Under-appreciated and usually smaller than today's McMansions, modern houses from the 20th century are disappearing from the architectural ecosystem. Some champions, though, are finding ways to save them.

Photo © Rollin R. LaFrance/Courtesy Mitchell|Giurgola Architects

Romaldo Giurgola's 1970 Dayton Residence in Wayzata, Minnesota, was purchased for a reported $10 million in 2012. The new owners plan to build a larger alternative, though they are considering options other than demolition, including moving the Giurgola house off-site.

The American Dream does not always align perfectly with the goals of architectural preservation. “Though certain homeowners consider themselves custodians of important works of architecture, most people draw the line somewhere between the greater good and their individual property rights,” points out Sue Mossman, executive director of Pasadena Heritage, a preservation nonprofit and advocacy group. “'My home is my castle' is an idea so embedded in our culture,” she adds, “and any government intervention in that realm comes with a degree of tension.”

In recent years, wrecking balls have hovered perilously close to modern homes by Rudolph Schindler, E. Fay Jones, and Frank Lloyd Wright, as well as key works by lesser-known talents. Currently, the survival of the 1958 Richard Neutra–designed Connell House, tailored to a spectacular site in Pebble Beach, California, has been the subject of a two-year battle; and the owners of a 1966 residence in Coral Gables, Florida, by one of the region's leading midcentury Modernists, Alfred Parker Browning, are suing the city for upwards of $7 million for denying them the option to raze it. The cliché of homeowners' or greedy developers' bulldozing architecturally remarkable houses, obliterating the cultural heritage to make way for McManors or McChateaus, reflects widespread reality.

The opposite of today's bigger-is-better mindset, the Modern movement championed efficient design and modest scale—which leaves irreplaceable buildings of that era susceptible to death by teardown, particularly if they occupy large or otherwise coveted sites. Adding to that predicament, crisp midcentury designs “don't look so good with the wear or patina of age the way, say, a Colonial would,” observes Dana Robbat, president and cofounder of Friends of Modern Architecture in Lincoln, Massachusetts. “So, when they're neglected or tired, they look very tired—and that makes them even more vulnerable.”...Continue Reading

> via Architectural Record