Modisabi: DeSilver

I had the chance, thanks to it's current owners, to visit John Black Lee's 1961 DeSilver House in New Canaan today.

This is John Black Lee's DeSilver House

I had been looking for the opportunity and in fact had found the house on my way to a friend's house last summer. I fought the urge to snap pictures (they share a driveway). Then a few months ago the current owners posted a note on this blog saying that they were the current...well you get the picture. We tried unsuccessfully to arrange a time in our schedules for a visit and finally, thanks to email, the weather and Facebook, today ended up being the day.

When you pull in to the driveway you are faced with the classic shot from the Bill Earle's book attributed to a modern house day probably in the late 1950's. There is a new garage, first sketched by the new owners, to the left and the guest house to the right.

The new garage, can you tell?
Be honest, you can't.

The main house appears smaller in person and it is indeed smaller than most built in New Canaan now-a-days. It is, like the Gropius and Noyes houses I have visited, filled with a sense of awe, of peace and calm. These folks knew their business. There is a reverence one feels when walking in this house.

To enter the home you walk across the bridge lined with planters. Previous owners had replaced the planters with railings as there is a good five foot drop off the side to the main level below. The bridge now steps off from a somehow both modern and classic New England stacked stone retaining wall instead of the steep grade that was there before. After seeing it the way it is I can not imagine it any other way.

When you do cross the bridge to the front door and enter the house your find yourself halfway between the entertaining space (bottom floor) and the private space (top floor). The stairwell is an open affair spanning three floors including the basement which the current owners have remade as a wine cellar. The stairs themselves are thick wood treads with period green carpet pads. There are steel box rods that run all the way up.

The staircase seen from the lower level.

Once on the lower level the kitchen, a beautifully redone and entirely usable space, is to the left and the dining room is to the left. Straight ahead is the living room with it's central fireplace resurfaced in stone. The floors are light and, at first look, appear to be bamboo laminate but they are in fact light bamboo.

The living room runs the entire width of the rear of the house. It is paneled in large light wood squares and is breathtaking in it's view of the rear of the property, open layout, impeccable period and new furniture. The ceiling is raised with hidden sconces that run around the entire room.

A big alteration to the downstairs plan is the removal of the half bath and built in cabinets that used to separate the living room from the dining room. The bathroom was moved to a center structure behind a wall covered in panels from the storage units by Charles Eames. The story goes that when the homeowners were looking to cover the wall with something out of the ordinary and yet still somehow true to the period and the home itself they found a resource in the company that presses the panels for the Eames reproductions currently available. The factory pressed an extra run and the panels were installed in the home with dramatic effect.

Also in the living room are wood stools by Eames, a Noguchi coffee table , Cloud Couches by Modernica and chairs that could be Jens Risom. There are area rugs by Flor all through the house.

The dining room has a clear table and chairs which, along with the big windows on two walls, gives the relatively small room a feeling of space and openness.

The kitchen has been transformed and yet does not feel out of place in the house. The previous owners had the kitchen laid out as an eat-in affair with very little counterspace. Realizing that wouldn't do the homeowners added a medium island in the middle of the room which makes the kitchen a wonderful place to prepare food for two or twenty two.

Upstairs there are three bedrooms. The master mirrors the living room downstairs with a central fireplace and central entry point. In addition it has access to the two second floor decks that are on each side of the house.

The master has it's own, as yet to be remodled, bathroom and there is a second bath on the floor.The owner maintains that a major reason for homes like this being prime candidates for tear-down is the size of the bathrooms which at the time the house was constructed were thought of as places to go number one and number two and then wash up afterwards. This was before everyone felt the need to have a day spa next to their bedroom.

There are two other bedrooms on either side of the house. One is used today as a TV room and the other as a guest bedroom. Both are furnished in a way that compliments the surroundings.

Colors are earthy and warm in the house with browns and greens, yes there is white accaisionally, but the feeling is warm and welcoming. The floor to ceiling glass doors and windows around the house afford great views of the outdoor space. There is never a question of where the outside stops and inside begins as there is in Eliot Noyes second house and certainly, I am told, at Philip Johnson's Glass House but there is light and you do feel connected with the outdoors.

The landscaping too has been redone. After previous owners had cut down many of the trees that surrounded the house it was left surrounded by lawn. There are new flagstone patios all around, the new retaining walls at the front and a very impressive set of stone stairs that run from the kitchen patio to the new garage.

All in all a perfect example of updating while staying true to the architect's vision. It is said that John Black Lee has been in the house since the renovation and told the owners that they had extended it's usefullness another 30 years. I agree and in a town where moderns are either threatened or remodled with somewhat murky results DeSilver stands as testiment to what can be done when care and a keen sense of what fits are applied in equal measure.

More Pictures.