[piano intro] - [Narrator] Come and see how unique dwellings or structures across the state can feel like home and captivate us with their history, whimsy and charm.

- [George] We have about 5,000 modernist houses, past and present, all across North Carolina.

- [Narrator] It's all on My Home, coming up next.

[soft bluegrass music] All across the state, we're uncovering the unique stories that make North Carolina my home.

♪ Come home ♪ ♪ Come home ♪ [soft music continues] [upbeat soft music] - [George] We have about 5,000 modernist houses, past and present, all across North Carolina.

They really are a part of North Carolina's legacy as much as medicine or tobacco or Clay Aiken.

- [David] I think it's important to save these homes because they tell a story.

We have a rich history of modernism in North Carolina, and it's an important cultural aspect of this region.

- [George] NC modernists started tracking and documenting these houses about 20 or so years ago because houses tend to get destroyed, if you don't know where they are and why they're important.

- [Melinda] NC State School of Design launched this movement in this area, and I think it's important to honor that history.

[crowd cheering] - [George] It's all about keeping these houses from being destroyed as much as possible.

[soft music continues] - [David] NC State played a major role in bringing modernism to North Carolina, and the concentration of modernist structures that we have here is clearly part of the legacy of the School of Design and the School of Architecture.

[upbeat music] - In 1948, NC State hired a hotshot dean from the University of Oklahoma who was all in on modernism.

His goal was to put Raleigh on the map, and he was very successful in that.

[upbeat music continues] - [David] Kamphoefner was a radical and a visionary.

When he came here, he brought a modernist type of education and style of architecture with him.

He brought in national and internationally known architects and designers to be part of the education.

People like Matthew Novitzky from Poland, George Matsumoto, Eduardo Catalano from Argentina.

- [George] Terry Waugh, Brian Shawcroft, Duncan Stewart.

- [David] People like Frank Lloyd Wright were visiting the school, Buckminster Fuller.

With those international perspectives also came new viewpoints on how to design.

- [George] Modernist architecture was very forward thinking.

It was very innovative.

Students put together incredible little houses dotted all around Raleigh primarily, but the faculty and students eventually would do houses all across North Carolina.

This was essentially sculpture that you could live in.

The key thing about modernism that is so appealing is the vibe.

[jazzy music] The vibe of most modernist houses is more relaxed.

It's less busy than a typical house.

- [David] I think one thing that comes to mind right away in modernist houses is just openness.

The sense of space and the sense of being able to see through spaces into other spaces, and that they're connected by view, not hidden behind walls.

- [George] The houses that were built in the early days of modernism had a number of shared characteristics.

They tended to have a flat or a low pitched roof.

They tended to have an unusual geometry.

They were not just boxes with pitched attics, for instance.

They tended to have a lot of openings, windows, atria, courtyards, et cetera, so that the outside and the inside were one and the same in the experience of the house.

And then finally, they had an open plan where your living room flows into your dining room, flows into your kitchen.

- Probably though the best known house is the Matsumoto House.

It received international acclaim.

It was on the cover of magazines, it was shown in world's fairs, and it just became known as one of the the prime modern houses of the 1950s.

- [George] George Matsumoto built exquisite little small jewelbox houses where every square inch was meticulously, thoughtfully designed.

Because of Raleigh's fascination with modernism because of NC State, the Country Club Hills area of Raleigh was full of modernist houses.

[upbeat music] - [Melinda] We moved to a modernist house in Country Club Hills, very close to where the Weber House was.

- The Weber House serves as a great example of that influence that the School of Design had on modern architecture in the area.

- [George] The Weber House was designed in the 1950s in Raleigh, North Carolina.

It's a 1954 modernist house created by George Matsumoto and William Weber.

Recently, it was up for sale, and then we found out that the new owners were going to destroy it.

[dramatic music] - [David] I think that it was presented in social media as, you know, the house has been bought and a young family wants to build their dream house there.

This was a one acre lot.

You know, the house wasn't practical for them to work with.

- A lot of the modernist architects of the day had designed amazing houses in that neighborhood, and several had been torn down, so when that came out, you know, it just really hit a cord.

- [George] The new owners were determined to get rid of the house, because they're gonna be building a much larger house on the site.

- Property values have just gone crazy in the triangle.

A piece of land inside the belt line in the city that's an acre, you know, either you would obviously build a gigantic house on it, or you would chop the lot up into four pieces and have four structures on the same lot.

There isn't as much value in the outdoor space.

- A lot of the houses, again, were built in that first layer of suburbs, which at the time they were built, you know, that land was probably quite affordable.

Now that same property is worth millions, and if we look at the way that the houses were designed, a lot of them were quite modest in scale.

People expect in a house now to be twice as big as they were in the fifties at least, so these houses, you really have to wanna live in one to preserve it.

You have to be okay with a smaller house, typically.

- I know that they're, you know- - Rich people who love small houses.

- Well, or who value what they are and are willing to make the trade off for maybe you're not gonna have as much space, but you're gonna live in a piece of art.

- Many times, people who are buying modernist houses and want to tear them down don't know much about the history or the importance of this kind of architecture.

Many times they don't, or they're unsuspecting that a community would actually care about this old weird house that they just bought.

So we mobilized support throughout the community to try to prevent the demolition or make other arrangements, and a couple stepped up with the Knowles to save the house and move it.

- I mean, they're heroes in my book, you know, for saving that house and figuring out a way to move it to a new property.

That's going above and beyond what people are typically willing to do to save a modern house.

- [George] The location where it's going to be is next door to another modernist house that they bought and restored, which is absolutely beautiful.

- It just seemed like, gosh, wouldn't it be great to have that house next door, like a piece of history that we'd always loved?

And that's kind of how it came to be.

- You know, I think we were fortunate in that we were able to begin a conversation with the new owners, and they were very amenable and cooperative.

The process of moving the house turned out to be a little more involved than we first suspected.

[upbeat jazzy music] Unfortunately, we couldn't take the whole house.

To take the whole house was gonna be very expensive and very complicated.

The cross section of the whole house going through city intersections was too large.

We had to revise the plan a couple times.

We met with the City Preservation Office to help us figure out how to get the clearance on the city streets.

We learned that, you know, we didn't have to pay to have a bunch of bucket trucks go before and after.

You know, they put us in touch with Duke Power to make sure that nobody's service was disrupted.

Traffic lights had to be lifted, and then Raleigh City Police were hired to escort us.

We had to move through city streets.

You can't move a house on the belt line, which seemed like it would be the most direct route, but it's too dangerous with interstate traffic going whizzing by.

Part of this was being pulled by a semi, but when they got to steep hills, they had to disconnect the semi and use self-powered dollies that were underneath the house.

- Look, should we walk over there and see it go by?

I'm kind of excited.

- [Andy] They could actually steer it somehow with a remote control moving through corners that were very tight.

- [Melinda] All these people showed up, all these neighbors I'd never met, and random people who saw it on the news who wanted to show up, and it was just this big celebration.

[crowd cheering] - [Bill] My father, William Weber, was the architect that built this house behind us.

I lived in the house 'til I was 16, and, you know, seeing it roll down the driveway from where I live to its new home, it's really great to see somebody that really, truly appreciates the architecture and has gone to the length they have to save it.

[soft dramatic music] - I don't know that it came so much from us as from the community at large, that it became bigger than us.

[people chattering excitedly] - [George] People who love to live in modernist houses, they really, really love it, and it forms the basis for helping not only preserve these, but find owners for them for future generations.

- [David] Graduates of the program have built so many structures that are remarkable, beautiful, and I think it's really important to spare them if for no other reason, to have that complete arc of history illustrated in tangible form.

[upbeat dramatic music] [jazzy music] [jazzy music continues] - [Buddy] It was not in my vision for it to turn out that way.

It was only supposed to be one room.

[jazzy music continues] When I try to tell people, they ask me, you have a tree house?

I say, yeah, well, I don't try to explain to 'em about the tree house because I can't.

'Cause in your mind you have a picture of a tree house, and that's far, far from this, so there's no reason.

I just say, you need to come and see it.

[jazzy music continues] My name is Willie Melvin.

Most of my friends call me Buddy.

At the beginning, the tree was in a garden.

My daddy had a garden out there.

One day I just said, I believe I'll try to build me a tree house, and I was grown, so I said, "Well, I want a tree house for grown people.

I ain't want a kids tree house."

So I asked this lady for a tobacco bar, and she said, yeah, and that's when I started.

I built me one room.

[jazzy music continues] Tree room first, that's number one, then I built the kitchen, which is number two, and then I built the pool room and the dance floor.

I do think that I have a gift that I can see stuff in my head, out in front, and sketch it on paper and I know what it's gonna look like before I finish it, and that's probably hard to explain to somebody that can't see a little ahead.

[jazzy music continues] The tree is probably 80 years old, but the reason it's as large as it is is because of there's an underground stream coming through here, and it feeds, it's constantly getting water.

We had a store.

It was called Melvin's Grocery, and that's the sign.

[jazzy music continues] The people in Roseboro remember that.

[jazzy music continues] The score clock came from my high school.

The score malfunctioned, and they had to get another clock so they were going to throw it away, so I got it.

I said, Mike, Mike, come on there.

[sign buzzing] [jazzy music continues] This is my life-size poster of Obama.

But you can see I'm taller than he is.

[jazzy music continues] But he's the president, I'm not.

Everybody that comes signs the wall, ones on the wall that's highlighted are the people that have passed, and I got 'em highlighted like a memorial.

This is my mother's.

That was my mother's signature right there.

My sister's is over here.

She passed too, Veronica.

[solemn music] My great-grandfather who was a slave, his father was Frank Melvin, my daddy who was Albert Melvin, and that's me, and that's my son.

The ones with the star on them, they died.

It was my cousin.

This was one of my friends who played baseball with me, and he used to be the policeman in Roseboro.

[solemn music continues] [solemn music continues] [solemn music continues] I spend a lot of time out here alone by myself.

[solemn music continues] [solemn music continues] It's peaceful.

It's my getaway.

Sometimes I wonder how I've done it, all this work.

50 years from today, if a person was to happen to come to the tree house, I would hope that they would feel the freedom and the atmosphere would be to a point where they would want to come back.

And I know it would be a place where they hadn't seen anything like it before, but the inspiration of a person to have thought of something like this and built it, that's what I would hope they would get from it.

[solemn music continues] [upbeat hopeful music] [upbeat music continues] - [Nancy] I think that God gave this wonderful, beautiful stretch of sand for everybody to draw close together.

[upbeat music continues] [upbeat music continues] - [Woman With Glasses] We swam three times a day.

We ate three times a day.

We slept a lot and talked a lot.

[upbeat music continues] - [Margie] There's so much history for us as a family.

Our family has such deep roots in this place.

[upbeat music continues] - [Nancy] My name is Nancy Rascoe, and I've been coming to Nags Head since I was six months old.

Every summer I stayed with my Grandmother Nixon.

The Nixon Cottage was actually the Grande Cottage in 1866.

Everybody just seemed to survive the hurricanes, the cottages, the people.

I think it's because they knew how to build them.

They built them with the right roof and the right pilings.

[upbeat joyful music] - Welcome to the Outlaw Cottage, I'm Margie Worthington, and this is my sister, Georgia Sullivan.

- Hi nice to meet you.

- How are you?

- And this is my niece.

- Georgiana.

- Georgiana Sullivan.

- Thank you guys for having us, a beautiful cottage.

Tell me about the history of how old this cottage is and how it's been in your family.

- The house was actually built in 1885 by our great-grandfather, Captain Edward Ralph Outlaw, and he cut the timber for this cottage up on the farm that we still own in Bertie County.

This was the last of the 13 original cottages to be built over here.

Terrible storm, August 25th, 1918, washed houses away.

- Well, it's funny, it's almost like they didn't have paper.

We were trained not to draw on the wall, weren't we?

- [Margie] Yeah, we were.

- And they did it all the time.

So you get to know the generations in a way that was like the old days here, where you weren't on your phone and you weren't doing all those other things.

You're just focusing on this place.

But there's magic here too in these old houses.

You feel the people who came before you.

[upbeat hopeful music] - [Frances] My name is Frances Inglis and I'm from Edenton, and I've been coming to this cottage by the villa most of my life.

- So this is a picture of you when you were about how old?

- I think about eight years old.

- Sitting on the railing at the original, pretty original cottage.

- [Frances] Well, it had been added to a little bit.

According to a local historian, it's the oldest cottage on the beach, and it can be dated from the time that an old Methodist church was torn down in Elizabeth City and the big old framing timbers were reused.

[upbeat hopeful music] I think we just need to treasure each minute we have and gather the families and just have the same simple routines and peace as long as we can.

[soft music] - [Gene] When I get an idea, I want to do something, I don't think about how to do it.

I just kind of get out and do it.

[metal clanking] I get obsessed with projects, and I can't let go of it, and it causes me to spend hours doing it.

I've always worked with my hands.

I repaired scientific equipment, refrigeration systems, bakery equipment.

I never did any art.

As a repair guy, I could creatively think about how to solve problems, but this kind of takes it to a whole 'nother dimension.

My name is Gene Dillard, and we're in Durham, North Carolina.

Probably better known as Northgate Park, and this is my home, welcome.

[upbeat dramatic music] I moved into this house in about 2000.

I started with the metal sculptures in the front yard, and I just progressed with projects.

Wren Smith, a friend and I, we mosaiced the first big piece, that really stuck with me, and I've been bitten by the mosaic bug ever since then.

About 2015, I started with my house.

Some people say, "Why'd you do this?"

I said, "Well, I thought it was gonna be cheaper than going to counseling, but I'm not so sure now."

[upbeat music] - [Carol] We've lived in this house for 40 years.

He was moving into my neighborhood.

I had been here.

I think what he does is wonderful.

It grows and changes constantly, and I love it.

Gene called me once in a while and would ask me to distract people.

He said, "Would you come over and talk?"

I did, I did that for him a few times, so then I considered myself to be a docent.

- [Vincent] Carol obviously was here while he was building everything, and she started giving tours herself, so she prided herself on being docent.

Well, I came along and started doing tours.

We got a little competition, she won.

She's docent number one, I'm docent number two.

I wanted to start documenting what Gene is doing here because it's just a spectacular piece of art.

When he retired, he really started working on the wall and finishing off the house.

This is definitely a working outdoor studio, but it draws so much attention.

People come by, they see the house, they love it, they're scared to walk up the driveway, and I thought it would be nice to have something to hand people, pointing out little details of his work that may be missed because people are overwhelmed by seeing this house.

- The bottle wall, the chimney on top.

- [Vincent] The surfing dude, the mermaid.

- This was supposed to be like an ocean scene.

I really don't know what I'm doing.

I'm just decorating my cave.

[Gene laughing] You know, I've worked all my life as a repairman for money and you never have enough, and yeah, I don't have enough, but this is something I do just because I enjoy it, you know?

It rocks my world.

[jazzy music] [jazzy music continues] [jazzy music continues]