Word: hanslin
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...resolve their almost contradictory requirements. They wanted Eastman to be a high-quality development that also would include some low-priced housing while conserving as much land as possible-and all to be sold at a profit. If anyone could deliver that, they decided, it would be Emil Hanslin...
...Pride. Hanslin was born a builder. His grandfather was a Swiss-German carpenter; his father headed a construction firm, as did two uncles. Indeed, the competing family firms built up miles of land in and around St. Louis during the 1920s and 1930s-with young Emil digging and hammering as a laborer for both of them. He launched a career as a theatrical director, but one night he heard his father and an uncle debating about who had built better houses. "At first I thought it was damn funny, but then I began getting the message. These guys arguing over...
From the start of his building career, Hanslin has had a theatrical fascination for "what turns people on." One of his successes came with houses that sealed off "family room" kitchens and put more emphasis on sweeping stairways. His theory was that lots of women who could not cook would like to disguise the fact by making grand entrances, whereas even a good cook would rather not be regarded as "just a hausfrau." Sales of Hanslin's houses showed that "we hit it right on the button." In recent years, Hanslin has also done very well with "Yankee barns...
...Hanslin was so successful that the owners of 3,000 acres of land on Cape Cod asked him to join them in developing it. Cluster housing was just beginning to get serious attention at that time, and Hanslin took the idea one step further, grouping houses in "special interest" villages for golfers, sailors and horsemen. The result was New Seabury, perhaps the best-designed second-home community yet built in the Eastern U.S. From then on, Hanslin could pick his projects, and in 1969 he picked Eastman...
Deed Back. He began by studying the project for nine months. Clearly, he had to know his market: Who would buy second homes, and what kind? Equally clear was the rise of environmentalism, so Hanslin walked the land with planners and ecologists, analyzing soil, water, slopes and wind patterns. Then the roads and utility lines went in, following not a predetermined grid of homesites but the natural terrain. "You spend more time on the drawing board and a helluva lot more in the field," he says, "but you end up doing the least amount of developing-and spend the least...