Requiem for a Trailblazer
Working exclusively from Cleveland, Robert Little would go on to
design notable projects like the MetroHealth Towers, the Air Force
Museum in Dayton, the Hawken School’s Upper Campus in Gates
Mills, and the beloved Musicarnival tent theater on Warrensville
Center Road that brought musical theater and performances by
bands like The Who, Led Zeppelin, and The Doors to generations
of Clevelanders between 1954 and 1975. He was also the recipient
of the Cleveland Arts Prize in 1965.
Little’s trailblazing work paved the way for other modernist
designers in Shaker Heights, including Larry Perkins, who designed the
Shaker Heights Middle School in 1954, and Don Hisaka, who designed
for his own residence on Drexmore Road in 1967. Little himself
designed another Shaker home in 1968, on Weybridge Road.
It is quite likely that around this time Little was also instrumental
in Frank Porter’s selection of Walter Gropius as the architect for Tower
East. Porter had hired Little in the late ‘40s to redesign his new Central
Cadillac showroom in downtown Cleveland – a project that didn’t get
beyond the drawing stage due to complications with construction
that had already begun. Now, Porter wanted to build a significant
development in Shaker Heights at the intersection of Chagrin Boulevard,
Warrensville Center Road, and Northfield Road. Tower East would be
Gropius’ last major project, and is a National Historic Landmark property.
But perhaps Robert and Ann Little’s favorite
project was Pepper Ridge. A development of
modern homes on a former farm in Pepper Pike,
theirs was the first of a dozen built on a narrow,
winding cul-de-sac starting in the early 1950s.
Little designed everything down to the mail
boxes. They raised their two sons there and it
was their home until Robert’s passing in 2005
and Ann’s in 2012. SL
One of the great advantages was that the Flaments didn’t need
to do much furnishing. Nearly every room has built-ins, from cabinets
to desks to wardrobes. While the low-sloping roof means there is no
attic for storage, the second-floor hall connecting the bedrooms is
lined with built-in cabinets below the awning windows. The space
under the stairs connecting the first and second floors and the stairs
to the basement provides additional storage.
However, there was not complete family harmony around the
move. The Flaments’ daughter Gretel, the older of their two children,
was not happy. In a letter to Robert Little a few years later,
she explained:
“I was horrified. I was a senior in high school at the time, and I
told my mother I was embarrassed for my friends to visit me at ‘The
Ugliest House in Shaker.’ I couldn’t believe they actually liked that
brown shoebox masquerading as a house.
“As time went on, I began to realize that our new house was
the most comfortable and interesting house I had ever lived in. I
especially loved being able to stand in the living room and look
around and see trees, flowers, and grass. It was almost like living
outside! All of my friends loved the house, too, which was, of course,
very important. I found myself feeling sorry for people who had to
live in boring old colonial-style houses.”
To which Little responded, “If you had a little trouble adjusting to
the unconventional design, you should have seen the Shaker Heights
Architectural Review Board in 1950.” SL
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