Cape Cod Modern: Mid-Century Architecture and Community on the Outer Cape

From the “summer Bauhaus” on, the Cape’ s modern designers enjoyed a lifestyle based on communion with nature, solitary creativity and shared festivity

In the summer of 1937, Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus and a professor at Harvard’s new Graduate School of Design, rented a house on Planting Island, near the base of Cape Cod. There, he and his wife, Ise, hosted a festive reunion of Bauhaus masters and students who had recently emigrated from Europe: Marcel Breuer, Herbert Bayer, Lász...