visit
modern meets old town
Architect Erling Falck achieves aesthetic harmony
by furnishing his 1815 cottage with 20th-century classics
Written by MARILYN MYERS SLADE
Photography by ERIC ROTH
How does an architect whose professional reputation was built designing
modern houses handle living in a circa 1815 house in a venerable historic district?
In the case of Erling Falck, spend nine years renovating the house and then fill it
with a world-class collection of modern 20th-century furniture.
Falck bought the house in the Old Town section of Marblehead, Massachusetts, in 1967 when he relocated from Washington, D.C., to take a job with The
Architects Collaborative, the Cambridge, Massachusetts, firm founded by Bauhaus guru Walter
Gropius, who was then head of the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Marblehead was a good fit
for Falck, who explains, “I had often sailed up the Chesapeake, eventually landing in Marblehead
harbor,” where sailing is central to the local culture.
The house needed a lot of work, but Falck was charmed by the location on Goodwin’s Court,
one of the many crooked lanes that meets rocky ledge along the harbor’s edge. He visualized a combination of modern and antique that would complement and highlight the integrity of each.
“The whole point of the house is that anyone could move in with period or contemporary furniture and be at home,” he says.
erling falck and his wife,
Maren (left), in front of their
19th-century home in
Marblehead, Massachusetts.
A glimpse into the living
room (above) reveals an
eclectic mix of art and classic
furniture, such as the leather-and-steel Wassily chair.
