In 1956 Evelyn and Jerome Ackerman purchased a home in Culver City and converted a portion of it into a design studio. This Friday through Sunday, August 7-9, an estate sale will be held of the home where they lived and created for more than 60 years. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to have a piece of their life work and items they collected and cherished.

Whether you are a longstanding member of Docomomo US or have yet to join, we are grateful that you are here and that you care about preserving our modern legacy. Today we are asking you to take the next step and join or renew your membership by August 31 to help us hit our goal of 100 members in the next 30 days.

Hidden in plain sight lie hundreds of forgotten Cliff May homes in the heart of Las Vegas. Architect Cliff May’s designs first appeared in Las Vegas in 1954 with the construction of a pair of identical homes on Van Patten Place, a half-mile west of Las Vegas Boulevard. That same year, Cliff May’s take on  modernism would be brought to the masses with the purchase of 103 homesites by Burns Construction from land developer Ernest Becker. Located in the third unit of the relatively young Charleston Heights Tract, the subdivision drew its name from the elevation created by the large fault line which runs north/south through west-central Las Vegas. 

In 1962 the City of Henderson commissioned the Palm Springs architecture firm of Wexler and Harrison to design a new, state-of-the-art City Hall. Incorporated only nine years earlier, Henderson already found itself outgrowing its original City Hall – a barracks structure dating from the construction of Boulder Dam that was moved from Boulder City. George Tate, who had begun practicing architecture in Henderson in 1960, acted as the local architect on the new steel structure. 

Due east of the Las Vegas strip lies one of the most well-known treasure troves of midcentury homes in Las Vegas: Paradise Palms. In 1960, fresh off their build of nearby Sunrise Hospital, local developers Irwin Molasky and Merv Adelson (who later in the decade would form Lorimar Television Productions) formed Paradise Development Corporation and Paradise Homes, with the intention of opening up Las Vegas’ Paradise Valley east of Maryland Parkway along Desert Inn Road for development and creating a wide-range of upscale housing on a 720-acre plot of vacant desert.

Legendary midcentury architect Paul Revere Williams had a long-standing involvement with Las Vegas that began in the early 1940s and lasted through the 1960s. Williams, widely regarded as the first African American member of the AIA in 1923, had built a successful Southern California practice designing over 2,000 residences ranging from humble bungalows to sprawling estates for Hollywood’s elite. 

Architects A. Quincy Jones and Frederick Emmons made a successful name for themselves in the midcentury era as the preferred architects for prolific developer Joseph Eichler. While not exclusively employed by Eichler, it was their work with another well-known West Coast builder that would first bring them to the Las Vegas market.

What will you find if you wander off the Las Vegas "Strip"? Longtime residents and preservation advocates Dave Cornoyer and Heidi Swank will introduce you to "the other Las Vegas," full of midcentury charm that visitors don't commonly see.

Last year, Docomomo US and our chapters focused our attention on the work of diverse designers through our annual advocacy theme "The Diversity of Modernism." Since then, we have continued to document and represent architects and designers of color and women who made significant contributions to the Modern Movement. The July 2020 Special Edition newsletter is dedicated to highlighting some of these designers. Thank you to our chapters and partners for their continued efforts with this, and a special thank you to Jerome A. Robinson for his contributions. 

This summer we are all about the at-home amenities. Luckily, there are plenty of modern homes that offer just that. Light-filled interior spaces, large windows that bring the outdoor surroundings in, and outdoor living space are just some of the features to be found in this summer real estate round up.

The Meyer House in Huntsleigh, Missouri, was designed by Charles Eames and Robert T. Walsh. John and Alice Meyer commissioned them after seeing another of their designs, St. Mary’s Church, in Helena, Alabama. The playfulness of Charles and Ray Eames’ later designs for items such as chairs, textiles, tables, and children’s toys, that they are most well known for, are clearly evident.

The Chestnut Hill neighborhood of Philadelphia is well-stocked with modernist homes of impressive architectural pedigrees. Nestled on Glengarry Road, there is the Dorothy Shipley White Residence, designed by Mitchell/Giurgola Architects and completed in 1963. Preservationists kept an eye on the house for many years as it deteriorated, and worked together to gain local landmark status for the home.

Docomomo US would like to send some positive spirit and honor the graduating class of 2020 by offering all recent graduates one free year of membership.

The Iconic Houses Network has just launched Icons at Risk, a new international initiative to preserve the world’s most endangered architecturally important modern houses.

Willert Park Courts is significant culturally, historically, socially and architecturally as the first housing complex for African Americans in Buffalo and as an early International Style design, but its demolition has been in the works for many years under the ownership of the Buffalo Municipal Housing Authority.

In keeping with our latest Regional Spotlight, Making Houston Modern, here are some modern Houston homes on the market that we would love to see find a sympathetic buyer. 

When Howard Barnstone landed in Texas in 1948, fresh out of Yale, it seemed as if he and Gertrude Levy were fated to meet in Houston’s contemporary art scene. With a job offer to teach at the new University of Houston architecture school, Howard moved to town and settled in. That was the opening scene in the marriage play starring Gertrude Levy and Howard Barnstone.

A number of important Houston Jewish families were drawn to Braeswood in its first decades, including the Gordons, Rauches, Brochsteins, Battelsteins, and Kaufmans, and they often employed Jewish architects such as Joseph Finger, Irving Klein, and Lenard Gabert, as well as Barnstone, to design their houses.

Barnstone’s office produced multiple schemes for the proposed Menil art center, which would house art storage primarily, along with offices, a conference room, and a small public gallery. The program grew to include a library for 3,700 volumes of “spiritual and philosophical” books, a workshop, and a small theater.

During the English architectural critic Reyner Banham’s last visit to Houston, to write about the Menil Collection by Renzo Piano (with Richard Fitzgerald, 1986), he observed the interrelationships among three generations of architects--Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Philip Johnson, and Howard Barnstone--who all left an indelible mark on modern architecture in Houston.