The current owners bought this 1949 bungalow in Six Moon Hill in 1989.
Working with architect Patrick Hickox of Hickox Williams Architects of
Boston, they expanded and updated it. The house will be on “Mid-Century
Modernism: Lexington’s Second Revolution,” a house tour to benefit the
Lexington Historical Society, Sunday, October 19. Ten houses in Peacock
Farm, Five Fields, Turning Mill, and Six Moon Hill will be open to the public.
Advance tickets are $20 for society members, $25 for nonmembers. Day of
the tour, $25 for members, $30 for nonmembers, and $15 for students. For
more information, call 781-862-1703 or go to lexingtonhistory.org.
cluded an African-American family. They tended
to be politically liberal and predominantly voted
Democratic.” Sales were brisk.
Seeing that it was possible to do well by
doing good, soon others joined the game. W.
Rupert McLaurin, a Massachusetts Institute of
Technology economics professor with a vision
of affordable housing for young couples, joined
with MIT architecture professor (and Gropius student) Carl Koch to build Conantum, a
190-acre, 100-home development near the Sudbury River in Concord, Massachusetts. Prices
began at $10,000, and at a time when such
things were uncommon, the houses came with
an anti-discrimination clause in their deeds.
Today, these and other modernist neighborhoods around Boston continue to thrive. Peacock
Farm and Turning Mill in Lexington, and Snake
Hill in Belmont all retain their minimalist, trapezoidal houses, and while most have been expanded, the additions are in keeping with the original
style. Indeed, several of the neighborhoods maintain strict control over exterior changes, but that
didn’t bother Jennifer Goldfinger, who earlier
this year moved her family into a 1958 Peacock
Farm house designed by architect Walter Pierce.
“The natural light pouring through the windows
is just wonderful,” she says. “We feel like we’re
in a tree house, with a powerful connection with
nature, the birds, and the weather.” She attended
her first neighborhood association meeting soon
after moving in. “You have to ask permission to
do just about anything to your house, including
changing its color, but that doesn’t bother me.
The people at the meeting — and it was packed
— were great. I’ve only been here a short time,
but I can tell I’m surrounded by very interesting,
intelligent neighbors.” Somewhere, Walter Gropius is smiling.
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