Interesting. I don’t know that the auction ever happened. There was a delay and then Covid hit.

it’s pricy to move even small houses, if and when it sells it probably won’t go far.

does It have good insulation and AC? Without the capability to add, the market will shrink.

I visited the replica model of this when it was on the Ringling grounds! Gorgeous little home.

I haven't heard anything.

I can’t find anything about the Walker Guest House in Sanibel! I would think for such a significant property, there would be tons of info.

robo, I did not know about the replica on the Ringling grounds until I started searching for info about the one on Sanibel. The replica was moved to Palm Springs CA for Modernism Week earlier this year. It was auctioned off during the exhibition in CA. I can find that it sold. I can find that it sold for 525% of the mid-estimated price, but I can’t find exactly how much that is or where it went.

it looks like a spider; how fun

I’ve googled and googled— cannot find out where the original house was moved to, nor the replica! Maybe the same person bought both?

Because this came up again…

”On December 12, 2019 the guest house is auctioned in New York City by Sotheby’s at its Important Design auction. Valued between $700,000 to $1,000,000, it sells for $750,000 and, with auction house fees, the total price is $920,000.

• In 2020 the guest house is disassembled and moved to California.”

https://www.paulrudolphheritagefoundation.org/195202-walker-guest-house

The legacy of Paul Rudolph is tricky because some of his work is not particularly attractive to the millennial way of thinking and Brutalism tends to be rigid and not particularly adaptable.Walker house is not Brutalist but grid forma are also rigid and not particularly adaptable. This is why some of these houses won't sell. (Kahn's Esherick house is considered a masterwork for example but it has very limited appeal in a marketing sense.)

I think it some respects Walker house is a more successful house than Farnsworth, which is more beautiful, but started life as a screenless, air conditionless glass box on a buggy marshy lot and is ending its life getting flooded because the 100 year flood plane as such is no longer valid.

This is his house on Beekman Place. Handsome or horrendous? Is it more or less so because it is on Beekman Place instead of some random street like Edward Durrell Stone's house? Hard to say:

It's interesting, I rewatched the New York Documentary from 1999-ish, and at that juncture they spent much of one entire episode demonizing Robert Moses for destroying greater New York City and while I agree with much of the sentiment expressed (he essentially said that cars and traffic flow were more important than people and that most people were too stupid to know what was best for them), but another 20 years has pushed the pendulum back the other way a bit and his work is now also examined through the lens of "Bob Moses: at least he got it built" and as it turns out some of his earlier public works are slowly becoming a little more successful than they have been at some points as the city continues to evolve. I can't imagine the terrible things that would have happened had he gotten his way with *three* expressways transecting Manhattan, but not everything should be evaluated by what happened between 1950 and the late sixties (even though he Decimated the Bronx).

Anyway, I think it is a bit soon for us to evaluate buildings that are 50-70 years old, and we do it all the time. (Penn Station was demolished at 53 years old.)

I have toured a few Rudolf homes in Florida, including the guest house replica, and one thing I really love about Sarasota modernism is the responsiveness to the environment. Lots of concern for shade and cross breezes, for example.

Compare to the Florida Southern Campus where FLW imposed desert principles on the swamp and the buildings were relatively less successful (but very cool!!!)

I live in one of four ugly little houses on my block (there are 5 different "models" in total). The four in my row each look different on the front because the developer wanted to try out some variations to make them look more traditional, or something. My house has the closest to what the architect had designed first, and is the only one that had any intervention that actually made it look better, some previous owner removed some unfortunate original slate cladding under the lower windows. Now it's just a stucco cube.

The developer and architect parted ways after these four were finished and the rest of the block was redeveloped with a 1960s version of "colonial" even though they have mansard roofs and Italianate details as well. They are actually very charming in a homely kind of way and they form a very cohesive enclave, and I actually tried to buy one of those first.

Anyway, the house I live in has a much more rational and organized plan and gets an awful lot of light inside both morning and afternoon, and is private in the 1st floor front despite being wall to wall glass (but at the ceiling level) and has two nice outdoor spaces. The other houses have conventional plans and window placement and charming colonial revival details inside but they are kinda dark on the inside and have a couple of really mean spaces.

I think it is possible to have both "pretty" and functional at the same time under the best of circumstances, but I don't spend a lot of time looking at the outside of my house and if I had to choose between one or the other I would choose the homely exterior with the livable interior over and over again--and I think this is one of the things that people don't understand about brutalism or modernism, possibly the conventional charm of the exterior has been exchanged for what happens inside.

100% - I'm in a few architecture shaming groups (guilty pleasure) and a common concern lobbed around is "this building was designed in floor plan with no concern for the exterior!" To me, interior function trumps exterior form. Ideally you get both. But my main concerns are livability, flow, storage, and light.

I live in a homely at best (ugly to most) beige box - but that's most modest housing especially in my post-war area. Functional but little expense was given since inception to beautiful details. It's honest, and that's a good thing.

Well I think the house shaming group may really be talking about something else.

They are talking about plug-in floor plans where every room starts as some sort of box and they are just stuck together at the edges and whatever the perimeter of the house ends up as there is a computer that can figure out a roof that will cover it no matter how many peaks and valleys it takes. Then they tack some sheathing details and different sized windows on those jigs and jogs to make them look intentional. That's a different thing. They started your house as a rectangle and worked In. And that is a different type of discipline.

They were - sorry - two unconnected paragraphs!