Appreciating the modernist houses of architect Jack Bialosky Sr.: space, light, and the quiet modesty of subu – cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio Architecture is the anonymous art. Aside from the occasional plaque in a lobby, most buildings dont come with tidy labels that describe who designed what and when.

But if you look closely, its easy to spot the differences between, say, houses designed according to a developers template and a bespoke dwelling designed by an architect for a specific client in a specific style.

This is certainly true of modernist-style houses designed by the late Cleveland architect, Jack Bialosky, Sr., who died April 14 at age 94. Bialosky founded the eponymous firm where his son, Jack Bialosky Jr., is senior principal.

Today the firm has 66 employees, with most in Cleveland, and a handful in New York, and is known for a wide-ranging body of work in a variety of architectural styles.

Its portfolio includes the traditional-looking Crocker Park lifestyle and office center in Westlake, the Van Aken shopping, office and apartment district in Shaker Heights, and more modern-leaning designs for the renovated Campus Center at Cuyahoga Community Colleges Metro campus and the new Cleveland Metroparks Edgewater Beach House.

The firm was smaller, with seven or eight employees, when Jack Bialosky Sr. led it from the 1950s to the 1980s.

On his watch, the firm designed significant projects including the 1954 Suburban Temple-Kol Ami in Beachwood, the 1976 headquarters for Progressive Corp. in Mayfield, plus headquarters buildings for Broadview Savings, and Leaseway Corp. (Under Jack Jr.'s leadership, the Bialosky has continued to design offices for the expanding Progressive campuses along I-271).

Nevertheless, Jack Sr. was known primarily for designing more than 60 single-family houses sprinkled across Clevelands East Side suburbs, with a strong concentration in Shaker Heights.

A map prepared by the architecture firm of Bialosky displays addresses for a curated list of 17 houses in Shaker Heights designed by Jack Bialosky, Sr.Bialosky

Theres a trio of big Bialosky houses along the east side of Eaton Road in Shaker Heights between North Park and South Park boulevards. Other examples are located farther east on those boulevards, and along Shelburne Road, Landon Road, Marchmont Road, and Hazelmere Road.

His clients included former U.S. Sen. Howard Metzenbaum, and philanthropist Joseph Mandel.

Collectively, the houses speak to the optimistic, utopian side of modernism and American suburbs in the postwar era. Bialoskys designs evoke the America of the Space Race and the bright visions of the 1964 Worlds Fair, not the America of race riots and protests over the Vietnam War.

With their clean lines, open plan floor layouts, abundant floor-to-ceiling windows and gently sloped gable roofs, the houses possess an earth-hugging humility, a serene clarity and a sense of restrained, quiet confidence.

The houses include numerous architectural references to the Prairie Houses of Frank Lloyd Wright, who was a guest speaker at the Yale School of Architecture, where Bialosky earned a bachelors degree in 1949.

Those touches include deep, overhanging eaves and strong horizontal shadow lines created by low-slung, hipped roofs, in which all sides are angled.

The houses also stand out in the subtly inventive push-and-pull of their geometries, and in their sense of building craft.

The Arsham Residence at 2767 Landon Rd. in Shaker Heights is long, lean and low, with hipped roofs recalling the Prairie Houses of Frank Lloyd Wright.Steven Litt, The Plain Dealer

Bialosky was fond of having the vertical joints filled between the long, slender Roman-style bricks he preferred, all the better to emphasize the sweeping horizontality of his designs, as in the Arsham House at 2767 Landon Road (so named, like other Bialosky houses for its original owners). He also enjoyed contrasting the horizontal lines of his houses with upper stories cladded with vertical panels or battens of wood, as in the Siegler Residence, at 2744 Sulgrave Road.

The Kangesser House at 2670 Courtland Boulevard in Shaker Heights features a folded rectangular form, deep overhanging eaves and clerestory windows in gable ends.Steven Litt, The Plain Dealer

He carved clerestories in the gable ends of his Kangesser House at 2670 Courtland Boulevard, admitting daylight from an unexpected part of the house. And, as with many of his designs, the Kangesser House has a folded, rather than a simply rectangular shape.

It is widely observed that after World War II and the rise of suburbia, houses often eliminated porches in favor of backyard patios or decks that gave them an inward focus, turning away from the public realm of the street.

Thats true of Bialoskys houses, many of which are set low on their sites behind landscaped berms or rows of trees whose trunks etch decorative patterns against the smooth planes of his facades.

Neither boastful nor overtly opulent, the houses dont advertise the wealth of their inhabitants, which is exactly how Jack Sr. and his clients wanted it, according to Jack Jr.

The Blumenthal Residence at 2755 Eaton Road has a rambling layout, a ground floor cladded in brick, and a second floor sheathed in gray clapboard siding. Though large and spacious, the house is set behind a berm and screens of trees, emphasizing privacy.Steven Litt, The Plain Dealer

Part of the explanation for the general spirit of restraint was that the early decades after World War II represented a valley between mountainous levels of socioeconomic inequality prevalent during the 1920s and again today.

In the 1920s, Clevelands wealthy lined Shaker Boulevard in Shaker Heights and Fairmount Boulevard in Cleveland Heights with richly ornamented, neo-Tudor or neoclassical mansions that openly flaunt the wealth of their owners.

Bialoskys houses embody an entirely different spirit, even though Shaker Heights was reputed to be the wealthiest suburb in America during the early 1960s.

In addition to the generally lower level of inequality at the time, there was an ethnic twist to the more modest, recondite spirit of Bialoskys houses.

A lot of the clients were Jewish and part of this was a desire for assimilation, Jack Jr. said. It was, in his words, about being quiet.

Jack Jr. described his father as an atheist who was nevertheless proud of being Jewish, and who prized ethics based on the 10 commandments of the Old Testament and the golden rule. He taught Sunday school at the Suburban Temple-Kol Ami, where he and his late wife, Marilyn Bartow Bialosky, where founding members and trustees.

The Spitz Residence at 2681 Wadsworth Rd. in Shaker Heights has a pergola and terrace extending from a ground floor sitting room, framed at the top with a horizontal beam that separates the brick ground floor and the clapboard second floor.Steven Litt, The Plain Dealer

It was part of Jack Sr.s make-up that he never promoted himself or advertised his work, his son said.

He thought other people should put you forward; you shouldnt put yourself forward, Jack Jr. said.

Accordingly, assignments for houses propagated from one satisfied client to another.

What sold them on Bialoskys architecture was that it communicated qualities of spaciousness and light and possibility.

Randy Curtis, a business appraiser who grew up in a 3,800-square-foot Bialosky House on Marchmont Road in Shaker Heights, was so compelled by the architecture of the house that he bought it from his parents in 1991 and lived there with his wife, Beth, until they downsized to a home in Mayfield in 2018.

The Marchmont house faces north toward the street and south toward the 6th green of the Shaker Country Club golf course, a view Bialosky framed with floor to ceiling windows.

It was wonderful, it was wonderful, Curtis said, repeating the thought for emphasis. You had a feeling of wide-open space, of being free, he said.

Yet from the street, the Marchmont house expresses a sense of humility and modesty that Curtis also finds deeply appealing.

Over on Hazelmere Road, Ayesha Bell Hardaway, an assistant law professor at Case Western Reserve University, said she was instantly struck by a 4,000-square-foot Bialosky house when she first saw it while house shopping 15 years ago.

It had an open floor plan, which I still love, she said. When you walk in you dont feel cramped. I feel free and peaceful.

By balancing freedom and restraint in a modernist idiom, the houses of Jack Bialosky Sr. continue to give pleasure to new generations of residents. They also summarize the spirit of an era in a way thats worthy of deep, ongoing appreciation.

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Appreciating the modernist houses of architect Jack Bialosky Sr.: space, light, and the quiet modesty of subu - cleveland.com