In the Philadelphia suburbs, the 1957 home by Carlos Joseph Alvaré has 10-foot walls of glass, exposed Douglas fir beams, fieldstone facades, and a lush, Japanese-inspired garden.
From the Agent: "The Rhode Residence is a remarkably preserved single-story midcentury-modern gem in Rydal, Pennsylvania, being offered for sale for only the second time since it was designed and built in 1957. Located in Abington Township, outside Philadelphia, the home was designed by Cuban-born architect Carlos Joseph Alvaré (1924–2017), who worked under Louis Kahn from 1947 to 1951. Alvaré studied architecture at Yale and the University of Pennsylvania, with connections to Oscar Niemeyer and Le Corbusier during his education.
Influenced by Kahn and other contemporary modernists, Alvaré designed award-winning homes characterized by facades of Pennsylvania fieldstone, open-flowing layouts, exposed structural elements, custom millwork, expansive windows, and dramatic ten-foot walls of glass that connect the interiors to the natural landscape. His work also emphasized thoughtful siting, natural light, and Japanese-inspired landscape design.
Commissioned by Meyer and Rhea Rhode, longtime patrons of Philadelphia’s arts community, the Rhode Residence is one of the finest surviving examples of Alvaré’s residential work. The home sits on a private, professionally landscaped 0.72-acre lot and retains many of its original architectural details, alongside updates to the roof, mechanical systems, kitchen, bathrooms, electrical system, flooring, lighting, and landscaping. Currently owned by a professional artist, it has been meticulously preserved.
Largely intact midcentury-modern homes by a Kahn protégé that are connected to Philadelphia’s modernist tradition are increasingly rare. The Rhode Residence offers an opportunity to experience a significant and well-preserved example of the region’s postwar residential architecture."
Architect Carlos Joseph Alvaré designed the home in 1957 after working under Louis Kahn from 1947 to 1951. Alvaré earned his bachelor’s degree in architecture from Yale and later studied at the University of Pennsylvania. At Yale, Oscar Niemeyer advised his senior thesis, and Le Corbusier judged his final project.
Photo by Kirsti Streahle / Donkin Media Group
Ten-foot walls of glass bring the surrounding gardens into the dining area, while original exposed Douglas fir beams and tongue-and-groove ceilings run throughout the main living spaces.
The owners had three requests: a place for their books, a kitchen for entertaining, and furnishings inspired by a beloved film.
Santiago Sánchez and Ángel Herrerahave hosted their share of parties at their two-bedroom apartment in Madrid. It had held up great since moving in two decades ago, but recently the couple found they were the ones in need of a change, having outgrown its traditional layout and lack of storage. Really, it just started to feel small. "It just got to the point where we said, We want to renovate," says Santiago.
Moving was off the table: they loved living in Madrid’s quiet Vicálvaro neighborhood. "I open the window and hear the birds in the morning," says Ángel. Their current building is also close to their jobs, Santiago’s parents, and a park. So, after fawning over a friend’s apartment designed by Gon Architects, they set up a call; after one meeting over Zoom, it was official.
Madrid studio Gon Architects transformed Santiago Sánchez and Ángel Herrera’s two-bedroom, 850-square-foot apartment into an airy one-bedroom home with a library at its center.
Photo by Imagen Subliminal
Various lights—including a white Ease portable lamp from Muuto, a dark green table lamp from Zara Home, and the Fado lamp from Ikea—decorate the shelves alongside the couple’s books and collected objects.
Photo by Imagen Subliminal
The decision to hire Gon, a Madrid firm founded by Gonzalo Pardo, was an easy one, since the couple already loved the practice’s hallmarks: a medley of bold colors, a knack for hidden spaces, and strong diagonal lines. Ángel and Santiago brought a few requests of their own, including a way to integrate the luminous mise-en-scènein Pedro Almodóvar’s 2024 film The Room Next Door, a film they both love. They shared a still from the movie with Pardo that had a red couch and a green sofa—could Gonzalo help incorporate furnishings like those into the renovation?
The red sofa is by Temasdos. It’s mirrored by two tulip-shaped armchairs from Nacher and a floor lamp from Muuto.
In addition to a private balcony off the primary suite, the 1970 residence has retro orange accents, original brick floors, and a revamped kitchen.
Location: 1024 Huntington Road, Kansas City, Missouri
Price: $2,000,000
Architect: Ward Haylett
Year Built: 1970
Footprint: 5,946 Square Feet (4 Bed, 4 Bath)
Lot Size: 0.56 Acres
From the Agent: "Designed by architect Ward Haylett, this 1970s midcentury modern home is one of a kind. The first thing you’ll notice are the mature trees and circle drive. The brick paver walkway creates an inviting path to the front of the home that flows into the entryway. The warm wood cabinetry, open shelving, modern pendant lighting, parquet flooring, linear lines, vaulted ceilings, open loft, natural lighting with floor-to-ceiling windows, and exposed beams all showcase the midcentury vibe. The main level has the first of two primary bedrooms. The first has hardwood floors, a brick fireplace, built-in shelving with pull-down desktops—perfect for a reading nook or mini office—multiple closets, a full en suite, and a sliding glass door leading to the back patio. As you walk through the primary en suite, you’ll come to a den, perfect for a second bedroom, nursery, or playroom. Upstairs there are two more bedrooms, one traditional and the second serving as another primary suite. In the latter, you’ll find a decorative brick wall, multiple closets, a full en suite, and a sliding glass door to a martini deck. Cross the catwalk into the spacious open loft, which is currently set up as an office. The lower level consists of a second kitchen and 1,852 square feet of unfinished space."
Architect Ward Haylett designed a number of homes in the Kansas City area.
After moving to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Ursula Emery McClure and Michael McClure put a contemporary spin on the area’s classic building typology.
Welcome to From the Archive, a look back at stories from Dwell’s past. This story previously appeared in the December 2000 issue.
Moving to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, from New York just under nine months ago, Columbia-trained architects Ursula Emery McClure and Michael McClure are already clued into how this city operates—or doesn’t. A lack of any kind of zoning has turned all of South Baton Rouge into the worst kind of suburban sprawl (the Sierra Club ranked Louisiana 5oth on its 1999 Rate the States Sprawl Report). The town square in its historic Beauregard Town, one of the country’s oldest planned districts, is now graced, for example, with a McDonald’s. And conversations with the city inspectors about their Maximillion Street house, a 193os shotgun duplex that they’ve renovated into a modernist take on Southern tradition, consistently descend into Abbott and Costello-like dialogues.
But the Emery McClures are part of a movement to change all that.
I’ve arrived in Baton Rouge just in time for the couple’s housewarming party. Prepping for the event, Ursula is frantic with the olives. When people start to arrive, I shoo her out of the kitchen to get ready. A photographer gets busy, the flashes brightening the fresh faces of the Emery McClures’ Louisiana State University professor peers and the babies they’ve brought with them. Ursula emerges looking very Southern belle-esque. She’s wearing a black, flouncy dress with elbow-length lace sleeves. Her curls are strategically bouncing down her shoulders and she’s strideful in tiny, strappy shoes. A party guest pauses to whisper haughtily, "Ah! Look at that." I suspect that Southerners are not accustomed to being so openly "referenced."
But that’s exactly what Michael and Ursula have done with their house. On the outside, the house looks like a fresher, newer shotgun duplex. The inside, however, is a pure abstraction of Southern tradition. "The idea was to respect what was here," says Michael. Using the iconography of the Southern shutter, the dominant features in the house are the five central pivoting louvered doors in the middle of the main room. Painted black, they allude to a division of space, yet allow enough light through that the central "public space" can be seen at all times. When closed, you wouldn’t be able to fire a shot from the front door straight through to the back, but it looks like you could.
The shotgun houses were typically slave quarters, usually 12 to 15 feet wide and 80 feet long with a front and back porch. But the form became "one of the most archetypal housing stocks in the South," Ursula explains. Their shotgun, which has no historical connections to slavery, is part of a pre-Civil War Beaux Arts planned subdivision that features quarter-acre lots with some grand homes, some shotguns, and some duplex shotguns. Along with Spanishtown across Government Street, it’s one of the few neighborhoods in town within walking distance to downtown. The 196os white flight to the suburbs literally turned Baton Rouge inside out, though, and Government Street, once the downtown shopping district and the original Beaux Arts boulevard, became the main exit to South Baton Rouge. Those families who remained lived in the shadow of a corrupt state capitol in crumbling homes with growing crime in one of the nation’s poorest states.
In 1995 the city hired New Urbanist planners Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk to cook up "PLAN Baton Rouge," a downtown development scheme much welcomed by residents. The renovation of Beauregard Town is part of the plan, as is the addition of a new community arts center, the widening of River Road, and several new high-rise downtown office buildings. Inspired by the vision of a 25-year-old contractor, Frank McMains, who began buying the dilapidated shotguns and fixing them up, the Emery McClures and others are following suit.
In defense of the unspoken word "gentrification," Ursula explains that "the idea is not that we want people to come in here and make everything look good and then rent it out. We want the owners to live here. There are people here that have lived here for a long time and who own their homes, and they’re not going anywhere. It’s the rental stock that’s being replaced."
David Baird, a fellow LSU architecture professor who has built a modernist house under the freeway in the Overpass district, is excited by the potential of this urban revitalization. "To me," he says, "Baton Rouge can really be seen as having two distinct communities: an African-American community and a white community. Downtown is one of those places where it doesn’t belong to one group or the other." Michael adds that "for a long time, a lot of lawyers had converted the old houses downtown into offices. The goal for our part of town is to make it a livable community."
The house has filled up with party guests who seem to be having a good time squeezing in and out of the open frames and peering (literally) at the Emery McClures’ dirty laundry inside the doorless bedroom closet. And the cow-trough-as-bathtub idea continues to draw huddles of onlookers.
Because they had only a week to get the plans together, the Emery McClures used Michael’s parents’ house in rural Oklahoma—which they had just completed—as a design reference. "We took the precedent of the American barn, and we started to get this idea of windows inside houses," Michael says. "In the shotgun tradition, the kitchen is always off the back porch where you eat your dinner, so the line from the kitchen door and the front door creates the major axis. Using the original windows realigned in cross-axis, we thought the second bedroom shouldn’t be a room, but a box that could be cut through, again the idea of inside and outside... So you’re inside the house, but outside the box.
"In the bedroom," he continues, "the original transom windows were more in reaction to their view. We like to think of those as hanging pictures of our neighbor Ronnie’s house, because we think that disintegration is very beautiful. Everyone (including Ronnie) thinks we’re crazy for saying that."
Holloway studio translated the piecemeal feel of the original plan into a cluster of spaces that better connect with the setting.
Houses We Love: Every day we feature a remarkable space submitted by our community of architects, designers, builders, and homeowners. Have one to share? Post it here.
From the Architect: "Set against the stark shingle landscape of Dungeness, Westview Cottage replaces a worn 1940s dwelling with a home that feels shaped by the coastline around it. When Tom and Yvette first bought the house, it was dark with low ceilings and heavily altered, with a series of awkward extensions and little connection to its setting. Years of patchwork additions had left it structurally failing, but there was something in its improvised character they wanted to hold onto. Their brief was to create three bedrooms, open the house up for family life and make better use of the roof volume, while reconnecting it to the landscape. Views to both the old and new lighthouses became key anchors in the design, alongside a detached outbuilding reworked as a flexible retreat for guests, work, or quiet escape.
"Working within the footprint of the original house, Hollaway Studio reconfigured the plan into a series of connected spaces that open gradually to the horizon. On arrival, the house frames a direct view west towards the new lighthouse, while living, dining and kitchen spaces unfold around shifting views of sea, garden and sky. White-painted, charred timber, black corrugated aluminum and Cor-Ten steel reflect the weathered monochrome of Dungeness itself, while polished concrete floors, made with locally sourced aggregate to match the surrounding shingle, bring the landscape indoors."
Topped with a crow’s nest and decked out with wooden built-ins, the Lumiere House is on the market for the first time since it was built in 1972.
Location: 331 Western Drive, Point Richmond, California
Price: $899,000
Year Built: 1971
Architect: Walter Thomas Brooks
Footprint: 1,186 Square Feet (2 Beds, 1 Bath)
Lot Size: 6,500 Square Feet
From the Agent: "Lumiere House was built by Walter Thomas Brooks and his family as their private residence on an oceanfront lot in quirky, quiet Port Richmond. The home is surrounded by terraced gardens, mature fruit trees, fish ponds, ferns, and reflecting pools.
Brooks synthesized several design ideas in this house. Crystalline structures create translucent walls that refract light like a prism, while earth shelter principles inspired the building’s small footprint, passive solar, and sleek lines that complement the landscape. His shipbuilding sensibility is also visible in the built-in furniture, prow-shaped front, two mezzanines, and crow’s nest.
Inside, cathedral-like ceilings and walls of ocean-facing windows frame views across San Francisco Bay. Even the detached garage overlooks the Golden Gate Bridge. The two-bedroom, one-bath home has appeared in numerous publications, including Dwell’s inaugural issue in October 2000, as well as, Fine Homebuilding, Sunset, and Newsweek."
Set on a 6,500-square-foot waterfront lot in Point Richmond, California, Lumiere House was designed and built by Walter Thomas Brooks for his family. Terraced gardens, mature trees, and water features surround the home.
Photo by Open Homes Photography
Photo by Open Homes Photography
The two-bedroom, one-bath home appeared in the inaugural October 2000 issue of Dwell.
Raw concrete meets terrazzo floors and sculptural millwork in this revitalized countryside estate.
Location: Montargis, France
Price: €550,000 (Approximately $625,812 USD)
Year Built: 1929
Renovation Year: 2020
Footprint: 3,767 Square Feet (5 Bed, 2 Bath)
From the Agent: "Built in 1929 and renovated in 2020, this property reflects the architectural principles of modernism, with its clean lines, modularity, and clarity of volumes. The renovation highlights the spatial qualities of the original structure while enhancing its functionality. The house offers 3,767 square feet of living space spread across three levels, set within a 12,916-square-foot landscaped garden. On the garden level, a spacious entrance hall leads to three bedrooms (a fourth is possible), a bathroom, a playroom, and a large lounge area. The first floor features expansive living areas, including a stunning double-height living room with a fireplace, flooded with natural light through an industrial-style glass roof. Adjacent to this is a fully equipped open kitchen and dining area. Outside, a wraparound walkway lined with shaded and sunny terraces encircles the level, with a staircase providing access to the garden. The top floor includes two additional bright bedrooms, a bathroom, an office, and ample storage space. A spiral staircase leads to a rooftop terrace offering panoramic views of the Château de Montargis and the Loing River below. The outdoor spaces have been thoughtfully designed to promote and preserve biodiversity, creating a lush and private living environment. A garage for two to three vehicles and a laundry room complete this property."
In 2020, the garden received an environmentally sensitive update with drip irrigation and on-site rainwater harvesting.
Photo by Vivre Côté Paris, Caroline Clavier – Philippe Garcia
The renovation preserved and restored many of the original Art Deco elements, including the sculptural fireplace, terrazzo tile, and the geometric woodwork crowning the staircase.
Photo by Vivre Côté Paris, Caroline Clavier – Philippe Garcia
The double-height living room is flanked on one side by tall windows.
Photo by Vivre Côté Paris, Caroline Clavier – Philippe Garcia
