I would love to have seen this with the original furnishings.
I think it's a great house--the only thing I'd feel immediately compelled to change is the ceiling treatment in the living room.

What I find interesting when I look at real estate is that there are more Time Capsules than one would think.

As a counterpoint to people who are constantly changing things around and redecorating, there is a group of people who seem to do things once and live with it forever.

Sometimes I think the houses are better for it. The finishes are not covered with layers of paint, the walls are not riddled with nail holes. In this group are a couple of subgroups: one who decorated well, and probably fairly expensively, at the outset, and the other, which never cared all that much and neither kept things up nor changed them. I lost a bidding war on a house that had curtains that were literally rotten strings and threads hanging from a strip of buckram.

The downside of serial redecoration and constant change is that few people can afford to keep doing it right, when they do it over and over again. And then I think in the back of one's mind is "well, I will be doing this over in a few years so if this one doesn't turn out that great, it's not forever".

That's not to say that all time capsules are good, or that some of them don't reflect some rather unfortunate periods or styles of designs--but some of this is temporal--as a sixty year old house we can appreciate it, but I am not sure we would be looking at it the same way if it was 1985.

I agree. Here's a link to a fully remodeled 1952 modern home. I would love to see the original version. To me, although stunning in its own right, the remodeled version has no soul.

Here is a link that might be useful: 1952 modern home

You're right, it's a well-done house but there is very little to indicate 1952 on the inside, so there has been a loss of sorts. The thing about early modernism is that the Idea often predated the ability to Execute because the materials didn't exist in a fully developed form or the technology wasn't quite there. So, there was often a slight roughness or awkwardness to some aspects of early modernism that give it charm, or it's soul if you want to call it that. Plus the aging process contributes.

I like the Musser house. It's mid-century, but still essentially a ranch house that wouldn't stand out as looking "modern" in the architecturally "modern" sense. It probably fits well in its neighborhood.

The CT house that WMA linked is nice, too. But when WMA mentioned it had "no soul" I expected to see much worse in the remodel than what I did see. It has had new dark wood flooring installed throughout, which is a modern choice, but isn't particularly offensive to me. And the bath has clearly been redone (I don't understand folks putting rough slate in rooms where you're meant to be nekkid . . .), but it isn't full of the odd vessel sinks and strange primary-colored pendant lights that so often afflict renos of "modern" homes.

The kitchen seems to have its original metal cabinets in place. Either they've been stripped down to bare metal and sealed, or painted silver. I'm hoping the former. The rock wall/fireplace is intact. There may have been some original wall coverings removed, but neutral drywall is fine with me.

WMA89, I love that house.

It's an interesting challenge, isn't it, to take a house that good and free yourself from the functional constraints of 60-year-old technology and materials in a sensitive way.

In that kitchen, for instance, I think I'd have opted for black epoxy resin laboratory countertops, which were available and used in that era, and appliances either with cabinet fronts or with enamel rather than stainless.

What about you, Pal?

I find the "old-fashioned modern" plain birch kitchen cabinets refreshing. (Utilitarian kitchens always appeal to me.) I like the wall sink on the tile in the bathroom too. It's definitely "nursing home" looking, but looks easy to keep sparkling clean. And sparkling clean is always attractive. So much cool stuff about the house; my only quibble is the mundane brown roof, though I'm not sure what would be a better replacement for it.

That wonderful chandelier in the dining room: that's contemporary, is it not? What a great room!

I like the CT house too, though I too feel the interior has been nuked/neutralized. It would've been nicer to have seen a mix of old contemporary and new contemporary.

I like the CT house a lot. I think they have kept most of it intact with the exception of the kitchen and baths. Those are okay and I don't think they fight the esthetic of the house, although I would have done a couple of things differently as Bronwynsmom mentioned.

"Plus the aging process contributes". Yes! I think that's what bothers me about the CT house. Too much of the patina has been removed.

I think most of the house is fine. I sometimes think this particular esthetic is what the modernist were shooting for at the time, but the materials now make it possible to be a little more slick.

I think the kitchen is mostly original. But generally I think the kitchen and baths are what I don't like in the renovation. I really expect tile in that kind of kitchen and the combination of slick and natural stone in the bath in particular is very 2000s. And the Euro pull hardware is a different sort of modernism, somehow.

I think I would have tried to keep the baths a bit more period-looking--even though the baths tended to look a bit "old-fashioned" for these houses as built, because of the materials and fixtures available.