Author: a2modern

Free Metcalf Open House

An open house will be held on Sunday, November 6 from 4-6:00 PM.

Realtor Anne Gilbert has invited friends of a2modern to an exclusive open house in this gorgeous Bob Metcalf home at 3965 Penberton, which she has just listed. It is an example of Metcalf’s mature style, as he had been designing homes for 25 years when he created this residence for the Eugene Claey family in 1978.

No need to sign up, just come.

This mid-century modern home is one of the most striking examples of Metcalf’s highly prized design aesthetic. An open floor plan for easy family living and gracious entertaining is complimented by extensive walls of glass, creating a sense of indoor-outdoor harmony in every room. There are two fireplaces, one in the living room and another in the master bedroom, along with oak paneling and built-ins throughout. Meticulously maintained and updated to preserve the design integrity, this home includes a thoughtfully updated kitchen with refinished original cabinets and Samsung appliances. Recent improvements include slate entry and planter box, updated lighting, new carpet. interior and exterior paint. Outdoor living spaces include a four-season room, re-built and expanded deck, and enclosed balconies. The home is located on a quiet cul-de-sac in a private wooded setting within walking distance of King Elementary and easy access to highways, Medical Center and North Campus.

  

  

Techbuilt Open House

An open house will be held on Sunday, October 2 at 1 PM, 2 PM, and 3 PM.

Techbuilt homes are considered the best of the many prefab houses that were developed to help solve the post- WWII home shortage.  Created by Boston area architect Carl Koch, a modernist who had studied under Gropius and Breuer, his design was a simple and inexpensive two-story bi-level house that could be built in a few days and added to when the family grew. Anitra and Jesse Gordons’ home, built in 1955, is one of the first built in Ann Arbor.

Click here to purchase tickets to the event.

The Gordon house on Chalmers Drive sits on the crest of a gentle ridge nestled in an encircling forest setting. On one side, steps descend to a swimming pool, open to the sky; on the other, a thick growth of tall trees provides a sheltering canopy for a spacious screened-in porch. This is a perfect site for a Techbuilt house, whose modern design allowed for ample light, open interiors and a settled-in-the-earth feeling.

Techbuilt, the brainchild of architect Carl Koch, solved two problems for homebuilders—wasted space in the basement and unusable space in the attic. By sinking the foundation a half story in the ground, the basement became the first floor. The second floor then rises to the pitched roof, whose gentle incline creates the dual effect of a cathedral ceiling in the center of the room and attic eaves at the edges. Because the barn-like frame of the building carried the weight, it was easy to install the standardized pre-fabricated wall panels and windows. Once the foundation was poured, the shell of a Techbuilt house could be put up in two days.

The Gordon house reveals the many strengths of the Techbuilt concept. Structural features—post and lintel framing, a roof visibly supported by solid but slender wooden beams, wall panels and windows placed to provide light or privacy, and an open interior wall-to-wall—present the durable, rational design elements typical of the original building. More recent modifications and additions demonstrate the flexibility of the original design, such that the four major additions authorized by the Gordons extend and cooperate with the lines of the existing structure. The large screen porch built over a wooded outlook, for example, continues the roofline in a natural extension, its gentle angle creating a cozy feeling in an open and airy space.

The Gordons are the fourth owners of the house. The second owner put in the swimming pool. Outside the house, one path leads to a short walk to Mallett’s Creek and another walk meanders in the densely wooded area nearby, accentuating the cabin-in-the-woods feel of the site. An original carport blocks the house from any view from the street. As with modern houses, the original entrance to this house was designed not to be immediately obvious to a visitor, and when you stepped in you could go up or down stairs. The Techbuilt design was the forerunner of the split-level house. These houses have a sleek, modern look and two levels of windows. Balconies could be added on, either on the ends or along the sides, and as for furniture, Carl Koch designed Techbuilt Spacemaking Furniture for those who found conventional furniture ill-adapted for use in these houses. Koch’s book, At Home with Tomorrow, catches the spirit of those days just on the verge of the Space Age and an encounter with a Techbuilt house provides an indelible insight into a vision for affordable living carried to an exceptionally detailed and successful resolution.

 

Written by Jeffrey Welch

Law Library Tour

On August 21st at 2 PM there will be a rare chance to see the University of Michigan Law School addition.

Almost entirely underground, yet light and airy, Gunnar Birkert’s 1981 law library addition is an amazing feat.   The law school desperately needed more space for a library, yet were loath to build anything that would impair the look of their 1920s neo-Gothic buildings. Birkerts solved the problem by building a structure three stories underground, lighted by V-shaped troughs that bring in light from several directions, aided by the limestone base that reflects light and the mirrored window frames. Not open to the general public, this is a unique opportunity to see the underground library, led by Margaret Leary, Director of the Library when the addition was built.

For tickets go to http://www.a2modern.myevent.com/

Livingston Bandemer/Mirsky Home Tour

August 14th at 1 PM, 2 PM, and 3 PM. This is one of several homes designed by architect James Livingston in the Arbor Hills neighborhood. It is newly restored by John and Renate Mirsky and recently featured on a tour during the national Docomomo convention, which explored modern architecture in the Detroit area. Tickets can be purchased at http://www.a2modern.myevent.com/

 

When John and Renate Mirsky were searching for a new home, they were not specifically looking for a mid-century modern one, but “spotting the listing in an emailing, I immediately recognized that the house fulfilled all of our priority wants,” remembers John. Their wish list included large windows to let in the sun, an open floor plan, and room for a garden.

The home was built in 1956 for William and Mary Bandemer. William was vice president of King Seeley and a Republican city council member from 1960-1964. Before marriage, Mary had been secretary to long-time mayor William Brown. The house was designed by James Livingston, who at the same time did one next door for Mary’s older sister, Margaret, and her husband Paul Greene. The two houses share a driveway and are both MCM but are quite different, although they share some traits like cove lighting and the same woodwork inside.

When Livingston designed the Mirskys’ house he was in his mid-thirties and moonlighting from his day job working for architect Walter Anicka. Joining with Bob Chase, another Anika employee, they worked evenings and weekends on their own projects. According to Chase, Livingston was the driving force, making the initial contacts and finding out what the clients wanted. Livingston clearly didn’t do cookie cutter houses, as reflected by the two sisters’ houses, but his designs were always modern. “All of Livingston’s houses were contemporary, with lots of daylight. He did nothing old-fashioned, he wouldn’t waste his time,” says Chase, adding “It was a lot of fun working with him, he was so imaginative.” Livingston went on to start his own firm and work on larger projects including the Bell Tower Hotel, Webers, Lawton school, and Maynard house. He is best remembered as the architect of Lurie Terrace, a pioneering project to house active seniors.

John and Renate moved in the summer of 2015 after spending a year and a half working on the house. They kept the original materials whenever possible or, if not, by using compatible replacements. They refinished all the woodwork and cleaned the metal hardware used throughout the house which often entailed taking things apart. Keeping an open feeling they have furnished the house with MCM furniture such as Herman Miller, Saarinen, and Eames. At the same time as meticulously keeping the Mid Century Modern ambience,they have made the house more energy efficient with a geothermal furnace, tripled glazed windows, andinsulation above the ceiling and in the crawl space.

Enthusiastic gardeners, they are using the original landscape plans by Edward Eichstadt, a Detroit-based landscaper whose projects included Cranbrook, the GM Tech Center and the basic plan for U-M Botanical Gardens, as a basis for future changes. The land sloping down to Hill Street is a natural area, perennial gardens and raised bed vegetable gardens are on the side, and fruit trees in front.

A Review of Albert Kahn: Under Construction

Albert Kahn: Under Construction

A Review of the Albert Kahn Building Projects, 1903 – 1943,
University of Michigan Museum of Art
February 27 to July 3

The north wall on level three at the University of Michigan Museum of Art has become Bentley Historical Library turf in the ongoing collaboration between these two kindred institutions. Albert Kahn: Under Construction, a gathering of documentary photographs generated by Detroit architect Albert Kahn’s building projects around the world is the latest installment in an ongoing series of joint exhibitions. Curated by Claire Zimmerman, Professor of Architecture, Albert Kahn: Under Construction surveys the years 1903 to 1943, during which Kahn actively managed an architectural firm that by the early twenties had grown to be the largest in the country. The exhibit dutifully documents stages in the actual construction of selected buildings, but revealed through the accumulation of these 130+ images is a a portrait assembled photo by photo of a man of exceedingly large vision who actively constructed a creative, nimble and versatile organization that helped shape significantly our modern American identity.

Here are some highlights: The photographs have been arranged in nine of eleven panels. Five categories identify the purposes of the selected buildings: Photograph (shows the range of projects), Manufacture (looks at factories and warehouses), Buy and Sell (focuses on city office buildings), Explore and Enlighten (deals with educational and religious structures) and Fight (highlights factories designed for the mass production of large-scale war machines like tanks and heavy bombers).

The projects cover a wide range of building kinds, but the 16 selected for display are significant and soundly represent what was typical of the more than 1,900 buildings produced by the Kahn office within these years.

1903 Packard Motor Company, Detroit
1912 Bates Manufacturing Company, Maine
1915 Natural Sciences Building, Ann Arbor, Michigan
1916 Ford Factory, Omaha, Nebraska
1917 The Vinton Building, Detroit
1917 Krolik and Company, Detroit
1921 Durant Building (General Motors Headquarters), Detroit
1924 Ford Motor Company Power House, Iron Mountain, Michigan
1929 Stalingrad Tractor Plant, Stalingrad, Russia
1930 Autostroy Forge Corporation, Moscow, Russia
1930 Shaarey Zedek Synagogue, Detroit
1938 Chrysler Half-Ton Truck Plant, Warren, Michigan
1939 General Motors Building, New York World’s Fair, New York City
1941 Glenn Martin Assembly Plant, Omaha, Nebraska
1941 Chrysler Tank Arsenal, Warren, Michigan
1943 Willow Run Bomber Plant, Ypsilanti, Michigan

The five categories of building types allow for a chronological arrangement, while the accompanying texts identify key issues and clarify sometimes hard-to-see details. However, on the panels themselves narrative sequencing often proceeds counter intuitively, from right to left rather than from to left to right. Under Explore and Enlighten, panels seven and eight (counting from the left side of the display), for example, the stark image of a steel frame forming the sides and roof of the Shaarey Zedek synagogue (center photograph on the bottom row on panel seven), demonstrates how skeleton and cut stone cladding go together to make a traditional structure. But the story of Shaarey Zedek actually begins on panel eight, so that the evolution of this building tracks from right to left. This trope of reading backward is repeated on other panels. The intention is to counter expectations and by doing so draw closer attention to the content of each photograph.

Another fine surprise is the cluster of photographs on the lower half of panel eight showing massive metal roof trusses being fabricated at Lehigh, Pennsylvania, and by the McClintic Marshall Production Company in New York City. Until the Russians had facilities of their own, design and construction of trusses for their factory buildings took place in the US. These pictures capture close up not just the scale but also the craftsmanship and the elegance of these purely functional elements in factory construction.

In the middle of panel five (under Buy and Sell) a photo of the Durant Building/ General Motors Building presents all four of the magnificently towering blocks of this immense and nearly completed project. To track the evolution of the Durant Building going up, however, begin at the bottom of panel six and work backward. To add to our understanding of the complexity attendant on urban building projects, the modest Vinton Building has been juxtaposed to the Durant Building. Pairing these two projects that were built so close together in time helps with understanding the rapid expansion of Kahn’s architectural office as Detroit escaped the constraints of war rationing and the labor shortage.

The last two panels (Fight) reflect changes both in design and in use of materials as dictated by new requirements for mass production. Even more vast interior spaces for building large, heavy machines for war were needed, and the scale was set for these colossal buildings well before Roosevelt’s declaration of war. The buildings rose rapidly out of empty fields, their proportions shockingly beautiful. Photos showing the fabrication of metal skeletons and then the application of concrete strips convey sleek, aerodynamic qualities in the designs, which become even sleeker when enhanced by ribbons of glass. The special knowledge and skill involved in selecting the photographs for all the projects presented in this exhibit show through everywhere, but these last spectacular choices confirm the fact that Kahn’s firm, right up to his death in 1942, was constantly advancing in its capability of building practically, efficiently and beautifully whatever the need.

More needs to be done both to illuminate the practices of the photographers who took the pictures and to comprehend the methods and interests of the various contractors brought in to do the work of construction. On panel ten, for example, photos of the Glenn Martin Assembly Plant show in one instance black men digging a foundation while next to it is a shot of what appears to be a low-cost workers’ housing development. How were black workers housed? How were they treated? How were vast sites taken in hand so that the work was sequenced, the materials brought in on time, and the daily schedules adjusted to occupy the workforce of men? Such questions cannot be addressed by a concise and intense show like Albert Kahn: Under Construction, but this show, the first of many it is hoped, opens the way for the investigation of new questions. The photographs on display are accompanied by an account book, an issue of Architectural Forum featuring Kahn’s buildings as of August 1938, and a typical scrapbook for holding and organizing a project’s pictures. These items enrich the encounter with Kahn’s routine photographic documentation of his projects and it is a pleasure to have them available in the two vitrines on each side of the display. One last note: along with photos of two projects conducted for the Soviet government, there is a map with data and diagrams showing the Soviet Union’s 5-Year Plan, 1928 – 1933, for modernizing Russia. It is a treat to be able to study this map in its large-scale format.

By Jeffrey Welch, April 6, 2016

Tale of a House: Architect Priscilla Baxter Neel

IN the fall of 2015 Dr. Mary Ann Hunting of New York City wrote a query to Washtenaw County Historical Society for information on a female architect who had designed the home at 2235 Belmont here in Ann Arbor. The architect’s name was Priscilla Baxter Neel. Dr. Hunting was writing a book on women architects. A graduate of Vanderbilt and CUNY, she had previously done a book about Edward Durrell Stone.

Mailbox, carport, boarded windows behind yews

Mailbox, carport, boarded windows behind yews

The WCHS administrator forwarded the query to Susan Wineberg, who had just completed the second edition of Historic Ann Arbor: An Architectural Guide. Susan Wineberg forwarded the query to Fran Wright. Mary Ann Hunting knew the house was “falling apart” and was slated for demolition by the owner. Dr. Hunting wanted an early photograph of the house.

Susan and I started with the City Assessor’s website. We found the house and the current owner, CR Investments LLC, or Campus Realty, a student apartment rental firm, but there was no photograph of the house on the website. And the old photograph from the handwritten assessor’s pages was only black and gray showing no details. So we went to see the house at 2235 Belmont for ourselves.

Assessors Floor Plan

Assessor’s floor plan, with modifications

The house, built in 1951, is brick with a the modern flat roof. There are skylights in the roof over the kitchen area. The living room/dining room/kitchen is one large area. One living room wall is brick with a raised fireplace and brick hearth. Large floor to ceiling windows and also glass doors to the exterior lighted the space. One glass door leads to a greenhouse. Four bedrooms and two bathrooms are in the wing that is closest to the street. One bathroom has a square deep tub in it. The house is on a concrete slab, no basement, and the furnace room is at the back end of the house. There is a carport connected to the house on the west side.

The family name Neel was still on the mailbox and the Ann Arbor City Directories confirmed that the owners were Dr. James V. Neel, geneticist at the University of Michigan, his wife Priscilla, and their children Frances, James Van Gundia, and Alexander Baxter. Priscilla did not have a separate listing as a professional architect in the directories.

The architect of this house, Priscilla Baxter Neel, had a twin. Her family lived in Wollaston, Massachusetts. Priscilla and her twin sister, Frances, both studied at Radcliffe College (the separate college Harvard University had for women) and graduated in 1940. They also received Bachelor of Architecture degrees from the Cambridge Graduate School of Smith College (another women’s college). In 1942 they were both awarded scholarships to study with Walter Gropius at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Front door, opening to the west

Front door, opening to the west

James V. Neel was born in Ohio and educated at Wooster College and then the University of Rochester, where he received a Ph.D. and an M.D.. Neel taught at Dartmouth until 1941, was in Washington in 1942 and then in the US Medical Corps. Immediately after the war (1947) he was chosen by the National Research Council to be the acting director of the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission in Japan. The Neels came to Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan in 1948, where James was Professor of Internal Medicine and a geneticist in the Institute of Human Biology which he helped found. He was director of the University Hospital from 1966 through 1970. He was a member of many professional Genetics and Internal Medicine societies, Phi Beta Kappa, the scientific research society Sigma XI, and the medical honor society Alpha Omega Alpha. His hobby was orchid cultivation, thus the greenhouse attached to 2235 Belmont. He died at 84 in the year 2000.

Priscilla was a good friend of Mary Palmer of the Frank Lloyd Wright designed Palmer House, and with her started a yoga program in Ann Arbor. The two women and other friends were in a yoga class at the Y. Their instructor encouraged them to read some of the yoga literature, including B. K. S. Iyengar’s Light on Yoga, leading to the two of them becoming the Y’s yoga teachers. Priscilla and Mary and other women practiced yoga in Mary Palmer’s Japanese tea house in her garden. This led to Mary Palmer going to India to meet B. K. S. Iyengar and to his coming to Ann Arbor to teach yoga here.

Priscilla never practiced architecture professionally as far as we could find out. When she died in 2012 her children sold the house to Stegeman’s Campus Realty firm the next year. We believe she designed only her own house at 2235 Belmont. Her twin sister Frances designed one house in Connecticut and some time after her marriage moved here to Ann Arbor and designed and built her own house in Barton Hills where she still lives.

Front door, living area, fireplace at base of brick will, hidden

Front door, from living area, fireplace, hidden, at base of brick wall left edge

The Campus Realty firm bought the house in 2013 and by the looks of it never had a tenant move in. The mailbox still says Neel. All the windows have been taken away and replaced with plywood boards. The greenhouse attached to the living room has lost all the glass, leaving only the three foot high brick foundation, a little fan, and two thermostats on the house’s exterior wall. The shrubbery around the house is quite overgrown.

All the kitchen appliances were gone. The interior finished walls of the kitchen (and perhaps laundry room) were gone too. The milk box was intact and opened both inside and outside. The living room had a ceiling-high pile of cupboards and such in front of the raised hearth fireplace. All the copper pipe that could be reached had been removed with the holes in the walls as evidence. One of the bathrooms had the entire wall of ceramic tile taken off and left leaning against a wall in the bedroom in two large sections. We could see from the inside that the windows were removed, frames and all, not just the glass panes. All the debris from the interior demolition is still in the house.

Windows and doorway to patio, across from kitchen/dining area

Windows and doorway to patio, across from kitchen/dining area

We wish for a more positive end to this house but CR Investments has had a demolition permit since January 2015. It is not advertised for sale. CR Investments originally bought the property, which was in poor condition, to demolish and to build another small house for a family member. But that moment passed and now they are just holding the property. It is only a matter of time before architect Priscilla Baxter Neel’s only house and long-time home is replaced by another dwelling.

But we finally found an early photograph of the Neel house; the Ann Arbor News did a feature article on the house and architect Priscilla Neel and it appeared in the paper in May of 1952. You can see the original Ann Arbor News article and see pictures here and here.  In the exterior photograph, taken in 1952,  Dr. Neel’s orchid greenhouse is yet to be added outside the glass door on the right side of the photograph.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Milk Chute, by the Utility Door

Milk box by the utility door

Inside the kitchen

Inside the kitchen

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By Frances Wright, March 11, 2016

Wells Ira Bennett, Educator and Architect

Wells I. Bennett led the College of Architecture and the University of Michigan as Dean from 1938 to 1957. Arriving at the university in 1912 as Instructor, Bennett rose to leadership through his early interest in low-cost housing and city planning. As a practicing architect in Ann Arbor, Bennett was active after 1921, developing a considerable residential practice mainly with faculty clients.

Taking a sabbatical leave in 1932-33 to study schools of architecture and post-WWI housing projects in Europe, Bennett published two articles on housing projects in the US and France in 1935. In addition he offered a course analyzing practices in low-cost housing projects with various forms of government intervention in England, Germany, Austria, Holland and France.

At this time in the Depression the US government authorized over three billion dollars for low-cost housing and slum clearance but with the proviso that each specific project be presented as part of a larger plan. At the time there were few trained town and city planners, opening a field for city planning that MIT stepped up to meet in 1934. At this same time Bennett, working with then Dean Emil Lorch, developed courses in this area, including housing, that gave Michigan’s program a unique place in the Middle and Far West. A formal degree in City Planning entered the architecture school’s curriculum in 1946.

A key initiative by Bennett starting in 1940 was a Forum gathering of architecture school administrators and architects at the university for the purpose of sharing insights and defining common interests. The first gathering brought together a who’s who of practictioners, including Eliel Saarinen and Eero Saarinen at Cranbrook, and Joseph Hudnut, Dean of the Harvard School of Design and a 1912 alum of the UM architecture school. The collegial dynamic inspired by these yearly meetings proved invaluable to the university in 1948 when venerable Professor Jean Hebrard retired and high enrolment created a need for recommendations for new staff and teaching leadership in architecture. These recommendations, for example, led to bringing in William Muschenheim in 1950.

Bennett served on the Ann Arbor City Planning Commission since 1935 and on the State Board of Registration for Architects, Engineers and Surveyors since 1939. He was a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects and was President of the Detroit Chapter from 1946 to 1947. During his tenure as Dean he brought a series of fine teachers to his program, including Mary Chase Stratton (1937), Gerome Kamrowski (1946), Herbert Johe (1947), Edward Olenki (1948) and William Muschenheim (1950).

By Jeffrey Welch, March 11, 2016

Birkerts at the Bentley Historical Library

“One of the great American Modern architects of the last sixty years,” is how Sally Bund describes the man whose papers she has been curating at the Bentley Historical Library for the last twenty years, working closely with him. She will give an overview of Birkerts’ work, which is international in scope, including most recently the Latvian National Library. She will be joined by Margaret Leary, retired director of the University of Michigan Law Library, who was involved in the planning and design of Birkerts’ pathfinding underground addition.

Birkerts follows no set of rules but designs every building for its specific site and use. He is particularly well-known for his innovative and sensitive use of light, which is well-demonstrated in his two Ann Arbor buildings, the University Reformed Church (with its indirect lighting) and the University of Michigan Law School Library Addition (which is filled with light despite being below ground).

The Bentley Historical Library is located at 1150 Beal Avenue, Ann Arbor on the University of Michigan’s North Campus. A map is attached, indicating the locations of the closest lots where free parking is available. Please contact Grace Shackman by email at gmshackman@comcast.net or by phone at 734-662-2187 if you would like any additional information.

Date/Time
Date(s) – 02/04/2015
7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

 

Nancy Marie Deromedi

Nancy DeromediWe are deeply saddened to post that Nancy Deromedi, one of the founders of a2Modern, passed away at home on Oct 13 at age 52 after saying her good-byes to her loving family and close friends.  She had bravely waged a year-long fight with esophageal cancer.  She made her mark on those who worked with her and who shared her passion for Ann Arbor’s rich legacy of mid-century modernism architecture, and she will be deeply missed.

Nancy was born in Wyandotte, Michigan on November 9, 1961, the daughter of Jerry Allen and Gaye Kathleen Skinner.   She earned a business management degree at Ferris State in 1983 and pursued a career in retail clothing, arriving in Ann Arbor in 1986 to open a Laura Ashley store.   On November 17, 1990 she married David Deromedi and decided to make another change in her life by returning to school to study history at the University of Michigan.  Her future career was decided when she took a seminar in Michigan history from Francis Blouin, then Director of the Bentley Historical Library, which led to her great interest in using archival evidence of the past.

Nancy earned a B.A. from the School of Literature, Science and the Arts, and a Masters Degree from the School of Information.  She started working at the Bentley as an assistant archivist in 1997, rising through the ranks and was recently appointed Associate Director for Curation.  She was an expert curator of digital archives, designing a series of new and consequential best practices for preserving complex digital collections including the curation of digital archives from Governor Jennifer Granholm and University of Michigan President James J. Duderstadt, as well as the secure preservation of the University’s essential administrative records from its executive offices.

Nancy DeromediHer innovative ideas for solving some of the profession’s most complicated challenges were awarded support by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the National Historic Records and Publications Commission, and the University of Michigan Information and Technology Services.  Her work inspired a new publication series of the Society of American Archivists, entitled Campus Case Studies, and her reputation led to invitations to present at professional conferences as far away as Beijing, Copenhagen, Paris, Vienna, and throughout the U.S.  She was also a regular guest lecturer with the School of Information, the Society of American Archivists, Midwest Archives Conference, and others.

Her interest in mid-century modern architecture led to her contributions to the cultivation of important design collections for the Bentley from architects Robert Metcalf and David Osler, whose works, along with those of George Brigham, an earlier architect who was instrumental in introducing modern architecture to Ann Arbor, were recently featured at the University of Michigan Museum of Art in the exhibition series and symposium Three Michigan Architects:  Osler, Metcalf, and Brigham.

Nancy was a person of wide interests who sought to incorporate what she learned into how she lived, including with respect to her appreciation of history, art, architecture, design, gardening, and landscape. She loved spending time at her family’s restored 1830’s log house on the natural beauty of Pelee Island, Ontario.  While residing in an Old West Side arts and craft house, she researched the many aspects of this architectural and design style, collected furniture and pottery of the era, created a period correct landscape, and used her many travels as an opportunity to further her knowledge.

Nancy’s deep interest in Ann Arbor’s contributions to modernism took hold when, while browsing in the Bentley’s stacks during breaks, she learned about George Brigham.  Nancy and David purchased the Brigham designed “Leslie and Mary White” home in 2005 and then worked with Robert Metcalf, who had assisted Brigham when the home was originally built in 1950, to make restorations.  This project evolved into her ongoing research and discovery of the amazing stock of mid-century houses in her neighborhood and throughout Ann Arbor, and the architects who designed them, and her development of a deep passion for mid-century design throughout the world.

In 2010 Nancy, along with other interested homeowners and local historians, founded a2Modern, with the goal of raising the awareness and preservation of Ann Arbor’s legacy of modern architecture and design.  Recruiting others with like interests, in a short time she helped make the organization the magnet for everyone interested in this style, publishing a map of mid-century modern houses in Ann Arbor, organizing walks, field trips, house tours, and lectures, developing this website, as well as working with Eastern  Michigan University historic preservation students.  She was pleased last fall when she was able to get non-profit status for the organization.

In addition to her husband David and parents, she is survived by her siblings Jeffrey Allen Skinner (and wife Mio) of Osaka, Japan and Patricia Skinner- Smudz, (and husband Alan) of Monroe, MI,  parents in-law, Herb and Marilyn Deromedi of Mt. Pleasant, MI, sister-in-law Lori Deromedi  of Ann Arbor,  brother and sister-in-law Thomas and Lyndia Deromedi , of Linden, MI, and loving nieces and nephews Matthew, Anne, and Jessica Smudz , Noah and Ian Deromedi, and Kai and Riki Haiden-Skinner.

A memorial service will be held at the First Presbyterian Church, Ann Arbor on November 7, 2014 at 10:30 a.m. with a reception at the Ann Arbor City Club immediately following.

In lieu of flowers the family has requested memorial contributions to the Matthaei Botanical Gardens (www.lsa.umich.edu/mbg) or Arbor Hospice (www.arborhospice.org).