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ArchDC Summer 2018.qxp_Summer 2018 5/25/18 2:13 PM Page 16

Front façade of the Hull House, with the driveway at right.

architect Louis I. Kahn—and acts as a physical and
acoustical barrier between occupants and passing traffic.
Behind the thickened front wall—which is made of
uniformly sized Carderock stone blocks quarried from
nearby Bethesda, Maryland—the house’s three bedrooms
and living area expand beneath the continuous, copper-
clad roof, which is supported by Y-shaped columns along
its gable ridgelines. Jameson describes the roof, with its
crisp ridges and continuous surface, as origami, and that
metaphor is apt. The roof also evokes a frozen moment
when children are playing with a bedsheet and several
hands hold down their sides at once as air billows
through the rest—what is taut at the street side opens
up toward the north, allowing ample indirect daylight
within voluminous, open spaces. Roof becomes wall
where corners are pulled down to shield the owners
from their neighbors' second stories, and the whole
construction, even with the Y-columns, seems to float
above its glass walls. Hull House as seen from the street.

16 GABLE STITCH