$4 million summer home designed by Vincent James
The real estate listing calls the $4 million Hayward-area mansion an “architectural masterpiece.”
That might be an understatement.
Called Type/Variant House, it’s a 6,950-square-feet, seven-bedroom, nine-bath summer home. Nestled on 9 acres of land with more than 270 feet of shoreline on Lac Courte Oreille, the home was designed by Minneapolis architect Vincent James. Type/Variant House was among the first projects done by the architectural firm VJAA, which James founded in 1995.
Built with a distinctively modern style of rectangular units, Type/Variant House was “conceived as a collection of wood-framed, copper-clad volumes,” according to the description of the home on the VJAA website, “each differentiated by its orientation, proportions and natural light.”
The home is owned by Richard and Virginia Polsky, New York City residents who spent dozens of summers on the property and lake, well predating the building of the house. Type/Variant House is a particular reflection on the aesthetic ideals and life philosophy of Richard Polsky, who is a painter and artist. Richard Polsky worked closely with James in the design and material choice for the home.
“We said to Vince, we’re building one house in our lifetimes,” Richard Polsky said, in a phone interview from his Manhattan home. “We wanted a very modern house, very modern. … We live now. We don’t drive in a horse and buggy. There’s no going backward, the movie goes one way only.”
In particular, Richard Polsky said he wanted the home to change as it ages, like the woods it sits in and people who live in it. That meant natural wood inside, and outside siding made of copper, which gains a patina as it is exposed to the elements.
“My philosophy of life is as follows: Life is very hard. Live is very austere. I wanted the house to be very austere. When it rained, even with acid rain, I wanted the house to show what happens — what happens to humans and structures when they meet reality,” Richard Polsky said.
Construction of the home was completed in 1996, and the design garnered an Honor Award for Architecture from the American Institute of Architects in 1998, two years after winning an Honor Award from the state branch of the organization. The design was no fad. In 2021, Type/Variant House received the AIA Minnesota 25 Year Award for “standing the test of time” for providing “a distinct experience with unique views and spatial qualities.”
Alongside the modern themes of the home, which could fit in the biggest of cities, the house gives a nod to Frank Lloyd Wright and his philosophy of organic architecture, which nurtures a relationship between humans and nature. Type/Variant House uses walls of windows, decks and patios to blur the notions of outside and inside.
“It’s got so much glass that you feel like you’re part of the woods,” said Richard and Virginia Polsky’s son, Charlie Polsky, 58, of Chicago. “At the same time … it feels very modern, and in a way, urban. But there is no cacophony, no disharmony between the inside and the outside.”
The house was built to accommodate the extended Polsky family, Charlie Polsky said, including Richard and Virginia Polsky, their five children and grandchildren. The pods, Charlie Polsky said, allowed the family to gather, but also have their privacy.
Charlie Polsky said the family decided to put the home on the market because his mother is in her 80s and father in his 90s and find it hard to travel. His siblings live in New York City near his parents, and it’s difficult for them to get to Hayward to enjoy the home.
“It’s a very hard goodbye,” Charlie Polsky said. “But the writing is on the wall, and it’s time for another family to have this house and make their memories. And hopefully use it a lot.”
The property itself has been part of his family for generations. Originally the land was the site of the Lakeshore Fishing Club, “which had been around since the very early part of the 20th century, if not before. Many, many families belonged to the fishing club,” Charlie Polsky said. “They would come up from either the Twin Cities or Chicago. My grandfather and his siblings were among the members.”
This grandfather was Virginia Polsky’s father, Chicago businessman and philanthropist Irving B. Harris. Around the 1950s, interest in being part of the fishing club began to wane, Charlie Polsky said, and Harris bought out the rest of the members. The entire family still spent summers in the large cabin-like club building.
“It was made of whitewashed pine,” Charlie Polsky remembers. “Two stories, with a very large screened veranda. I think it had 10 or 12 bedrooms. And when I was growing up in the 1970s, we would go up to Hayward all summer.”
Virginia Polsky grew weary of the old rustic cabin-like structure, and she and Richard decided to build a new home for summer family stays.
“It was at that point that my father, who wanted to make a very interesting, thought-provoking piece, reached out to Vincent James,” Charlie Polsky said.
Charlie Polsky remembers the first time he walked into the new home. “It was like nothing I had ever seen before,” he said. “I had seen the drawings, and remember thinking it doesn’t makes sense to me. Then you walk in and it was jaw-dropping, in just the materials, the richness of the materials. And the craftsmanship was like nothing I had seen before.”
The house is a unique blend of both James’ and Richard Polsky’s artistic temperaments and at the time the design was groundbreaking, Charlie Polsky said.
“There’s a house in Chicago on my very block, and I walk past it every day when I’m walking the dog,” Charlie Polsky said. “And whoever designed that house has obviously looked at the Type/Variant House. It’s a vernacular now. It has been copied I don’t know many times. It’s a reference point in modern architecture, there’s no doubt about it.”
The home is listed by Vic Sacco of Edina Realty. He can be reached at [email protected] or 715-645-0832.
Keith Uhlig has been writing about Wisconsin, its people and all it has to offer since 2000. Raised in Colby, he loves wandering around the state. He can be reached at [email protected], and is on Facebook, X and Threads.
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