Preserving the Legacy of Mid-Century Modern Architecture

We’re celebrating May, Historic Preservation Month, with an episode on the Modern houses of the 1950s and 1960s. 

Could you live in a glass house? New Canaan, Connecticut’s Mid-Century Modern homes designed after the Second War are world famous. In addition to Philip Johnson’s Glass House, now a museum, New Canaan has homes designed by Marcel Breuer, Eliot Noyes, Frank Lloyd Wright and Edward Durell Stone. Each one is a part of architectural history and is a masterwork of the era’s most talented architects. But by the 1990s, people began to demolish these relatively small homes sited on large lots. People in New Canaan  began to band together to save these artworks-”machines for living”.  Towns across Connecticut have at least one or two good Mid-Century Modern homes worth saving and celebrating. 

Host Mary Donohue discusses what a homeowners and community members can do to help save these modern homes. Her guests are Gwen North Reiss, historian and author of New Canaan Modern: A Preservation History published by the New Canaan Museum and Historical Society in 2024 and Mary Dunne, Deputy State Historic Preservation Officer for the Dept of Economic and Community Development and homeowner of an architect-designed,  Mid-Century Modern home. 

 For more information on New Canaan’s Modern houses, order your copy of Gwen North Reiss’s book New Canaan Modern: A Preservation History from the New Canaan Historical Society. It has really tremendous photography-a joy if you are a fan of this era!

To buy the book, contact the New Canaan Historical Society at info@nchistory.org

To learn more about Modernism in New Canaan, go to: https://nchistory.org/modern-new-canaan/

To visit the Glass House, go to: https://theglasshouse.org/

 You can find the link to the New Canaan Modern House Survey on the website of the Glass House Museum here: https://theglasshouse.org/learn/modern-homes-survey/

To read more about Mary Dunne’s mid-century modern home and furniture designer Jens Risom, go to: 

https://www.ctexplored.org/the-answer-is-risom/

https://www.ctexplored.org/the-modern-style-in-manchester/

photo: Michael Biondo

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Visit Connecticut’s four state museums operated by the State Historic Preservation Office including the Eric Sloane Museum in Kent, with the artist’s studio; the Henry Whitfield House in Guilford, the state’s oldest house built in 1639, , Old New-Gate Prison & Copper Mine in East Granby, the Nation’s first chartered copper mine and state prison; and the Prudence Crandall Museum in Canterbury, the first school for young black women. 

Learn more here: https://portal.ct.gov/decd/services/historic-preservation/state-museums

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This episode of Grating the Nutmeg was produced by Mary Donohue and engineered by Patrick O’Sullivan at www.highwattagemedia.com/   Follow GTN on our socials-Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and BlueSky.

Follow executive producer Mary Donohue on Facebook and Instagram at WeHa Sidewalk Historian. Join us in two weeks for our next episode of Grating the Nutmeg, the podcast of Connecticut history. Thank you for listening!