Walter Gropius wanted the Hagerty House, The Hagerty House as it became known, was his first architectural commission in the United States. The Hagerty House he approached the architect to design a summer home for Walter Gropius family’s in Cohasset, a suburb south of Boston. Upon completion, the Hagerty House was the subject of much controversy and criticism from neighbors. Though Hagerty House regularly affirmed his love for the modern house design, he had complaints both during and after construction.

The story of the home begins in 1937, when Walter Gropius, the pioneering founder of Germany’s Bauhaus and a recent émigré to the United States, accepted a teaching position at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. Hagerty’s House request was simple: He wanted a two-story part-time Residence characterized by a plain geometric form and simplicity of detail, with a large living area and several bedrooms. The roughly L-shaped house’s main longitudinal section extends in a north–south orientation, punctuated by floor-to-ceiling windows and smaller bands of glass designed to maximize views of the Atlantic Ocean.

Even with the addition of Sasseen’s modern Sub-Zero appliances, honed-granite countertops, and SieMatic cabinetry, the home retains the identity that endowed it with a place on the National Register of Historic Places in 1997. Sasseen—the fifth owner since the Hagertys—bought the house in 2001. Living in a modernist home wasn’t quite what she envisioned when she moved north from Florida to be near her children and grandchildren. In fact, she almost bought the house next door.

The basement hasn’t proven to be an adequate substitute for the shortage of closets in Gropius’s design, as storms bring floodwaters as high as three feet when water comes over the seawall and surrounds the house.se. Gropius had originally wanted to build the house on the beach, so inhabitants could simply walk out the back door and step onto the sand.Perhaps it is not the distance from the house to the ocean that is so significant, but the other way around.