It's a Deal for Edward Durell Stone's Celanese House

Really good news for modern house aficionados out of New Canaan today: The deal for the Celanese House closed. Joel Disend, an executive at New York Life, bought it for $4.1 million, half-a-million below its last listing price.

I say good news because we can only assume that Disend bought the house, which Edward Durell Stone designed, to live in rather than to tear down. It's an oddity outside, no doubt, but stunning inside. We loved it when we saw it, unfurnished, during New Canaan's Modern House Day in November. Except for its price, which was almost $4 million above what we could afford, and its location, on Oenoke Ridge Road, which is too main street for us, we might have bought it ourselves.

But its good news too for Jackie and Bruce Capra, New Canaan residents who bought the house because they didn't want to see it torn down (they had seen that happen too many times to modern houses in New Canaan), invested in the renovation and now, presumably, will get a payoff for their effort (Fred Bernstein wrote a good account of the Capras in the Times, here).

There's also lots of background information on this blog and on my other blog, Sphere. -- ta