Our goal with the listings on this page is to bring significant pieces of architecture to a wide audience with the goal of saving them.

These projects can be treated as artifacts worthy of restoration or as the basis for great new works either by extension or transformation. Each situation is unique.

When we walk around and through these projects we see the possibilities; we appreciate the skill of their designers and builders and the imagination of the owners who commissioned them.
Only properties that we have experienced firsthand appear here. If you know of a property that you think would add to this group, please send it to us by email.

As we have no connection to these properties other than our appreciation and situations change regularly, we recommend that interested parties confirm availability with the originating brokers.

The Litt Weekend Home

Garrison, New York

Built 1968, Architect: Frank Dushen

Renovation 2008, Newick Architects

Frank Dushen was a well know local architect who built many modernist houses in the Hudson River valley. The Realtor's description proposes a link to Frank Lloyd Wright and I suppose a case could be made for the way the house hangs over the stream on the downhill side but the influences for the architecture here really lie in the work of Paul Rudolph. You can see the vertical massing and overhanging roof planes in the Yale Art and Architecture building and the Bass Residence and others. The interior is a close packed puzzle of relatively small rooms that link visually to one another even as you have to negotiate the complex floor plan to move from one to another. This is very Rudolph-like but you can also see the roots of this kind of interior organization in the much earlier houses of Adolf Loos. Its interesting to compare these interiors to the more horizontally flowing ones of any of the midcentury examples below.

Our renovation work involved some extensive structural modifications to open up the main living level and the new kitchen and interior finishes generally. There are a number of great things left to do here even though the house has been brought back to a fairly high level of finish.

The Goodyear House

Darien, Connecticut

Built 1956, Architect: John Johansen

12 July 2012

John Johansen sat on my final review for the George Ranalli studio at Yale in 1986.

It was a luminuous group which included Paul Rudolph, Sverre Fehn, Bob Maxwell of Princeton, and Cesar Pelli.

I am drawn to these houses because as a maker of contemporary space it is important to experience what I refer to as "the real thing". The Goodyear house is a very good example,

rendered by someone who knew what they were doing. The site is beautiful - a combination of wooded glades and rock outcroppings negotiated by the cantilevered volumes of the house,

not quite touching each other and the topography of the landscape. This house is unusual in that it is quite grand in size. For the most part, what we think of as Mid Century Modern houses

were built quite modestly, for limited budgets. The interior dimensions of this house are surprising and the vistas acrross the rooms and through the glazing to the other projecting wings

are arresting. There is this sense of captured space, of calibrated landscape and a lightness that comes from the breaking down of large volumes with the introduction of light and

the structure of detail. The interior is defined by a trim detail that projects unusually far from the surrounding wall surfaces so that there is a feeling of a constructed thicket - the trim

competes for attention with the wall surfaces and columns even though they are all the same color. It reminds me to some extent of the City in Space installation by Friedrich Kiesler

from 1925, though in a symetrical, more classical vein. The Keisler reference is more of an explanation for anything Paul Rudolf ever did than it is for this house, but the grain of

the projecting trim I think adds to the hanging quality of the construction.

Brick House

Woodbridge, Connecticut

Built 1938, Architect unknown.

25 April 2011

We do not yet know who designed this house but it is as extraordinary as it is unusual.

It is always a facination to me when I try to understand historic designs and how they came to be.

Who was the original architect influenced by? What were they looking at? What books were on their desk when they were drawing?

There are obvious precedents here in European modernism but there are other influences as well. There are some of the stylizations of Art Deco,

the symetries and proportions of Adolf Loos, some Frank Lloyd Wright - especially in the cottages of the Arizona Biltmore Hotel from just about the same time.

Coming upon this house for the first time as I did soon after I came to New Haven for graduate school in 1984 is a revelation. The site is spectacular

and the idea that a house like this can fit in to that landscape so well is amazing to experience.

The Hugh Smallen House

New Canaan , Connecticut

Hugh Smallen, Architect 1957

4 February 2010

Smallen designed this house for himself and his family. A Yale trained architect in a town overrun with graduates of Harvard, his influences are interesting. The living room facade of glass in particular

resembles one of Lou Kahn's earliest works, the Weiss House of 1949. The living room in Smallen's work is so simple, yet wonderfully proportioned.

A long stone clad fireplace, white walls and a walnut floor define the room. The compact form of this house is a very good model for contemporary interests in efficiency of material and

energy use.

The Alice Ball House

New Canaan , Connecticut

Philip Johnson , Architect 1953

24 September 2010

There is a great deal of interest in preserving this small house.

There are so many interesting ways in which that can be done while at the same time

extending the composition and refurbishing the structure.

Reed House

Guilford, Connecticut

E. Carleton Granbery, Architect 1954

25 April 2010

THIS PROPERTY HAS BEEN SOLD

Victor Christ-Janer House

New Canaan, Connecticut

Christ-Janer, Architect 1948-2008

17 March 2010

THIS PROPERTY HAS BEEN SOLD

Booth House Bedford, New York

Philip Johnson , Architect 1946

17 March 2010

123 Old Quarry Road, Guilford Connecticut

E. Carleton Granbery, Architect 1950

18 February 2010

THIS PROPERTY HAS BEEN SOLD

118 Roseville Road Westport, CT

4 February 2010

Gelbin House, Weston Connecticut

Alan J. Gelbin, Architect 1965

21 October 2008