July 17 Mod of the Month- 2 Open Houses 1-4PM

[SpaceAge]

Mod of the Month

Saturday, July 17th, 2010 1:00 - 4:00 PM

Houston Mod invites you to join us this Saturday, July 17th (1:00-4:00 PM), for Mod of the Month.

An interesting mid-century modern house currently for sale will be open for touring. The house is located in Idylwood in south-east Houston.

A very similar restored house by the same architect will also be open to provide information on preservation opportunities and show the potential of the Merry Lane house.

6648 Merry Lane, Houston, Texas 77023

Idylwood

This intriguing early modern house designed by architect Allen R. Williams, Jr. is situated on a picturesque elevated lot in the desirable Idylwood neighborhood. Promoted as a Century Built Home, the house was built in 1949 using a unique almost all masonry construction system. It has been occupied since completion by its original owner. A large and handsome Roman brick chimney with planter box dominates the front exterior of the house while the living room also contains a floor to ceiling brick fireplace wall. The house offers three bedrooms and two bathrooms, all fortunately maintained in almost totally original condition.

HAR Link

6328 Brookside Drive, Houston, Texas 77023

Simms Woods

Ben Koush, Houston Mod co-founder and former board president, purchased this Century Built Home in 2004 from the family of its original owners. After a careful restoration, the house is now a City of Houston Protected Landmark. It is also a Texas Recorded Historic Landmark and on the National Register.

Now a noted interior architect and expert on modern historic preservation, Ben will be available from 1:30 to 4:00 PM for guidance on restoration and preservation of modern structures.

Century Built Homes

This event is free. Please make a donation to support Houston Mod at 6328 Brookside.

Support future Mod events by becoming a member of Houston Mod.

Houston Mod publications will be available during the open house including:

Booming Houston and the Modern House, The Residential Architecture of Neuhaus & Taylor, 1955 - 1960

Have your copy signed by the author, Ben Koush.

See you there,

Houston Mod

Houston Mod was recently recognized with a third "Good Brick Award" from the Greater Houston Preservation Alliance (GHPA) for the Mod of the Month open house program.

[little frau]

Swamplot featured these homes today and a Stallworth family member signed on with additional information about the Idylwood home.

Imagine.....a 60 year old one owner home. He would have had some tales to tell about the East End.

[Scott08]

As was rumored on Saturday, looks like the Merry house has gone to "option pending" on HAR. Maybe I just don't have the proper amount of vision, but I thought the house was kind of blase. The exterior has some nice MCM queues and the house has a nice presence on its smallish lot, but the inside was pretty dark and other than the big fireplace, kind of conventional looking in general. I also visited Ben's house (thanks for showing us around) and I think it had a better, more light, floorplan to begin with. He's done a great job of modernizing it while keeping its character intact. With the Merry house's concrete construction, I would think it would be cost prohibitive to really change the bones of the house too much, i.e. move walls. I suspect it's likely that the potential buyer chose it for the neighborhood and price first, and style second. Will be interesting to see how it turns out.

[sevfiv]

The Stallworth house looks neat (haven't seen it in person, though) except the garage is kind of irritating..

Interesting that is was owned all this time by the original buyer - looks like Mr. Stallworth passed away in March - and he was 100 years old!