LESCAZE HOUSE ARCHITECTURE: AMERICA'S FIRST INTERNATIONAL STYLE TOWNHOUSE

The Lescaze House at 211 East 48th Street in Manhattan is widely regarded as the first International Style residence in New York City — a four-storey white stucco townhouse that appeared on a block of deteriorating Victorian brownstones in 1934 like a manifesto made solid.

Designed by the Swiss-born architect William Lescaze (1896–1969) for his own use as both home and architectural office, the house was a radical remodelling of an 1865 brownstone. Lescaze stripped away all historical ornament, applied a smooth white stucco façade, and introduced glass blocks — the first use of this material in a New York residence — to flood the interior with light while maintaining privacy from the street.

The house was not merely an aesthetic experiment. It was the first private residence in New York City to have central air conditioning, and it incorporated advanced mechanical systems, built-in furniture, and spatial planning designed to demonstrate what Lescaze called a "philosophy of life" — modern architecture as a response to the tools and needs of the 20th century.

When Lescaze and his new wife Mary Connick Hughes moved in on 1 June 1934, the house immediately became a sensation. So many people crowded the sidewalk to see it that the couple agreed to open the house for public viewing every Monday afternoon, leaving a servant to host tours while they escaped elsewhere.

  • Written by Gavin Paisley, director & model-maker at Chisel & Mouse based in East Sussex, England.
  • Last updated: 18-Feb-26.

Photograph by Irene A. Banks, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Lescaze House (manhattan modernist townhouse) facade architectural scale model

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What is Lescaze House?

Lescaze House is a modernist townhouse that served as William Lescaze's residence (first through third floors) and architectural office (basement and rear extension). Rather than demolishing the existing 19th-century structure, Lescaze radically renovated it — preserving the footprint and much of the internal structure while completely transforming its appearance and function.

The house sits in Turtle Bay, a Manhattan neighbourhood of narrow streets and traditional brownstones. The sudden appearance of this stark white modernist façade among post-Civil War brownstones had, according to the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, "a dramatic impact upon the streetscape and the neighborhood." It inspired similar modernist renovations to four townhouses on nearby 49th Street in the 1930s and 1940s.

The house is one of three Manhattan residences designed by Lescaze. The others are the Raymond C. and Mildred Kramer House at 32 East 74th Street (1935) and a renovation at 209 East 48th Street (adjacent to his own house) for his son Lee Lescaze's family.

Facts panel

Modernist townhouse renovation, Turtle Bay, Manhattan, New York City. Original brownstone built 1865; renovation designed 1933, approved February 1934, completed June 1934.

  • Architect: William Edmond Lescaze (1896–1969)
  • Client: William Lescaze and Mary Connick Hughes Lescaze (self-commissioned)
  • Original building: Four-storey brownstone townhouse, built 1865
  • Renovation application submitted: August 1933
  • Renovation approved: February 1934
  • Construction: 1933–1934
  • Contractor: Albert Alitz Co., Inc.
  • Completed and occupied: 1 June 1934
  • Original use: Architectural office (basement and rear extension) + private residence (first through third floors)
  • Address: 211 East 48th Street, East Midtown/Turtle Bay, Manhattan, New York, NY 10017
  • Lot: Northern sidewalk of 48th Street between Second Avenue and Third Avenue
  • Configuration: Four storeys above ground; basement office space extending to rear property line
  • Materials: White-painted stucco blocks over original brownstone structure; glass blocks; steel-framed ribbon windows; cantilevered sundeck
  • Innovations: First use of glass blocks in a New York City residence; first private residence in New York City with central air conditioning
  • Architectural style: International Style
  • Designated NYC Landmark: 1976 (Landmarks Preservation Commission)
  • Listed National Register of Historic Places: 1980
  • Lescaze family occupancy: 1934–1969 (William Lescaze died at the house 9 February 1969); Mary Lescaze maintained the property until sale in 1985
  • Subsequent ownership: William Kaufman Organization (purchased 1985, renovated while maintaining historic design); Hendale LLC (purchased 2020)
  • Current status: Private residence; exterior façade painstakingly restored by Sage Realty to match original 1934 condition

Architect: William Edmond Lescaze

William Edmond Lescaze was born 27 March 1896 in Onex, near Geneva, Switzerland. He died 9 February 1969 of a heart attack at his home at 211 East 48th Street, Manhattan, aged 72.

Lescaze studied at the Collège Calvin and the École des Beaux-Arts before completing his architectural education at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) in Zurich in 1919, where he was taught by Karl Moser, a leading Swiss modernist. After graduation, Lescaze contributed to post-World War I reconstruction efforts in Arras, France.

In 1920, Lescaze immigrated to the United States. He worked first for the architectural firm Hubbell & Benes in Cleveland, Ohio, while teaching French at the YMCA's night classes. In 1923, he was offered a modelling job and moved to New York City, where he established his own architectural practice.

Lescaze's first major commission was the Oak Lane Country Day School outside Philadelphia (1929), designed with George Howe. The building was notable for scaling many features — stairs, fixtures — down to child size and for using cork floors to reduce knee injuries from falls.

Partnership with George Howe and the PSFS Building

In 1929, Philadelphia architect George Howe invited Lescaze to form a partnership: Howe & Lescaze. Within weeks, the duo began work on what would become their most famous project: the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society (PSFS) Building, completed in 1932.

The PSFS Building (today the Loews Philadelphia Hotel) is widely considered the first International Style skyscraper and the first International Style building of major significance in the United States. It was also the first fully air-conditioned building in America. Although Howe was the senior partner, letters from Howe to Lescaze quote the former insisting "the design is definitely yours." The building effectively introduced European modernism to American commercial architecture.

The partnership dissolved in 1934 — reportedly acrimoniously — just as Lescaze was completing his own house. In 1930, Howe & Lescaze had submitted a design for the new Museum of Modern Art building in New York; though it was not selected, the model is owned by MoMA, and Lescaze's work has been exhibited there fourteen times since the museum's opening at its current location in 1939.

Later work and legacy

After the partnership ended, Lescaze established his own firm and continued to design innovative modernist buildings. Major works include:

  • Highcross House, Dartington Hall, Devon, UK (1932) — one of Britain's most important modernist buildings
  • Williamsburg Houses, Brooklyn (1938) — a New York City Housing Authority development, now a NYC landmark, conceived as a "city-within-a-city" with playgrounds, parks, and schools
  • Longfellow Building, Washington, D.C. (1941)
  • Manhattan Civil Court, Civic Center, Manhattan (1960)
  • Church Center for the United Nations, Manhattan (1962)
  • 1 New York Plaza, Financial District (1969, completed the year of his death) — 50 storeys, the 100th tallest building in New York City at the time

Lescaze is ranked among the pioneers of modernism in American architecture. He was a fierce perfectionist who described modern architecture not as a "style" but as a "philosophy of life" celebrating the mechanised tools of civilisation.

Lescaze married Mary Connick Hughes in September 1933, just after purchasing 211 East 48th Street. Their son, Lee Adrien Lescaze (1938–1996), was born and raised in the house. Lee later became an editor at The Washington Post. William renovated the adjacent townhouse at 209 East 48th Street for Lee's family when Lee reached adulthood.

The 1933–34 renovation: transforming a Victorian brownstone

In August 1933, William Lescaze submitted plans to the New York City Department of Buildings to renovate the 1865 brownstone at 211 East 48th Street. He proposed converting the basement to commercial use (his architectural office) while retaining the first through third floors as a residence.

The renovation was approved in February 1934 after what Lescaze later described as an "epic battle" with the building code — particularly over the use of glass blocks, which had never been used in an American building before. The battle "lasted at least three months, back and forth. Three months of agony," Lescaze recalled.

The glass block innovation

Glass blocks were the house's most radical material innovation. Lescaze had seen them used sparingly in Europe and recognised their potential. He enlisted an enterprising Illinois manufacturer to produce the first American glass blocks specifically for the Lescaze House.

Lescaze explained his reasoning: "They added to the amount of daylight without adding to the fuel bill, they let daylight through yet obscured the uninteresting view of the nine-storey apartment house across the street, and they deadened street noises."

The glass blocks allowed the house to be both luminous and private — a critical advantage in dense Manhattan, where traditional windows would have offered views only of neighbouring buildings. After the Lescaze House, glass blocks became a symbol of high-style modernism in America.

Photograph by molybdena, licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Interior planning: inverting the townhouse

Lescaze's renovation completely reimagined the traditional Manhattan townhouse plan.

Basement: Architectural office, extending all the way to the rear property line. The roof of this extension creates an outdoor terrace for the residence above.

First floor (ground level): Service spaces pushed to the front (inverting the traditional plan); dining room at rear with floor-to-ceiling glass doors opening onto the terrace (Lescaze's version of Le Corbusier's rooftop garden).

Second floor: Divided by a service core into a front-facing guest room and rear-facing master bedroom, whose ribbon window subtly curves to face the morning sun.

Third floor: Transformed into a single continuous living room flowing from the front glass-block wall to the rear façade — defying traditional townhouse planning, which placed communal spaces on the ground floor. This decision maximised functional use of space; Lescaze also built furniture into alcoves to optimise the room.

The house incorporated central air conditioning — the first private residence in New York City to do so. Lescaze's original plans called for this innovation, which he saw as essential to modern living. He also designed built-in furniture throughout, integrated lighting, and efficient mechanical systems.

Public reaction and cultural impact

When William and Mary Lescaze moved into the house on 1 June 1934, public reaction was immediate and intense. The house attracted so much attention that, according to the Associated Press, the couple "had about as much privacy as a traffic cop."

Curious New Yorkers crowded the sidewalk to stare at the stark white façade. The Lescazes agreed to open the house for public viewing every Monday afternoon for one hour. They left a servant to conduct tours while they travelled elsewhere to escape the attention.

When asked if they feared vandalism, Mary Lescaze replied they were not afraid of stone-throwers: "the stones will simply rattle off." The smooth white stucco was tougher than it looked.

The architectural press lauded the house immediately. Coming just two years after the 1932 Museum of Modern Art exhibition "Modern Architecture: International Exhibition" (which had featured Lescaze's PSFS Building), the Lescaze House was quickly celebrated as the first example of an "International Style" townhouse in Manhattan.

The Landmarks Preservation Commission designation report (1976) later noted: "The sudden appearance on East 48th Street of this startlingly 'modern' façade of 1934, set between deteriorating brownstones of the post-Civil War period, had a dramatic impact upon the streetscape and the neighborhood." The report described the house as a "harmonious design of deceptive simplicity."

Critics who inspected the house from top to bottom reported that "almost no one... goes away with his faith in the Traditional approach unshaken."

Model-maker's lens

The Lescaze House is one of the most architecturally legible buildings we model — pure geometry, pure composition, no ornament to distract from the essential idea.

  • Focus — the street façade: the white stucco plane, the asymmetrical composition of voids (windows, glass blocks, entrance), the curved entry canopy, the ribbon window at second floor subtly curving to catch morning light, the large glass-block wall on the upper floors. This is architecture as abstract composition — solid and void in careful balance.
  • Detail — the glass blocks are the defining material innovation. At model scale, we simplify them into a textured plane that suggests transparency without attempting to replicate individual blocks. The smooth white stucco reads as a continuous surface. The curved entrance canopy — a sculptural gesture — gives the façade its only three-dimensional projection.
  • How it reads at small scale — exceptionally well. The architecture is fundamentally about proportion and composition rather than detail or ornament. Reduced to object scale, it becomes even more abstract — a study in modernist principles. The contrast between solid white stucco and transparent glass block remains legible; the asymmetry holds; the discipline is apparent.
  • How to display — best viewed straight-on from the street perspective, as a pedestrian would encounter it. The façade is designed to be read frontally as a two-dimensional composition (though the curved canopy adds depth). Natural or neutral lighting works well; harsh directional light can flatten the subtle relief of the glass blocks and canopy.

Modelling the Lescaze House is an exercise in understanding early American modernism — European ideas adapted to Manhattan's dense urban fabric. The house demonstrates that modernism could work within the traditional city not by imitating its neighbours but by declaring itself unambiguously different. The model captures that declaration.

View the Lescaze House architectural model

Frequently asked questions about Lescaze House

Who designed Lescaze House?

William Edmond Lescaze (1896–1969), a Swiss-born American architect and pioneer of modernism in the United States. Lescaze trained at the École Polytechnique in Zurich and emigrated to America in 1923. He is best known for the PSFS Building in Philadelphia (1932, with George Howe) — widely considered the first International Style skyscraper in America — and for his own townhouse at 211 East 48th Street in New York, which he renovated in 1934.

When was Lescaze House completed?

The renovation was completed in June 1934. William and Mary Lescaze moved in on 1 June 1934, having married in September 1933. The project transformed a mid-19th-century brownstone into what is widely considered the first International Style townhouse in New York City.

What was the original building at Lescaze House?

An 1865 brownstone townhouse, typical of post-Civil War Manhattan residential construction — a building type characterised by sandstone facades, stooped entrances, and floor-by-floor repetition. Lescaze stripped back and transformed the exterior entirely, replacing the brownstone facade with stucco, glass blocks, and horizontal strip windows to produce a building that bore no visual relationship to its neighbours.

What architectural style is Lescaze House?

International Style — widely considered the first International Style townhouse in New York City. The renovation predates the widespread adoption of modernist residential design in America by more than a decade, and the house was a direct statement of architectural intent: Lescaze was building his own home as a manifesto as much as a dwelling.

What are glass blocks, and why were they innovative at Lescaze House?

Glass blocks are hollow bricks made of glass, allowing light transmission while maintaining privacy and providing insulation. The Lescaze House was the first building in New York City to use them. Lescaze had to persuade an Illinois manufacturer to produce the first American glass blocks specifically for this project, and then spent three months battling the New York City building code to gain approval for their use — obstacles that underscore how radically the building departed from contemporary practice.

Was this Lescaze's first major building?

No. His most significant prior work was the PSFS Building in Philadelphia (1932), designed in partnership with George Howe — widely considered the first International Style skyscraper in America. The PSFS Building and Lescaze House together established Lescaze as the most committed advocate for European modernism in American architecture of the early 1930s.

Who lived in Lescaze House?

William Lescaze, his wife Mary Connick Hughes Lescaze (married September 1933), and their son Lee Adrien Lescaze (born 1938). The family lived there from 1934 until William's death in 1969. Mary maintained the property until selling it in 1985. The house served as both family home and architectural office — Lescaze's practice occupied part of the ground floor.

Is Lescaze House a landmark?

Yes. It was designated a New York City Landmark by the Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1976 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980 — recognitions that reflect its significance as a pioneering work of American modernist residential architecture.

Is Lescaze House open to the public?

No. Lescaze House remains a private residence and is not open to visitors. The exterior — including the glass block facade and horizontal strip windows that made it so radical on its completion — can be viewed from East 48th Street.

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