This 1937 Modernist Masterpiece Still Feels Ahead of Its Time | The Watzek House Tour in Oregon

John Young was a native Portlander who set out to create a new style that was both modern and that responded to the landscape of the Northwest. He reacted against the machine age aesthetic, the severe aesthetic of the international movement. He once described his goal as designing buildings as if he were a painter choosing a building that would enhance the landscape he was painting. I'm Richard Lewis Brown. Welcome to the Watsik House in the West Hills of Portland, Oregon. This is recognized as one of the most important works of architecture in the Pacific Northwest. It was designed by a young architect named John Young and built in 1937 for a prominent Portland citizen, Aubrey Watsik. Aubrey Watsik was a leading citizen of Portland, Oregon in the timber and lumber industry. His mother had been recently widowed in Davenport, Iowa and he decided to build a house in Portland. He had met the young architect John Young because they were both appointed to the Parks Commission and became friendly. When John learned that Aubrey wanted to build a house, he scouted out the site and founded and recommended it. It was a knoll which had a panoramic view of the Cascade Mountains all the way from St. Helens down to Mount Jefferson. Watsik wanted the house that would accommodate his mother. John designed on his own this house, but John had never done a complete house before. His only completed project before this house was a garden which was designed for his mother. Watsik went first to an architect in town who did traditional designs, but John persuaded him that he should have something more significant architecturally and sent him to Pietro Beluschi. Beluschi actually designed a house for this site and it went through two or three iterations, but in the end I don't think he was satisfied with it. Eventually Watsik decided that he would go back to this original design that John Young had presented. John went into the office of A.E. Doyle because he was not licensed architect. In fact, he had not gone to architecture school at all. He was completely self-taught. He went into the A.E. Doyle office for a brief period of five months while the working drawings were being done. They had to be authenticated by a licensed architect, but he spent a lot of time here. People have said that he camped out here while the house was being built. I know that he involved himself very much in the construction, even built the stone pier by the pool with his own hands. The house was completed by the end of 1937. It was started within that year so that it was built rather quickly, but with astonishing craftsmanship and materials. John had an intense interest in landscape and conservation issues in addition to architecture and art. His father had become the overseer of construction of the Columbia River Gorge Highway, which in those days was innovative and it was very carefully planned and constructed. John, from childhood, learned the and intense interest in landscape and conservation of landscape. Aubrey Watzek lived in the house from 1938 until his death on New Year's Day in 1973. John Yon and I had become personal partners in the late 1960s and after Watzek's death, we decided that we needed to protect the house from falling into unfriendly hands. So John bought the house for me to live in. I became the owner upon John's death in 1994 and soon after gave it with an endowment to the University of Oregon School of Architecture for both educational and preservation purposes. The house had been carefully preserved up until then with most of the interior surfaces and fixtures retained and I reasoned that if it were sold, any new owner would want to immediately repaint and replace the outmoded fixtures. But I kept a life estate and so I continued to live here until 2010 when I turned the house over to the university and I moved to a smaller Yon designed house. I was here 37 years altogether. My name is Marcus Bennett. I'm a superintendent with Schomer and Sons. We've been building since 1937, ironically the same year as the Watzek house. We've been working at the Watzek house for I'd say eight years. First thing we did was we redid the roof. It was pretty important to swap out all the downspouts, make sure they had lead and we swapped it out with copper and fern coves for the in case they back up so there's no damage to the property. Well this year for instance we worked on the mother Watzek's room's bump out which is pretty extensive. We had to build an enclosure for safety and workspace to take out all the windows and do it properly. Everything on the exterior of the house is Douglas fir. It's kind of hard getting the material sometimes but like I said we got a pretty good vendor. Being that it's on the historic registry it's pretty they're pretty particular on the materials that we use like slotted screws and just to keep everything just to capture the mindset of the builders back in 1937. There's a lot of problem solving when it comes to working on this stuff. We usually work at the house every year, summer work is what we call it. Sometimes we'll find issues and present it to the University of Oregon. Sometimes they have ideas and stuff that they would like to get done and we basically go by that but we're here on a yearly basis. John was interested in the progressional experience of coming to the house. It was built for the automobile age, 1937. You drive in the front aspect is fairly severe but it composes beautifully. The roof lines are almost cultural in the way they align and they are low comparatively. John had the idea that the eave should be within the reach of a tall man. Coming through the first entry into the courtyard you're led along a pool and it's an entirely surprise to come through and there was originally a view out to the Tualatin Valley under the passageway. Then you're led along to the front door. You come into the side of a long hallway and turn, come into the living room, it opens up to another experience. Then if you're here for dinner there's another access from the living room to the dining room which opens out onto a view into the natural garden. The landscape was original for its time, possibly the first planned garden of completely native plant material in the city. Everything outside of the courtyard was native plant material. Many of the plants were collected by John himself and by Watsik who was a mountain climber and he would bring plants down so there was originally an alpine garden in the front with plants that he brought in. The university has recently done some really good restoration projects and I'm thrilled with those. I would like to point out some names. For all the years that Watsik lived here he had a caretaker and chauffeur named Elmer Pollack and Elmer took care of the gardens and the house and he was a wonderful caretaker. After I got here I of course spent a lot of time working on the house and I loved to do the gardens especially in the courtyard but I had a caretaker also whose name was Mark Wenzel and he knew every screw and nail and splinter in this house far more about it than anybody and was a wonderful asset to the house and now in the most recent years George Bleekman who is part of the university campus planning office has been devoted to the house. I want to have it known that those three people are important to the history of this house. John and I had a wonderful life together. He continued to live in the house that was called the Jorgensen house which he bought back from the original owners right after World War II and he continued to live there. I used to say we lived in two houses together but when he became ill in the late 1980s I brought him up here to live. The last years were difficult for him but wonderful for me in a way because I was able to take care of him. I will always have the feeling of this house as being home.