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It was designed by Paul Rudolph, who was the dean of the Yale School of Architecture from 1958 to 1965 and a student of the Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius. Mr. Rudolph, who died in 1997, built homes and public and commercial buildings. Among them are his penthouse apartment on Beekman Place in Manhattan, Yale’s Art and Architecture Building and the Burroughs Wellcome headquarters in North Carolina.
In an interview on the Web site, WestportNow.com, Morley Boyd, the chairman of the Westport Historic District Commission, said: “If you’re looking for shock value, it’s hard to beat the loss of this house. There is not much to top it.”
But in a town where 92 demolition permits have been issued so far this year, a celebrated lineage alone is not enough to save the house. Because it is not at least 60 years old, the historic commission does not have jurisdiction.
“The house is not historically significant, and any view of how good or bad an architect Paul Rudolph was is purely subjective,” said David Waldman, who runs a commercial real estate company and whose wife is listed in town records as the buyer of the house.
Mr. Waldman said that his family wanted the house for the lot. “We have a family of three young children, and a modern structure wasn’t appealing to us,” he said.
The 4,200-square-foot house, which is to be razed this week, was commissioned by Louis Micheels, a former president of the Western New England Psychoanalytic Society, and his wife, Ina.