From Bauhaus to Our House in State College

A column for the Center Daily Times

Have you ever taken a walk through State College and noticed something different about some of
the houses? One minute there’s a Cape Cod-style house, cottage-like in appearance with its shutters
and sloped roof. The next, there’s a boxy-looking building, all clean, spare lines, perhaps with the
main entranceway hidden. This second house might appear more modern to your eyes and yet it
may also seem to be very much of the context.
If you’ve ever made an observation like this one, then you’ve almost certainly walked or
driven through one of the neighborhoods, such as College Heights and Holmes Foster, where
William Hajjar (1917-2000), an architect and faculty member at Penn State built 32 single-family
homes during the mid-twentieth-century period. The youngest of an immigrant Lebanese family,
Hajjar was an influential figure in the history of architecture in the area. Hajjar’s architecture in
the area shows a mix of formal and functional features typical of European modernism used in
conjunction with features characteristic of traditional American architecture.
If you’ve noticed flat roofs, horizontality, and absence of ornamentation, then you’ve been
observing the presence of European modernism, AKA the International Style, in the area. On the
other hand, if you’ve observed pitched roofs, symmetricity, and ornamental elements, then your
eyes were drawn to traditional American style. Overall, the International Style wasn’t very popular
for house design in State College or in the US more generally in the mid-century timeframe.
Although, it was used in large-scale projects and high-rise buildings, such as the PSFS Building in
Philadelphia, built in 1932 (a block away from the City Hall). Faculty-practitioners like Hajjar,
who studied architecture at a traditional school and then learned about modernism, either through
an apprenticeship or academic studies helped popularize modernism by mixing features of the
imported style with elements of local traditional architecture.
The houses built by Hajjar in State College reflect his familiarity with one of the most
famous architectural styles of the twentieth century: the Bauhaus, or School of Building (Bauhaus
literally means “building house”) founded in Germany in 1919. During his graduate studies, Hajjar
became familiar with this style including through encounters with Walter Gropius, a pioneering
master of modernist architecture and founder of the Bauhaus School, who was director of the
Department of Architecture at Harvard. The central idea of the Bauhaus was to reimagine the
material world in order to create unity among all the arts. Given the political situation in Europe,
with the rise of Fascism and with WWII on the horizon, many proponents of the style, including
Gropius, moved to the US, where they were to train a new generation of architects. Marcel Breuer,
another faculty member at the Bauhaus also moved to the United States to teach with Gropius and
to form a brief partnership with him. They designed several buildings in the US following the
principles of the Bauhaus style but in a new context and using materials available here.
As a teacher and practitioner, Hajjar followed in the steps of Gropius and Breuer by
localizing/Americanizing Bauhaus culture in the United States. His 32 single-family houses in the
Penn State area are not a copy of the Bauhaus style. Instead, they are a mixture of European modern
architecture with traditional American architecture—a mix that constitutes his principal
contribution to the stability and popularity of modern architecture in the area. Hajjar built 18 homes
in the College Heights neighborhood, and 14 in Holmes Foster. Next time, you take a walk, see if
you can pick them out.

The Osher Lifelong Learning Insistute (OLLI) at Penn State - open to adults who love to learn -
offers short courses in many subjects ranging from gardening to history to technology. Mahyar
Hadighi will lead a course titled From Bauhaus to Our House in March. Borrowing its name
form a 1981 book written by Tom Wolf, the American author and journalist, this course will
briefly discuss the relationship between Hajjar’s single-family architecture and European
modernism. To receive a free catalogue for the spring semester, call OLLI at Penn State at (814)
867-4278 or visit olli.psu.edu.
Mahyar Hadighi is a PhD Candidate in architecture and a researcher at the Hamer Center
for Community Design at Penn State.