Where'd You Go, Bernadette(33)
The Twenty Mile House, which had taken three years to complete, had been demolished in a day. The only pictures that exist are the ones realtor Judy Toll took with her point-and-shoot. The only plans are the comically incomplete ones Fox submitted to the building department.
PAUL JELLINEK: I know she’s considered the big victim in all of this. But the Twenty Mile House getting destroyed was nobody’s fault but Bernadette’s.
There was an outpouring of grief in architecture circles as word spread that the house had been demolished.
PAUL JELLINEK: Bernadette went AWOL. I had a ton of architects sign a letter, which ran in the paper. Nicolai Ouroussoff wrote a nice editorial. The Landmark Commission got serious about preserving modern architecture. So that was something good that came out of it.
I tried calling her, but she and Elgie sold Beeber Bifocal and left town. I can’t imagine. I just can’t imagine. It makes me sick to think about it. I still drive by the site. There’s nothing there.
Bernadette Fox never built another house. She moved to Seattle with her husband, who got a job at Microsoft. When the AIA made Fox a fellow, she didn’t attend the ceremony.
PAUL JELLINEK: I’m in a weird position when it comes to Bernadette. Everyone looks to me, because I was there, and I never gave her the chance to alienate me. But she built only two houses, both for herself. They were great buildings, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying it’s one thing when you build a house with no client, no budget, and no time constraints. What if she had to design an office building, or a house for someone else? I don’t think she had the temperament. She didn’t get along with most people. And what kind of architect does that make you?
It’s because she produced so little that everyone is able to canonize her. Saint Bernadette! She was a young woman in a man’s world! She built green before there was green! She was a master furniture maker! She was a sculptor! She called out the Getty on its wasteful ways! She founded the DIY movement! You can say anything you want, and what’s the evidence against it?
Getting out when she did was probably the best thing that could have happened for her reputation. People say that Nigel Mills-Murray destroying the Twenty Mile House caused Bernadette to go crazy. I think, Yeah, crazy. Crazy like a fox.
An Internet search produces no clues as to what Fox is up to these days. Five years ago, there was an auction item listed in a brochure for the Galer Street School, a private school in Seattle. It read, “CUSTOM TREE HOUSE: Third-grade parent Bernadette Fox will design a tree house for your child, supply all materials, and build it herself.” I contacted the head of school about this auction item. She emailed back: “According to our records, this auction item received no bids and went unsold.”
MONDAY, DECEMBER 13
From Mom to Paul Jellinek
Paul,
Greetings from sunny Seattle, where women are “gals,” people are “folks,” a little bit is a “skosh,” if you’re tired you’re “logy,” if something is slightly off it’s “hinky,” you can’t sit Indian-style but you can sit “crisscross applesauce,” when the sun comes out it’s never called “sun” but always “sunshine,” boyfriends and girlfriends are “partners,” nobody swears but someone occasionally might “drop the f-bomb,” you’re allowed to cough but only into your elbow, and any request, reasonable or unreasonable, is met with “no worries.”
Have I mentioned how much I hate it here?
But it is the tech capital of the world, and we have this thing called “the Internet,” which allows us to do something called a “Google search,” so if we run into a random guy outside the public library and he starts talking about an architecture competition in L.A. inspired by let’s say, oneself, we can type that information into the aforementioned “Google search” and learn more.
You little rotter, Paul. Your fingerprints are all over that Twenty Mile House redux. Why do you love me so? I’ve never understood what you saw in me, you big lunk.
I suppose I should be honored or angry, but really the word would be nonplussed. (I just looked that up in the dictionary, and you know what’s funny? The first definition is “so surprised and embarrassed one doesn’t know how to react.” The second definition is “not at all disturbed.” No wonder I never know how to use it! In this case, I’m using it in the latter context.)
Paul Jellinek. How the hell are you? Are you mad at me? Longing for me because life’s just not the same without me? Nonplussed, in either the first or second sense of the word?
I believe I owe you a return phone call.
You probably wonder what I’ve been doing for the last twenty years. I’ve been resolving the conflict between public and private space in the single-family residence.
I’m joking! I’ve been ordering shit off the Internet!
By now you’ve figured out that we moved to Seattle. Elgie was hired by Microsoft. MS, as it’s known on the inside. You’ve never seen a more acronym-happy company than Microsoft.
My intention was never to grow old in this dreary upper-left corner of the Lower Forty-eight. I just wanted to leave L.A. in a snit, lick my considerably wounded ego, and when I determined that everyone felt sufficiently sorry for me, unfurl my cape and swoop in to launch my second act and show those bastards who the true bitch goddess of architecture really is.