WHS celebrates Frazier Forman Peters’ Classic Stone Homes and Sustainable Architecture

“Connecticut is four parts rock and one part dirt,” wrote Frazier Forman Peters, more than half a century ago, perhaps explaining his decision to eschew a career as a farmer in Westport and launch one as a self-educated architect and sustainability advocate, building beautifully sited homes of native stone. Inspired during World War I by the stone farmhouses and lifestyle he saw during his military service in Moret, France, Frazier Peters, a Columbia educated chemical engineer, quickly abandoned a job in the chemical industry after his return, and—in 1919—moved with his wife and infant son to start a farm in Westport.

Beginning October 2nd and running through December 31st at the Westport Historical Society, Frazier Forman Peters: At Home with Stone and Earth, Air, Water and Fire: The  Wit & Wisdom of Frazier Forman Peters will showcase the principles, contrarian practices and considerable legacy of this much-admired Westport builder-architect of the 1920s and 1930s, and subsequent author of such works as Pour Yourself A House. Unlike today’s developers, who avoid proximity to inland water and rock ledge, and who clear-cut wooded lots, Peters sought out rock ledge promontories and woodland streams, and often built homes within a few feet of primeval trees. His construction method, a modified version of that developed by Ernest Flagg, featured stone exteriors backed by an interior concrete facing. To him, one of the great virtues of his method is that it made beautiful, fireproof, rot-proof and insect-proof homes affordable to the common man.

In the Sheffer Gallery, stunning color photographs of some 32 of 36 Frazier Peters homes in Westport, all built between 1926 and 1936, are at the heart of the exhibit, along with a model of his framing for pouring walls and an original casement window. The signature elements of Peters’ houses, along with a chronology of his life, are all there. The foyer provides a map of the Westport locations of homes built by Peters, who also built many in Norwalk, Weston, Wilton, and Darien, CT, Alpine, New Jersey, and—after 1936—for the utopian community he founded, Points of View, in Warwick, New York. At the end of his career, to share his experience with land acquisition, house siting and construction with a wider audience, he wrote a series of “how to” books directed to novices. Choice excerpts from these works, clustered by natural element, are featured in the Little Gallery’s special exhibit, Earth, Air, Water and Fire: The Wit &Wisdom of Frazier Forman Peters.

Finally, in a first-time collaboration between the WHS exhibits committee and the oral history committee, this exhibit also will feature a Frazier Peters documentary film, comprising interviews of Bob Weingarten, guest curator for the exhibit, who personally researched all 35 Peters houses, along with Laura Blau, granddaughter of Frazier Peters and now a Philadelphiabased architect, and two long-time owners of Peters homes, Adam Stolpen and Natalie Ryshna Maynard.

Later this year, the WHS also plans to use funding from its Eve Potts Fund to publish a softcover biography of Peters and his work in Westport, co-authored by Laura Blau and Bob Weingarten, and edited by Katie Chase, designed by Miggs Burroughs and managed by Jane Sherman.

WHS Committee members collaborating on these projects include Anne Levine, Sue Kirby, Laurence Untermeyer, Elizabeth Juviler, Janine Brown, Brian O’Leary, Miggs Burroughs, Jane Sherman, John Hartwell, Dorothy Curran, Katie Chase and Mary Vickery.

The Westport Historical Society is a private, member-supported, non-profit 501(c)(3) organization that receives no taxpayer subsidies. Major support for the WHS comes from annual sponsors, including lead sponsor, BNY Mellon Wealth Management, along with the Betty R. & Ralph Sheffer Foundation, Janet & Fred Plotkin/The Ruth and Adoph Schnurmacher Foundation, Berchem Moses Devlin, Kowalsky Brothers, The Leapley Financial Group/Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, TD Bank and Weichert Capital Properties & Estates. Major support for the exhibits comes from First Niagara Bank and Jamieson Architects. Additional support comes from Sylvia R. Karasu, MD and T. Byram Karasu, MD; Howard Matson, Wells Fargo Advisors; Catamount Wealth Management; Edward Jones-Jonathan Baron, Financial Advisor; Geringer Global Travel- Susan Geringer, India & Asia specialist; WR Green Construction; Leifer Properties.com and Noelle Newell, Design and Décor.

The Opening Reception for the Exhibit will take place on Sunday, October 2, from 2 to 4 pm, at the Westport Historical Society, 25 Avery Place. A highlight of the event will be the presentation to the WHS Archive, by Frazier Peters’ granddaughter, Laura Blau, of two of her grandfather’s unpublished manuscripts. For more information, contact the WHS at 203.222.1424 or at www.westporthistory.org