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Carved Into a Hill in Glenside, a Modern Masterpiece

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This week we're featuring the interiors of the homes that were on this weekend's Philadelphia Modern Home Tours. It was the first time Philly was a featured Modern Home Tours city, and Curbed staff photographer Laura Kicey zoomed from North Philly to Chadds Ford to Mt. Airy to get pictures.

Photos by Laura Kicey.

This three-bedroom home was built in 1961 by John Whitehead, a disciple of Louis Kahn and Phillip Johnson. Both the year of its creation and Whitehead's influences are clear in the materials and form. Perhaps the mid-century date also accounts for the lawn jockey outside, which does seem rather ... passé, to put it gently.

Like Kahn's Fisher House, this one also has a lower level that the house sort of floats above; and this house, too, is meant to be one with the natural space around it. The backyard waterfall has steel panels around it to suppress noise—like the sound of your neighbors saying, "What's up with that lawn jockey?"

Other features of the home include a bathroom and steam room with a medical-industrial feel tempered by the curves of a vessel sink, and two field stone fireplaces. It's 2,500 square feet.

· Three Waverly Street Carriage Houses, Transformed [CPHI]
· Inside the Beta 2.5 House on Controversial Amber Street [CPHI]
· Eye-Popping LEGO Colors Inside a Mt. Airy Stone Colonial [CPHI]
· Mind-Boggling Interior Behind a Strict Modernist Facade [CPHI]