience. Anyone else out there lived in a Dow, or worked for the man? We'd love to hear more about his life and work from those of you who knew him. Aaron
I worked for Dow Chemical in the early 90s and rented a Dow-designed house in Midland my first year there. It had gorgeous maple plywood walls, floor-to-ceiling casement windows and amazing light. I will always love that house -- thanks for the reminder!
Midland is a wonderful small city to visit. There are many examples of outstanding residential architecture by Dow and others, with established neighborhoods largerly unspoiled by hideous McMansions. There is an entire neighborhood near the medical center filled with Dow's work and that of his associates, and another near the country club with many examples. There is a small downtown with a wonderful boutique hotel and a great art gallery. Their minor league baseball stadium is beautiful and a short walk from downtown. If you find yourself in this part of the state a little exploration would be well worth your effort.
I was born & raised in Midland MI, I spent my childhood growing up in Alden B.'s buildings (I went to preschool at St. John's Lutheran, volunteered for years at the Grace A. Dow Library, had band performances at both the Center for the Arts & Central Band Shell, my father even worked in a Dow building at Dow Chemical) and have always shared a special connection with his works. Do you know if there is anywhere which sells any sort of Dow souvenirs? I no longer live in Midland and would love to take a piece of Dow with me. I checked with the Dow Studio last time I was home, and got a great coffee table book but I was hoping to find something more displayable like a poster or unit block. Anyway, thanks for the great article. I always enjoy reading whatever I can about this man, his work and what made him tick.
I screamed with delight when I saw the opening photo. Dow Gardens was my backyard and playground growing up, I can remember turtles sunning themselves on the stepping stones, swinging on the weeping willows over the pond and dodging the gardeners. My Dad worked for Mr. Dow in the 60's, It made me a little melancholy to see the drafting room where he worked. Thanks for the trip back in time. Robin Stocker Baer 11/25/2011
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