A look back at some favorite and most popular house tours from our past issues.
The house tours we feature in Atomic Ranch are the heart and soul of every issue. Our editors feel a connection to the wonderful homes and homeowners they’ve found and shared within these pages. Here are just some of the remarkable homes and stories that have made a lasting impression on our team as well as you, our dear readers, as evidenced by your letters, comments and emails to us.
Me & Mr. Jones
When it comes to their 1951 house, Alex MacDowell and his wife Kristin Kozlowski are definitely all-in. They took a trip to Mendocino, California, for all-heart, vertical-grain lumber milled from old-growth redwood sinker logs—the kind they can no longer harvest. They have painstakingly replicated the original stain on the home’s marine-grade plywood paneling; stripped paint from miles of concrete block, redwood siding and tongue-and-groove decking; and they’ll entertain you with anecdotes about his two-year house renovation or impart the boundless enthusiasm he has for his mid-century neighborhood in the Santa Monica Mountains.
This passion is no accident. The couple, originally from St. Louis, Missouri, had a goal to move to California and find a modernist house that could qualify for historic landmark status. The target area was the Mutual Housing Association tract in Brentwood, California, now known as Crestwood Hills. It took Alex eight years to find this 2,000-square-foot model designed by A. Quincy Jones.
“The original owner lived in the house until she passed away in her late 90s,” says fellow Crestwood resident and architect Corey Buckner. “Nothing had been done to the house for decades and the work that it needed was daunting. As Alex and Kristin peeled away the layers of paint and painful additions, they not only became fascinated with the original intent of the community and architecture, but were awed and humbled by the sheer beauty of what they had purchased.”
Post-and-steel beam construction, a multilevel hillside lot and original features like an accordion door between a bedroom and the living room made the residence highly unique. Another was the separate au pair quarters attached to the carport—this was one of the spaces where Alex and Kristin lived during the top-to-bottom renovation.
“For the first half of fixing up the house, I was so excited to wake up at the crack of dawn and start sanding something,” Alex says with a laugh. “We had the roof off for weeks while we solved electrical arcing problems and one morning we woke up with rain pouring down on us [through the ceiling boards]. “I lived through Alex’s second renovation [in St. Louis] and slept on the floor for a year,” Kristin says. “We’re both history buffs, so it was our passion to bring back a house like this.”
With such stunning results, it’s no wonder that this home is a favorite house tour so many years later.
Adapted from the original text by Michelle Gingeri-Brown.
A Little Personality
Some Mid Century Modern homes are like pristine museums, each room filled with perfect and polished pieces. Other mid-century houses are eminently livable spaces, where quirky vintage finds meld with modern pieces, offering a tip of the hat to a bygone era without becoming stuck in time. The Seattle home of George and Mary Campbell falls into the latter category. Built in 1957, the two-story house retains its original footprint and has had only minor structural modifications. The interior design, however, showcases the couple’s affinity for blending authentic mid-century wares with affordable reproductions and practical contemporary furniture. The result is a cozy and inviting abode with plenty of eye candy for the retro enthusiast.
Accent walls are painted in shades of Majestic Blue and Cypress Green, inspired by a multicolor George Nelson sunburst clock. In the living room, a pair of Nelson Bubble Saucer wall sconces flanks a gray velvet couch and original Haywood Wakefield coffee table. Nearby, a stately teak wall unit houses various books and vintage knickknacks collected over the years at antiques shops and thrift stores around Seattle and in Mary’s home state of Montana. In the dining area, red metal mesh chairs surround a vintage Danish teak dining table an eye-catching contrast to the pistachio green walls.
The exterior looks much the same as when the home was built, with only minor modifications. The only significant change to the original interior came when the couple decided to open up the kitchen, which was closed off from the main living area by a wall and small pocket door.
“When we remodeled, we really just knocked that wall out and added the peninsula,” Mary explains, noting that the new design was more conducive to entertaining. In addition to removing the original appliances, the couple contracted local remodeling company Fivedot to replace the original cabinets with custom-built Kerf cabinetry that was in keeping with the style of the home and captured their fun sense of color and detail.
This cozy and memorable home balances honoring the home’s past but doesn’t take itself too seriously, and it’s no surprise that it remains one of Atomic Ranch‘s favorite house tours.
Adapted from the original text by Leslie J. Thompson.
Love Conquers All
“Remember those weird houses that were so ’50s? Let’s go look at them,” Lori Goodman-Szorenyi proposed to her husband George Szorenyi one day in 2002. “We thought they’d be really cheap,” she recalls. The couple had lived in Old Towne Orange, a Southern California neighborhood filled with quaint bungalows, back in the late ’80s and amused themselves by driving through the nearby Eichler Fairmeadows tract, which had a fair number of rundown eyesores back then. “I thought, who would want these homes? They’re such a specialty buy,” George remembers.
“We had no idea!” Lori interjects excitedly. “I don’t like Mediterraneans or any of the typical California styles, and I love wood. It took us a while to get our 1964 Eichler.”
George, a microbiologist who defected to the U.S. in 1983 from Budapest, grew up in a house built in 1820, prefers new houses. But Lori, a vintage Barbie doll collector, has always been drawn to the old. Opposites attract, as they say.
The flat portions of their roof leak subtly around the air conditioning vents and George has fixed them as best he can. Other minor issues include the four times the concrete slab in the bedroom was jack hammered in search of an elusive water leak, but so far no problems have surfaced with their radiant heated floor. The house still has its single-pane windows. “It gets cold!” Lori says. “If you didn’t have the radiant heat, I don’t know how you could keep your house warm. When we were younger, I loved vintage things from garage sales and thrift stores. Every time I’d bring something home he’d get really upset. I still love it, but George is happier with new, so it’s a good compromise that some of the [MCM] things are back in production and you can get exactly what you want and it’s brand new and fresh.”
Among their iconic furnishings are a few pieces that George doesn’t “get”—like the fiberglass shell rocking chair and the prices many of these items command. “Some people buy the old ones for almost the same price; it’s the same stuff,” he says in wonderment.
Adapted from the original text by Michelle Gingeri-Brown.
Rebel With a Cause
Architect Irwin Stein built some 80 commissions after he started his practice in 1958, including garden apartments, industrial buildings, offices, automobile agencies and a dozen contemporary houses, primarily in the Philadelphia suburbs. But first, he started out with this house.

“Most young architects start out working for friends,” he says. “The Wachses were personal friends and Mort was starting his dental practice and found the site. He wanted to build an office with an apartment above it—he felt that was all they could afford. I screamed and hollered that it was a nice site and they should be building at least the beginnings of a house.” Stein prevailed, and a two-bedroom, split-level home with an attached dental office was built for Morton Wachs and his wife, Elsa, on a wooded lot in Wallingford, Pennsylvania. The living area was on the same level as the office while the bedrooms were up a level and the kitchen and dining room were down a few steps.
“I had never seen anything like it before,” Stein says about his folded-plate roof design. “It was simply an enlargement of the idea of the usual cross-bridging that you see in a floor for stiffening; the roofing and ceiling just followed that [design]. I used it on three houses ultimately.”
In 2010, Bobbie Ann Tilkens-Fisher bought the home. “When we first moved in, we really had no idea what we would use the former dental office for,” says Tilkens-Fisher, an art history and museum studies college instructor. “But the house inspired me to start my own mid-century design business—At Home Modern—and gave me the room to run it.”
Adapted from the original text by Michelle Gingeri-Brown.
With over thirty years of collecting, celebrating stories of Mid Century Modern houses, it is difficult to choose just a few of our favorite house tours. For more, check out the Atomic Ranch book and make sure you subscribe to the magazine to see more fab MCM homes.
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