NBM Hosts Program on Chloethiel Woodard Smith

To celebrate Women’s History Month, the National Building Museum is hosting an online program on Wednesday March 17 about Chloethiel Woodard Smith, FAIA (1910–1992). Smith was an American modernist architect and urban planner who was an architectural powerhouse here in Washington.
Smith was known for her planning and residences in Southwest DC, office buildings and homes in the suburbs including Pine Spring, Reston and custom homes like my past listing in Somerset.
“She was the sixth woman inaugurated into the American Institute of Architects College of Fellows, and at the peak of her practice led the country’s largest woman-owned architecture firm,” the museum says.
Neil Flanagan, architectural designer and writer, Peter Sefton, independent architectural historian, and Catherine Zipf, architectural historian and author, discuss the career and legacy of Chloethiel Woodard Smith, whose work in the District a study of new uses for the Pension Building, now the National Building Museum. The program is moderated by Susan Piedmont-Palladino, director, Washington Alexandria Architecture Center and consulting curator, National Building Museum.
You can also take a virtual walk of Smith’s work here.

Washingtonian on Reston’s Mid-Century Modern

Jennifer Sergent of the blog DC by Design writes about the mid-century modern architecture in Reston in the latest issue of Washingtonian. “In a region known more for Colonials and historic rowhouses, Reston’s architecture is like a greatest-hits collection from many of the most prominent 1960s modernists,” the headline says. Read the piece here.

Reston’s Visionary Robert Simon Dies

Two years ago, I was doing a home inspection in Charles Goodman’s Hickory Cluster in Reston, when I spotted a lone figure walking in the snow with ski poles. It was none other than Reston founder Robert E. Simon Jr. He was only 99 at the time. Yesterday, he passed away at 101 at his home in Reston, the groundbreaking suburban neighborhood he founded and started developing before being hit by financial issues.
“At a time when millions were fleeing crowded cities for what some sociologists called a colorless life in suburbia, Mr. Simon envisioned a Northern Virginia community that blended the serenity of an Italian hill town, the urban attractions of San Francisco’s Embarcadero and the social equality of a utopia in Finland,” The New York Times says in its obituary of the native New Yorker, whose family owned Carnegie Hall before selling it to New York City.
Rather than building cookie cutter suburbs, like Levittown on Long Island where he summered as a child and lived as an adult with his own family, Simon sought to develop villages with their own amenities and modernist architecture by the likes of Goodman, Chloethiel Woodard Smith, James Rosssant, William Conklin and Louis Sauer.
Thanks for your vision, Bob.
Washington Post obituary
Reston Association statement

Event: Reston’s First Architects

The Reston Historic Trust will hold an event May 23 examining the modernist architects that helped shape early Reston. The program will include individual 15-minute presentations and panel discussions on Charles M. Goodman and his Hickory Cluster (seen above) by Hickory Cluster Association (HCA) member Richard Speier; Cloethiel W. Smith and her Waterview and Coleson Clusters by HCA Director Ralph P. Youngren, FAIA. Barbara Naef will discuss Louis E. Sauer’s Golf Course Island Cluster and Cheryl Terio-Simon will discuss the work in the Lake Anne Village Center by William J. Conklin and the late James S. Rossant.
Reston Founder Robert E. Simon Jr. and Conklin will attend a private Reston Historic Trust members-only wine and appetizer reception at the Reston Museum before the public program. Public program admission is free, but space is limited. Donations to Reston Museum are welcome. For more information contact Reston Museum at (703) 709-7700 or visit restonmuseum.org.

James Rossant, Reston Planner and Architect, Dies at 81

Architect James Rossant, who planned Reston and designed Lake Anne Village Center along with William Conklin, died Tuesday at the age of 81.

Pulitzer Prize winning architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable, in a 1965 front-page article in the New York Times, described Reston as “an attractive cross between an updated Georgetown and an Italian harbor town like Portofino.” Indeed, the village center was designed by Rossant, who studied under Walter Gropius at Harvard University Graduate School of Design, to emulate the Italian coastal town.

A condo in the 1966 high-rise on Lake Anne by Rossant and Conklin is for sale here.

Redeveloping Reston

The Washignton Post ran an interesting piece on Saturday about the impact of planned redevelopment and construction of three Metro station in Reston, founded by developer Robert Simon in 1964 as the country’s first modern planned community.
“Reston –which famously pioneered the kind of walkable, environmentally friendly, mixed-use suburban neighborhood that is all the rage these days — is on the cusp of its own transformation,” writes Sandhya Somashekhar. “And some residents say they fear it could lose the delicate balance that made it a model.”
Pulitzer Prize winning architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable, in a 1965 front-page article in the New York Times, described Reston as “an attractive cross between an updated Georgetown and an Italian harbor town like Portofino.” Indeed, the village center was designed by James Rossant (who studied under Walter Gropius at Harvard University Graduate School of Design) to emulate the Italian coastal town. The village center (which has looked somewhat forlorn when I have been there) is slated to see new development, including more housing and stores.
The Post says that Simon, 94, supports change in Reston, but reports that “some residents say they fear that Lake Anne will be the first domino to fall in a chain reaction that would turn Reston into a traffic-clogged Manhattan. ‘We are not doing design that is in the character or quality of the original Reston,’ said John Lovaas, who has lived in Reston since 1975. He said he favors adding shops and residences to Lake Read More >

MCM Townhomes in Reston by Goodman, Sauer

Townhomes by Charles Goodman in Hickory Cluster in Reston, Virginia

I came across an interesting article (scroll down a bit after you hit the link) from 1966 on the new phenomenon of suburban townhomes by then-Washington Post architecture critic Wolf Von Eckardt. In his article, Von Eckardt writes how developers repackaged the old row house concept of the cities into the modern townhomes of the suburbs. He hailed this move not only for the modern architecture, which he thought was more compelling than most suburban homes, but for their “green” attributes (he did not describe these as green, but that is essentially what he was saying 40 years before it was hip): townhouses minimize suburban sprawl by using less land, they take less resources to build, etc.
“When the row house became a town house, a number of creative, modern architects came to the rescue,” Von Eckhardt wrote. “They have contributed little to our suburban housing, partly because it doesn’t pay them and partly because the builders feel they can along without them. But for the town house the builders have sought professional help.” Von Eckardt highlighted the work of prominent architects in the new modern suburban town of Reston, including Charles Goodman, Chloethiel Woodard Smith and Louis Sauer, who was schooled at the Institute of Design at Illinois Institute of Technology founded by Bauhaus master Lazlo Moholy-Nagy.
Below are a few homes for sale, one by Goodman and two by Sauer.
1965 2/1.5 Hickory Cluster Townhome by Charles Goodman – $239,999
1968 Read More >

Chloethiel Smith’s Coleson Cluster in Reston

I added a new link to the MCM Neighborhoods list. Designed by Reston founder Robert E. Simon and modernist architect Chloethiel Woodard Smith in the mid-1960s, Coleson Cluster consists of 47 two-, three- and four-bedroom flat-roofed, brick rowhouses with floor-to-ceiling windows on each level. Here’s a vintage image of a real estate agent showing a couple the homes in June 1966. I did not see any homes currently on the market in the neighborhood, which is located here.
Smith’s most recognized design in Reston is the Waterview Cluster of townhomes overlooking Lake Anne. Here’s a vintage brochure marketing the townhomes, built between 1962 and 1965.

Reston Virginia