Suginome House

A House Built by a Chemist for Himself

Suginome House (杉野目家住宅, Suginome-ke Jūtaku) is a two-storey brick-nogged timber residence at Minami 19-jō Nishi 11-chōme in Chūō Ward, Sapporo, Hokkaido, completed in 1933 and entered on Japan's register of Tangible Cultural Properties (buildings) on 14 October 1999. It has a sheet-metal roof and a floor area of 231 square metres, and it still stands in the Yamahana residential district south of central Sapporo as a private home.

The man who built it was Suginome Harusada (1892 to 1972), an organic chemist known for his work on alkaloids. He became a professor when Hokkaido Imperial University opened its Faculty of Science in 1930, and he later served a long term as president of what is now Hokkaido University. The house went up in 1933, while he was still occupied with getting that new faculty off the ground.

The design came from Hagiwara Atsumasa, an engineer who headed the university's building and repairs office. Imperial university professors of the period often commissioned the fashionable architects working in Sapporo. Turning instead to the head of the campus buildings office was a deliberate choice, and one imagines the client had his reasons.

Tudor Reference, Curved Timbers in the Gable

The exterior takes its cues from the English Tudor style of the sixteenth century: half-timbering, with posts and beams left visible against white infill panels. What the Agency for Cultural Affairs singles out is the curved timberwork in the gable. The members framing that gable are not straight; they bend. Looking up from the pavement through the trees, that curve is the first thing you register.

Why Brick Nogging

The structure is mokkotsu-rengazō, a timber frame with brick infill between the members. It produces walls that are thicker and heavier than ordinary timber construction, and that hold heat. In a city where January averages sit well below freezing, that was a performance decision as much as an aesthetic one. The sheet-metal roof is there to shed snow.

Sapporo's First Centrally Heated House

The reason architectural historians keep coming back to this house has less to do with its face than with its services. The national database records it as known for being the first house in the city with central heating. Rather than a stove in each room, a single heat source distributed warmth through the whole building. For a private house in 1933 Sapporo, that was well ahead of local practice. Sapporo's own cultural property records add that it also had a flush toilet, unusual for the time.

A chemist commissioned a building in which the handling of heat and water was designed rather than improvised. Seen that way, the house's character comes into focus. It was registered under the criterion covering buildings that serve as a model of design, which reflects both the exterior and the technical fitting-out. Its registration number is 01-0015.

Viewing Is From the Pavement

One point needs stating plainly. Suginome House is still a private residence and the interior cannot be visited. Sapporo's cultural property listing states in its opening-hours field that viewing is possible only from outside the grounds. You cannot pass the gate, and you cannot photograph from within the property.

It is still worth going. The site is ringed with mature trees, so you trace the outline of the house through gaps in the foliage. Walk around to the rear and two chimneys become visible. Once you know about the central heating, the chimneys stop being decorative details.

Near the gate there is an explanatory board about the building's history, along with plaques marking it as a Sapporo Landscape Asset and as one of the city's hundred selected cultural landmarks. All of this is legible from the pavement.

To get there, use the Ishiyama-dōri or Ropeway Iriguchi stops on the Sapporo streetcar, or the Minami 19-jō Nishi 11-chōme stop on the Jōtetsu bus. Allow about thirty minutes from Sapporo Station by streetcar. This is a residential street, so keep the visit quiet and brief. People live here.