When it comes to modern homes in the Washington DC area, there may have been no bigger impact than that of Charles M. Goodman—an American architect whose heyday was a half-century ago.
Born in New York City in 1906, Goodman grew up in Chicago as a child and received his training as an architect at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Influenced by modernist pioneers like Frank Lloyd Wright and Richard Neutra, Goodman moved to Washington, DC in 1934 and became an architect for FDR’s Public Buildings Administration, the Treasury Department and the Army Air Forces Airport Transport Command during World War II.
While government buildings can seem monolithic and staid, Goodman sought to instill a contemporary sense of style, including the U.S. Federal Building for the New York World’s Fair in 1939, the original terminal building for the Washington National Airport and even an embassy in Iceland! After the war, Goodman opened his own firm. But while he sometimes created individual custom homes for individuals, his greater emphasis was on a production scale—designing entire communities.
That mission began with Hollin Hills in Alexandria. Planning began in 1946 when developer Robert Davenport purchased 326 acres of heavily wooded land. Davenport was interested in homes that would comport to their natural surroundings and he found the perfect partner in Goodman who designed a series of models that could be produced inexpensively for an emerging post-war middle class while also featuring giant walls of windows, subtly sloping roofs and fascinating geometric aesthetics.
And just like that, the mid-century modern era began in the Washington Metropolitan area, aping a trend that was just getting started in other parts of the nation as well.
Homes for sale in Hollin Hills were built between 1949 and 1971, eventually yielding more than 450 iconic structures. Goodman designed his last home in the community in 1961 but his guiding vision remained in force. Meanwhile, he had also been active with a number of other projects.
From 1949 to 1951, Goodman worked with developers Paul Burman and Paul Hammond on Hammond Wood in the Wheaton/Silver Spring area of Montgomery County, Maryland, with 58 spare but elegant houses, often with huge chimneys on one end. Hammond Hill was the sister community with 20 homes built in 1950. All 78 structures set into rolling, woodsy land, now form a historic district.
Between 1951 and 1952 Goodman also built five single-family homes in what is now the Takoma Park Historic District near the Washington, DC/Maryland border. During the same period, he designed a number of houses in Wheaton Crest as well as the Crest Park subdivision in Silver Spring’s Hillandale.
Goodman returned to the area from 1958 to 1961 with what is now the Rock Creek Woods Historic District in Silver Spring, featuring 74 contemporary homes nestled into a bucolic valley between two streams. These large two-story dwellings came in four models with vertical siding and large wood panels juxtaposed by glass and brick.
In all, there are upward of 275 Goodman homes in Montgomery County. He also offered his production designs and cost-efficient methods of modular construction to numerous other merchant builders throughout the country.
He also ventured outside of the DC area on his own at times, building custom homes in upstate New York, designing the Houston House 31-story high-rise in Houston and even working In partnership with industrial giant Alcoa, designing 24 Alcoa “Care-Free” aluminum houses in different parts of the country.
During the 1950s, our intrepid architect designed a number of iconic houses with cubist elements and car ports in the Lake Barcroft neighborhood in Fairfax County. Imagine the view over the lake from those giant windows.
Stunning views were also integral to Hickory Cluster—90 International-style townhouses built in 1962 overlooking Lake Anne in Fairfax County’s Reston community. Goodman clustered these buildings with their glass walls, balconies and roof decks in groups of three, leaving 90 percent of the land in its natural state with woods, water and trails.
Another 1960s project was the highly distinctive River Park Mutual Homes—a 130-unit cooperative in Washington, DC’s Southwest Waterfront. Here, grid-like apartment-style structures are staggered with townhouses featuring barrel-like roofs and aluminum trim.
Adding another facet to the Goodman portfolio is Height Point, a section of 21 contemporary duplexes in the Virginia Heights community just south of the Columbia Pike in South Arlington.
From singular custom creations for the very wealthy to affordable style on a large production scale, Charles M. Goodman left a huge impact, not only on the DC area but throughout the country. The mid-century modernist passed away in 1992 at the age of 86.
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