Built as a lakeside house for the administrator of a Rochester university, this simple “cabin” was constructed with an expressed frame of smooth telephone pole columns and wood beams, and using rougher telephone poles for the roof beams.

The plan organization places the kitchen, bathroom and storage in a dense zone to the land side with the living, dining and master bedroom opening up to the water side. Entry was to be via a bridge that passed over a swale and then penetrated the dense zone, a strategy that appears in a number of other, larger Seligmann projects, such as the Science Building in Cortland, the Willard Administration Building and the mid-rise housing block of the Elm Street Housing in Ithaca.

In the facade one can readily see the legacy of the Villa at Garches, a subject on which Seligmann often lectured: its “detached” quality from the structure by the vertical articulation slots at the ends, the horizontal banding of the primary windows, with the minor openings above treated as punctures, are all elements derived from the Garches facade.

Sproull House

Cayuga Lake, New York

All photos by Eduard Hueber

View of Cayuga Lake from terrace

1

1967

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