Michael Dwyer (architect)

Michael Middleton Dwyer
Garden Pavilion on the Hudson River at Barrytown, New York
Born	1954 Philadelphia, PA, USA
Nationality	American
Alma mater	Rose Bay Secondary College, Sydney, New South Wales. National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS), Lander, Wyoming. Columbia College (B.A.) University of Pennsylvania (M.Architecture)
Occupation	Architect
Buildings	Edgewater Pavilions, Barrytown, New York. Hollyhock, Southampton, New York.

Michael Dwyer is an American architect and author of books about architecture, including Great Houses of the Hudson River (2001) and Carolands (2006).

Architecture Practice

Buttrick White & Burtis

Michael Dwyer was associated from 1981 to 1995 with the New York architecture firm Buttrick White & Burtis, where he helped design several noteworthy buildings. Among these was the Saint Thomas Choir School, a fifteen story boarding school in Midtown Manhattan, completed in 1987. Writing in The New York Times, architecture critic Paul Goldberger placed the school "among the city's best examples of contextual architecture."

Another such project, the Dana Discovery Center, was designed as a venue for environmental education in New York City's Central Park. The structure was the centerpiece of the Central Park Conservancy's 1990–93 reconstruction of Harlem Meer, an eleven-acre lake in the park's northeast corner. In a 1993 interview with the journal Progressive Architecture, Dwyer said that the building's "picturesque character" was intended to reinforce the park's "romantic landscape design."

In his book The Architecture of Additions, Paul Byard wrote that the Dana Center "is sized to be not too big for its adopted idiom but at the same time an effective presence and marker for one of the defining corners of the park." To Byard, the building's use of the "spiky polychrome architecture of the [earliest] park buildings, with porches, porticos, a steeply pitched and pinnacled tile roof, and rich, multi-colored ornamentation" served to connect the northernmost end of the park to the more developed southern part.

Classical controversy

During his time at Buttrick White & Burtis, Michael Dwyer was an advocate of New York's prewar, classical style of architecture and a protagonist of its resuscitation. In a 1995 review of architecture's nascent classical revival by The New York Times, reporter Patricia Leigh Brown wrote that, "Michael Dwyer...an architect at Buttrick White & Burtis...has recently completed a classical-style yacht" and a "town house on the Upper East Side," a house characterized by Robert A.M. Stern, dean of Yale's School of Architecture, as "scholarly...reflecting the elegant manner of Ange-Jacques Gabriel."

Interviewed by Brown for the article, dean Stern opined that the young classicists were "perhaps the true radicals of their time," whereas architect James Stewart Polshek, formerly dean of Columbia University's School of Architecture called them "bizarrely backward" and "lacking new ideas." Asked to weigh in, Yale historian Vincent Scully declared that "classicism speaks fundamentally to what people want, to security and dignity and permanence."

Meatpacking District pioneers

The gallery Establishment in New York's Meatpacking District.

In 1996, Dwyer and interior designer Ungkun Sae-Eng formed Dwyer & Sae-Eng, an architecture and design firm, after which they repurposed a derelict auto-repair garage on Gansevoort Street in Manhattan's Meatpacking District, a newly formed historic district in the northwest corner of Greenwich village. The renovated space did double-duty as a space for Dwyer's architecture studio, and a venue for Establishment, Sae-Eng's showcase for Southeast Asian art and antiques.

Cultural projects

George F. Baker Jr. House, at 75 East 93rd Street, New York City, a restoration project.

Eleanor Roosevelt Monument

In 1996, Dwyer was the architect for the Eleanor Roosevelt Monument in New York's Riverside Park, where he supplemented landscape architect Kelly and Varnell's circular oak bosque and Penelope Jencks' bronze statue with granite medallions set into the surrounding bluestone paving (one inscribed with a quotation from a 1958 speech of Roosevelt's; the other with a quotation from Adlai Stevenson's 1962 eulogy for her). The monument was dedicated on October 5, 1966.

75 East 93rd Street

In 1997, Dwyer restored the exterior of the George F. Baker Jr. House, built in 1918 and designated a landmark in 1969 by the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission whose report called it "an outstanding example of a modified Federal style...one of the finest works in New York City by the architects, Delano and Aldrich."

Cosmopolitan Club

From 1998 to 2007, he was the consulting architect to New York's Cosmopolitan Club, a private social club for women, helping to restore its clubhouse, designed by architect Thomas Harlan Ellett and awarded the Architectural League's 1933 gold medal.

Residential projects

On a parallel track, Dwyer prepared designs for the upper strata of New York's private sector, including apartments on Manhattan's east side (960 Fifth Avenue, 720 Park Avenue, and River House); its west side (The Dakota, The Majestic, and The San Remo); and houses in diverse locations such as Bridgehampton, East Hampton, Southampton, Rye, Greenwich, and Nantucket.

Carnegie Hill

In 1996, the financier, preservationist, and author Dick Jenrette engaged Dwyer to design a major alteration to his Carnegie Hill townhouse at 69 East 93rd Street, which he described in his memoir, Adventures with old houses:

For the next seven years (1989–1996), I lived quite happily at No. 69 East 93rd Street...I liked the light and the height of the ceilings, but the house lacked a grand ceremonial entrance staircase as I had enjoyed next door at No. 67 East 93rd Street...I even went so far as to commission Michael Dwyer, my favorite young neo-classical architect in Manhattan, to design a new interior layout. His plan 'borrowed' half the six-car garage on the first floor and would have created an elegant entrance hall and elliptical staircase ascending to the piano nobile.

Jenrette abandoned his plan to renovate No. 69 when he bought the house next door for a second time and moved back to 67 East 93rd Street.

Edgewater on the Hudson

Above, the entrance to the garden pavilion at Edgewater; below, the portico (built 1997).

In 1997, Jenrette commissioned Dwyer to build a pair of classical pavilions at Edgewater, Jenrette's villa on the Hudson River. Jenrette described them in his memoir:

In recent years, I've begun making more of my own architectural imprint on the Edgewater property. This past year I added a small neo-classical guest house, built on a point of land across the lagoon to the north of Edgewater—far enough away not to compete with the main house. Designed by Michael Dwyer of New York, the guest house is a small Grecian temple with four columns of the Doric order framing a large porch looking downriver. Viewed from the front porch of Edgewater across the lagoon, the new structure serves as an architectural folly extending the sweep of the landscape to the north.

Michael Dwyer also relocated the swimming pool and added a charming pool house, again in classical style with four Doric columns along the side of the pool. The effect is quite Roman—rather like a small corner of Hadrian's Villa. From guest house to pool house and back to the main house provides a scenic one-mile roundabout walk, mostly along the winding riverbank.

Hollyhock

The July 2018 issue of Architectural Digest featured Hollyhock, a new house in Southampton, New York designed by Dwyer for real estate executive Mary Ann Tighe, a decade-long collaboration with interior designer Bunny Williams, reminiscent of the prewar houses of architect David Adler and interior designer Frances Elkins.

In Dwyer's plan for Hollyhock's main wing, an entrance hall leads to an enfilade of three high-studded, south-facing rooms: a dining room embellished by Williams with panels of 18th-century wall paper; a living room with boiserie painted a "rich watery blue" by Williams and a 55-foot-long, pine-paneled library designed by Dwyer, divided into three spaces by projecting bookcases in the tradition of David Adler's Wheeler House library (1934); Bigelow & Wadsworth's reading room at the Boston Atheneum (1914); Charles Follen McKim's University Club library (1904); and Christopher Wren's library at Trinity College (1695).

The principal feature of the entrance hall is Dwyer's design for an elliptical staircase, inspired by a design of Adler's that was inspired by a design of John Russell Pope's, to which Dwyer added a black and white starburst marble floor.

In Hollyhock's gardens, designed by landscape architect Quincy Hammond in the grande manière, Dwyer built a guest house (a kind of modern-day Petit Trianon); a garden pavilion in the form of an orangery; an arbor with limestone columns supporting teak lattice panels; and a garage building in the guise of a caretaker's cottage. (Link to photographs of Hollyhock's landscape.)

Hollyhock's tile roofs and stucco facades allude to Red Maples, a house designed by the architects Hiss and Weekes, with gardens designed by Ferruccio Vitale, that stood on the site from 1913 until its demolition in 1947.

Critiques

In its 2013 review of Michael Dwyer's work, the editors of The Franklin Report wrote, "Dwyer has a strong command of historical reference and is adept at renovating prewar building interiors. Sources praise Dwyer's impressive intellect and charming nature while noting that the firm's 'confidence in its skills' may come across as rigid to unsuspecting clients."

In 2015, the Institute of Traditional Architecture ranked Dwyer No.22 on its list of the world's top 50 architects working in the traditional idiom.

Gallery

See main gallery at Wikimedia Commons

• 
  Venetian window at the Edgewater Garden Pavilion.
• 
  Pool Pavilion at Edgewater.
• 
  Longview, on Lake Agawam in Southampton, New York.
• 
  Detail of entrance door at Longview.
• 
  Detail of staircase at Longview.
• 
  Stone cottage in Southampton, New York.
• 
  Classical house in East Hampton, New York.
• 
  The entrance court at Hollyhock in Southampton, New York.
• 
  The portico at the entrance to Hollyhock.
• 
  Garden gate and guest house at Hollyhock, Southampton, New York.

Project List

• 35 Meter Cruising Yacht (interior architecture; completed 1994).
• Nureyev Apartment; The Dakota, New York City (interior architecture; completed 1995).
• Eleanor Roosevelt Monument, Riverside Park, New York City (granite medallions and bronze plaques; completed 1996).
• Windsong; Shimmo Beach, Nantucket, MA (new house; completed 1996).
• George F. Baker Jr. House, 75 E 93rd St, New York City (roof replacement and window restoration; completed 1997).
• Edgewater, Barrytown, NY (Garden Pavilion and Pool House; completed 1997).
• Maisonette duplex, 960 Fifth Avenue, New York City (interior architecture; completed 1999).
• Longview; 27 Gin Lane, Southampton, NY (new garden facade, new wing with indoor pool, and interior architecture throughout; completed 2000).
• Mead Point; Indian Field Road, Greenwich, CT (new house; completed 2001).
• River House Apartment (apartment alterations; completed 2003).
• Stone Cottage; Toylsome Place, Southampton, NY (new house and interior architecture; completed 2004).
• 720 Park Avenue, New York City (apartment alterations; completed 2006).
• Cosmopolitan Club, New York City (alterations to the entrance hall, ballroom, and garden penthouse, from 1998 to 2007).
• New Sommariva; East Hampton, NY (new house; completed 2009).
• Hollyhock; Southampton, NY (new residence, guest house, garden pavilion, and arbor; completed 2017).
• Triplex penthouse; The San Remo, New York City (alterations completed 2017).

Bibliography

Publications (as contributor)

• Carl A. Pearson (author); Michael Dwyer (illustrator). "Up in Central Park on the Shore of Harlem Meer," Architectural Record (March 1990).
• Mark Alden Branch (author); Michael Dwyer (illustrator). "Flirting with Folly in Central Park," Progressive Architecture (August 1991): 23.
• Michael Dwyer (contributing illustrator). "Proposed Addition to the Harvard Club of New York," Architecture in Perspective No. 7 (American Society of Architectural Illustrators, 1992): 29.
• Michael Dwyer (contributing illustrator). "A View of the Dana Discovery Center, Central Park, New York," Architecture in Perspective No. 8 (American Society of Architectural Illustrators, 1994): 10.
• Michael Dwyer (author). "Buildings in Public Parks," Clem Labine's Traditional Building (March/April 1995): 26, 28, 30; ISSN 0898-0284.
• Michael Dwyer (contributing illustrator). "New Master Plan - Trinity School," Architecture in Perspective No. 11 (American Society of Architectural Illustrators, 1996): 83.
• Michael Dwyer (author). "Building with Stone," Clem Labine's Traditional Building (March/April 1996): 25–26; ISSN 0898-0284.
• Michael Dwyer (author). "The Arts and Crafts in Architecture Today," Classicist No. 3 (1996–97): 90–96; ISBN 1-56000-936-5.
• Michael Dwyer (editor) with a preface by Mark Rockefeller. Great Houses of the Hudson River (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, in association with Historic Hudson Valley, 2001).
• Michael Dwyer (author) with a foreword by Mario Buatta. Carolands (Redwood City, CA: San Mateo County Historical Association, 2006).

Publications (as subject)

• Clem Labine. "A Townhouse in the Corinthian Order," Clem Labine's Traditional Building (September/October 1991): 48, 49; ISSN 0898-0284.
• Lee Goff. "Manhattan Townhouse," Stone Built (New York: Monacelli, 1997): 40. ISBN 9781885254696.
• Richard H. Jenrette. Adventures with Old Houses (Charleston: Wyrick, 2000): 8, 105, 161. ISBN 0-941711-46-3.
• Elizabeth Pochoda (author), Pieter Estersohn (photographer). "The Long View," House & Garden (August 2001): 76-82.
• Editors of The Classicist, with an introduction by Robert A.M. Stern. A Decade of Art & Architecture 1992–2002 (New York: Institute of Classical Architecture, 2002).
• Dan Shaw. "Top Tier Design Team Breathes Elegance into a Southampton Estate," Architectural Digest (July 2018).
• Bunny Williams. "Hollyhock," Love Affairs with Houses (New York: Abrams, 2019):13-35. ISBN 9781419734649.

See also

• Francis F. Palmer House (75 East 93rd Street, New York City)
• George F. Baker Jr. House (69 East 93rd Street, New York City)
• Edgewater (Barrytown, New York)

External links

• Michael Dwyer on Instagram
• Institute of Traditional Architecture 2015 Rankings.