HO M E& GA R D E N
THORO UG HLY MODERN DURHAM
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Our cutting-edge home designs are the envy of the Triangle B Y J . M I C H A E L W E LTO N
PHOTO BY LOUIS CHERRY
The author writes about architecture, art and design for national and international publications. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Metropolis and Dwell magazines. He is the author of “Drawing from Practice: Architects and the Meaning of Freehand,” and editor and publisher of a digital design magazine at architectsandartisans.com.
PHOTO BY JOHN MICHAEL SIMPSON
PHOTO BY JULI LEONARD
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durhammag.com
PHOTO BY HOLLY DWAN
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april 2021
urham’s pedigree for modern architecture is long, strong and enduring. Consider the public realm: There’s George Milton Small’s 1957 Home Security Life building, once the city’s police headquarters on West Chapel Hill Street. A powerful piece of midcentury modern design, its future was uncertain for a time – but now it’s slated to be restored by the nationally known Fallon Company. Its developers might look to downtown’s renovated Hill building on West Main Street for inspiration. It was designed in 1937 by Shreve, Lamb & Harmon, architects for New York’s Empire State Building, and transformed in 2015 into the 21c Museum Hotel by Deborah Berke Partners. Deborah, a gifted modernist, is the first woman to lead the Yale School of Architecture. Then there’s architect Perry Langston’s 1968 Home Savings Bank on East Chapel Hill Street. It was also updated in 2015 by Los Angeles-based Commune Design studio, which transformed it into the sparkling Durham Hotel with a rock star rooftop lounge. Rounding out this downtown trio of modern hotels is the once-empty-and-forlorn 1962 Jack Tar Motel, now reborn and rebranded as Unscripted Durham on North Corcoran Street near West Parrish Street. But modernism on Durham’s residential front is alive and thriving, too. Nowhere is that more evident than at Cassilhaus, a 2009 breakthrough design by Durham’s Ellen Cassilly Architect. At 4,100 square feet, the Duke Forest home is a mashup of home, gallery and artist’s studio – a concept that earned it a full-page feature in The New York Times. On the following pages are three examples of the approximately 200 modernist homes in our neighborhoods. Each in its own way responds to its site and the wants and needs of its owners. And each, like the monumental buildings in downtown’s public realm, is part of the reason why Durham’s innovative designs are a cut above the rest.