Marcel Breuer's Wellfleet cottage is for sale. A Cape house trust is desperate to buy it.

Nestled amid the Wellfleet Woods, near the headwaters of the Herring River, lies a house unlike your average New England cottage. It's a mid-century modern haven, made from plywood, featuring windows that panel the entire home's exterior.

But this geometrically sleek cottage is more than just a cabin in the woods — it's the Wellfleet home and burial site of famed mid-century architect and furniture designer Marcel Breuer.

Now, almost 75 years after its completion, the house is up for sale by Breuer's son, Tamas, and the Cape Cod Modern House Trust is on a mission to buy the cottage and save it from potential demolition.

“It's not just an important house and it's not just an important site — the environment there — but taken together with all the contents, it really is a positive cultural repository of great international importance," said Peter McMahon, founding director of the Cape Cod Modern House Trust.

The house, which contains furniture, a collection of books and art belonging to Breuer, as well as other items important to the Hungarian designer's legacy, is currently under a contractual sale with the trust which is seeking to raise $1.4 million of the $2 million asking price in order to purchase the cottage.

"There's just a window of opportunity to get this purchase price together and, you know, (there's a real danger) of losing it,” McMahon said.

Who was Marcel Breuer?

If you don’t know the name Marcel Breuer, you certainly know his furniture — like the Cesca chair — or buildings — like the third home of the Whitney Museum, now the temporary home of the Frick Collection in New York.

A man of many talents, Breuer was the youngest student at the Bauhaus — an art school in Germany — and became one of its most notable graduates, establishing himself as a pioneer in mid-century modern design, notably for his use of bent, tubular steel to create his furniture.

Throughout his life, Breuer lived in a variety of places such as Boston, New York, and Paris, but his Wellfleet cottage was a place he returned to every summer up to his passing in 1981.

“Wellfleet was sort of the home base where he always came in the summer,” McMahon said. “So, in a way, it became kind of their spiritual home because [he’d] spend more time there than anywhere else.”

A place to experiment for the 'restless designer'

With a budget of under $5,000, Breuer built a barebones home with no electricity, insulation or interior finishings, according to McMahon. The furniture was sparse, consisting of cinder block tables and Japanese mats scattered around, but as Breuer grew as a designer, the house did as well.

“He was constantly tinkering with the house, kind of trying different furniture ideas and painting things different colors, and he expanded the house twice,” McMahon said.

“You can see the way it originally was and then Breuer got more money and more established and he put oak floors and then he put this birch plywood ceiling and he added other refinements …. He made furniture out of lumber or cement blocks,” McMahon continued. “He was a restless designer.”

Now, the shabbily-made house needs some TLC in order to be brought back to its original glory. Though structurally sound, major repairs, such as a new roof, siding and septic system, are needed.

“The bones of the building are fine, which is often not the case,” McMahon said. “So, we have restored four modern houses already that were owned by the Park Service, which we have leased, and often they are in much worse shape. So, it's on the better end of what we've dealt with in the past.”

McMahon worries the Breuer house could be demolished.

The property is also a Breuer family resting place, as his ashes, along with his wife Connie’s, and her sister's and husband’s ashes lay under a stone slab on the property.

“The son of the other couple that are buried there, just called me recently concerned because he heard the house was for sale and he said, ‘Do I need to move my parents’ ashes?’ McMahon said. “If somebody bought the house and tore it down, they're not gonna want this gravesite there.”

The cottage also serves as a remnant of Wellfleet’s rich modernist history as the town was a hub for mid-century artists and thinkers alike.

“It wasn't just the architects,” McMahon said. “It was also the kind of cultural moment with writers and painters and a lot of very prominent political thinkers were all here. These are the houses that they lived in … so sort of went along with this whole cultural moment.”

Breuer himself envisioned a cottage colony within the wooded area, originally purchasing 24 acres of the land, but couldn’t get anyone else on board. He built his Wellfleet home along with three others in the area and sold the remaining 20 acres of land to the National Parks Service.

“In Europe, there wouldn't be a question. It would be a listed home that would be protected,” McMahon said. “In this country, property is king and there's the idea that you should be able, if you buy something …. to do whatever you want .… we have terrible protections in this country on historic buildings unless they're part of a historic district, but that's hard to do in the woods.”

What would the Cape Cod Modern House Trust do with the Breuer home?

If purchased, the trust plans to use the house as a place for their already established work-study programs where students and scholars will be able to take part in restoring the cottage.

“What we're looking to do with the Breuer house is to expand that program [and] take the whole fall semester and do a work-study fellowship in the house from September to December and that would be for scholars of historic preservation, archiving, habitat restoration,” McMahon said.

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This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Wellfleet cottage of famous mid-century modern architect for sale