Charles A. and Gertrude R. Lubrecht House

73 Clinton Avenue, Westport, CT

1936 | Residence | Extant

Charles A. Lubrecht (1875-1963) was a physician and surgeon with a practice based in Brooklyn, New York. Together with his wife, Gertrude (1897-1995), Charles Lubrecht purchased a three-acre plot on Clinton Avenue in Westport in June 1932. Westport deed records confirm that the property included an existing dwelling (located at 77 Clinton Avenue), and it was this house that served as their summer residence beginning in July 1932.

Gertrude Lubrecht took an active role in parent-teacher organizations, and her name appears regularly in the Brooklyn society pages into 1937, while the 1940 U.S. Census confirms that Brooklyn was their primary residence (as of April 1935). Their summer residencies, no doubt, provided the couple with the opportunity to meet their neighbor Minerva Parker Nichols – who had moved into 82 Clinton Ave in 1930 – and to familiarize themselves with the house that the architect had designed for Jack and Adelaide Baker in 1928. These associations ultimately led them to commission Minerva to design them a new home sometime in 1935 or early 1936. Minerva herself reported that she had designed a house as lately as 1936, and there is little doubt that she is referring to the Lubrechts’ house.

Reflecting on the design of houses in 1937, Minerva expressed her belief in “purely functional houses, built to live in.” She found much of value in “simplification” and found in Georgian and Colonial Revival, an ideal of spareness. Nichols thought modern architects should take what is good out of every period, “letting fitness for use rule choice.”

 The Lubrechts sold the house in 1957.

- Researched and written by Bill Whitaker