Birth of the Modern -- Our New Blog

Regular readers and regular Googlers know that I occasionally veer off and write about things besides Long Island Sound and the environment, most frequently modern houses. I've always thought it was a juxtaposition that didn't make much sense; and it also effectively excluded my wife, Gina, from participating, and she knows far more about modern things that I do.

So we did what anybody in our predicament would do -- we started a new blog, called, simply enough, Modern. As of now there's only one introductory post but henceforth all of my modern house posts will be there, and a lot of new posts from Gina too, I hope.

So if you're interested in modern houses, the Harvard Five, New Canaan's modern house day, Philip Johnson and the Alice Ball House, Marcel Breuer, Landis Gores, Eliot Noyes, John Johansen, Edward Durell Stone, the Glass House, the house in Pound Ridge that Moore and Hutchins designed (and which we live in), and a lot of other modern things, stop by often. It's right here.

And for a while anyway I'll cross-post my modern house stuff here, for those readers who don't catch on right away.

Edward Durell Stone's Celanese House is on the Market

[Read 'Modern,' our new modern house blog, here.]

A week after we saw it on the Modern House Day tour, Edward Durell Stone's Celanese House, on Oeneoke Ridge Road in New Canaan, is on the market. I had predicted it would list for $5 million; the actual listing is for $4.9 million. Details here.

Stone designed another very similar house -- complete with pyramids on the roof -- in North Salem, where Route 121 and June Road diverge. I was in it once years ago, as a reporter, when it was the location of an auction that partly benefited a local arts center, and then I stopped by again within the last 18 months, I think, when it was on the market and there was an open house for real estate brokers. He built it for Carlo Paterno, the grandfather of a friend of ours, and if you go to this Google search and click on the first result, you can see it on page 10 of a pdf of a 1962 issue of Architectural Record. It contains an interesting quote from Stone about development patterns, the kind of sentiment that would make smart growth proponents and New Urbanists happy. And remember, it's from 1962:

We must give up the idea that we are English country squires and plan our houses compactly. Our countryside is being used up by these millions of little boxes. We should be inspired by the Mediterranean countries which have, as you know, compact villages, towns with houses built wall to wall and privacy obtained by cloistered walled gardens, courtyards and atriums. And in planning compactly this way we will save the open countryside.