Historic Moon Hill Road house in Lexington to be presented for demolition

The mid-century modern house at 25 Moon Hill Road in Lexington, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, will be presented to the town’s Historical Commission for demolition on Jan. 15. 

The contemporary build was the first of 28 houses on Moon Hill Road designed by The Architects Collaborative, or TAC, a Cambridge-based architecture firm led by Walter Gropius and deemed one of the most influential of the twentieth century.

Moon Hill Road is internationally recognized for showcasing mid-century modern architecture and informing a utopian vision for community living.

While the famous 1947 house still stands, the current owner, who requested LexObserver not use their name, has left it abandoned for approximately 10 years.

“It’s a rarity,” David Fixler, former president of Docomomo US/New England, a nonprofit dedicated to conserving buildings from the modern movement, told LexObserver. “It’s one of the most important modern-house neighborhoods in the world and the fact that it’s still intact after almost 80 years is extraordinary.”

Two local women are in the process of buying the property — Yvette Beeman, a Lexington resident, and her business partner Krassi Diehl, a general contractor. 

Their original intention in purchasing the property was to preserve the historic home by renovating it. 

“We thought this would be great if we could do a quick renovation but it was clear that would not be possible,” Beeman told LexObserver. 

A structural engineer looked at the house and told Beeman and Diehl it would be far more expensive to renovate than build new because “the pipes burst, the foundation is unstable…[and] the floor has fallen through,” Beeman said.  

“It seems to be unanimous, as far as I can tell, that it’s past salvaging,” Bill Janovitz, the seller’s agent who works with ModernMass.com at Compass Real Estate, a real estate team specializing in mid-century modern houses, told LexObserver. “It would be a great act of charity to take that on.”

Katie Flynn, a Lexington resident and founder of Hisel Flynn Architects, a Lexington-based architecture firm, thinks that demolishing a mid-century modern home is an “unfortunate outcome.” But after nearly 80 years, she said she would not be surprised if the house at 25 Moon Hill Road has reached end-of-life. 

“There are times when these homes are really truly beyond their lifespan through neglect and the cost of retrofitting that home would really outweigh building a new one,” she said. “There are times where the cost benefit analysis just doesn’t check out.”

Beeman and Diehl plan to build a new mid-century modern house in the international style that will fit in with the other houses on Moon Hill Road by working with Chris Johns, a founding partner of ThoughtCraft Architects, a Somerville-based architecture firm. 

^{Homes in the Moon Hill neighborhood}

Beeman told LexObserver she lives in a mid-century modern house and appreciates the history of the architecture in town.    

“Moon Hill is like our neighborhood, it’s a very tight community, it’s got a certain sort of community feel to it and I think it would be better for Moon Hill to have a family who can participate in that,” she said. “We’re trying to build something that honors the original design of the house.”

Beeman and Diehl will present the plans for their new build to the Historical Commission in hopes of receiving a permit to demolish the existing house. 

Under Chapter 19 of the town’s bylaws, they may obtain that permit if: the commission believes there is no reasonable likelihood that anyone is willing to purchase, preserve, rehabilitate, or restore the property; or the commission believes the owner has made reasonable efforts to find a purchaser who is willing to preserve, rehabilitate, and restore the property, and that such efforts have been unsuccessful; or 21 months have passed. 

In addition to requesting a permit to demolish the house at 25 Moon Hill Road, Beeman and Diehl are also requesting that a 21-month demolition delay not be applied. 

If the town’s commission grants Beeman and Diehl a permit to demolish, they will be able to knock down the historical house and build new. 

25 Moon Hill Road and its neighboring mid-century modern style houses were imagined in the 1940s by seven young architects, most of whom studied at Yale University. They wanted to collaborate to create a utopian-like community of mid-century modern homes for middle class families in Massachusetts. 

They needed a leader to help them, so they approached Gropius, who was the chair of Harvard University’s Architecture Department at the time. With Gropius and his then-new architecture firm, TAC, the group found the property that became Moon Hill Road in Lexington. 

Before vacating the property, the former owner of the land left a garage filled with six 1920s Moon Cars on the property, which is how the neighborhood got its name, “Six Moon Hill.”

The group liked the land’s natural beauty and vast views. It was in close proximity to the town’s center, an elementary school, Harvard Square, and train station which would give future residents access to the city and nearby suburbs.   

Built on a ridge, the houses were designed to disturb the land as little as possible. That’s why many of them, including 25 Moon HIll Road, don’t have large yards, but rather, small patios. The houses also feature large glass windows in sub frames to increase the sense of space and maintain contact with the outdoors, flat roofs, vertical siding, and are painted colors that look as though they belong in nature.

The homes were built for middle class families that didn’t have servants, so many spaces are multi-purpose and integrated. For example, kitchen, dining, and play spaces are integrated so parents could supervise children while completing other household tasks. There also aren’t service entrances like there were in many colonial homes.

“They’re very transparent and kind of a diagram of the way the nuclear family was seen at that time in a progressive way,” Flynn said. 

Lexington is a hub for mid-century modern homes. Neighborhoods such as Peacock Farm, Turning Mill, and Five Fields are all full of these historical homes. 

“Whether or not [25 Moon Hill Road] is demolished or refurbished or added on to, my hope would be that the new design would still carry those main features of mid-century modernism,” Flynn said.