Swanky Spread : Shaken Not Stirred.

Elegant MCM in Monroe

Stunning Walnut woodwork. 

Mid-Century Modern Enthusiast here is a rare opportunity to own your own piece of history: 104 Hillsdale Road in Monroe, NC. Elegantly appointed and in mint condition this home is one of the areas few moderns to retain it’s “Total FAB”. Dramatic raised entry highlights the volume of space in the formal dining and living rooms.  Hand cut granite from floor to ceiling creates a stunning fireplace focal point surrounded by  thick walnut shelves, floating stairs, and terrazzo floor. Custom lit soffits cast a lovely reflection on the original wood ceiling.  But the drama doesn’t stop here.  The large kitchen has the original cabinets, including curved peninsula.  Open to a large breakfast room and family room with  floor to ceiling glass and a fantastic view of the inground pool and shuffle board court.

Built for entertaining you will love the custom curved bar and the second granite fireplace gives “Swanky” a new meaning.

If this wasn’t enough, there is an over 400 square foot room perfect for a pool table, ping pong and media room.  With a private entrance off the driveway the uses are endless.  Home school, office or in-law suite would work too.   There is a huge laundry room, a galley pantry and space where a professional ironing machine used to live.

No expense was spared when this home was built and it shows.The three expansive (and when I say "expansive" I mean "enormous") bedrooms are situated in the West wing of the home.   The master features windows on three walls overlooking the back patio and koi pond.

The master bathroom comes with a sauna!  We know you will want to renovate this space but to have the original sunken tub is something you don't see everyday.

                                                                                                                    

                                                                           

The property encompasses over 5 acres with a private drive that curves deep onto the property.  There are two modern homes on the drive that form it’s a mini-mid-century modern enclave.
This property is still owned by the original family.  In 1960  William Engle relocated his family business Oro Manufacturing Co. to Monroe, NC.  He and his wife, Marjorie purchased this lovely piece of property and hired architect William Dare Boone Jr. to design the home.  William and Marjorie told Boone he wanted a house that was the same size as the home he left in Detroit. But he wanted it to be a ranch style!   Boone incorporated the game room, formals, lounge with a bar and large bedrooms.  The end result is this spacious airy statement home.  Once the main home was finished the Engle’s had William Boone design a house for his son and his family which sits to the right of the original home.

To see more photos check out the listing on Savvy + Co. Real Estate site.  If you would like a private tour of this pad… don't hesitate to call or click! 

104 Hillsdale Road - Notable Features:

• Newer heat and air
• New Roof installed 2012
• Original copper gutters
• Expansive Carport
• Large laundry Room and Butler’s Pantry/Mud Room with floor to ceiling storage and sink is great craft project space.
• Terrazzo Floors
• Hardwood Floors
• Original brushed brass door knobs
• Original walnut panelling on ceiling and walls
• Original walnut shelving
• Cut Granite fireplace and planter wall.

Want to see more, watch the video: 

A Modernist Patio for a Traditional Home --- Part II

Guest-blogger Ted Cleary, ASLA, of Studio Cleary Landscape Architecture offers insights into midcentury modern garden design.  Today’s post is the wrap-up of his first “Case Study Garden”. 

MCM enthusiasts will be familiar with Arts & Architecture magazine’s legendary design feature known as the “Case Study House Program”.  From its inception near the war’s end in 1945, through 1966, the CSH Program showcased innovative modernist designs, many of them modest, others more grand, meant to address the postwar housing needs of the typical American family. Like the CSH examples, some unbuilt, others still existing, these Case Study gardens strive to offer solutions you can apply to your own outdoor spaces.

In Part One, we looked at a very traditional home, in the French Provincial style, whose owners nevertheless have a very modernist sensibility.  Besides giving me a clear direction as to their desires, their contemporary art collection reinforced the sort of taste they shared.  My challenge was:  “How can I get these these two seemingly incongruous directions to ‘speak’ to each other in some complementary way?”

The existing lower level’s outdoor space was an inadequately-small bulbed-out patio, with a formless curving wall wrapping around one side of it to hold back the significant grade change. But the clients had an ambitious program, for both an active family-with-kids and for grownup entertaining: full outdoor kitchen and cocktail bar, and various bells & whistles that are part of many clients’ wish-lists such as pizza oven, TV, outdoor heater, and some kind of fire feature.  A pool was also mentioned as a possible future-phase item (seen here at the far-left of the Conceptual Plan).

proposed new design

The design solution is a multi-layered composition of orthogonal elements.  The large Holly tree at the end of the existing patio, a nice specimen in an otherwise open yard, was worth saving and working around.  That high curved wall is replaced by a com-fortably-lower right-angled one, creating seatwalls that wrap around two sides of a stepped-up terrace.  Family and friends sitting at both terrace and bar can enjoy the natural-gas linear fireplace.  Square planters step down and around the existing columns adjacent to the upper deck’s stairs down to the yard.  Taken together, all these elements transition down to the lower level in a terraced, gradual fashion.

The kitchen area becomes “defined” by its square, flat canopy overhead.  This not only provides some shelter from sun or an unexpected rain, and a logical place for recessed task lighting (controlled by dimmer switches....always include dimmer switches!), but also a more cozy sense of enclosure, so the cook and his companions at the bar don’t feel so exposed next to the looming deck and three-story house.  An “oculus” --- a simple but dramatic circular opening in the roof --- relieves some of the heavy dark feeling of the kitchen, located off to the side away from the cook. The flat roof is not wasted; it becomes a “green roof”, covered in an interesting tapestry of sedums that makes for a much more enjoyable view down onto it from the home’s occupants.

At the bar, a formed-in trough in the concrete countertop aligns with a simple “waterfall” on the wall (really, just iridescent tiles that mimic one), to serve as a place for chilled water or ice among beer and wine. One of the roof columns is larger, housing a pizza oven; at the other end, a “spider leg” column, an element devised and often employed by architect Richard Neutra, is for both interest and function, opening up the space and circulation.

Could you envision integrating a modernist garden into your tradional home’s outdoor space?  If you look beyond the obvious, and find fresh ways to reference the existing --- in this case, with the same brick as used in the house, but assembled in a ‘cleaner’, less ornamental way, and with bronze-painted metal elements that echo the color & material of the house’s standing-seam metal mansard roof --- it might just feel more “right” than you first thought.

All images credited to:  Studio Cleary Landscape Architecture

Written by: Ted Cleary, ASLA

http://www.houzz.com/pro/tedcl/studio-cleary-landscape-architecture