Mid-Century Modern

Mid-Century Modern houses are usually one story, with flat or low-pitched roofs, and sometimes a butterfly roof whose two halves slope down to a valley in the middle. Many use post-and-beam construction: a frame of wooden or steel posts and beams carries the roof, so the walls between them can be floor-to-ceiling glass. Plans are open, with kitchen, dining and living areas in one space, and sliding glass doors lead to patios and gardens. Exteriors have little or no ornament, and ceilings often show the exposed beams.

The Eames House in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles (1949), by Charles and Ray Eames, was assembled from standard industrial steel parts. Pierre Koenig's Stahl House in the Hollywood Hills (1960) has glass walls on a steel frame cantilevered over a hillside. Richard Neutra's Kaufmann Desert House in Palm Springs (1946) has long flat roofs and glass walls facing the desert. Joseph Eichler's tract houses in California, with glass walls, open atriums and post-and-beam frames, brought the style to middle-income buyers.

The style developed in the United States after World War II, building on European modernism of the 1920s and 1930s. In January 1945 the Los Angeles magazine Arts & Architecture, edited by John Entenza, announced the Case Study House program to design prototype homes for postwar housing demand. It commissioned 36 designs from architects including Richard Neutra, Pierre Koenig and Charles and Ray Eames; 25 were built, the last in 1966.

Joseph Eichler became a developer after renting a Frank Lloyd Wright Usonian house in Hillsborough, California, in 1943. Between 1949 and 1966 his company built more than 11,000 houses in California, designed by firms including Anshen & Allen and A. Quincy Jones. The style was used across North America, Brazil and Europe into the 1970s. The name became common later: Cara Greenberg's 1984 book Mid-Century Modern: Furniture of the 1950s defined the term, and a revival of interest in the houses and furniture began in the late 1990s.