More Maneuvering in the Quest to Protect the Alice Ball House

A settlement of a lawsuit between the owner of the Alice Ball House, which Philip Johnson designed, and the Town of New Canaan has been scuttled by neighbors of the Alice Ball House who don’t want to see the part of the property near them developed.

(I’m paraphrasing much of this from a very hard-to-understand story in the New Canaan Advertiser, here.)

The decision by the neighbors – William and Linda Powell – means that Cristina Ross, the owner of the Alice Ball house, will reapply to do exactly what the Powells don’t want: namely, to build a house behind the Alice Ball house and convert the Alice Ball House into its pool house.

Presumably if Ross applies to the Town, and specifically to the Town’s environmental commission, to build what they agreed to in the court settlement that the Powells’ scuttled, the Town will approve Ross’s application.

Now bear with me here. This is fairly convoluted but I’ll try to get the background right: Ross applied to build a house on her property behind the Alice Ball House. The environmental commission said no, so Ross filed a lawsuit appealing the decision. The Powells live behind the Alice Ball House and as adjoining neighbors, they had the right to join the lawsuit on the side of the town.

Ross and the Town subsequently agreed to settle the suit. But it takes three to tango, and without the Powells’ signature, the court was not able to approve the settlement.

So essentially the Powells are forcing her to go through the process again. Presumably they are hoping that Ross, knowing that the Powells will appeal if the Town approves the application, won’t want to spend the money or the time defending the appeal.

Or perhaps they’re hoping that if they continue to stretch out the process, a buyer will come along who wants to preserve the Alice Ball House but not build near the Powells.

Ross probably would prefer that too, but thus far there are no buyers. In the meantime, her permit to demolish the house is still valid, I think. I'm told, by the way, that the Alice Ball House has been rented for the next three months, so it won't be coming down any time soon, if indeed that's still a real threat.

There's plenty of background on this issue here. -- ta

The Owner of the Alice Ball House and the Town of New Canaan Have Reached an Agreement on Preserving the House

The Alice Ball House in New Canaan, which for a while seemed on the verge of being demolished, will remain standing and may in fact be on the verge of being protected.

Cristina Ross, who owns the house (which Philip Johnson designed), called me the other day to say she has settled her dispute with the town's environmental commission. They approved her request to put a driveway through a wetland, which would allow the back of her property to be developed, and she agreed not to knock down the Alice Ball House, which sits on the front of the property, on Oenoke Ridge Road, and has become a modernist icon and a preservationists' cause since she applied for and received a demolition permit last year.

However the settlement still has to be approved by the court, and the neighbors to the rear, who are part of a lawsuit that involves the town and Ross, still have to be mollified.

Ross said that if things work out, she might be able to sell the lot to a developer, who would have to save the Alice Ball House while being allowed to build in the back. That's what the neighboring family, who lives on a back lot, does not want -- they'd prefer to see the Alice Ball House demolished and a McMansion built in its place rather than have a McMansion built close to them. The acronym for that attitude, of course, is NIMBY.

She also can sell to an aficionado of modern houses. She said she has had serious expressions of interest from a couple of buyers recently, who have returned a couple of times. I neglected to ask her if that means there are two separate possible buyers or if the possible buyers are a couple, but whatever.

For the time being, it's good news. The Alice Ball House won't be coming down anytime soon.

The Threat to Philip Johnson's Alice Ball House: A Further Explanation

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!

Alice Ball House: The Owner's Perspective, and Ours

We spent well over an hour inside the Alice Ball House yesterday morning, talking to its owner, Cristina Ross. Philip Johnson designed the house in 1953, and we left thinking that it’s nicer and more spacious than it seems from the outside – serene, comfortable and warm, well-proportioned, and beautifully lit with natural light. The Alice Ball House has been the center of a controversy over its future for months now (background is here and here); we went to talk to the owner not because we thought we could get to the bottom of anything but rather because we wanted to hear her side of the story, which I think has been lacking from the many newspapers and preservation website accounts (including our own).


Here are my impressions:

Ross bought the house and the property it’s on – 2.2 acres – as an investment, to develop it in a manner consistent with all the other development that has happened recently on Oenoeke Ridge Road – that is, to build the same kind of big house that everyone else has built (like this one, which is next door).

She said that when she was looking to buy, she told her broker “anything but a modern,” fearing that she’d get caught in a vise by preservationists newly aware that modern houses were worthy of protection but that the town of New Canaan was doing next to nothing to protect them. Nevertheless, she bought the Alice Ball House.

She received a variance from the town’s planning and zoning commission to build a new house in the rear portion of the 2.2-acre lot and to make the Alice Ball House a pool house for the new structure, with the condition that she restore the Alice Ball House to its original configuration as Philip Johnson designed it. She agreed.

Throughout the planning and zoning process, a neighbor objected to the plans because the new house Ross wanted to build would be visible from his house; instead, he urged the planning and zoning commission to require Ross to tear down the Alice Ball House and build her new house in its place, away from the part of her property that is nearest his. When the planning and zoning commission declined, he sued and named Cristina Ross in the suit.

With her variance in hand, Ross then asked the town for a permit to build a driveway along what she described as an old farm road, across a wetland, and to the back of her property. After a fairly lengthy review, which included what Ross considered to be a healthy amount of back-and-forth and compromise, the town commission that decides wetlands permits said no. They added, essentially, that if she didn’t like the decision, she could always tear down the Alice Ball House and build her new house there, which would absolve her from having to get a wetlands permit. She then sued to overturn the wetlands decision.

With the variance and the permit up in the air because of the court cases, Ross put the house on the market last year for $3.1 million. In recent months, other modern and contemporary houses have gone on the market in New Canaan and nearby for $2.1 million, $3.3, $2, $3.1, $3.1, $1.8, $2.3, $1.8, and $2.6 million (according to the William Raveis Agency); Johnson’s Hodgson House, across the road from his Glass House, went on the market in 2006 for $4.3 million and sold for something close to that; a Marcel Breuer house, on West Road in New Canaan, sold a couple of years ago for just shy of $3 million and is being rebuilt with a new design by Toshiko Mori. So an asking price of $3.1 million for a Philip Johnson house is far from being out of line; and in any case, it’s a free market – she can ask whatever she wants and if no one thinks it’s worth that much, they’ll offer less. Asking for a lot of money for a house in New Canaan isn’t a sign of greed; it’s a sign that you live in New Canaan and you want to cash in on real estate the way everyone else is.



Late last summer, Ross began the process of asking the town for a demolition permit to tear down the Alice Ball House – which, as you’ll remember, is what the wetlands commission suggested she do and what her neighbor is suing the town and her to force her to do. The permit process brought out a large number of preservationists to protest, including representatives of the New Canaan Historical Society and of the National Trust for Historic Preservation/Glass House; the preservationists, Ross says, had previously either ignored or were unhelpful to her efforts to get a wetlands permit. Ross feels that the preservationists unnecessarily turned the process into a confrontation that has led to her being unfairly vilified.

Ross said she thinks it’s unfair and unrealistic to expect one individual to be responsible for the stewardship of a building that some people consider culturally important. Having watched numerous important modern houses in New Canaan get torn down, and others be renovated and expanded with no outcry about the integrity of the original design, I tend to agree with her. Why hold her to a standard that others weren’t held to, particularly when the town government either doesn’t particularly care if these cultural assets are destroyed or, in the case of the wetlands board, is happy to see them destroyed if that’s what it takes to protect a small and (in my opinion) insignificant strip of swamp?

Ross said that last week she met with a handful of people from the National Trust/Glass House and is hoping they can work together to find a buyer for the house.

So that’s where it stands. Ross didn’t answer directly when I asked about specific plans for demolishing the house. Our sense from talking to her is that she clearly doesn’t want to do that but if she’s pushed hard enough and if she’s denied a chance to at least make back her investment, she will. She clearly wants out, and clearly feels as if she’s been treated unfairly by pretty much everyone except perhaps the planning and zoning commission. And it seems as if she is a tiny bit optimistic now that a buyer will come forward and relieve her of her misery.

It’s hard for me to say who is wrong in all this. The answer probably is just about everybody, although in a country and in a town (that is, New Canaan) that prizes real estate values and ownership of private property almost above all else, I’m sympathetic to Cristina Ross. It’s not that I hold real estate value and ownership of private property above all else, or that I think it’s right to do so. But that’s our system, and I think it’s unfair to demonize someone who is playing within the system.

I particularly think it’s unfair and maybe even hypocritical to criticize her when New Canaan has allowed far, far worse affronts to its history and culture. Its lassez-faire attitude toward the destruction of old buildings – farmhouses and barns from the colonial era and the early years of the country as well as mid-century moderns – is scandalous. You occasionally hear New Canaan officials claim that their hands are tied because if they regulate tear-downs they’d be interfering with private property rights and the free market.

That, of course, is baloney. The town already heavily, heavily controls the supply of land and its useability through its zoning regulations. It could do a lot more to protect its cultural heritage, if it wanted to. But it doesn’t want to. Instead it wants to hassle landowners for years under the pretense that it’s doing something constructive. - TA

The Future of the Alice Ball House? Sorry, No News

If you're looking for a follow-up to this, come back next week. Our meeting with the owner of the Alice Ball House, scheduled for this morning, had to be postponed. We're on for next Tuesday morning though.

Alice Ball

Architectural Record published a story about the Alice Ball House today on its website to coincide with the expiration of the demolition moratorium. It runs through the usual background and then makes a couple of worthwhile points that are obvious but not often mentioned, which allows me to make some inferences:

Given the resounding success of the Glass House’s public opening last summer—tours of Johnson’s compound are sold out almost a year in advance—and the increasingly mainstream appreciation of Modern architecture, the uncertain future of the Ball house surprises many observers. But Johnson scholar Hilary Lewis points out that other trends are at work.

“We’ve seen a resurgence of interest in Modern design, but there’s been a change in people’s attitude toward size,” Lewis explains. “Johnson’s houses are part of what makes New Canaan special, but they require a different kind of living. Philip [Johnson] was proof positive that you can live comfortably in less than 2,000 square feet.”

Size may indeed be part of the problem. The Alice Ball House has been on the market for six months, and while Parris notes that in the New Canaan market many houses take that long to sell, most buyers in the area are looking for “a five-bedroom Colonial.” With two bedrooms and tile floors, though, the Ball House isn’t exactly family friendly.

So here’s what I take from that:

 Modern houses are trophies, particularly in New Canaan (as I wrote here, on my other blog). http://thissphere.blogspot.com/2006/11/collecting-modern-houses-supply.html
 expensive houses, even in New Canaan, often take a long time to sell; the Alice Ball House has been on the market for less than a year.
 rich people with families want big houses; many of the houses near the Alice Ball House, on Oenoeke Ridge Road, are obscenely big; the Alice Ball House is less than 2,000 square feet; there are plenty of rich people with no families who could happily live in the Alice Ball House as a weekend place.

And then there’s this:

According to Stover Jenkins, the author of The Houses of Philip Johnson, Johnson’s design for Alice Ball, a single woman in the conservative 1950s, was influenced by Mies Van der Rohe’s unbuilt Resor House. It features 10-foot ceilings, glass-enclosed living areas, and private bedroom and service areas.

“It’s a very rationalist house,” Jenkins says, adding that that its massing and siting give the composition the feeling of a romantic garden villa. “It’s not one of Johnson’s masterpieces, but it’s part of a collection of houses he designed in New Canaan. That collection is unique. When you start demolishing parts of a group, it’s like taking apart a community.”

So…

 it’s a nice house but it’s not a great beauty.
 We tend to think of modern houses, or any notable works of architecture, as public cultural assets, and destroying them is an affront; but houses are owned by private individuals; few private individuals who buy a house would welcome the responsibility of owning something that is part of a unique collection of houses; it’s extremely unrealistic to expect any individual to be responsible for holding together a whole community of architecturally notable works.
 The obvious exception to that last point is a situation where the “community” is a historic district, with standards for renovation and external (or even internal) changes; there are scores and scores of these – Providence, Nantucket, Old Harbor on Block Island, even the hamlet of Pound Ridge, in my town – but I don’t know of any historic districts that encompass modern houses.
 Attitudes about modern houses are changing in New Canaan but it’s still virtually impossible to imagine the town creating a historic district of modern houses, of which there are about 80 still standing.
 But the town isn’t the only entity capable of creating a historic district, and maybe isn’t even the best; private groups are trying to do it (here) but this Philip Johnson Glass House webpage, which explains the project, doesn’t seem to have been updated for at least seven months.

Alice Ball Still Standing

The Alice Ball House is not coming down today and it's not coming down tomorrow. The 90-day moratorium on demolition of the house expires today, which means that as soon as the owner is ready, it can be demolished (a couple of earlier posts about the situation are here and here).

The Alice Ball House was designed by Philip Johnson and sits, visible to all, on Oenoeke Ridge Road, in New Canaan, Connecticut. When it actually will come down, or even if it will, I can't say. But I'll have a better idea tomorrow morning.

Last week I asked the owner, Cristina Ross, if I could email her a few questions about her plans for the house and the property, and she responded by inviting us for a tour. We're meeting her there tomorrow morning. -- TA

A Mid-Century Modern Cowboy and Other Preservation News

I have a historical artifact buried in a drawer somewhere -- a circa 1960 Hopalong Cassidy watch that I got probably when I was first learning to tell time.
What I didn't realize until now is that it has a connection to historical mid-century modern houses. Out in Palm Springs, officials are working on a new law that will list local places of historic significance. One of the potential sites, according to the Desert Sun ...

... the black and white mid-century modern house built by William Boyd, better known as Hopalong Cassidy, at 73-498 Joshua Tree St.

I'm going to dig around this weekend and see if I can find that watch (I know it's not with my Davy Crockett handkerchief). It alone might be a mid-century modern classic. I wonder what kind of house Roy Rogers and Dale Evans lived in?

Hopalong Cassidy's house might be significant in Palm Springs but it doesn't quite make it to the level of a UNESCO World Heritage Site. But a lot of Frank Lloyd Wright's buildings might. Here's an excerpt from UNESCO's 2008 tentative list:

Wright (Frank Lloyd) Buildings, Arizona, California, Illinois, New York, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin

These ten properties are among the most iconic, most intact, most representative, most innovative and most influential of the more than 400 Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) designs that have been erected. They span almost sixty years of his efforts to create an "organic architecture" that attracted widespread international attention and powerfully affected the course of modern architecture around the world as well as in the United States. The properties include the two Taliesins (his long-time homes with studios and schools); three residences he designed for others, two office complexes, a place of worship, a museum, and a governmental complex. They are:

* Taliesin West (1938), Scottsdale, Arizona
* Hollyhock House (1919-21), Los Angeles, California
* Marin County Civic Center (1960-69), San Rafael, California
* Frederick C. Robie House (1908-10), Chicago, Illinois
* Unity Temple (1905-08), Oak Park, Illinois
* Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (1956-59), New York, New York
* Price Tower (1953-56), Bartlesville, Oklahoma
* Fallingwater (1936-38), Mill Run, Pennsylvania
* S. C. Johnson and Son, Inc., Administration Building and Research Tower, Racine, Wisconsin (1936-39; 1943-50)
* Taliesin (1911 and later), Spring Green, Wisconsin

And finally there's another news story out today about the prospects for a significant building biting the dust, not in the Palm Springs desert but in New Canaan, Connecticut. I'm referring to Philip Johnson's Alice Ball House, on which a demolition moratorium expires on January 29. Despite the expiration date, the house won't be coming down immediately. From the New Canaan Advertiser:

... Ms. Ross’ application still requires several documents before it can be acted upon.

In a call to the Advertiser Wednesday, Mr. Platz said he had not received notice that utilities had been disconnected; an asbestos manifest; verification that oil tanks have been removed, nor any demolition contractor’s certificate and insurance information.

While Ms. Ross’s submission of these elements are “routine, not insurmountable steps,” Mr. Jarboe said, he added, “It’s not coming down next week.”

Tuesday is D-Day (for Demolition) for Philip Johnson's Alice Ball House

The Alice Ball House, designed by Philip Johnson and standing for all to see on Oenoeke Ridge Road in New Canaan, might be demolished in less than a week on Tuesday, January 29.

That's when an automatic demolition moratorium expires (I had mistakenly reported that the moratorium expires on February 15). The house's owner, Cristina Ross, is in a dispute with the town over the use of the property and says the only way she can resolve it is to raze the house. Although many other modern houses in New Canaan have been destroyed, including at least one each designed by the other four members of the Harvard Five (Breuer, Noyes, Johansen and Gores), this would be the first Johnson house to be demolished.



The Alice Ball House continues to be on the market, but Gillian DePalo, who specializes in selling mid-century modern houses for William Raveis Agency, told me on Tuesday that there's no cause for optimism on that front.

Here's what the New Canaan News-Review reported today:

Provided that landowner Cristina Ross submits final paperwork, building inspector Brian Platz said he will hand out a demolition permit. Ross needs to give notice of Connecticut Light & Power shut off and documentation of an asbestos survey and any necessary abatement.

"When the 90 days is up and the owner gives me all the paperwork, then I'll process the application and issue the permit," Platz said in an interview with the News~Review. "Which doesn't mean she has to."

Read more here.

Time Running Out on Johnson's Alice Ball House

The Alice Ball House in New Canaan is featured in the In Focus column on the Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation's website. The owner, Cristina Ross, has applied to the town for a demolition permit and, assuming a buyer doesn't materialize soon, can tear the house down on February 15. If it happens, Philip Johnson would join the other Harvard Five architects (Breuer, Johansen, Gores, Noyes) in the ignominious honor of having one of their New Canaan houses demolished.

Protect Your Modern House and You Might Get a Nice Income Tax Deduction

I know what Cristina Ross should be doing on January 14. Ms. Ross, you may remember, is the New Canaan architect who bought Philip Johnson's Alice Ball House for about a million and a half dollars, renovated it, put it on the market less than a year ago for three million, and now wants to tear it down.

On January 14 there are two meetings in New Canaan at which she can learn how she might be eligible for a nice income tax deduction if she protects the house with a historic easement. the money she saves in income taxes might be enough to let her keep the house on the market for a while longer, until a buyer appears who appreciates the house's historic value. Amy Grabowski of the Glass House sent me the media alert. Here's part of what it says:

This workshop will explain how to use preservation and conservation easements to protect historic properties in Connecticut and surrounding areas, using the abundance of New Canaan modernist buildings as a case study. Open to homeowners, real estate agents, historical societies, and preservation organizations across the state of Connecticut, this workshop will share the common components of easements, what to expect as the owner of an easement property, and what potential tax benefits are associated with the donation of an easement.

Representatives from the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation, and Historic New England, will provide information on their preservation easement programs. Following the presentation, there will be a Q + A session as well as one-on-one consultations with participating organizations.

The meetings are at the New Canaan Historical Society. There's an afternoon session and an evening session. The hosts are the Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation, New Canaan Historical Society, the Northeast Office of the National Trust, and the Philip Johnson Glass House. RSVP to Marty Skrelunas, the Glass House, 203.594.9884 or martin_skrelunas@nthp.org.

I happen to work for an organization that uses conservation easements as the foundation for its land preservation work. I can attest that when the conservation values are legitimate and well-documented, the tax deduction allowed by the IRS can be significant. I assume the situation is the same for an easement that protects a historic house.

I hope Cristina Ross and lots of other in New Canaan (and why not Pound Ridge, which has its own supply of modern houses) think about taking advantage of it. -- TA