They’d Already Renovated an Iconic Midcentury. What’s One More?

After expertly updating Louis Kahn’s historic Esherick house, a Pennsylvania couple discover their forever home in a surprising place.

They’d Already Renovated an Iconic Midcentury. What’s One More?

After expertly updating Louis Kahn’s historic Esherick house, a Pennsylvania couple discover their forever home in a surprising place.

In December 2017, Paul Savidge and Dan Macey were staying at a hotel for a wedding in Reading, one and a half hours northwest of their home in Philadelphia. Once outside the nuptial festivities, they were met with a bleak winter weekend, and the couple got a flat tire on a dark and icy trip home. The dour weather seeped into their mood. Who would want to live here? they asked each other.

Designed by the prominent midcentury architecture firm Muhlenberg Brothers in the late 1950s, a house outside Reading, Pennsylvania, proved irresistible for Philadelphians Paul Savidge and Dan Macey.

As it turned out, they would.

In February 2019, the pair got a call from a real estate agent and friend specializing in midcentury houses. There was a house in Wyomissing, a town next to Reading, that they had to see, she said.

"We drove up to the site, we looked at the house, and we looked at each other," says Paul. Before the sun set, they were ready to sell their second home in New Hope, a town on the New Jersey border, and buy this one.

Built in 1957, the flat-roofed, International Style house featured floor-to-ceiling steel windows interspersed with oatmeal-hued brick walls and was perched on a slightly elevated corner parcel of land surrounded by a short slate wall. It was also a single story—exactly what Paul and Dan wanted to settle into as retirement edged closer.

A sunken library houses Paul’s extensive Jane Austen collection. Built-in walnut seating, also by Lutz Wood, is covered in Cortina Leathers cushions. A 1960s Hungarian tapestry hangs nearby.

See the full story on Dwell.com: They’d Already Renovated an Iconic Midcentury. What’s One More?
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