Dream Houses

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They included lots of little touches, such as a laundry on the second floor, a Murphy bed in the basement, and a library nook in the upstairs hall. The newel post on the stairs replicates the one they liked in their previous house. The kids' bathroom has a round window above the sink instead of a mirror. There's a mirror on another wall.

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While all the architects' houses are different, certain elements are similar. The most noticeable is that they all rejected four-walled rooms in favor of free-flowing space, except in the private areas. All of them paid careful attention to the light coming in.

The exteriors are all Modernist, either totally with the straight vertical lines that define the style as in the Osler, Marzolf, and Serbay houses, or with references to earlier styles used by Hopkins, Farrell, and Melchi.

Many of the architects took the opportunity to try new materials and technologies. Melchi used plumbing pipe for his porch pillars. Hopkins was the first architect in the area to install geothermal heating. Serbay used a Canadian construction method he had read about, with a thicker outer wall for insulation, and a conventional inner one for wiring, plumbing, and heating ducts.