1963 Frank Lloyd Wright-Style By Randall Vosbeck - $1.3 Million

If your are looking for a home by Frank Lloyd Wright, he only designed three in the Washington area (see Washington Post story from today). However, this 4,600 square-foot Alexandria home on more than acre by noted local architect R. Randall Vosbeck could fit the bill if you are looking for that Prairie modern feel.

The Allure of MCM Airport Terminals

Preservation magazine has a nice piece by Sudip Bose on the power of mid-century airport terminals, including two in our area: Eero Saarinen's iconic terminal at Dulles and the historic Terminal A at National, early designs of which were done by local modernist Charles Goodman.

"To be sure, many of the new concourses in the world—from Hong Kong to Singapore, London to Indianapolis—are among the most exciting places on earth," Bose writes. "And there's no doubting the need for new spaces to accommodate blooming crowds and increased security demands. But no matter how glorious the design, no mega-terminal can recall the spirit, the romance of an earlier era the way the old airports do. Those terminals conveyed the very essence of air travel, symbolizing the splendors and possibilities of the era. They practically called out, "Come fly with me," inspiring a profound sense of wonder."

No wonder why he thinks they should preserved.

Open House Roundup for Sunday, April 26

Too many house, too little time. Here's a quick roundup of some interesting homes open on Sunday. I have posted some of these before, while others are new to the site. Now you just have to decide which ones you are going to see. Have fun.

• The I.M. Pei/Hugh Newell Jacobsen Slayton House and Jacobsen's Three Linked Pavilions home.
  
  
• Organic Modern by Wright protege and associate Aaron Green - $1.395 Million
  
  
• 1979 Bethesda Contemporary - $1.299 Million
  
  
• Eco-Friendly Modern in Arlington - $1.295 Million
  
  
• 1964 Carderock Springs Contemporary - $849K
  
  
• 1941 Expanded Tauxemont Contemporary - $825K
  
  
• 1965 Franklin Park Contemporary - $799K (Down from $949K)
  
  
• 1965 Frank Lloyd Wright-Style in Annandale - $615K
  
  
• Two mid-1950s Standard Properties contemporary ramblers in Rock Creek Palisades - $399K and $499K
  
  
• Check out this $1.395 million colonial with modern interior and all that MCM furniture.
  

Price Drop: 1965 Whittlesey & Conklin MCM Townhome on Lake Anne in Reston -$475K; Open 4/26

This Whittlesey & Conklin MCM townhome in Reston is down from $490K. Whittlesey & Conklin created the master plan for Reston; William Conklin and James Rossant designed Lake Anne Village center, including the townhomes along the water. Conklin said the townhomes in Reston represent the first time townhomes--a design normally associated with urban areas--were built in the suburbs. Charles Goodman and Chloethiel Woodard Smith also designed townhomes in Reston. Here's a link to an original brochure for the Whittlesey & Conklin townhomes, which have abundant glass to see the lake.

This 3/2.5 home is open April 26 from 1 to 4 p.m. and located here.

1959 Rock Creek Woods Goodman Open Again on Sunday

The house in Rock Creek Woods that my logo is based on is open again this Sunday from 2 to 5 p.m. It's listed at $599K

Crest Park Goodmans Highlighted in Post

Did you see the Post's "Where We Live" column on Saturday? Homes by Charles Goodman got a shout out and picture in the piece about Hillandale in Silver Spring. Located in the Crest Park subdivision, the 25 homes built in the 1960s reflect Goodman's designs seen earlier in Rock Creek Woods.

"The Goodman houses are situated not only at the most prominent corners of the development (such as Schindler and La Grande Drives,) but also at the choicest sites topographically, abutting woodlands and streambeds," architectural historian Elizabeth Jo Lampl writes in her 2004 monograph on the architect's subdivisions in Montgomery County. "One can only imagine Goodman insisting on these sites for some of his model houses."

While I do not see any Goodmans for sale in the neighborhood, this MCM by Patterson & Worland is still on the market after nearly two years.

Price Drops: 1975 Deck Houses in Vienna ($595K); McLean ($899K)

Looks like a spring Deck House sale. This Deck House in Vienna, Va., has dropped to $595K after going on the market in January at $675K. The listing has one image. This Deck House in McLean has dropped from $970K to $899K.

Modern Snapshot: Mid-Century Print Shop in Kensington, MD

A mid-century commercial building in Kensington. I shot this with my iPhone so the image is a little fuzzy. Note to self: Bring the nice camera that your lovely wife bought you so you can take good pictures of buildings.

1982 Organic Modern by Frank Lloyd Wright Protege Aaron Green - $1.395 Million

Moss-Rosenbaum Residence by Aaron Green

California Architect Aaron Green, who died in 2001, was a protege and associate of Frank Lloyd Wright and it definitely shows in the Moss-Rosenbaum residence located here in the Palisades. Green, who ran Wright's West coast office for many years, developed his own organic style of architecture beyond Wright's.

"During his 60-plus-year career, Green designed more than 200 homes, often of brick and stone and natural wood, long and low to the ground, with open plans and walls of glass, broad brick chimneys, bravely cantilevered eaves and decks and roofs shaped liked arrowheads," writer Dave Weinstein explains in an interesting piece. "... Green produced homes that can be exciting and full of movement from one prospect, warm and relaxing from another. Zigzagging rooflines, dramatic asymmetric or triangular clerestory windows, and two-story living-dining- kitchen areas surrounding immense fireplaces provide the excitement. Low-slung, built-in couches facing the hearth, indoor gardens beneath skylights and half- hidden bedrooms provide a meditative respite."

Like Wright's Fallingwater, this 3/3.5 cedar-clad home was built over water. "Two steep slopes and a brook are the challenging features of this heavily wooded lot on the palisades of the Potomac River," according to a description on the architect's web site. "A special effort was made to keep the quarter-acre site in it's natural state. The design solution was to suspend the residence above the ravine and allow the creek to flow naturally beneath. Only two trees were cut to make room for the structure, leaving the house nestled snugly amongst the forest of vegetation rising from the ravine floor. "

1970s Modernized Colonial in Vienna - $590K; Open 4/19

The owners of this house in Vienna, Va., went against the grain for this area: they took a 1970s colonial and turned it into a more modern space, even installing Neutra-esque house numbers (pictured above). In this area, people typically will take a contemporary home and transform into a more traditional-style home or tear it down altogether. A real turning of the tables for us modernists. This is a FSBO (For Sale By Owner) and is open Sunday, April 19 from 11 a.m to 3 p.m.

Price Drop: 1961 Hollin Hills Goodman - $649K; Open 6/28

This 5/3, two-level Hollin Hills MCM by Charles Goodman has dropped from $699K to $649K. It's open Sunday from 1 to 4 p.m. and located here.

Speaking of Hollin Hills, I just bought a copy of the Sept. 10, 1951, copy of Life magazine, which highlighted in a "Modern Living" column the best houses under $15,000.

Developer Robert Davenport and Goodman were highlighted for their work in Hollin Hills--they were featured on the first page of the five-page spread. The mid-century modern homes in Arapahoe Acres in Denver and the work of builder Joseph Eichler and architects Anshen and Allen in San Francisco were also featured among others. On the homes in Hollin Hills, the magazine wrote:

"Each house at Hollin Hills is sold complete with a landscaping plan which provides for trees and shrubs to give privacy. The buyer chooses a lot, then has his house built. This means he can make variations in the plan. ... Hollin Hills development was given the first prize in the Southwest Research Institute for the excellence of its site and for the good contemporary line of its houses."

Architect Max Borges 1963 Lake Barcroft MCM - $799K; Open 4/19

The home of noted Cuban mid-century modern architect Max Borges is for sale in Lake Barcroft and open this Sunday from 1 to 4 p.m. Borges, who passed away at the age of 90 on Jan. 18, designed and built the home for his family in the early 1960s after leaving Cuba in the aftermath of Fidel Castro's rise to power. Borges, who comes from a family of architects, had earlier studied architecture as an undergraduate at Georgia Tech and earned a master’s degree at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design.

New York architect Belmont Freeman, writing about Borges in The Architect's Newspaper, describes the 5/3 home as "meticulously detailed in stone, wood, and glass, and filled with plants, [and] would not be out of place in Marianao or Playa. It is the only work of true Cuban architecture that he built in the United States."

Borges is perhaps best known for his work on the Salon Arcos de Cristal at the world-famous Tropicana in Havana.

Here are images of the home and address if you plan to go see it.

Modern Capital's Letter on Dwell's D.C. 'Detour'

I just received the new issue of Dwell, which contains a letter to the editor I wrote in response to the magazine's "Detour" piece on D.C. that ran in the December/January issue. At the time, I wrote that I was surprised to see that the modernist enclave of Southwest was not mentioned in the piece. Hats off to Dwell for running the letter and including the blog's URL.

As someone who blogs about Washington, D.C.'s modern architecture (moderncapital.blogspot.com), I was excited to see the December/January 2009 "Detour" article. While the piece touched on Richard Neutra's Brown House, Gordon Bunshaft's Hirshhorn Museum and I.M. Pei's Slayton House, you overlooked a major part of the D.C. story: the mid-century modern enclave of Southwest Washington.

As the area goes through another period of urban renewal, Southwest remains the largest urban-renewal project in U.S. history. The efforts in the 1950s and '60s to create a "modernist Utopia" led to structures by leading modernist architects, such as Chloethiel Woodard Smith, Charles Goodman, Morris Lapidus, Marcel Breuer, Harry Weese and the team of Arthur Keyes, Francis Donald Lethbridge and David Condon.

In his excellent AIA Guide to the Architecture of Washington, D.C., G. Martin Moeller Jr. (your featured expert) writes that while many urban renewal projects have "come to symbolize indiscriminate destruction of neighborhoods (squalid though they may have been) in favor of drab, soulless superblocks ... much of the redevelopment in the Southwest quadrant was of unusually high quality, avoiding the pitfalls that plagued many such projects elsewhere. Notwithstanding the sensitive social issues surrounding the genesis of such endeavors, several of the housing developments in Southwest are among the best works of large-scale urban architecture of their era."

I'm sure Moeller mentioned in your discussions the significance of the modernism on display in Southwest. I just wished you had decided to write about it. Your readers missed out on a a fascinating story.

Modern Stops in NYC; 1958 Bennett MCM in Glen Echo Heights - $855K

Taschen in SoHo

Sorry for the lack of posts during the past few days. I was away for the holidays. Hope everyone had a good Easter and Passover. I did hit some modern spots in NYC, including DWR's Tools for Living store on Wooster Street and the Blu Dot store right next door. I also hit the Taschen store on Greene Street, where I was able to finally leaf through the first set of reprints of Arts and Architecture magazine (1945-1954). The first issue in the $700 set--January 1945--announces the Case Study House Program.

Photo mural in Blu Dot

On to the house. This 1958 MCM looks like the work of developer Edmund J. Bennett and his go-to architectural firm Keyes, Lethbridge and Condon, who also designed Carderock Springs and New Mark Commons in Rockville. The 5/3 home located here has a double carport, walls of glass and open family room with large fireplace/room divider. Thanks to reader Corey for the tip on this one.

(Sold - $1.178 Million; 5/09) Price Drop, Bank-Owned: 2006 'Case Study' Home in Clifton - $1.249 Million

Talk about a price drop. Back in 2006, this flat-roof MCM with a Case Study feel located here in Clifton was listed for $3.5 million. It's now bank-owned and listed for $2 million+ less. I wrote about it here when it was on the market for $2.99 million. See images here.

Rental: Carrollsburg A Townhome in Southwest - $2400/Month

This listing is for a 2/2 end-unit townhome in Southwest's Carrollsburg A Condominium, completed in 1967 and designed by Keyes, Lethbridge and Condon.

"The architecture of Carrollsburg A Condominium represents a fusion between the International Style as interpreted by Le Corbusier in his landmark work Unite d’ Habitation in Marseilles (1947-1952) and the 'informal revival' concepts of urban planning as propagated by Eero Saarinen, " the condo's web site says in citing a 1963 Architectural Record article by architect Arthur Keyes.

Short Sale: 1953 Holmes Run Acres MCM - $450K

I knew this 3/2 located in Holmes Run Acres looked familiar. It sold in June 2007 for $522,500 and I first mentioned it here. The Falls Church home has nice wood-beamed ceilings and some vintage touches in the kitchen and bathrooms. See images here.

1959 Goodman in Rock Creek Woods - $599K; Open 4/26

For those searching for a MCM in Montgomery County, take a look at this 4/3 in Rock Creek Woods, the 76-home community by architect Charles Goodman and developers Herschel and Marvin Blumberg. The Silver Spring neighborhood was entered into the National Register of Historic Places in 2004.

The yellow Masonite end-gable panels you can see in the image above and here are in line with Goodman's original color specifications. The colors included yellow, dark blue, white, green and sky blue, according to architectural historian Elizabeth Jo Lampl's 2004 submission about Goodman's homes in Montgomery County to the National Register. See the matching yellow back door and the shed, which mirrors the architecture and hues of the house, which was marketed as the "Brookview" model.

The house is located here.

1954 Updated Hollin Hills Goodman - $625K; Open 4/5

This is a brand new listing for an updated 3/2 Charles Goodman located in Hollin Hills. The one-level home on nearly half an acre is open this Sunday from 1 to 4 p.m.