The Alice Ball House’s owner, an architect and developer, Cristina Ross, decided a few years ago that the building would make a worthy pool house for a much more au courant dwelling to be built at the back of the property. But that move was blocked, first by the town, which has since been mollified, and now by the neighbors to the rear, who have not.

This would not be an unprecedented development in New Canaan, a suburb forever of two minds about its place as epicenter and laboratory of the International Style: about two dozen of the 90-odd modernist dwellings built in New Canaan by Johnson and a group of fellow modernists known as the Harvard Five have been torn down in favor of buildings that cast more shadow on the landscape. This would be the first Johnson house to fall.

“It’s basically an option,” said Ms. Ross, who has the demolition permit to prove it. “Investment in property is only worth what you can get out of it.”

Ms. Ross, who lives in a five-bedroom colonial elsewhere in New Canaan, had her office in the Ball house for a while and now rents it out while it sits on the market. By her count, there have been at least a dozen prospective buyers in the last year, and a Finnish fashion shoot and a 50th birthday party for an architect, but there have been no takers.

The fact that such an architectural trophy has gone unbought for a year speaks less about any ambivalence for modernism, or even a softness in local property values, than about the domestic expectations of the superprivileged. “No one builds with less than five bedrooms now,” said Prudy Parris, Ms. Ross’s real estate agent. “People with no kids or one kid want five bedrooms.”

[...]

Even some modernist partisans say the price seems high. Ms. Ross bought the house for $1.5 million only three years ago, and says she has overhauled “all major systems: roofs, walls, woodwork, plaster, stonework.” But Helen Higgins, the executive director of the Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation, said, “There haven’t been enough improvements to suggest that the value is doubled.”

[...]

The math on the Alice Ball house works out to $1,750 a square foot, ignoring for the moment the value of land, which is of course considerable. That’s about triple the average price per square foot of houses that sold in New Canaan in the last few weeks, on lots that average the same size, according to statistics from a local brokerage, Barbara Cleary’s Realty Guild.

Ms. Ross said she would sooner knock the house down than lower her price.

“The bottom line,” she said, “is that if there’s a buyer out there, great. If there isn’t, then I’ve done my due diligence.”

An acquaintance in New Canaan sent us a long, thoughftul and, it seems, well-informed reply to our post about our visit to the Alice Ball House and our talk with its owner, Cristina Ross (here's the post). Here it is:

I have a couple of thoughts on the AB scenerio to pass on, where there may be confusion either on your or my part:

Asking Price: It is not considered a "Fair asking price" by many who otherwise appear to have been interested and have made inquiries. Owner paid $1.5 million in 2005 and two years later listed it at double that price; it's a tiny house - 1440 net sf living area including two small bedrooms. I believe it is smaller than many of the comps you mention.

I understand she would like to recoup her legal expenses and whatever she has put into the house, but now, especially in a "down" market, that probably is unrealistic. As I was told she had a permit for "cosmetic improvements" which I believe cap out at $2,500; if that is true, then the improvements could not have been very costly. I suggest you check out the permit.
Asking a lot of money for a house in New Canaan can also mean you are not really interested in selling it, sending a negative message to a potential buyer.

Environmental Commission: The letter that the Commission wrote to the owner clearly states the reasons her application was denied: too much filling of the wetlands, adverse impact of upland activities far greater than they need to be, and there are feasible alternatives that would cause little or no impact on the wetlands.

It then suggested she reapply, keeping in mind 12 points (some paraphrased):
1 Reduce the width of the driveway crossing the wetlands
2 Use grass pavers instead of gravel on driveway and parking areas
3 Straighten the driveway
4 Reduce the flare out of the driveway as it approaches the parking area
4 Rotate the garages in order to pull more of the parking area out of the wetlands and buffer area
5 Reduce the size of the parking area
6 Restore existing grass area currently located in wetlands for mitigation to offset some of the proposed wetland filling
7 Pull back the terrace and stone wall in front of the proposed house away from the wetlands
8 Reduce the amount and area of grading around the proposed house
9 Reduce the overall activity in the uplands in order to reduce the run off into the wetlands
10 Investigate whether adding onto or renovating the Philip Johnson house or otherwise building up front is a prudent alternative in lieu of a driveway crossing
11 Push the house upslope on the lot and further away from the wetlands

Only #10 would suggest that in order to "build up front" she might have to tear down the Alice Ball house, but it is not explicitly recommended.

You may obtain the letter from the Environmental Commission office in Town Hall. When I examined the plans, the recommendations all seemed quite doable and encouraging a re-application. I suggest you review the plans and the letter from the Environmental Commission.

I am certainly sympathetic to her, but is unclear to me why the owner did not reapply with a scaled back version, "that preserves the integrity of the Alice Ball House and respects the scale and character of the site" (as stated in a letter to Christina Ross signed by the Glass house, the National Trust and the New Canaan Historical Society Aug 17, 2007).

I do not believe anything has been heard before the Planning and Zoning Commission. I understand that the neighbors sued the Zoning Board of Appeals for giving a variance to allow the AB House to remain as a secondary residence on the property.

The neighbors are evidently going to object to anyone building a house on the rear of the lot, where there is more high ground than in front of the wetlands; and the wetlands, which cut across the width of the property, then curve around toward the road on the north side, eliminating that end of the front section as a build-able area. Not many options here at all!

Tell Us What You Really Think


A few weeks ago, when I wrote about the Alice Ball House, someone submitted an anonymous comment* calling my analysis pathetic, my assertions nonsense, my conclusions claptrap, my justifications lame, and my "side-stepping lesser evilist comments about how other people have gotten away with it" smarmy. [why no link? id like to read the entire comment in context.] Other than that, I think he really liked the post.

Happily, all our readers aren't so crabby. The people who run Blinkdecor (and who happen to be our neighbors, in Stamford) noticed us, for example, and said nice things about us on their blog, here. Thanks! Take a look at their site, if you're unfamiliar with it.

There aren't all that many blogs that link to us, yet. Here are some that do, fyi: 100K House, eyecandy, and Green Redux.

And here are some that don't but should: Hatch (they're written nice things about us but haven't added us to their links yet), Moco Loco, Best House Design, DWR Design Notes, Grassroots Modern, Inhabitat, Land+Living, Materialicious, Midcentury Architecture. I mean, who needs a blog that links to BoingBoing and Engadget? Everybody knows those sites. Expand your horizons!

* Since everybody knows our names, I consider it my prerogative to reject mean-spirited comments from people who won't tell me theirs. -- TA

the listing with pictures
- bill 5-25-2008 4:30 pm [add a comment]

Cristina Ross has written a letter to the Glass House team (and copied Town Hall) saying, basically, "you had your chance to save this house and you did nothing". While she is not specific in the letter, it would appear she is moving forward with her plans to build on the site.

Christy Maclear, the Director of the Glass House has responded by saying, "we urge you to use your considerable skills and talent to develop a compatible design for new construction that preserves the integrity of the Alice Ball House and respects the scale and character of the site. We have full confidence in your ability to achieve these design goals and we are pleased to offer the resources of our respective organizations to assist you throughout this process."

She then asks Cristina Ross to consider the following actions:
1. grant a preservation easement on the Alice Ball House to remove the threat of demolition and ensure the preservation of the property
2. Offer the Alice Ball House for asale at a fair market price.
3. Secure a new site for the construction of your new home.

It sounds like the preservation of the Alice Ball House is by no means assured.

from todays AR news:

A Philip Johnson-designed house in New Canaan, Connecticut, may be torn down if a suitable buyer doesn’t step forward, according to an article in The New York Times. The 1,773-square-foot Alice Ball House, as it’s called, is regarded as the “livable version” of Johnson’s Glass House, located just a few miles away. Built in 1953 for a single woman named Alice Ball, the light pink stucco and glass house sits on 2.2 acres. The owner, Cristina Ross, an architect and developer, is asking $3.1 million for the house—and has threatened to raze the structure if she can’t find a taker. Ross purchased the property three years ago for $1.5 million. At the time, architectural writer Fred Bernstein predicted the Ball house could face a dark fate. “The buyer, who is an architect, says that she plans to save it. And maybe she will,” he wrote in a piece for the August 2005 issue of Metropolis. “But New Canaanites have reason to be skeptical.”