Frank J. Barrett architectural collection

Historical/Biographical Note

Historical/Biographical Note

Frank Joseph Barrett (1912-1999) was an architect during the twentieth century. He grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and studied architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He graduated from MIT in 1937, and he went on to earn a master's degree in architecture in 1941. Barrett studied with Samuel Chamberlain, and he was greatly influenced by the early Modernist movement. Through his studies at MIT, Barrett was introduced to the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, Walter Gropius, and Le Corbusier.

After completing his studies at MIT, Barrett worked for the Diamond Match Company where he designed low-cost homes. He also worked as an architect for the Federal Housing Administration in Boston. Barrett married Dorothy Hill in 1941, and during World War II, Barrett was an engineer with the United States Army. He designed airstrips and hospitals while stationed in the South Pacific, but he sketched designs for Modern houses in his free time, which he sent to his wife in Melrose, Massachusetts. He also kept sketch books with him throughout his service, during which he was stationed in New Guinea and the Philippines.

In February, 1945, Barrett designed a New England Cape house for General Douglas MacArthur, which MacArthur wanted to build in the South Pacific believing that he would be stationed there for a considerable length of time. In August of 1945, Barrett was sent to Tokyo to repair Frank Lloyd Wright's Imperial Hotel for MacArthur's use. In December, 1945, Barrett returned to Cambridge, Massachusetts. Barrett went to work for Alfred T. Granger in Hanover, New Hampshire, where Barrett lived for the rest of his life. He and his wife had three sons, the youngest of whom, Frank J. Barrett, Jr., also became an architect.

Barrett, Sr. designed and built a Modern home for his family in Hanover along the bank of the Mink Brook. The house employed passive solar design with large sheets of glass and a sloping shed roof, which earned it the nickname "Frank Barrett's chicken coop." The house was efficient, however, and it both heated well in the winter and stayed cool in the summer. Barrett believed in the importance of adapting architecture to the seasonal patterns of the location in which the structure was to be built. Barrett decorated the house with his own watercolor paintings.

Sources

Barrett, F. (Fall 2011). Portrait of an Architect. Historic New England, vol. 12, no. 2, 16-20.