Music Mountain invites guests for an 80th birthday visit

 FALLS VILLAGE — In the late 1920s, the Sears Roebuck company  shipped the component parts of four houses and a concert hall to an obscure corner of Connecticut, where Jacques Gordon, violinist, founder of the Gordon String Quartet and former concertmaster of the Chicago Symphony was waiting to build his dream project: a performing arts center where artists could live, practice and perform.

Last Saturday Nicholas Gordon, son of Jacques, surveyed a group of interested persons assembled on a brilliant fall day for a rare tour of the buildings.

“This is going to be a very strenuous tour, so let’s get moving,� he said, and ambled off at a good clip, talking a mile a minute.

The four houses and the concert hall at Music Mountain are all constructed from what Sears called “kit houses.� Sears shipped all the numbered pieces, plus the hardware, to the customer, who provided the site, foundation and labor. The cost was between $45 to $60 per month for the average aspiring homeowner; the total tab for Music Mountain, exclusive of foundations and utilities, was about $70,000.

Sears president and philanthropist Julius Rosenwald, who was also president of the symphony board, made the arrangements.

“He sent an architect to New England,� said Gordon, adding that while the style of the standard Sears kit houses was boxy, the buildings designed for Music Mountain incorporated indigenous New England features — dormers, gables etc.

“And the design went into the next Sears catalog as ‘The Gordon.’�

The houses are named: The Big House, where the Gordon family lived; and three smaller houses, each named for a member instrument in the quartet.

Hence Cello, Viola, “and as far away as we could get it, Second Fiddle,� said Gordon over his shoulder as the tour rambled down a dirt road.

The occasion for the tour was the 80th anniversary of Gordon Hall and the four houses. It also payed hommage to the exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, “Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling,� which remains up until Oct. 20.

The houses share unifying architectural features. “The front doors all face the same direction, they have two chimneys and a red patio.� The concert hall is similarly adorned, and angled so the sun does not distract the performers onstage.

The houses have furnaces, great hulking things that burn coal or cord wood. Storm windows, added later, make it possible, if not exactly easy, to make it through the winter. And the original idea was to have the musicians in residence year-round.

But the quartet was scheduled to tour the Midwest that first winter of 1930, which involved first catching the New Haven Railroad in Falls Village to Pittsfield, Mass., and then on to Albany, N.Y., to board the 20th-Century Limited for points west.

A goodish snow storm derailed that plan, and the quartet and the Gordon family decided it might be more practical to winter in New York City.

The smaller houses are masterpieces of economy — in scale, practicality, and endurance.

“There was no treated lumber then,� said Gordon. “This is all seasoned wood, kiln-dried, and has experienced almost no shrinkage or expansion.�

As Gordon talked, a picture emerged of life in the Northwest Corner at the beginning of the Great Depression. For instance, what to do when the burner on one of the Sears electric stoves burned out.

“You’d go up to Canaan to the electric company and they’d give you a new one,� said Gordon. “Same with light bulbs.

“It was a much, much different world.�