Daphne, Christ-Janer, Landis Gores

The fellow at the MCArch blog doesn't post often but when he does he writes about choice houses new to the market and, as his blog title implies, from the mid twentieth century. The other he wrote about this terrific house, known as the Daphne residence, in Hillsborough, California. There are a lot more good pictures on his blog, here. And scroll down to see his post called "Who is Jack Viks?" He's also way into Neutra and has good stuff about him and his houses.

In our part of the world a house designed by Victor Christ-Janer, for himself, in New Canaan in 1949, just came on the market. Until I figure out how to get a photo off the realtor's site, here's a link. When Christ-Janer died last May, the Times wrote of him:

Like the far-better-known Marcel Breuer and Philip Johnson , Mr. Christ-Janer helped transform the town from a haven of traditional Colonial-style homes into an incubator for distinctive Modernist dwellings as well.

It also says he designed the New Canaan Post Office, which isn't particularly distinguished, and a market, which probably was Walter Stewart's, on Elm Street, near the train station. Its site says:

In 1957, Stewart's moved to our current location on Elm Street. The unique, concrete dome roof and extensive glass frontage were considered avant garde at the time.

Christ-Janer was also a developer who built a rather ugly condo development down the road in Vista, which is in Lewisboro, New York, and when Gina had her design studio on Main Street, New Canaan, 15 years ago, Victor was her landlord.

There's also a house on the market on Wahackme Road, in New Canaan, that was partly-designed by Landis Gores. His widow, Pamela Gores, told me that the house had been a rather undistinguished ranch but that the owners hired Landis to design a pavilion for it, as she called it. Here's the listing. -- ta

We Didn't See Martha But She Was There

Did we mention that Martha Stewart was on the Modern House Day tour?

She wasn't on my bus or Gina's, and she wasn't at the morning symposium or the evening cocktail party. But there were several Martha sightings, including one by Katherine Markiewicz, whose house was on the tour. She said it was fairly intimidating to have Martha Stewart giving the once-over to her furniture and rugs, but Martha herself was very polite and quiet.

For gossip purposes, that's the best we can do. But there were other people worth noting on the tour.

Cristina Ross, for example. Cristina owns the Alice Ball House, in New Canaan, which Philip Johnson designed, and gained great notoriety when she threatened to demolish it. That threat dissipated and now she wants to sell it and to build a new house behind it. Some people on my bus expressed the wish that Cristina's relatively new-found interest in modern architecture might prompt her to design and build a modern on the site, instead of a McMansion.

The tour was also notable because the offspring of three notable architects were there: Fred Noyes, the son of Eliot Noyes (although there was no Noyes house on the tour); F. Taylor Gates III, the son of Taylor Gates, who designed the older section of the Markiewicz house; and Kathy Christ-Janer, Victor Christ-Janer's daughter. - ta

Modern Discount in New Canaan

One of New Canaan's notable modern houses sold for $1,850,000 recently, after being listed two years ago for $3.5 million and then reduced a year later, to $2,199,000. It was designed by Victor Christ-Janer in 1949 for himself and his family.

Patch.com reported the sale today. Here's a link to previous posts about Christ-Janer on our blog.

If only the Alice Ball House were so lucky. -- ta

Falling Prices

What a difference a year makes: this house in New Canaan, designed by Victor Christ-Janer, was listed at a shade under $3.5 million a year ago (it was on the New Canaan Historical Society's Modern House Day tour last May). The property is beautiful, there's a cottage and a garage with an apartment (if I recall correctly), and the house itself is nice though not spectacular.

Now it's being offered at $2,199,000. That's a 37 percent discount, if I did the math right. Is that because of the recession or because of an inflated view of what the house was worth? Probably a bit of both. -- ta

Coming soon: Modern House Day Tour + Symposium 2009

Modernism Moves Forward is the theme of the '09 MHD, which is being held May 2 in New Canaan, CT. 5 speakers will discuss, from the point of view of their respective disciplines, how Modern homes are being modified to accommodate the requirements of their 21st-century owners. The Symposium + Tour offer an opportunity to hear from foremost experts on modern architecture and design, meet the homeowners, designers and architects themselves, and participate in an in-depth guided tour of some of New Canaan's fine examples of Modern architecture.

The symposium speakers are:

• William D. Earls, AIA, author of The Harvard Five in New Canaan will moderate
• Bassam/Fellows, design team who integrate architecture, interiors and furniture of their own design, recently featured in the New York Times Magazine
• Toshiko Mori, AIA, architect and former dean of Harvard School of Architecture
• David Prutting, insightful builder of modern homes in New Canaan
• Linnaea Tillett, lighting designer and faculty member at Parsons and Columbia

The program begins at the New Canaan Country School. Breakfast will be served before the seminar starts at 10:00am. House tours will follow the seminar. Attendees will be driven to each house via private tour vans, escorted by an architect or historian of the Modern Movement who will be available to answer questions. Among the homes to be visited will be homes designed by Marcel Breuer, Victor Christ-Janer, Gates and Ford, Alan Goldberg, and John Johansen.

The first Modern House Tour in 1949 attracted more than 3000 visitors. The 2004 and 2007 Tours were sold out. Space is limited to only 200 attendees, and tickets are $250 per person which gets you breakfast, the symposium, the exhibit, lunch, a cocktail reception and transportation from the New Canaan Country School to all tour houses. Symposium only (no tour) tickets are $50.

Note: If you are arriving by train, the symposium location is about 5 miles away and you'll need to take a taxi from the train station.

The '09 MHD Tour + Symposium will benefit The New Canaan Historical Society’s preservation program. – GF

For Sale

Judging from the real estate notices I keep getting, this doesn't seem like the most propitious time to sell a mid-century modern house in New Canaan. On the other hand, if you're a buyer maybe you can get a (relative) bargain.

John Johansen's Bridge House (shown at left; asking $5 million), Philip Johnson's Alice Ball House (asking $3.5 million), the house Victor Christ-Janer's designed for himself on Frogtown Road (asking a shade under $3.5 million), and a house designed by Taylor Gates ($1.9 million) are among those still on the market. And if you want to live in a 1966 modern/contemporary on the same road as the Bridge House, there's one listed for $1.375 million, down from the original asking price of $1.425 million.

Skip Ploss, by the way, reports that Cristina Ross, who owns the Alice Ball house, "has all of the permits needed to build the second home she wants to build on the site while still preserving the Ball House." - ta

Working on New Canaan's Modern House Day

We're working like mad on preparations for the New Canaan Historical Society's Modern House Day, on May 2.

Yesterday and today I wrote short biographies of the architects (Breuer, Alan Goldberg, John Johansen, Taylor Gates, Toshiko Mori, Mark Markiewicz, and Victor Christ-Janer) and short descriptions of the five houses, and started work on longer descriptions for a separate pamphlet that will talk about how each of the houses was changed and adapted over the years to the changing needs of the various owners.

I think we've written, in one form or another, about each of the houses, although the only one I've been in is Alan Goldberg's (I nosed around outside the Breuer 2 house about 3 1/2 years ago, when it was unoccupied and before the current owners moved it, but I haven't been inside). Gina, on the other hand, has been in the Goldberg house and Johansen's Bridge House (and wrote about the Bridge House here).

Gina now will start to design the ticket (which really serves as the informational brochure for the event) and the pamphlet.

There's more information about the tour here and here.

New Canaan Inventory

The folks at the Glass House have put the new inventory of modern houses in New Canaan online. I just started clicking a few minutes ago and have only gotten through three or four of the 91 houses, but I already came upon some interesting stuff, in a mildly gossipy vein, written by a homeowner who was trying to decide whether to hire Victor Christ-Janer or John Black Lee.

The website is www.preservationnation.org/modernhomesurvey.

Christy MacLear, director of the Glass House, tells me that it's not quite complete but that they felt compelled to go live with it because the New York Times wanted to scoop it in today's Home section. -- ta

Perdro E. Guerrero, "local" MCM photographer

While trying to find positive things to think about the redesign of Dwell Magazine (the only mag. I read pretty much cover-to-cover and still feel the need to save stacks of) I almost overlooked a story about Pedro E. Guerrero.

Guerrero became a photographer through of string of serendipitous events beginning slightly before 1939, when he showed up to register for art classes at Art Center School in L.A. only to find all the painting and drawing classes filled. All they could offer him were photography classes, which he took because he "would have taken embroidery classes rather than go beck to Mesa" (AZ, where he grew up and whose bigotry he wanted to escape).

At the age of 22, Guerrero brazenly drove out and presented himself to Frank Lloyd Wright who hired him as Taliesen West's resident photographer.

What was a complete surprise to me is that Guerrero, for a time, lived in New Canaan, CT, among so many of the Modern architects and designers who were active at the time. The ones he mentions in the story as being friendly with were Breuer, Stone, Noyes, Salerno, Gores, Christ-Janer, Risom.

His web site has collections of fabulous photos of houses by these architects as well as of Louise Nevelson and Alexander Calder, both of whom he photographed pretty intensively over years.

Although he is now 90 years old, it would be so great to have him as a speaker back in New Canaan at the next Modern House Day Tour and Symposium. The story in Dwell, which is really an interview, shows him to be a clever guy with a lot of fascinating anecdotes who lived through an amazing time, knew amazing people and has a lot to impart through his work and stories. Hang in there, Pedro, we'd welcome you back to New Canaan for the next MHD! – GF

5 Moderns

Here are my quick impressions of the five houses that were part of Saturday's Modern House Day in New Canaan (Gina, who designed the brochure cover on the left, might offer her opinions later). (No one was allowed to take photos except the day's official photographer, Bob Gregson, who was on my bus, so unless Bob reads this and sends me some, which I would welcome, I'll have to make do with older shots.)

The Goldberg House is a gem, simple and beautifully proportioned and scaled. Alan and Trudy Goldberg have lived there since the early 1970s, when Alan moved to New Canaan to work for Elliot Noyes (he later became Noyes's partner). Alan told us what the original house, designed by John Johansen, was like -- well-designed but very small -- and how he essentially rebuilt on the same site and added to it over the years. The latest addition -- a new wing connected to the main part of the house by a glass walkway overlooking the woods and wetlands -- is seemless. Trudy told us that Alan worked with the contractor every day for months to get it right.

Victor Christ-Janer's house sits on a lovely, rolling piece of land, with apple trees, and ponds that Victor himself dug, and the house itself is nestled nicely into a small hill. I didn't like the inside as much as I liked the Goldberg house though. Gina pointed out that the materials were not as high quality, which I probably sensed but couldn't articulate. If Alan's additions were seemless, Victor's were less so. One of the guys on my bus loved it however. The house is on the market and is normally empty, but it had been "staged," as they say (a new use of that word for me) by Victoria Lyon Interiors.

We learned at Friday's MHD cocktail party (at a really interesting, under-construction modern townhouse, with three stories and an outdoor room on the roof, being built by David Prutting in downtown New Canaan) that John Johansen's Bridge House had sold -- we walked in at the same time as the guy who bought it, Michael Fedele. He was there on Saturday, along with Johansen himself, who, at 90-plus, is fit and lively, his hair and beard snow-white. I was somewhat shocked by just how pink -- or salmon, I guess -- the outside of the house is ("Mrs. Warner probably wanted pink and so Johansen made it pink," Gina guessed). It's a beautiful house and, although a guest house has been added, it was the only house on the tour that had not been changed, and so buying it is probably akin to buying the Glass House or the Farnsworth House -- something to be preserved and kept intact, a showplace probably more than a home. The Rippowam River was beautiful and clear as it ran under the house, and two mallards swam quietly downstream, undisturbed by all the coming and going.

The Gates House was interesting and homey -- the original section small, with low ceilings, typical of a mid-century modern and charming for it, and the new section brighter, more open. Mark Markiewicz, who has lived there since the early 1990s, designed and built the new section for his elderly parents. He was proud of it -- justifiably, I thought -- and he was also happy to meet and talk with the original architect's son, F. Taylor Gates III (who grew up in the house) and his wife, Susan, who took the tour and stayed for the cocktail party afterward.

The Breuer II house was something else again. Toshiko Mori did what she did at the famous John Black Lee II house on Chichester Road -- raise the ceiling and put in clerestory windows. Some visitors preferred the original low, wood ceilings, and were disappointed by the change; I thought the windows made the original Breuer section bright and comfortable. Mori's new, spare-no-expense addition is spectacular but it evoked different emotions among my group. One person said he liked it so much it gave him chills when he walked up the stairs and through the corridor. Another told me that maybe over time he could accept it. I thought it would be a terrific place to spend a long weekend but I'm not sure I'd want to live there. But it certainly is stunning. -- ta