The Development of Modernism in Raleigh 1945-1965 - Triangle ...

The Development of Modern Architecture in Raleigh 1945-1965 17sprawling Ranches with orchard stone and wood walls, private street fronts, and rearterraces. Holloway & Reeves designed the Usonian flat-roofed Lowell Nielson House,3208 Darien Drive, in 1948. The Ritcher House, 3039 Churchill Road, designed byGeorge Matsumoto in 1950, is one of the first modern houses created by faculty of thenew School of Design at North Carolina State University. The house incorporates suchUsonian principles as orienting the house away from the street and into the naturalenvironment, modular design, low-cost modern materials, and passive climatic control. Itwas also the last house designed by George Matsumoto that used Wright’s version ofmodernism, for Matsumoto subsequently became a strong practitioner of the MeisianInternational Style. 36 F. Carter Williams’s Parker House in Budleigh and Albright Housein Country Club Hills are slightly smaller Usonian houses. Developer Ed Richards built asmall Usonian Better Homes and Gardens demonstration house in 1954 in Country ClubHills (Drew House, 511 Transylvania Avenue).Beginning in 1951 the more formal European Modernism of Mies van der Rohe came toRaleigh in the house design of G. Milton Small for his own residence at 310 Lake BooneTrail. Matsumoto’s own house built in 1954 at 821 Runnymede Road is a Miesian designas well. The soaring, more lyrical modernism of Matthew Nowicki’s 1950 DortonArena’s parabolic roof was utilized by Eduardo Catalano in his own residence in 1954(destroyed).Matsumoto moved to California in 1961, and no known Contemporary houses in theMiesian mode were recorded during the 1955-1965 decade. Raleigh taste preferred thesofter modernism of the Wright Usonian mode, but in larger and more luxurious versions.Houses reached out into their sites through carports attached with covered walkways andincorporated outdoor space more aggressively through courtyards. Owen Smith’s ownhouse in Country Club Hills has a large carport reached by a covered walkway. Thehouse Arthur McKimmon designed on White Oak Road for the Tillerys encloses aninterior courtyard. Terry Waugh’s 1959 house for the Uyanicks has a courtyard. JohnHolloway’s large Split-Level for the Harrises of 1959 at 2815 Lakeview is a luxuriousUsonian residence. Holloway’s own residence of 1965 at 531 Lakestone is cross-gabled,with a brick latticed privacy wall enclosing four courtyards around the house.The fundamental difference between buildings designed by School of Design faculty andthose by full-time architects can be summed up in the assessment of Leif Valand’s firmby his son Mark Valand during an interview: “My father was not considered anarchitectural purist. His firm evolved into a developer-driven service firm.” 37 Still,Valand’s design aesthetic, developed at Pratt Institute in New York City, waswholeheartedly contemporary. Architects such as George Matsumoto acceptedcommissions that allowed them to exercise nearly total control over the design. Valand,Holloway and Reeves, F. Carter Williams and other firms thrived by creatingarchitectural forms that fulfilled their clients’ needs.36 Black, Ritcher House National Register Nomination, 1994, 8.1.37 Mark Valand interview, Raleigh, June 22, 2006.