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Serenity East
Clockwise from top: Louis Kahn, architect of Serenity East; interior of Serenity East featuring Jay Good’s antique electric fan collection; exterior of Serenity East
Jewish homeowner restores house designed by Louis Kahn
BY LEE CHOTTINER
Executive Editor
After years in the corporate world, Jay
Good was looking for a change — a chal-
lenge, actually.
He found it in the woods of suburban
Pittsburgh, not far from Fox Chapel.
Good, 42, an artist and former profes-
sor at Carnegie Mellon University, is just
about finished with a gray cinderblock
and plaster cube house designed by fa-
mous architect Louis Kahn. It was built
for a WQED public television executive.
So a piece of architectural history in
the Pittsburgh area that was designed by
a Jewish architect has been brought
back to life by a Jewish artist — sort of
like an artistic double play combination.
“I had just gone through seven years
in the corporate world,” Good said. A
neighbor of his told him about the house,
which definitely showed signs of age —
and bad taste — when Good first saw it.
“Wallpaper everywhere,” he recalled.
“And [bad] guts. All the electrical wiring
needed to be done — all the plumbing. It
looked [like] it had too many cooks in the
kitchen.”
But he knew he wanted it.
“I always thought the house had good
bones and good vibes,” he said.
Plus, it was a great place for Good to
show off his collection of antique elec-
tric fans.
No, that’s not a typo. He has a col-
lection of some of the most exotic elec-
THE JEWISH CHRONICLE NOVEMBER 1, 2007
tric fans, including one that also works
as a space heater, all over his house —
nearly 300 in all.
“I only had a few fans when I moved
in,” Good said, “but this house seemed to
beg for them.”
Based on the design of Kahn’s Esher-
ick House in suburban Philadelphia, the
cinder block residence, which sits on six
acres of land, far removed from any sub-
urban development, has no clearly de-
fined front or rear entrance, and it has a
massive I-beam “that can support a sky-
scraper” in the basement — far more
support than a dwelling needs.
Good has a theory to explain these
quirks: Kahn was known more as a com-
mercial architect, so that’s the way he
built houses when such a commission
came his way.
Built in 1967 with large, geometrically
positioned windows, the high-ceilinged
living room, which can be seen from a
second floor balcony, served as a projec-
tion room where the executive displayed
his many Emmy Awards for his work at
WQED and showed films against a bare
white wall.
Now, the room houses most of Good’s
fan collection.
Good tried to be true to the original
floor plan of the house, to the point of
contacting Kahn’s son, Nathanial, for his
input. In the end, while the first floor was
left intact, he took the second floor from
four rooms down to three, creating a
seamless master bedroom and bath and
a game room in the basement with a
multicoat urethane floor.
He used the dining room to show off
a wide-ranging art collection, from a
Roualt print, Asian art, (he shows very
little of his own work even though he
once had an exhibition at the Smith-
sonian) to paintings he “picked up at
Goodwill.”
He painted the exterior gray to make it
blend in better with its natural sur-
roundings. He also tried to make the
house as environmentally friendly as
possible, using reclaimed pine wood for
some of his upstairs floors — he did most
of the work himself — purchasing car-
bon-offsetting units and minimally using
lighting and air conditioning. He prefers
instead to rely on the windows and high
white walls to light the house.
He predicts the house will be carbon
free within three years.
Born Itze-Leib Schmuilowsky in Esto-
nia, possibly in 1906, Kahn and his fami-
ly immigrated to the United States be-
cause his father feared recall into the
Russian army during the Russo-Japan-
ese War. He was raised in Philadelphia,
and his father changed their name in
1915.
Kahn trained in the Beaux-Arts tradi-
tion, with its emphasis on drawing, at the
University of Pennsylvania. From 1925
to 1926, he served as chief designer for
the Sesquicentennial Exposition. The
back-to-the-basics approach he adopted
after visiting the ruins of ancient build-
Chronicle photos by John West
ings in Italy, Greece and Egypt helped
him to develop his own style of architec-
ture influenced by earlier modern move-
ments but not limited by their some-
times dogmatic ideologies. His influ-
ences led to projects such as the Salk In-
stitute in La Jolla, Calif.; the Richards
Research Laboratories at the University
of Pennsylvania; Kimbel Art Museum in
Ft. Worth, Texas; and the National Par-
liament Building of Bangladesh — which
is considered to be Kahn’s masterpiece.
Good comes by his love of architecture
naturally. The son of Larry and the late
Barbara Good of Wheeling, W.Va., (his
father ran a chain of department stores
while his mother was a singer and music
soloist at Temple Shalom), his parents
lived in a praire-style home designed by
a protégé of Frank Lloyd Wright. His
parents named their house Serenity Cen-
tral; his sister’s home in Colorado is
called Serenity West, so Good named his
Serenity East.
Good took a six-year sabbatical to
work on Serenity East, though he now
works as a consultant. But he considers
the time he devoted to the house well
spent.
“I just thought it was the best house to
show my eccentricities,” he said.
(Lee Chottiner can be reached at lchot-
tiner@pittchron.com.)