The owners of this 5-bedroom, 3-bath Charles Goodman in Rock Creek Woods are looking for interested buyers to make an offer on the 1959 home, which is located at 4007 Ingersol Dr. The 76-home community in Silver Spring by Goodman and builders Herschel and Marvin Blumberg is on the National Register of Historic Places and is a great place to view the Cherry blossoms. Here’s a recent piece in the Examiner about the mid-century modern community.
The Hall of Justice in Victor Lundy’s U.S. Tax Court.
The U.S. Tax Court by Victor Lundy (designed in 1965; built in 1974) is an intriguing mid-century modern building. As you are rushing to work, you can easily pass the blocky-glass-walled sides of the building without taking too much notice. But when you actually stop for a second and look at the building from the front, you will see a deconstructed cube with four parts, the most striking of which is the 4,000-ton cantilevered courtroom block on the front held up by an innovative cable system (see images in the slideshow).
On Feb. 27, the D.C. Preservation League in cooperation with the Government Services Administration held a rare public tour of the building, which has been named to the National Register of Historic Places and to the list of DC historic sites. The two-hour tour was led by one of GSA’s senior preservation experts, Joan Bierton, who has worked extensively securing the designation for the building. She is currently working on a film about Lundy, 87, who studied with Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer at Harvard and became a leading member of Paul Rudolph’s Sarasota School.
The most powerful space in the building is the open, four-story Hall of Justice with walls of glass on the front, clerestory windows at the top and natural materials: bronze columns, granite floors and walls and vertical slats of teak and hemlock ceiling. One unfortunate thing we learned during the tour is that the judges did not take Lundy’s advice on the furniture. Lundy, who was based in New York, brought down representatives from Knoll to show the judges the latest in modern furniture. Beirton said the judges loved the modern building, but decorated with traditional-style furniture.
You can read a more detailed GSA history about the the U.S. Tax Court building here. And if you like Lundy’s work, you can even rent a house he designed for his family in Aspen.
Listings are sprouting like spring flowers in Hollin Hills.
It’s that time of year. New listings are sprouting up in Hollin Hills like spring flowers. The mid-century modern community by Charles Goodman also is featured in the new issue of Modernism magazine in a piece by architect John Burns, FAIA, and landscape architect Dennis Carmichael, FASLA. The duo will discuss the history, growth, and influence of Hollin Hills during an upcoming National Building Museum program, “A Modernist Suburb.”
Now on to the new listings.
1950 3/2 – $599K – Nice landscaping on the nearly 1/2 acre lot.
1954 4/2 – $699k – A two-level with walls of glass upstairs and down.
1952 3/2 – $735K – Looks like a For Sale By Owner.
The slat-enclosed raised parking area in the Bender Building.
The boom in post-World War II car production in the United States created a unique design challenge. Where are all those cars going to go when people were not driving them? The National Building Museum is currently hosting the first major exhibition of parking garage design. “House of Cars: Innovation and the Parking Garage” details the history of the form, with a major emphasis on the growth in construction during the mid-century period. The exhibit includes the designs of modern masters such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Eero Saarinen and Bertrand Goldberg, who studied with Mies van der Rohe at the Bauhaus, before designing Marina City in Chicago.
The photos here are of a mid-century parking solution here in D.C. The Bender Building, built in 1959 and designed by the team of Julian Berla and Joseph Abel, features an above-ground parking lot right under the office space. At the time, the building, which faces three streets–Connecticut, 18th and L–was the largest and most modern in the city.
Parking entrance on 18th Street.
Cool concrete cut outs along parking area on L Street.
The snow is disappearing. Temperatures are warming. Gardens will be blooming. With spring approaching, it is a good time to tour Hollin Hills, the award-winning a modernist development by architect Charles Goodman and developer Robert Davenport. There is plenty of upcoming opportunity to explore the 450-home community south of Alexandria, which Goodman and Davenport began in the late 1940s as one of the first post-war suburban developments in the D.C. area.
There is the biennial Hollin Hills Home and Garden Tour on May 1, which I wrote about here. And on April 28 at the National Building Museum, architect John Burns, FAIA, and landscape architect Dennis Carmichael, FASLA, will discuss the history, growth, and influence of Hollin Hills during the program, “A Modernist Suburb.” (Tip: Members of the NBM and the Civic Association of Hollin Hills can purchase discount tickets for the home tour at the event.)
If you can’t wait until April and May to get your fill of Hollin Hills, you can check out two new homes on the market. Both are open March 7 from 1 to 4 p.m. This expanded and updated 1952 Goodman pictured above is listed at $824K while this 1957 flat-roof Goodman is listed at $569K.
Here’s a quick roundup of three new listings fresh on the market. As I like to say, if you scratch below the surface of the real estate market here in Washington you’ll keep finding mid-centuries that you have not seen before. The one in McLean even looks like an Eichler. Looks like all of these have been updated.
1963 5/3 in Bryn Mawr in McLean – $869K – The entrance way on this house looks like an Eichler in California.
1961 4/3 in Old Georgetown Estates in Rockville – $855K – This mid-century has walls of glass and cathedral ceilings.
1965 4/2.5 in Manor Woods in Rockville – $489K – This mid-1960s home by Miller & Smith has large expanses of glass and a cool open staircase.
Josef Albers’ “Glow” (1966). From the Hirshhorn's collection.
On my recent visit to Tel Aviv, as I was strolling along the streets taking pictures of some of the 4,000 Bauhaus buildings and visiting the city’s Bauhaus Center, I marvelled at the impact the Bauhaus school has had on modern architecture, design and the arts long after the Nazis forced its shutdown. After only 14 years (1919-1933), the Bauhaus members had to seek refuge in the United States, Israel and other countries. This dispersion allowed the work to continue and quickly influenced the design thinking around the globe.
Albers' "Steps," (1932). From the Hirshhorn's collection.
You can now get a taste of the creativity at the Hirshhorn Museum, which is holding a major exhibition on the work of German-born Josef Albers, an early student and professor at the Bauhaus.The Hirshhorn possesses one of the world’s largest and most comprehensive collections of work by Albers, who headed Yale University’s Department of Design from 1950 to 1958. The exhibit, “Josef Albers: Innovation and Inspiration,” encompasses nearly 70 works spanning the artist’s 50-year career, many of which are on view for the first time. The exhibit runs through April 11.
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