Guest post: Modern homes in DC

January 8, 2010 · Posted in Places to go in DC

Today’s post comes from mid-century modern enthusiast and D.C.-area Realtor Michael Shapiro. Michael works diligently to share his knowledge of local mid-century modern and modern homes, and to help support the preservation of mid-century modern architecture in the nation’s capital. He is also the mastermind behind the blog, Modern Capital, which is full of great information on mid-century modern real estate, design and events.

image from Modern Capital

D.C. and the surrounding suburbs is a traditional place with very few mid-century modern homes. Right? That’s the conventional wisdom I hear from many people I talk to, including many fellow real estate agents, when I tell them about all the communities I have featured on my blog, Modern Capital. While the D.C. area may be dominated by older, traditional homes and newer McMansions, if you scratch beneath the surface and explore a bit you can find a world of interesting mid-century modern neighborhoods across our area. Look at the modernist enclave of Southwest D.C., home to the designs of leading modernist architects such as Chloethiel Woodard Smith, Charles Goodman, I.M. Pei, Morris Lapidus, and the team of Arthur Keyes, Francis Donald Lethbridge and David Condon. In the Virginia suburbs, you will find Goodman’s Hollin Hills, the groundbreaking modernist community south of Alexandria, and his Hickory Cluster townhomes in Reston. In Falls Church alone, there’s Holmes Run Acres, Pine Spring, Raymondale and Lake Barcroft, communities that embraced the open floor plans and walls of glass made popular by high-end and more modest homes alike in post-war California. In Maryland, you can find more Goodman-designed communities such as Rock Creek Woods and Hammond Wood and Carderock Springs by Edmund Bennett and Keyes, Lethbridge and Condon. There’s even an enclave of five Goodman-designed homes in traditional Takoma Park. All four of these modern communities have been named to the National Register of Historic Places. And did I mention Bradley Park in Bethesda? The neighborhood was built by Ken Freeman, a former clothes designer from New York who came to D.C. to construct cool, 1960s homes Mad Men-style. So if you are obsessed with mid-century design or just being exposed to its clean lines, use of materials and vast expanses of glass to blend inside and outside space, you are not doomed to live in a traditional abode. So go out and explore these and other mid-century communities (I only named a few of the dozens) in our area. You’re surely going to need a cool space to house all that irresistible mid-century modern furniture.