Rear View of the Eliel Saarinen House
Villa Hvitträsk near Luoma, Finland

Perched on a steep hillside overlooking a beautiful lake, Eliel Saarinen's own house at Hvitträsk, built between 1901 and 1904, offered spectacular views.  This was the childhood home of Eero Saarinen, who would become a famous architect in his own right.  Saarinen and his partners, Herman Gesellius and Armas Lindgren, made their home a northern outpost of high culture.  Friends and visitors included composers Gustav Mahler and Jean Sibelius, novelist Maxim Gorki, sculptor Carl Milles, and many others of artistic temperament.  The Saarinens emigrated to America in 1923, shortly after Eliel won the $20,000 second place prize in the Chicago Tribune Tower architectural competition.  He soon took a position as the first president of the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.  Hvitträsk then became a summer home for the family.  Photograph taken in 1982 by Howard J. Partridge.

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