New Backyard Studio for a Home in an Iconic Modern Neighborhood

While cross-country skiing in the 1940s, a group of idealistic young architects working with modernist Walter Gropius at The Architects Collaborative (TAC) came across a hilly, rocky undeveloped piece of land. Once a farm, the Lexington, Massachusetts, property had a barn with six cars made by Moon Motor Car Co. inside. The idea for a different kind of neighborhood named after those cars, Six Moon Hill, evolved from there.

From 1947 to 1953, the architects built 28 homes on the hilly site, using modernist principles of simplicity and affordability and incorporating utopian ideas like paths between and through the properties for everyone in the community to enjoy. “All of them except Gropius designed homes for themselves to live in here. They were able to use this development as an experiment,” architect Colin Flavin says.

This home at Six Moon Hill was designed by Sarah Pillsbury Harkness, a founding partner of TAC, and built in 1949. The current homeowners, a couple with three daughters, wanted to create a studio for artistic expression, gathering and enjoying views of the surrounding forest and garden. They also wanted a carport. Flavin designed the two structures to echo the architecture of the main house and fit the sloped, rocky site.