When you walk into the lobby of the former American National Bank Building in Silver Spring you think ‘Mad Men.’ The preserved mid-century lobby (terrazzo floors and marble walls) evokes Manhattan mid-century skyscrapers featured prominently on the show. I learned more about this building and others from Montgomery County historic preservation planners who have begun exploring, [...]

I just returned from some time exploring the modernism of Tel Aviv. I roamed around taking pictures of some of the 4,000 Bauhaus buildings in the “White City,” finally checked out the small but interesting Bauhaus Museum and toured the new and old buildings of the Tel Aviv  Museum of Art. Check out the images below: Some of [...]

I have driven by the WTOP Transmitter Building in Wheaton too many times to count.  Always rushing somewhere, I never actually got out of the car to take a look and take a picture of this Bauhaus building on University Boulevard that was once featured in Architectural Record. I finally did today and here is what I [...]

I saw this tweet posted yesterday: (CREATION/DESTRUCTION – S. R. Crown Hall’s interior during finals week at Illinois Institute of Technology) along with this picture. I had a chance to stroll through Crown Hall–designed by Mies in 1956–during a quieter time this summer. There was no one else on the top open floor with 18 foot-ceilings, which [...]

The mid-century modern Davis Memorial Library on Democracy Boulevard in Bethesda sits on what is left of the Davis family farm, once a 400 acre estate called Rock Spring. Designed in the mid-1960s by Bethesda-based modernist architect Stanley Arthur, the sprawling 16,000 square foot library features a side-gabled roof, extended eaves, clerestory windows and variety [...]

During and after World War II, the population of the Washington area boomed. There was a great need, especially in the growing suburbs, for libraries, houses of worship and schools. Most of it was basic modern design of the time, or as one of my favorite sites calls it: mid-century mundane. One example of this [...]

The mid-century modern Marvel Cleaners sits empty at its perch near the corner of New Hampshire Avenue and Randolph Road in Colesville. It has been sitting vacant for a year and is slated for redevelopment. The rendering in the window shows a “Marvel Plaza” but it does not look like anything to marvel at like the [...]

Some shots from today of the Wheaton Woods Baptist Church located here in Rockville. Nothing spectacular, but a solid mid-century modern church. Or, as this site I discovered recently would call it: Mid-Century Mundane. The site “was created to explore a specific genre of architecture that has largely been ignored. While architecture of the mid-century [...]

I look at a lot of houses online and in person. I write about many of them here. In this post, I want to highlight some of the smaller mid-century modern details I have come across during the past several years.  Scrolling through the 3,000+ pictures on my phone (all of food, architecture and my [...]