$1.2 Million Homes in Missouri, Virginia and Texas
Town and Country, Mo. | $1.2 Million
A Frank Lloyd Wright Usonian house, with four bedrooms and two bathrooms
Frank Lloyd Wright designed this house in 1955 for Theodore and Bette Pappas, when Town and Country, an affluent city 18 miles west of downtown St. Louis, was largely rural. Construction began in 1960, the year after Wright’s death, and was completed by his studio in 1964. (His wife, Olgivanna, picked out the bedroom curtain fabric.) The Pappases are now deceased, and their children are selling the property along with its custom furnishings. There have been no other owners. The house is on the National Register of Historic Places. It sits southwest of the intersection of Interstate 64 and South Mason Road, a block from the Mason Ridge Elementary School.
Size: 2,310 square feet
Price per square foot: $519
Indoors: The single-story home was built with 25 varieties of precast concrete blocks that were tinted red and connected — “knitted together,” in the usual description — with steel rods. More than 500 of the blocks have inset glass pieces introducing light and texture. (Typical of Wright interiors, the wall surfaces function as art.) Assemblages of hollowed blocks create coffered ceilings that rise to a towering height in the great room and kitchen, and are embedded with downlights. The red concrete flooring is scored to look like tile.
The building has two wings, public and private, flanking an entrance composed of two sets of glass doors. On the east side is a sunken living room with an open fireplace, a built-in sofa that seats seven and a custom table and chairs that Wright designed in stained Philippine mahogany — the material found in all the furniture, wall paneling and trim.
The dining area includes an expandable custom table that can be joined with a smaller table for parties. An enclosed family room, also described as a “social office,” holds a round table surrounded by chairs with octagonal backrests. A serving area and bar off the dining section lead to a kitchen with mahogany cabinets, orange laminate countertops and many of its original appliances.
A long corridor with built-in shelves and cabinets leads to four small bedrooms and two bathrooms on the west side. These rooms have built-in cupboards and desks; the bathrooms have custom mahogany vanities.
Outdoor space: Multiple sets of glass double doors open from the living room and family room to a terrace with an overhanging roof. The 3.36-acre property was planted on the north side with oak, birch and pine trees to screen the view of the highway. The Pappases added cherry trees and more oaks with the blessing of Mrs. Wright. Parking is in an attached carport.
Taxes: $6,892 (2017)
Contact: Andrew W. Dielmann or Ted Wight, Dielmann Sotheby’s International Realty, 314-607-5555; dielmannsothebysrealty.com

Roanoke, Va. | $1.199 Million
An 1862 house with four bedrooms, three and a half bathrooms, a swimming pool and a one-bedroom, one-bathroom guesthouse
Built at the beginning of the Civil War for a physician who came to this western Virginia city with the railroad, the house was used, in the absence of a local hospital, to treat wounded soldiers. It is in the Cave Spring area, six miles southwest of the center of the city, minutes from businesses along Brambleton Avenue and 45 minutes east of Virginia Tech University.
Size: 4,832 square feet
Price per square foot: $248
Indoors: The original brick house received a clapboard addition at some point in the 19th or early 20th centuries, and the property has been substantially renovated by three sets of owners in the last 20 years. During this period, the pool and pool house were constructed, the kitchen was enlarged and upgraded, a root cellar was turned into a rec room and an elaborate outdoor kitchen was installed in the backyard.
A covered porch supported by Doric columns and deep enough for a swing wraps around a corner of the brick structure and takes you to the main entrance. On either side of the front door are rooms with hardwood floors, door transoms, closets and working fireplaces: to the right, a study with built-in bookshelves and louvered shutters; to the left, a room staged as a formal dining room.
The entire back of the house, incorporating the footprint of the frame building (which has its own entrance, through a smaller covered porch), is devoted to a combined family room and kitchen measuring about 29 by 24 feet. This room has a coffered ceiling, multiple seating areas and a kitchen with antiqued white cabinetry, marble surfaces, a carved wood island and stainless-steel appliances, including a Wolf range with two ovens. There is also a half bathroom.
The upstairs master bedroom has a working fireplace, an en suite bathroom with custom cabinetry and granite vanity tops, and a 142-square-foot walk-in closet. Three guest bedrooms (one with a working fireplace) share two bathrooms. One has a glass shower with a river-stone floor and is also used as a laundry room. The basement rec room has walls of painted brick and a working fireplace. It connects to a storage room.
Outdoor space: The outdoor kitchen is built into a circular, tiered stone patio in the backyard. It has multiple appliances and a sink as well as a towering pizza oven. A waterfall splashes into the nearby swimming pool, which is surrounded by a brick sun deck. The pool house includes a sitting room, bedroom and bathroom with a shower. The 1.29-acre property also has a detached three-car garage and a treehouse with a zip line. Horses are welcome.
Taxes: $5,210 (2018)
Contact: Jeannine Hanson, Long & Foster Real Estate, 540-798-8640; longandfoster.com
Carmine, Tex. | $1.2 Million
A house with two bedrooms and two and a half bathrooms, a one-bedroom guesthouse and a barn
In 1982, Dick DeGuerin, a criminal defense attorney known for representing the Branch Davidian sect leader David Koresh and the real estate scion Robert Durst, among other challenging clients, bought a ranch midway between Houston and Austin, Tex., as a family retreat. The property included a converted railroad depot that had been moved to the site from 100 miles away. Mr. DeGuerin is selling this house and two outbuildings along with 40 acres of his land. The property is six miles west of Burton, a city of about 300.
Size: 2,042 square feet
Price per square foot: $588
Indoors: Although renovated and enlarged, the main house retains the architectural ghosts of the old depot. The kitchen has the cabinetry that was used when it was the stationmaster’s office. The living room, with its original doors and windows, was the waiting room — or, rather, a pair of waiting rooms for black and white passengers, although the spaces are no longer separated. The master bedroom was once the freight room and has two sets of massive sliding doors leading outside.
In the renovation, salvaged longleaf pine was used to match the depot’s wood (about half of the floors are original); the kitchen received its tin ceiling; local craftsmen built the living room’s stone fireplace from scratch; a second bedroom with a gabled ceiling and balcony was added over the master; and a new bathroom with a tiled vanity was installed. Another bathroom was built into a former greenhouse and has a pedestal sink and a claw-foot tub.
The guesthouse has white-painted wood walls and beamed ceiling, and natural-colored floors and trim. There is a separate kitchen, a bathroom with a shower and a screened porch. The barn has four horse stalls, a bunkhouse that sleeps six, storage rooms and a tack room.
Outdoor space: The 40 acres are filled with open pasture and woods, where live oaks, post oaks, blackjack oaks, mountain juniper and a bit of cedar grow. There are two lakes created from dammed springs; the largest is 40 feet at its deepest. Wildlife includes deer, raccoon, opossum and coyote.
Taxes: $10,173 (2018), without homestead exemption
Contact: Jeanine Kaminski-Ditzel, John Daugherty, Realtors, 832-494-7749; johndaugherty.com
For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate.
Published at Wed, 24 Jul 2019 13:01:35 +0000