Most qualities draw in customers for the features they have rather than the kinds they really do not — that is not the situation for the 1,940-sq.-foot, solitary-story Mathews Residence in Atherton that the went on the market for $8 million this spring. Each individual of the walls in this 1952-period dwelling, other than one, lacks 90-degree angles.
Created by Frank Lloyd Wright, the property is thought of a pristine case in point of the mentioned architect’s “Usonian” model — a form of modern-day, 20th-century household architecture uniquely easy, modest, purposeful — and American, explained Monique Lombardelli, CEO of Menlo Park-centered Modern Homes Realty, who is overseeing sale of the property at 83 Wisteria Way. This design of residence was extremely perfectly-built but supposed to be additional obtainable and inexpensive for middle-course Americans at the time, she stated.
1 of the primary tenets of Wright’s principles for residential layout was to make a house eminently livable “for Homo Sapiens,” Lombardelli explained with a chuckle. He mostly averted producing rooms with 90-diploma angles and rather favored 60-diploma and 120-degree angles, which he viewed as far more people today-helpful. Created for primary operator Arthur Mathews, the residence is one particular of only six residences in the better Bay Area designed by Wright — with the some others in Hillsborough, Orinda, San Anselmo, Carmel and Stanford. The Mathews House, together with Stanford’s Hanna Dwelling, is shown on the Countrywide Register of Historic Locations.
Lombardelli describes the 70-year-old Mathews household as a midcentury fashionable gem of understated rustic elegance comprised of red brick, redwood, glass and concrete concealed away on almost an acre of land in the silent, sylvan, tree-lined Atherton community of Lindenwood.
Like most of Wright’s homes — and other examples of midcentury fashionable homes these as the 3,000 Eichlers in Palo Alto, and 8,000 additional through the Bay Place — Lombardelli claimed the Mathews Residence options an indoor-out of doors really feel centered about courtyards and gardens, and an open floor prepare wherever the living home, kitchen area and dining area are in a widespread room. The Mathews Household also has these types of rustic, modernistic touches as a floor-to-ceiling crimson brick fire, designed-in household furniture and oblique lights.
To date, the Mathews Residence has experienced only two proprietors in practically a few-quarters of a Century.
The residence arrived up for sale after the January death of its next owner, Betty Porter Sox, at the age of 98. Sox, a 1946 Stanford physics graduate, was employed by Bill Hewlett, co-founder of Hewlett-Packard, in 1956. Throughout her 47-year HP tenure, Sox invented the technological innovation company’s payroll procedure that was utilized for 35 years and managed its personnel retirement system. “This is a dwelling that appeals to a very specific, specialized form of property purchaser,” Lombardelli explained, introducing the home is getting promoted to “modernist consumers,” or lovers of modern day residential style, by way of this kind of publications as Dwell and Western Arts and Architecture publications. The eventual new proprietor of the Mathews Dwelling also will have to comply with rigorous guidelines governing the servicing and preservation of homes of historical importance.
But they will have a great deal of help and suggestions from fellow Frank Lloyd Wright scholars and aficionados. The Chicago-centered Frank Lloyd Wright Setting up Conservancy provides advocacy, schooling and specialized support for the proprietors and guardians of the hundreds of structures Wright developed and experienced designed across the United States for the duration of his 70-12 months job.
“It could not be very well regarded to the common general public, but the Mathews Home is surely known among the aficionados of Frank Lloyd Wright-intended households,” stated Chuck Henderson, who serves as president of the Conservancy’s board of directors.
Henderson claimed his corporation became active at the Mathews Home in 2016 when the operator sought out the organization’s suggestions for restoring the house’s roof.
“She wanted to do it the correct way,” he stated of her consulting with his business.
“It is extremely true the Mathews Dwelling is not as well known as a Frank Lloyd Wright-created structure as the Hanna Household. It is type of hidden, established back again from the street and not as quick to come across. It has never ever been open up for tours to the general public.”
The larger Bay Area may well be dwelling to only 6 Frank Lloyd Wright homes — virtually all of which are personal residences — but individuals hunting to discover the architect’s get the job done are in luck. The Hanna Household at Stanford University is open for community excursions twice a year. Stanford Professor Paul Hanna and his wife, Jean —both professionals in childhood education and learning — commissioned Wright to develop the home in 1936. Soon after dwelling in the property for nearly 40 decades, the few donated it to Stanford University in 1975.
The Usonian-model household, also named the “Honeycomb House” for its impressive hexagonal layout patterned just after the honeycomb of a bee, was crafted with no suitable angles in the floor plan.
Hanna Residence is the very first and greatest example of Wright’s modern hexagonal style and design and represents a turning stage in his job, major to concepts afterwards evidenced in the Guggenheim Museum in New York.
The American Institute of Architect recognized the home as one particular of 17 structures
by the architect to be retained as an instance of his contribution to American lifestyle. It was identified as a Countrywide Historic Landmark in 1989.
David Goll is a freelance author.