Richmond's most famous modern home, the Rice House, designed by Richard Neutra (Photo by Ansel Olson courtesy Trey Tyler)
When you think about architecture in Richmond, Colonial Revival homes and red brick immediately come to mind. But among the area’s Cape Cods, Dutch Colonials, Tudors and row houses, you’ll find a few modern surprises.
The modern movement infiltrated Richmond in 1936 when the first International Style home was built by metal manufacturer George Edward Hoppe Jr. at 1900 S. Meadow St. in the Maymont neighborhood. Influenced by the Bauhaus movement in New York, Hoppe returned to the River City and built about 15 homes in the area.
“He was our first true modernist,” says Andrea Levine, a real estate agent with One South Realty Group and chairwoman of Modern Richmond, a nonprofit dedicated to modernism. Levine and her husband, Kent Eanes, owned the Hoppe home for three decades, selling it in 2017.
For the next three decades the modernist movement made its way through the city, eventually spreading into the suburbs where homeowners were seeking more land. Today you can find Midcentury gems sprinkled throughout the city’s outskirts. Local architects such as Frederick “Bud” Hyland left their mark, along with architects world-renowned George Matsumoto and Richard Neutra.
Architect Trey Tyler’s design on Grayland Avenue in Carytown (Photo by Trey Tyler)
After the robust Midcentury movement there was a lull in progressive design and craftsmanship in the 1970s and ’80s. But in the past decade, there has been a new wave of modern construction with city infill projects such as Citizen 6 in The Fan, The Reserve in Church Hill and The Mews at Cary Mill.
“The modern movement in the Midcentury era was happening farther out where more land was available and the modern movement is now in the city where there is more of a demand,” Levine says.
While most contemporary residential development is happening within city limits, there is also a push for cutting-edge design in the suburbs. The Midlothian development RounTrey recently announced their “Midlo Modern” project, a 17-lot pocket neighborhood called Century.
The project is headed by developer Danny Sowers of River City Custom Homes with design by local architects Chris Snowden and Trey Tyler. The trio is planning to build six modern spec homes that will be open to the public in April 2020. The remaining lots will be for sale in early 2019, and buyers can choose from a range of floor plans that will be unique to each site.
“There is a lot of interest in modern in the city, and my gut tells me that that interest is spilling over to the suburbs.” —Trey Tyler, architect
The 2,500- to 3,000-square-foot homes will have open-concept floor plans and will embrace a modern architectural style with clean lines, lack of ornamentation, large windows, and flat or low, sloped roofs.
“Modern can be expensive and seem unattainable at price points well over a million,” says architect Snowden. “Our aim is to design modern residences at a more attainable price point. So not only are we pioneers for modern design in the suburbs, but we are making it available to a greater population of current and future Richmonders.” Houses in Century will be in the $600,000 range.
George “Bruce” Sowers developed Bon Air’s Highland Hills. (Photo by Ansel Olson)
The only other all-modern neighborhood in the Richmond region is Highland Hills in Bon Air, which was coincidentally built by Sowers’ late grandfather George “Bruce” Sowers in the mid-1950s. Sowers’ grandfather ran a local division of National Homes, which manufactured the 80 prefabricated component homes that are found in the neighborhood.
“There is a lot of interest in modern in the city, and my gut tells me that that interest is spilling over to the suburbs,” says architect Tyler. “I think that young professionals and people that are starting families are interested, along with some empty-nesters.”
Young families who are heading to the suburbs for schools and more land don’t have a wide variety of housing styles to choose from. Currently a handful of avant-garde homes are scattered throughout Richmond’s suburbs, but not many are located in newer developments.
“Yes, it is a testing ground,” says Snowden of RounTrey’s new development, “but I know that it will succeed. It's the void that needs to be filled.”
Around the Region
Some of Richmond’s notable modernist homes and architects
WEST END
“As far as Tuckahoe there have been several Midcentury moderns,” Realtor Andrea Levine says.
Richmond’s first modernist, George Edward Hoppe Jr., built a handful of homes south of Cary Street: the 10-unit John Rolfe Apartments building at 101 Tempsford Lane; a home next door for his mother at 103 Tempsford Lane; and around the corner from the Wilton House at 201 Ampthill Road, another flat-roofed, single-family home.
Not far from Hoppe’s Tempsford properties is Richmond’s beloved Rice House, a Midcentury jewel in Windsor Farms at 1000 Old Locke Lane, situated on a private island in the James River. In the mid-1960s U.S. Ambassador to Australia Walter Rice and his wife, Inger, commissioned Austrian architect Richard Neutra, who is primarily known for his Midcentury residences in Southern California, to build the house. The Rices donated the house and the 18 acres it sits upon to the Science Museum of Virginia Foundation in 1996, which sold it to Christine and David Cottrell in late 2015. The landmark home has recently undergone extensive renovations.
The neighborhood Hillcrest is home to a handful of avant-garde homes that were built by one of Richmond’s first modern architecture firms, Marcellus Wright and Son Architects. Marcellus Wright Sr. is known for the Hotel John Marshall and Altria Theater, while son Marcellus Wright Jr. was the modernist in the family, designing the General Assembly Building.
A Bud Hyland design in Drouin Hills (Photo by Gordon Gregory)
Richmond architect Frederick “Bud” Hyland, an apprentice under Frank Lloyd Wright, built around two dozen modern homes in the Richmond area — some of which are located in Hillcrest as well as farther west in Henrico’s Westham area. “He is probably one of the first Midcentury architects that headed into the suburbs,” Levine says.
SOUTH SIDE
The area south of the river has the highest concentration of Midcentury modern homes in the area, along Riverside Drive, Cherokee Road and in Bon Air. The area attracted many high-profile architects throughout the 1950s and ’60s.
Local architect Hyland built his first modern home in 1949 at 8712 Old Spring Road in Stratford Hills for himself and his wife. A few more of Hyland’s cutting-edge designs can be found in the same neighborhood.
Nearby, acclaimed architect Edward Durell Stone, known for his work on Radio City Music Hall, designed the W. T. Holt House (AKA Rockfalls Estate) in 1938, a modern home near Pony Pasture at 4009 Chellowee Road. Richmond architect Haigh Jamgochian, who designed the Markel Building in Richmond’s Willow Lawn area, purchased the property in 1968.
Highland Hills in Bon Air is Richmond’s only planned Midcentury Modern development. Washington, D.C.-based architect Charles Goodman, also known for the Hollins Hills neighborhood in Alexandria, designed around 80 prefabricated component homes in the 1950s for home manufacturer National Homes Corp.
With its unique topography and lush natural setting, Riverside Drive became a magnet for progressive homes. In 1957 Richmond couple Eric and Jeannette Lipman commissioned architect George Matsumoto, whose modern residences are found primarily throughout North Carolina, to build their split-level home at 5310 Riverside Drive. And Virginia architect Alan McCullough, known for his work in Norfolk and the Northern Neck, also made his mark in the 1950s in Bon Air and Westover Hills.
VARINA
Aside from Richmond’s West End and South Side, the Midcentury Modern architectural style didn’t make its way north or very far east. There is one small exception though. A handful of Midcentury houses can be found in Varina off Battery Hill Drive, a street that snakes its way through the woods towards the James River.
