Robert Green's Gould House

I was contacted sometime in February 2010 regarding the upcoming sale of a Robert Green property. The email was from the listing agent, who provided a couple of images but not much else in detail. Using the images I determined that the home was the Gould House, and from my copy of the RG website (http://www.modusmodern.com/RobertGreen) deduced the location by back-tracking the hint regarding its location on Lake Phoebe (I had to do a bit of sleuthing as the lake is only known as Lake Phoebe by the residents, it's actually now known as Silverlake). Using the floor-plan and images I looked at homes around the lake via aerial photos on Google Maps. A couple of weeks later my guess was confirmed. The home is one of the most well-maintained examples of an RG structure I've seen to date - probably because the family it was built for owned and lived in the residence until recently.

I have some images up from the original RG website here:

http://www.modusmodern.com/robertgreen/gould.asp

Note the intentional resemblance in the floor-plan to the well-documented Hanna House in Palo Alto, done by the master himself. When we first pulled up to the drive I knew we were in for a treat - the roofline from the road, the natural stone, and great fireplace all provided hints of a wonderful structure. I took a few moments looking around the empty house before entering, as evidenced by the photographs in my flickr gallery.

The entryway was simply wonderful, with a custom-made door that was heavier than it first appeared. The short foyer opens into a hallway to the right (where the baths and bedrooms are) and a kitchen to the left - ahead lies the large living room. The home is similar to the Arrow Head House in many ways, only with the living room more centralized. The entire back of the house is glass and provides a magnificant view of the lake below. I spent some time taking photos, probably more than many of you will ever want to see, but I wanted to take the opportunity to document the house through photos as I wasn't sure if there would ever be another chance.

The bedrooms and bathrooms, with the exception of the master, are small, featuring built-in dressers (the drawers are often built as parallelograms to match the angles of the walls. The beds and nightstands for the most part are also built-in. The spaces all take as much advantage of the view as possible by providing floor-to-ceiling windows and utilizing the remaining space as efficiently as possible. The master has an additional private room with balcony which is overlooked by the bed, which is surrounded by built-in shelves. There are many areas providing natural light both in the walls and ceiling via skylights.

The living area is one of the best I've seen by Green, slightly sunk-in with a two-sided fireplace that comes to an acute point (the other side services an angular seating room). Built-in cabinets cascade down a short flight of stairs to a small end-table. There's provision for television sets, stereo and speakers, all built-in.

The kitchen is expansive, running around the outside of the angular seating room - it features an amazing amount of counter space and what appears to be all original appliances. The floors throughout are the red-stained concrete in triangular motif or carpet. All I can say is, what a fantastic home. Please visit my gallery to look at all the photos - I don't think you'll be disappointed. 

For my previous Robert Green posts, follow this link or click Robert Green in my Tag Cloud to the right:

http://modusmodern.blogspot.com/search/label/Robert%20Green

-- John

DOCOMOMO GA Home Tour 2007 Part 2

This is the second part of three describing the DOCOMOMO Home Tour held on 2007.09.29 in Atlanta, GA. The second house on the tour was also designed by Robert Green and construction was finished in 1964, I believe. The story is that RG had designed the home for a client who then decided not to build. Around the same time, RG was designing homes for the Amberwood development - this was a unique neighborhood with a business model of selling unbuilt lots - the buyer would then either purchase plans and construction from the developer or bring in his/her own architect and building crew. In this case, RG built one custom house (the Nicoll house - more here: http://www.modusmodern.com/robertgreen/nicoll.asp) and had been hired to build the entryway to the neighborhood - the developer saw the original plans Robert had created and hired him to adapt them to the lot it's currently on - the developer's name was Robert Witcher (more images and the plan here: http://www.modusmodern.com/robertgreen/arrowhead.asp).


The Witchers lived in the home with their two small children for 7 years before selling to the current owners (actually the surviving second wife of the second owner). The House featured an 8x8 tiled bath that could be filled with water that the children referred to as their "kiddie pool." Unfortunately I didn't take any images of the room, as it's quite spectacular with a full skylight above the space and light green jade tile, commode and sinks. The house is quite unusual with a main structure making up the "point" of the arrow, a long hall with small alcoves opposing bedrooms, and a "tail" family room that was formerly a carport - RG was hired to transform the carport into the current family room and an external 2 car garage was added - at some point the garage was extended upward and a guest house was built, much to RG's dismay. Two additional structures were also added, a pool house and a workshop - neither of these three structures have more than a passing resemblence to the original structure (the garage has obvious lines in the bottom floor and some details were carried over, but the general lines were all abandoned).

The long hallway reveals many surprises, FLW style, with new rooms, alcoves, shelving and geometric shapes around every corner. The main living room comes to a slightly acute point, with a two sided fireplace in the opposite corner. The front eave of the house actually comes down to chest level making this a remarkable construction indeed.

Photo Album here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/14338634@N02/sets/72157602225231786/

Part 3, the Dowd residence, will go up shortly.

-- John

DOCOMOMO GA Home Tour 2007 Part 1

I thought I would provide some running commentary plus some photos from the DOCOMOMO Home Tour yesterday (2007.09.29).

Cindi and I left the house at 9:00 AM but had to run some errands (placing directional signs and ballons around the Amberwood subdivision for the tour) before arriving at the first house. Because we shared responsibilities as docents at the Dowd House (in Amberwood) and were expected to arrive by 1:45 to relieve the first docents, we were limited in time and decided to only view the 3 houses on the tour, regrettably bypassing the condo at Plaza Towers. There were four homes in total on the tour and they were separated by some distance so one would need to factor in some travel time. This year two homes were designed by Wright Fellow Robert Green - the first is the Copeland house near buckhead off of Northside Drive. This first photoset features the images I took in the morning before heading back towards Amberwood (the two remaining homes were both in Amberwood).

As to the Copeland House, there's not much I can say that hasn't already been said. The current homeowners were present and had photos of the original construction and comparison shots of two historical remodels, passed to them from previous owners. The house is simply amazing. The level of detail and use of materials was quite stunning, even the furnishings (I wish I would have taken some images of the Nakashima table) had the effect of flooring me as I crossed rooms. I was running low on disk space so I spent most of my time taking shots of architectural details. I also tried to get shots that didn't contain people, so some of the details are sparce. I hope to aggregate photos taken from others to make a more complete journal of the visit - an hour went by very quickly.

Photo Album here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/14338634@N02/sets/72157602207959344

I'll try to get photos of Arrow Head up later tonight or tomorrow.

-- John