The Second House

The Second Car, once the great American status symbol, has become the great American what-of-it--7,400,000 U.S. families now own two or more cars. The thing these days is to have a Second House.

Members of the upper crust, of course, have always had their country cottages for getting out of town when the weather was hard to take. The Emperor Tiberius, for one. used to beat the Roman heat on the cliffs of Capri, where some of the house guests at his verdant Villa Jovis were said to have disappeared into the sea below. Perhaps the most famed second house of all is the exquisite Petit Trianon, begun by Louis XV for his mistress. Madame de Pompadour, and elaborated by Louis XVI's wife, Marie Antoinette. From the punkah-hung summer bungalows of Darjeeling to the marble "cottages" of 19th century Newport (where a four-bedroom, two-bath apartment has been fitted into what was once a dining room), most of the rich have had at least a second*#151;and often a third, fourth or fifth--house to live it up in.

But for most middle-income Americans, summer usually meant merely a hotel holiday--until recently. Today, more and more have their own vacation houses, and more brains, taste, enthusiasm--and careful budgeting--are going into them than into almost any other field of architecture. The second houses range from modest cabins in the woods to elegant retreats that cost anywhere from a few thousand dollars to $75,000 or more. They may be on the seashore, in the mountains, on a pond, or simply on the most convenient spot of land available for its owner's means. There are already more than 1,000,000 vacation houses in the U.S., and so many more are being built each year that there will be an estimated 2,000,000 by 1970.

Release from Tedium. The range of reasons for this new phenomenon is as diversified as the summer houses themselves. First is the traditional American hankering for outdoor life, perhaps heightened by the brush-fire spread of urbanization. Second is the growing amount of leisure-longer weekends, longer vacations and more money to spend. There is also the stepped-up mobility of modern life: superhighways and fast cars--even private planes--are bringing vacation areas nearer to metropolitan centers. And with the nation's population of those 65 and older growing faster than almost any other age group, the conversion of vacation houses to retirement houses is an increasingly attractive possibility.

The more modest of the second houses are often used only on weekends, but the great majority become summer-long retreats (or, for many, winter retreats) where the children grow up for three months, mother is released from the tedium of city or suburban life, and dad, after rushing out of his office at 5 on Friday and making the trek by auto, train or boat (or a combination of all three), can take his leisure for at least a few days in sylvan surroundings. It is no matter that he must often drain his bank account to carry the second house (as they have become more popular, coveted land sites have rocketed in price), or that he often returns to the city more exhausted than when he left; the second house often releases energies he never knew he had.

Blossoming Imaginations. The modern second house offers a fertile field for inexpensive experiment that excites both architects and owners. People who would not think of doing anything architecturally far-out on Main Street somehow let their imaginations blossom when they get away from it for the summer. Within the past decade a diversity of new building materials has given the owner of the second house the chance to create new shapes, employ new methods of construction and invent new ways of blending outdoors and indoors.

But the new vacation houses that are flowering in the land are not necessarily modern. Cape Cod cottages are sprouting on Cape Cod and off it, and prefab log cabins are proliferating beside lakes and trout streams--and even, as in the mountains just west of Denver, in regular rows like any suburban subdivision, with a few pine trees for greenery and a snowcapped mountain range for scenery.

Stippling the Dunes. In most areas, sites for second houses naturally stretch out toward the cool air. In Denver each summer weekend, the highways leading westward into the higher elevations of the Rockies are jammed with Denverites taking to the hills--the higher, the fewer. Midwesterners have no mountains, but their lakes abound, many of them created in the last 20 years as flood-control projects, which have opened up a whole new recreational world. Vacation houses are springing up around Missouri's Lake of the Ozarks, Table Rock, Taneycomo, and the new Pomme de Terre. In Kansas there is Tuttle Creek Reservoir and Fall River. Even in Minnesota (where the license plates proclaim 10,000 lakes), waterfront property is in short supply.

The Atlantic Seaboard is more familiar with the second house, but never have so many Bostonians-proper and improper--spread out in such numbers into the cool Berkshire Hills, or the trout-stream areas of New Hampshire and Vermont, or the watering places along the North Shore and Cape Cod. New Yorkers are stippling the dunes and potato fields of Long Island with daring new beach houses that are a far cry from the vast mansions of Southampton--the second houses of another generation.

California's demand for second houses has been so great that a new breed of architect has come into being to specialize in them (e.g., Campbell & Wong Associates. Francis Lloyd). San Franciscans, for example, stream out of their fogbound city in the late spring and summer. Those who can afford the best have summer houses along the northern Emerald Bay area of Lake Tahoe on the California-Nevada line; the less affluent have cottages around the perimeter of the lake. Other rich Californians have summer houses on the magnificent Del Monte peninsula near Carmel and Monterey. More and more ordinary families, however, are moving into the rugged country north of San Francisco.

Dramatically Different. One design for a second house now making great strides in popularity throughout the U.S. is known, for obvious reasons, as the A-frame. Virtually nothing but a steep roof with glass at both ends, it is relatively easy to build and therefore economical. It is also versatile, as well as being dramatically different, both outside and in. But whatever the size or shape of his house--and whether he is tightening his budget or damning the expense--the contemporary owner of a second house usually expends as much care in its planning and construction as he would in an undertaking costing many times as much; most are no longer satisfied with a fishing shack or hunting cabin. And wherever they are or whatever they cost, the second houses have a consistent common denominator: they are designed for informality, relaxation, easy living and no servants. Tiberius would not have understood the situation at all. And Mrs. Astor, whose second house at Newport required a staff of 30, would simply have looked the other way.

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