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59 mid century and modern historic house museums that you can visit

Kate

59 historic mid-century houses you can visit -- researched by retrorenovation-com-staging.enwf9w61-liquidwebsites.com

Gordon House FLW 1957 Silverton, OR Eugene O'Neill House 1937 Danville, CA Schindler House 1922 West Hollywood, CA Eames House 1949 Pacific Palisades, CA Stahl House 1959 Hollywood, CA Neutra VDL House 1933, Los Angeles, CA Hollyhock House FLW 1917 Los Angeles, CA Leo Carillo Ranch 1937 Carlsbad, CA Sinatra Twin Palms 1947 Palm Springs, CA Elvis’ Honeymoon House 1960 Palm Springs, CA Sunnylands 1966 Rancho Mirage, CA Clark Co. Museum Heritage Street Henderson, NV Morelli House 1959, Las Vegas, NV Taliesin West FLW 1939 Scottsdale, AZ Georgia O’Keefe Home/Studio renovated 1945, Abiquiu, NM Barton County Museum Lustron Home Great Bend, KS Allen-Lambe House FLW 1915 Wichita, KS LBJ Ranch Remodeled 1951 Stonewall, TX Wilson House 1959 Temple, TX 1950s All Electric House 1954 Shawnee, KS Winston Guest House 1982 Owatonna, MN Stockman House FLW 1908 Mason City, IA Taliesin 1911 FLW Spring Green, WI Murihead Farmhouse B&B FLW early 1950s Hampshire IL Fabyan Villa & Japanese Garden FLW 1907 Geneva, IL Dana-Thomas House FLW 1940 Springfield, IL Graceland remodeled 1957 Memphis, TN Rolling Meadows 1953 Ranch Replica Rolling Meadows, IL Farnsworth House 1951 Plano, IL Bradley House FLW 1900 Kankakee, IL Frank Lloyd Wright walking tour Oak Park, IL Robie House FLW 1910 Chicago, IL Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio 1889/1898 Chicago, IL Emil Bach House FLW 1910 Chicago, IL Miller House 1953 Columbus, IN Rosenbaum House FLW 1939 Florence, AL Alden B. Dow Home & Studio 1941 Midland, MI Saarinen House 1920s Bloomfield Hills, MI Dymaxion House 1946 Dearborn, MI Weltzheimer/Johnson House FLW 1948 Oberlin, OH Ohio Historical Society Lustron Home Columbus, Ohio Carl Sandburg Home 1838 Flat Rock, NC Kentuk Knob FLW 1956 Chalk Hill, PA Fallingwater FLW 1935 Mill Run, PA Martin House Complex FLW 1903-1905 Buffalo, NY Graycliff FLW 1926-1931 Derby, NY Shoe House 1948 York, PA Eisenhower National Historic Site 1950 Gettysburg, PA Hillwood Estate Museum & Gardens remodeled 1955 Washington, DC Pope-Leighey House FLW 1940 Alexandria, VA Wharton Esherick Museum 1926 Malvern, PA Russel Wright’s Manitoga & Dragon Rock 1961 Garrison, NY Guest House, Field Farm 1960 Williamstown, MA Frelinghuysen Morris House 1930-1942, Lennox, MA Philip Johnson Glass House 1949 New Canaan, CT Louis Armstrong House Museum 1910 remodeled 1940s, Queens, NY Pollock/Krasner House & Study Center 1879 East Hampton, NY Gropius House 1938 Lincoln, MA Zimmerman House FLW 1950 Manchester, NH

Historic house museums aren’t just for Early American revolutionaries, pioneer settlers or Victorians any more. Yes, as appreciation for mid-20th century architecture has grown, so has the number of historic house museums. Kate and I have been working for several weeks to research and prepare what we believe is the first conclusive list of mid-century and modern historic house museums that you can visit and see. In the USA. In your Chevrolet, even.

Our list includes 59 mid century and modern house museums. A number of these are iconic, architect-designed “mid-century modern” masterpiece houses. But we also were somewhat liberal in including other early- and mid-20th historic houses that played key roles in the evolution of mid century residential architecture and the “modern” way we still live today. There are quite a few houses by Frank Lloyd Wright that fall into our “extremely influential” but not really “mid-century” category, for example.

Houses generally become “historic” for one of two reasons (or both): (1) Their architecture is special, or (2) Someone historic lived there. Reflecting this, the houses in our roundup are there for a variety of reasons — and we believe this diversity helps illuminate the story of mid-century America. In addition to the houses that are important examples of mid century and modern residential architecture, our list includes celebrity houses where Elvis, Sinatra, and Louis Armstrong lived… a number of “biographical” houses including from Russel Wright, Georgia O’Keefe, and Jackson Pollock and Louise Krasner… There are two presidential estates… and we dug and dug and dug to find two Lustron houses open to the public! We take the research all the way to one “post modern” house, a 1982 design by Frank Gehry. Don’t be harassing us, please, if you don’t like the way we sliced and diced the list; be nice; we were trying to show the love for 20th century modern and modern-esque houses that haven’t quite made it onto others’ formal lists yet. Also, we started to get cross-eyed after a while of hashing what’s “in” the list and “what’s out”. We kinda wanted to be done already.

Readers, did we miss any mid century or modern historic house museums?
If so, please let us know!
In all cases, the houses had to be open for tours. Some are open all the time. Some require reservations. So call ahead. Our map is interactive — hover over any of the dots to see the name and year of the house. Click on the dot to get to either the house’s website or, if we’ve written about the house, the link will take you to our story. With our stories, we always try to get lots of great photos — more than you are likely to see on the house’s website.

Read all our spotlight stories
with lots of “bonus” photos you won’t find on the house websites
by clicking here.

 

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  2. David C. Nelson says

    I toured this house museum last year and it is terrific:

    Leroy Anderson House, Woodbury, Connecticut
    National Register of Historic Places

    Leroy Anderson spent the summer of 1946 at Painter Hill in Woodbury, Connecticut. It was here that he composed Sleigh Ride during a heat wave. Two years later the Andersons settled in Woodbury permanently, first to Eleanor Anderson’s mother’s house on Painter Hill Road.

    The Andersons built a modernist home on Grassy Hill in 1953. During these years Leroy Anderson wrote many of his well-loved compositions. The Leroy Anderson House was designed by architect Joseph Stein (1916-1977) of Waterbury, Connecticut and was constructed (1953-1954) by the McGinn Company of Naugatuck, Connecticut.

    http://www.leroyandersonfoundation.org/woodbury.php

  4. Scott says

    I don’t think I saw this on the list, but there is also the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Westcott house in Springfield, Ohio. While in Springfield you see a rare surviving example of the Westcott automobile at the nearby Clark County Heritage Center, also home to an impressive collection of working vintage neon signs.

    Springfield is about 45 minutes from the Lustron in Columbus, Ohio.

  5. Dottie Martin says

    This FLW-designed home is in St. Louis and is open for tours by appointment. I just toured it last weekend, and it’s fantastic! It’s a true time capsule with all the original furniture that FLW designed for the home. https://ebsworthpark.org/

  7. Leann says

    The Bachman-Wilson house at Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville, AR is available for tours. http://crystalbridges.org/frank-lloyd-wright/

    Fay Jones, one of the deans of the architecture school at the University of Arkansas (it is now called the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design) studied under Frank Lloyd-Wright and was heavily influenced by him. I saw a documentary on this on our local PBS station (AETN) and there are several homes in Fayetteville and Northwest Arkansas that Jones designed and had built for clients.