TMH McCowan Residence Tour

Modern Living

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Triangle Modernist Houses has again teamed up with area realtors to bring modern residential design to the public. TMH’s first modernist tour took place in May and featured three houses spanning fifty years worth of modernist design in the Triangle. This latest tour was announced shortly after the cancellation of the Chapel Hill Modernist House tour originally scheduled for August, and was a more exclusive, private tour featuring just the McCowan Residence. The weather was warm, the water was cool, and drive from Raleigh was long.

The McCowan Residence is located in the Treyburn community just north of Durham. This house took four years from design to completion and was initially put into the hands of Raleigh’s most well known architect, Frank Harmon. While in Harmon’s office, the project was managed by Vinny Petrarca and Charles Holden who later formed Tonic Design while still working on the project. Charles has since started his own firm, Oxide Architecture. Both Charles and Vinny were present at the tour to answer questions about the design and construction of the project.

The house itself is over 6,000 square feet with four bedrooms, six bathrooms, a lap pool, home office, and windows galore. Two main volumes are connected by a glass bridge. The first volume holds the majority of the public areas of the house as well as the garage, and two children’s bedrooms upstairs. A small loft space within the children’s wing, accessible only via a small stainless steel ladder, overlooks the kitchen which boasted lots of finely crafted concrete counter top and nearly every other amenity one might look for in a kitchen. The glass bridge tying the two larger masses of the house together sits above the screened-in lap pool with the golf course on one side and the thickly wooded lot on the other, resulting in a space that feels very open without compromising privacy. At the terminus of the glass bridge sits a wood clad rectangular volume, this half bath is clad with the same wood as the Herman Miller furniture scattered throughout the house. A two story volume intersects the end of the bridge and provides a well lit, comfortable space (again with wide views of the golf course as well as the surrounding woods). Upstairs from this point was a luxurious home office with it’s own library, conference room, private deck, and lounge space. Tucked below the home office is the master bedroom which was simple and comfortable, without being over sized. Two generous master closets featured a ton of built-in cabinetry for even the most extensive wardrobe. Sitting below the master bedroom was a nicely appointed home gym, complete with sauna, and an elevated meditation space.

The structure sits comfortably within the canopy of trees and is anchored nicely into the landscape with generous outdoor decks extending the living space well into the lawn. Our small group was quite impressed with the house as a whole. The level of craft is carried out in everything from in-laid patterns on the concrete counter tops to the postless corner windows. Based on the short ride out, this house was held to a much higher standard of detailing and construction than its surrounding neighbors. It was clearly a head above the rest. However, as one might expect, at this scale of house not everything can be kept in pristine condition indefinitely. A handful of finish nails popping up from the IPE decking out back could have easily been hammered back down before the tour, and we’re still a little puzzled as to why exactly there is still exposed framing on the sides of the soffit within the glass bridge. At $2.4 million, these kinds of cosmetic issues should have been handled prior to the tour, but no doubt they will be taken care of before closing.

Overall the tour was quite successful, at least in bringing modern design to triangle residents at a scale rarely seen. At a whopping 6,456 square feet, the list price of this house puts the cost per square foot over $370. That’s a hard price to swallow, even for a house as spectacular as this one.

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Architecture , Other posts by Rusty.