Michael Dwyer (architect)

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Michael Dwyer
Garden Pavilion on the Hudson River.
Born1954
NationalityAmerican
Alma materColumbia College (BA)
University of Pennsylvania (MArch)
OccupationArchitect

Michael Dwyer is an American architect known for designing new buildings in traditional vocabularies. He was the editor of Great Houses of the Hudson River (2001) and the author of Carolands (2006).

Architectural practice[edit]

1981–1996[edit]

Michael Dwyer was associated from 1981 to 1996 with the architecture firm Buttrick White & Burtis, where he worked on several notable projects, among them the Saint Thomas Choir School, a fifteen-story boarding school in Midtown Manhattan,[1][2] described by architecture critic Paul Goldberger "as among the city's best examples of contextual architecture."[3] Another was the Dana Discovery Center, a venue for environmental education, the centerpiece of the Central Park Conservancy's 1990–1993 restoration of Harlem Meer in Central Park's northeast corner.[4][5] In an 1993 interview with the magazine Progressive Architecture, Dwyer noted that the building's "picturesque character" was intended to reinforce the park's "romantic landscape design."[6][4]

While at Buttrick White & Burtis, Dwyer was an advocate for New York's prewar, classical style of architecture. In a 1995 survey by The New York Times of New York's nascent classical revival, reporter Patricia Leigh Brown noted that, "Michael Dwyer...an architect at Buttrick White & Burtis...has recently completed a classical-style yacht" and a "town house on the Upper East Side,"[7] a house whose new facade architect Robert Stern characterized as "...scholarly...reflecting the elegant manner of Ange-Jacques Gabriel."[8]

1996–present[edit]

After establishing his own firm in 1996, Dwyer was the architect for the Eleanor Roosevelt Monument in New York's Riverside Park, supplementing Penelope Jencks' statue of Roosevelt with granite medallions set in the surrounding bluestone paving (one inscribed with a quotation from a 1958 speech of Roosevelt's; the other with a quotation from Adlai Stevenson's 1962 eulogy for her).[9][10] In 1997 he restored the exterior of the Francis F. Palmer House, a designated New York City landmark. From 1998 to 2007 he was the consulting architect to the Cosmopolitan Club, a private social club for women.

In addition to institutional projects, Dwyer designed residential projects for New York's private sector, including apartments on Manhattan's east side (960 Fifth Avenue and 720 Park Avenue); its west side (The Dakota and The San Remo); and houses in diverse locations such as East Hampton, Greenwich, and Nantucket.

The financier and preservationist Dick Jenrette, who called Dwyer his "favorite young neoclassical architect," commissioned him to build a pair of classical pavilions at Edgewater, Jenrette's Hudson River Valley villa. Jenrette described them in his memoir, Adventures with Old Houses:

In recent years, I've begun making more of my own architectural imprint on the Edgewater property. This past year I added a small neo-classical guest house, built on a point of land across the lagoon to the north of Edgewater—far enough away not to compete with the main house. Designed by Michael Dwyer of New York, the guest house is a small Grecian temple with four columns of the Doric order framing a large porch looking downriver. Viewed from the front porch of Edgewater across the lagoon, the new structure serves as an architectural folly extending the sweep of the landscape to the north.

Michael Dwyer also relocated the swimming pool and added a charming pool house, again in classical style with four Doric columns along the side of the pool. The effect is quite Roman—rather like a small corner of Hadrian's Villa. From guest house to pool house and back to the main house provides a scenic one-mile roundabout walk, mostly along the winding riverbank.[11]

The July 2018 issue of Architectural Digest featured Hollyhock, Dwyer's largest project, a new house in Southampton, New York for real estate executive Mary Ann Tighe, a collaboration with interior designer Bunny Williams, reminiscent of the prewar houses of architect David Adler and interior designer Frances Elkins.[12][13]

List of representative projects[edit]

  • 35 Meter Cruising Yacht (interior architecture; completed 1994).[14]
  • Nureyev Apartment; The Dakota, New York City (interior architecture; completed 1995).[7]
  • Eleanor Roosevelt Monument, Riverside Park, New York City (granite medallions and bronze plaques; completed 1996).[15]
  • Windsong; Shimmo Beach, Nantucket, MA (new house; completed 1996).
  • Francis F. Palmer House, 75 E 93rd St, New York City (roof replacement and window restoration; completed 1997).[16]
  • Garden Pavilion and Pool House at Edgewater, in Barrytown, New York (completed 1997).[17]
  • Maisonette duplex, 960 Fifth Avenue, New York City (interior architecture; completed 1999).[18]
  • Longview; 27 Gin Lane, Southampton, NY (new garden facade, new wing with indoor pool, and interior architecture throughout; completed 2000).[19]
  • Mead Point; at Indian Field Road, Greenwich, CT (new house; completed 2001).[20]
  • Stone Cottage; at Toylsome Place, Southampton, NY (new house and interior architecture; completed 2004).
  • 720 Park Avenue, New York City (apartment alterations; completed 2006).[21]
  • Cosmopolitan Club, New York City (alterations to the entrance hall, ballroom, and garden penthouse, from 1998 to 2007).
  • New Sommariva; East Hampton, NY (new house; completed 2009).
  • Hollyhock; at Southampton, NY (new residence, guest house, garden pavilion, and arbor; completed 2017).[12][13]
  • Triplex penthouse; The San Remo, New York City (alterations completed 2017).[22]

Gallery[edit]

Bibliography[edit]

  • Carl A. Pearson (author); Michael Dwyer (illustrator). "Up in Central Park on the Shore of Harlem Meer," Architectural Record (March 1990).[23]
  • Mark Alden Branch (author); Michael Dwyer (illustrator). "Flirting with Folly in Central Park," Progressive Architecture (August 1991): 23.[5]
  • Michael Dwyer (contributing illustrator). "A View of the Dana Discovery Center, Central Park, New York," Architecture in Perspective No. 8 (American Society of Architectural Illustrators, 1994): 10.
  • Michael Dwyer. "Buildings in Public Parks," Clem Labine's Traditional Building (March/April 1995): 26, 28, 30; ISSN 0898-0284
  • Michael Dwyer. "Building with Stone," Clem Labine's Traditional Building (March/April 1996): 25–26; ISSN 0898-0284.
  • Michael Dwyer. "The Arts and Crafts in Architecture Today," Classicist No. 3 (1996–97): 90–96; ISBN 1-56000-936-5.
  • Michael Dwyer (editor) with a preface by Mark Rockefeller. Great Houses of the Hudson River (Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company, in association with Historic Hudson Valley, 2001).[24]
  • Michael Dwyer (author) with a foreword by Mario Buatta. Carolands (Redwood City, CA: San Mateo County Historical Association, 2006).[25]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Miller, Clay (March 12, 1992). "St. Thomas Choir School1" (PDF). Progressive Architecture. Retrieved September 14, 2020.
  2. ^ Joseph Giovannini (September 17, 1987). "Young Voices Soar at the New St. Thomas Choir School". The New York Times. Retrieved May 1, 2020.
  3. ^ Paul Goldberger (June 29, 1990). "Four projects honored for design". The New York Times. Retrieved September 17, 2023.
  4. ^ a b Stern, Robert A.M. (2006). New York 2000. New York: The Monacelli Press. p. 788. Retrieved July 18, 2022.
  5. ^ a b Branch, Mark Alden (August 1991). "Flirting with Folly in Central Park" (PDF). Progressive Architecture. Retrieved April 10, 2021.
  6. ^ Arcidi, Philip (December 1993). "Learning by the Rules" (PDF). Progressive Architecture. Retrieved May 1, 2020.
  7. ^ a b Brown, Patricia Leigh (February 9, 1995). "Architecture's young old fogies". The New York Times. Retrieved March 25, 2022.
  8. ^ Stern, Robert A.M. (2006). New York 2000. New York: The Monacelli Press. p. 932. Retrieved July 18, 2022. The house is at 14 East 81st Street.
  9. ^ Martin, Douglas (October 5, 1996). "Eleanor Roosevelt Honored in Hometown Today". The New York Times. Retrieved September 22, 2023.
  10. ^ Jean Parker Phifer, Public Art New York (New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Co., 2009).
  11. ^ Richard H. Jenrette, Adventures with Old Houses (Charleston, SC: Wyrick & Co., 2000). ISBN 0-941711-46-3.
  12. ^ a b Dan Shaw."Top Tier Design Team Breathes Elegance into a Southampton Estate'" Architectural Digest (July 2018).
  13. ^ a b Williams, Bunny (April 2019). Love Affairs with Houses. New York: Abrams. p. 13. ISBN 9781419734649. Retrieved July 18, 2022.
  14. ^ Editors of The Classicist, with an introduction by Robert A.M. Stern, A Decade of Art & Architecture 1992–2002 (New York: Institute of Classical Architecture, 2002).
  15. ^ Phifer, Jean (2009). Public Art New York. New York: W.W. Norton. p. 148. Retrieved July 18, 2022.
  16. ^ Records of the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission.
  17. ^ Richard H. Jenrette, Adventures with Old Houses (Charleston, SC: Wyrick & Co., 2000).
  18. ^ NYC Department of Buildings, Letter of Completion #101756823, March 3, 1999.
  19. ^ Elizabeth Pochoda. "Taking the Long View." House & Garden (August 2001).
  20. ^ Laura Beach, "Sojourn on the Sound." Antiques & Fine Art (Summer 2006).
  21. ^ NYC Department of Buildings, Letter of Completion #104423722, October 25, 2006.
  22. ^ Kathryn Brenzel, "Inside the World of Luxury Renovations," The Real Deal (February 16, 2016).
  23. ^ Pearson, Clifford (March 1990). "Up in Central Park on the Shore of Harlem Meer" (PDF). Architectural Record. 174: 19. Retrieved 9 October 2022.
  24. ^ Great Houses of the Hudson River. WorldCat. OCLC 47983424.
  25. ^ Carolands. WorldCat. OCLC 77238885.

External links[edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Michael Middleton Dwyer.
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