New Canaan's First Modern House

I was under the impression that the house we live in, in Pound Ridge (which is next to New Canaan and which is nowhere near as well known as New Canaan is for modern houses, although there are dozens here), was built before any of New Canaan's modern houses.

But I was wrong. Sherwood Mills designed and built a house for his family in New Canaan in 1939, the same year as our house was designed and built, by John C.B. Moore (the Mills House is on the left, below). That's one of the things I learned while clicking through the new inventory of modern houses in New Canaan that went online last week.





Coincidentally, Moore lived in New Canaan for a number of years, although he doesn't seem to have designed any houses there. Moore's firm (Moore and Hutchins) did however design an addition to the New Canaan library and when I mentioned that to Mills's son when I had occasion to call him on the phone a few years ago, he knew of Moore and Hutchins and told me that he himself had also designed an addition to the New Canaan library. -- ta

French Cutie

This house by Franklin Azzi in Yport, France (in Normandy), is just so delicious. . . All that lovely wood and light and smooth open spaces in a neat, petite footprint. The windows and their hardware are so sophisticated – where does the water go when it sheds off those recessed skylights? Very clever. Can you imagine trying to get upper decks like those passed by your local building department? Seen on Materialicious (the most delicious!) and MoCo Loco. – GF

New Canaan Inventory

The folks at the Glass House have put the new inventory of modern houses in New Canaan online. I just started clicking a few minutes ago and have only gotten through three or four of the 91 houses, but I already came upon some interesting stuff, in a mildly gossipy vein, written by a homeowner who was trying to decide whether to hire Victor Christ-Janer or John Black Lee.

The website is www.preservationnation.org/modernhomesurvey.

Christy MacLear, director of the Glass House, tells me that it's not quite complete but that they felt compelled to go live with it because the New York Times wanted to scoop it in today's Home section. -- ta