A House to Live With: Paul Rand in Esquire 1953

Ann and Paul Rand’s house in Connecticut, as it appeared in the August 1953 issue of Esquire.

A man who knew the scripts of living, Henry David Thoreau, once wrote: “I sometimes dream of a…house, standing in a golden age, of enduring materials, and without gingerbread work … containing all the essentials of a house, and nothing for housekeeping…”

Ann and Paul Rand wanted such a house, too, an enduring, essential house, built for beauty and privacy, security and shelter, peace and an intimacy with its surroundings. So they designed theirs as if this were the first house ever built. Mrs. Rand is a graduate architect, Paul Rand a designer and painter, so perhaps this approach was destined to be a creative and tasteful success.

The Rand home is set in wooded Connecticut acreage, and by coincidence meets the formula of the ideal setting defined by the Japanese; a hill to the north, a brook to the east, a road to the west, looks south. Compact, spacious, it neither tosses the inhabitants out into the open by too much “picture-window” exposure, nor shuts them off from the outdoors by conventional barriers. The entrance, above, for example, utilizes natural light in the small court opening to the left, where stand welcoming birches. The outdoors goes with you, quietly, as you enter.

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This article and images originally appeared in the August 1953 issue of Esquire, (see cover below).