CALL 301-503-6171
Modern Capital
  • About
    • Testimonials
  • My Listings
  • Neighborhoods
  • MCM Architecture
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Menu Menu
You are here: Home1 / Blog2 / I.M. Pei3 / Modern Capital’s Letter on Dwell’s D.C. ‘Detour̵...

BLOG

April 14, 2009/I.M. Pei, Richard Neutra, Southwest /by Mid-Century Mike

Modern Capital’s Letter on Dwell’s D.C. ‘Detour’

I just received the new issue of Dwell, which contains a letter to the editor I wrote in response to the magazine’s “Detour” piece on D.C. that ran in the December/January issue. At the time, I wrote that I was surprised to see that the modernist enclave of Southwest was not mentioned in the piece. Hats off to Dwell for running the letter and including the blog’s URL.

As someone who blogs about Washington, D.C.’s modern architecture (moderncapital.blogspot.com), I was excited to see the December/January 2009 “Detour” article. While the piece touched on Richard Neutra’s Brown House, Gordon Bunshaft’s Hirshhorn Museum and I.M. Pei’s Slayton House, you overlooked a major part of the D.C. story: the mid-century modern enclave of Southwest Washington.

As the area goes through another period of urban renewal, Southwest remains the largest urban-renewal project in U.S. history. The efforts in the 1950s and ’60s to create a “modernist Utopia” led to structures by leading modernist architects, such as Chloethiel Woodard Smith, Charles Goodman, Morris Lapidus, Marcel Breuer, Harry Weese and the team of Arthur Keyes, Francis Donald Lethbridge and David Condon.

In his excellent AIA Guide to the Architecture of Washington, D.C., G. Martin Moeller Jr. (your featured expert) writes that while many urban renewal projects have “come to symbolize indiscriminate destruction of neighborhoods (squalid though they may have been) in favor of drab, soulless superblocks … much of the redevelopment in the Southwest quadrant was of unusually high quality, avoiding the pitfalls that plagued many such projects elsewhere. Notwithstanding the sensitive social issues surrounding the genesis of such endeavors, several of the housing developments in Southwest are among the best works of large-scale urban architecture of their era.”

I’m sure Moeller mentioned in your discussions the significance of the modernism on display in Southwest. I just wished you had decided to write about it. Your readers missed out on a a fascinating story.

Related posts:

  1. Dwell Does D.C. and Baltimore
  2. A Tour of Southwest
  3. Southwest D.C.: A Haven of Modernism
  4. Walking Tour: Chloethiel Woodard Smith’s Southwest
Share this entry
  • Share on Facebook
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on LinkedIn
  • Share by Mail
/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/modern-capital-logo.png 0 0 Mid-Century Mike /wp-content/uploads/2019/11/modern-capital-logo.png Mid-Century Mike2009-04-14 16:58:002009-04-14 16:58:00Modern Capital’s Letter on Dwell’s D.C. ‘Detour’

Call Modern Capital founder and Realtor Michael Shapiro for your mid-century real estate needs.
301-503-6171
michael@moderncapitaldc.com

Subscribe via email

Popular Posts

Sold: Cook Architecture Reno in Falls Church – $990K

Sold: Historic Charles Wagner Design in Moyaone Reserve

Under Contract: Custom Chloethiel Woodard Smith in Somerset

Categories

  • Alcoa Care-Free Home
  • Alexandria Virginia
  • Ashton
  • Bannockburn Bethesda MD
  • Bauhaus
  • Berla and Abel
  • Bethesda Maryland
  • Brutalist
  • Carderock Springs
  • Charles Goodman
  • Charred Oak Estates
  • Chevy Chase Maryland
  • Cohen & Haft
  • Cook Architecture
  • Crest Park
  • Deck House
  • Deigert and Yerkes
  • Docomomo
  • Drumaldry
  • Eason Cross
  • Fairfax Virginia
  • Flint Hill Virginia
  • Forest Hills
  • Frank Lloyd Wright
  • Glen Echo Heights Maryland
  • Hammond Wood Kensington MD
  • Herman Miller
  • Hickory Cluster
  • Hollin Hills House and Garden Tour
  • Hollin Hills Virginia
  • Holmes Run Acres Virginia
  • Hugh Newell Jacobsen
  • I.M. Pei
  • Listing Roundup
  • Manor Woods
  • Marcel Breuer
  • McLean Virginia
  • Mid-Century Modern
  • Mies van der Rohe
  • Modern Capital Real Estate
  • Moyaone Reserve Accokeek MD
  • New Mark Commons Rockville MD
  • Palm Springs
  • Pine Spring Falls Church VA
  • Potomac Overlook
  • Preservation
  • Raymondale
  • Reston Virginia
  • Richard Neutra
  • River Park Washington DC
  • Rock Creek Palisades Silver Spring MD
  • Rock Creek Woods Silver Spring MD
  • Silver Spring Maryland
  • Somerset Chevy Chase
  • Southwest
  • Tiber Island
  • Timberwood of Potomac
  • Truro Annandale VA
  • Usonian
  • Victor Lundy
  • Virginia
  • Wessynton

Blog Archives

michael@moderncapitaldc.com
Cell: 301-503-6171
Direct E-Fax: 253-369-5843

Modern Capital
5471 Wisconsin Ave, Suite 300
Chevy Chase, MD 20815

  • Instagram
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Google_map
  • About
  • My Listings
  • Neighborhoods
  • MCM Architecture
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy
Modernism in a ‘Classic’ Capital Modern Snapshot: Mid-Century Print Shop in Kensington, MD
Scroll to top