Most people drive past without seeing it
From Prospect Crescent you see one storey and a garage wall. The house is behind and below, three levels deep in a wooded ravine, and it has been a private residence for a century.
We open it in small numbers, by reservation, for people who want to stand inside a building that changed how concrete was used in America. Groups are kept to eight so the rooms still feel like rooms.
Everything raised goes into the restoration. Textile block houses are difficult to keep — the steel inside the walls corrodes, the blocks spall, and water finds the joints. The work underway is listed here.
The house goes down, not up
Upper — entrance
You arrive here, level with the street, at what is really the top of the house. The entry gives onto the bedroom floor and the interior balcony that looks down into the living room.
Tap a level on the drawing. The section is diagrammatic, not measured.
Come and see it
Visits run in small groups and last about ninety minutes, covering the entrance level, the living room, the garden and the 1926 studio. Reservations open a month ahead.
Or help keep it standing
The restoration is funded entirely by visits and gifts. Blocks are recast one at a time, matched to the originals in colour and aggregate.