By Eric White
I was hoping when I went looking for a Highlands connection between architect Gregory Ain, his clients Kenneth and Midori Ginoza, and the Highlands own architect Phillip Hallock, I would find some evidence that would link Mr. Hallock to the house that Gregory Ain designed for the Ginozas. Alas, at this time no link has been discovered (or at least no link has been identified).
However, Highlanders always come through! Not one, but two of our neighbors emailed me their connections.
First to come in was an email from Anne Pangborn who wrote:
“I want to tell you that in the mid 70’s, the Rosenblatt family, who lived then in our house, a few owners before us, and who added the pool in the backyard, wanted to add a bedroom and half bath on the main floor. That small addition (that included reworking a bedroom to create a hallway, and also involved creating a pool shed under that additional space) was designed by [Josef] Van der Kar; and while our home is not at all fancy, and the architect who designed our house was not notable…and that small addition is unremarkable, it fits in with Van der Kar’s design: the room is small but has one entire window wall facing the back of the house, and a line of windows facing the front of the house. The wood finish on the windows and the light wood floor and wood closet door make this small space very cozy but also very bright and cheerful; and it fits in with Van der Kar’s aesthetic, which involved the use of natural materials and a design that highlighted nature.”
So who is this van der Kar Anne is referring to? For those who are interested in the nuances of punctuation, some sources use a lower case V for van der Kar; other sources use an upper case. Van der Kar was born in the Netherlands and purists insist that Dutch names begin with a lower case V. Others will claim that a capital V is okay as well. For the sake of the rest of this piece I will use a lower case V.
Josef van der Kar, an associate of Gregory Ain’s in the Architecture Department at Penn State, took charge of completing the Ginoza home on East McCormick Avenue in the Vallamont neighborhood after Ain left his position as department head and returned to California. All evidence suggests that they were friends and colleagues prior to their Penn State collaboration, Ain having recruited van der Kar to Penn State to help revitalize the department and ultimately gain the accreditation it had not received while in the College of Engineering.
A biography of Gregory Ain by Anthony Denzer (Gregory Ain: The Modern Home as Social Commentary, Rizzoli International Publications, New York 2008) identifies van der Kar as an “old friend” noting that van der Kar visited Ain in his later years in a Los Angeles retirement home, even after Ain developed the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease.
Unlike Ain who only had one commission in State College, van der Kar had a few local commissions, although archival documents indicate that he was not especially proactive in seeking commissions. Most notable though of his State College works might be his own self designed home at 534 Orlando Avenue in College Heights. At the moment I am unable to identify any other homes that he provided the original designs for that are situated in the Highlands. This limited output isn’t especially surprising considering that his full time academic position at Penn State was his priority.
While the renovations that he designed and executed at the Pangborn house are enough to give us our sought after Highlands connection, wait—there’s more.
Shortly after receiving Anne’s email, I hear from another Highlander, Kirsten Jensen, who wrote:
“So there is another small connection to the Highlands re: the Ginoza house. I helped take care of Mr. Ginoza until he turned 100. He has (had) a daughter living in Paris and a son in California, who hired me to help him with things. He…could no longer drive, but he was still living in his house and very adamant that he would not move. I bought groceries, wine and cigarettes(!!) for him, and I cooked meals for him. When I stopped caring for him I set him up with a friend of mine who cared for him for several more years.”
This is a very personal recollection, but shows the interconnectedness of our Highland community with the rest of the Borough neighborhoods. William Ginoza lived to be 104. He ultimately moved to California where he died, and like Gregory Ain, the architect of his much beloved house, he too came to Penn State to be a part of a new department being set up. He retired in 1979 with emeritus professor of microbiology rank.
What is discovered while trying to make Highlands connections is that sometimes the information is often buried or known to only a few, yet is rich in all sorts of historical detail and significance.
Gregory Ain, who served as a department head at Penn State for a relatively short time, actually is a significant mid-century modern architect, important enough to warrant his own published biography. While he does not personally see the Ginoza house construction to the end, he does leave his trusted colleague and friend, Josef van der Kar in charge.
It is van der Kar who gives us the first link back to the Highlands with the redesign of a portion of the Pangborn House. He too returns to California, continues to practice architecture and dies at the age of 96 in 2002. Having spent ten years on the Penn State architecture faculty he is described as “a visionary second-generation modernist architect whose mid-century residential masterpieces left a lasting footprint on the Southern California landscape. Born to Dutch immigrant parents, van der Kar integrated bold architectural innovation with a deep-seated commitment to social progress, believing that progressive design could positively shape human community.” He died in 2002 at the age of 96 and was recognized by the American Institute of Architects (AIA) as one of the oldest practicing licensed architects in the association.
Archival information about van der Kar is in the Special Collections of the Penn State and Stanford University Libraries. In addition, a scan of the Internet turns up all sorts of digitized records as well, including many pictures of houses that he has designed.
And one final connection—for now at least—comes from a random search of mine which turned up that van der Kar provided a redesign of Charles Moore’s home, a contemporary architect who was living in Los Angeles. Charles Moore, it turns out, is the architect of the Palmer Museum of Art (the first one with the big paws in front on Curtin Road on the Penn State campus). How fortuitous that we can claim that the architect who worked on a Highlands house also worked on the house of the architect who designed the original Palmer Museum.
So our Highlands connection has now been made thanks to our Hearts in the Highlands readers. And not one connection, but two.
That this still leaves us wondering: Are there any more? And what about my original inquiry about Phillip Hallock and his influence on the naming of the Vallamont neighborhood? Facts can be elusive, especially when they are not digitized and available on the Internet. Perhaps this is only family lore maintained by the grandchildren and perhaps great-grandchildren of Phillip Hallock. Or perhaps it is just the product of my own mind on one particular day
In any case, learning about people who helped shape the Highlands and their connections to our current residents gives us an appreciation for those who lived or worked in our neighborhood. Sometimes these names get lost to time, while others slowly disappear from our memories. But we can, once again, with the help of our fellow Highlanders, remember who they were, what they did here, and bring them back to life as people who impacted the place that we call home.
Eric White is a member of the Hearts in the Highlands Editorial Board.