[gentle upbeat music] - 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.

- 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.

- NCModernist 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.

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

- [Onlooker] Yeah, there it is.

- Yeah, there it is.

- [Onlooker] Oh my God!

- It's all about keeping these houses from being destroyed as much as possible.

[gentle upbeat music] [birds tweeting] - 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.

[curious strings 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.

[curious strings music] - [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 Nowicki from Poland, George Matsumoto, Eduardo Catalano from Argentina.

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

- People like Frank Lloyd Wright were visiting the school.

Buckminster Fuller.

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

- 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 a sculpture that you could live in.

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

[relaxing 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.

- 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 prime modern houses of the 1950s.

- George Matsumoto built exquisite, little, small jewel box 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.

[gentle perky 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.

- 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.

[gentle perky music] - 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.

- 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 Beltline 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 '50s, 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 there are, you know.

- Rich people who love small houses.

- 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?

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.

[perky 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'd 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 Beltline, which seemed like it would be the most direct route.

But it's too dangerous with interstate traffic 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.

- 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 cheers] - [Onlooker] Hip hip hooray and Marshall!

- My father, William weber, was the architect that built this house behind us.

Lived in the house till I was 16.

And, you know, seeing it roll down the driveway from where I lived 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.

[uplifting 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 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.

- 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.

[uplifting music] [uplifting music continues]