Midcentury Redux

Architect Ehrman Mitchell built this house for himself just outside of Chestnut Hill in 1956. At the time, it was of modest size, on a large sloping partially wooded lot. A somewhat later addition in local stone harmoniously complemented the original house and nearly doubled its size. More recently, new owners called on us to create an addition of two bedrooms on the rear of the house. In designing additions to older buildings, we usually prefer to make a visual distinction between the existing structure and new construction, rather than designing something that pretends to be of another time. In this case, though, it seemed wrong to disrupt the flow of an iconic mid-century modern house that already had two distinct parts. Therefore, we designed a single story addition using the same materials, proportions, and window styles as the existing house. Tall narrow windows simply mark the connection between old and new.