The Irving Langmuir House is a historic house at 1176 Stratford Road in

Schenectady, New York Schenectady () is a city in Schenectady County, New York, United States, of which it is the county seat. As of the 2020 census, the city's population of 67,047 made it the state's ninth-largest city by population. The city is in eastern New Y ...

. Built about 1900, it was the home of physicist-chemist Irving Langmuir, winner of the 1932

Nobel Prize in Chemistry ) , image = Nobel Prize.png , alt = A golden medallion with an embossed image of a bearded man facing left in profile. To the left of the man is the text "ALFR•" then "NOBEL", and on the right, the text (smaller) "NAT•" then "M ...

during his research career with

General Electric General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable en ...

. It was declared a

National Historic Landmark A National Historic Landmark (NHL) is a building, district, object, site, or structure that is officially recognized by the United States government for its outstanding historical significance. Only some 2,500 (~3%) of over 90,000 places listed ...

in 1976. and

Description and history

The Irving Langmuir House is located in the middle of a suburban area east of

Union College Union College is a private liberal arts college in Schenectady, New York. Founded in 1795, it was the first institution of higher learning chartered by the New York State Board of Regents, and second in the state of New York, after Columbia Co ...

known as the

General Electric Realty Plot The General Electric Realty Plot, often referred to locally as the GE Realty Plot, GE Plots or just The Plot, is a residential neighborhood in Schenectady, New York, United States. It is an area of approximately just east of Union College. Origi ...

, a historic district to which it is a contributing property. The neighborhood is residential, with large houses dating to the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is located on the east side of Stratford Road, a short way north of Rugby Road. Architecturally, the house is unremarkable. It is a two-and-a-half-story building in a

vernacular A vernacular or vernacular language is in contrast with a "standard language". It refers to the language or dialect that is spoken by people that are inhabiting a particular country or region. The vernacular is typically the native language, n ...

interpretation of the

Colonial Revival The Colonial Revival architectural style seeks to revive elements of American colonial architecture. The beginnings of the Colonial Revival style are often attributed to the Centennial Exhibition of 1876, which reawakened Americans to the archit ...

style Style is a manner of doing or presenting things and may refer to: * Architectural style, the features that make a building or structure historically identifiable * Design, the process of creating something * Fashion, a prevailing mode of clothing ...

. The

hipped roof A hip roof, hip-roof or hipped roof, is a type of roof where all sides slope downwards to the walls, usually with a fairly gentle slope (although a tented roof by definition is a hipped roof with steeply pitched slopes rising to a peak). Thus, ...

is tiled in

terra cotta Terracotta, terra cotta, or terra-cotta (; ; ), in its material sense as an earthenware substrate, is a clay-based unglazed or glazed ceramic where the fired body is porous. In applied art, craft, construction, and architecture, terracotta ...

and pierced by two almost symmetrical

dormer window A dormer is a roofed structure, often containing a window, that projects vertically beyond the plane of a pitched roof. A dormer window (also called ''dormer'') is a form of roof window. Dormers are commonly used to increase the usable spac ...

s. A columned porch covers the Palladian-style main entrance. The interior follows a basic central-hall plan. The house was probably built ca. 1900. In 1919 Langmuir moved in, living there until his death in 1957. It was still in his family's hands at the time of its landmark designation almost two decades later. Langmuir worked at GE's Schenectady research laboratory in 1909, where he performed basic research in a wide array of areas of physics and chemistry. He retired in 1950, having won numerous awards, most prominently the 1932

for his work in

surface chemistry Surface science is the study of physical and chemical phenomena that occur at the interface of two phases, including solid–liquid interfaces, solid– gas interfaces, solid–vacuum interfaces, and liquid– gas interfaces. It includes the fi ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Langmuir, Irving, House Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in New York (state) National Historic Landmarks in New York (state) Houses completed in 1900 Individually listed contributing properties to historic districts on the National Register in New York (state) Houses in Schenectady County, New York National Register of Historic Places in Schenectady County, New York

Description and history

See also

References