The space may now house a Joe Fresh, but it will always be the Manufacturers Trust building, the elegantly, minimalist International Style structure designed by Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. “When it opened in 1954, the public marveled at the steel vault boldly displayed on the ground floor behind a facade of clear [...]

“A very special sense of place.” That is the appropriate tag line of the The Colony of Wellfleet, 10 Bauhaus-style cottages nestled among soaring pine trees just across the road from Wellfleet Bay. Designed and built in late 1940s by architects Nathaniel Saltonstall and Oliver P. Morton, the originally named Mayo Hill Colony Club was operated [...]

In Washington, Chloethial Woodard Smith was a trailblazing female modernist architect that left a major imprint on the area: the urban renewal plan in Southwest, the National Building Museum, townhomes in Reston, office buildings downtown and custom homes in the suburbs. In Miami, Marion Manley, the first female architect in Florida, left an important imprint as well, especially [...]

To mark Memorial Day, I thought I would highlight Eero Saarinen’s 1957 War Memorial Center in Milwaukee. The center was designed to ”create a new home for two previously separate art collections and a veterans’ memorial,” according the center’s web site. “The modernist building is shaped like a floating cross, with wings cantilevered from a central base. [...]

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 [...]