Brian Boucher
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A small house by legendary architect Louis Kahn could be yours for less than $300,000. The three-bedroom, two-bath house, at 417 Sherry Way, in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, was completed in 1962 and sits on a lot of less than an acre. It measures about 1,700 square feet. Cherry Hill is about 10 miles from Philadelphia.
“For those who admire architecture,” says realtor Fox Roach on its website, “this home is a delight.”
Though the house is being sold in “as is condition,” realtor Rosemary Mercanti-Anthony says the only problem is that the radiant heat is not working properly. “Everything else seems to be cosmetic,” she told artnet News. “It hit the market on Thursday and I have a lot of interest in the property,” she added, with a number of scheduled showings through next week.
“It’s just amazing,” she said of being inside the house. “I love watching people come in. When they walk into the central room, they look up and light up. You really have to be there to feel it.”
Fred E. and Elaine Cox Clever commissioned the house after seeing Kahn’s Trenton Bath House (opened 1955), stark modernist buildings that frame the entrance to the Trenton Jewish Community Center. The monumental concrete forms represent Kahn’s first adaptation of ancient structures, and the project saw Kahn hit his artistic stride.
Kahn built only nine houses. In the Clever house, five small rooms with pyramidal roofs surround a central living room topped by four gable-like structures.
A titanic figure in 20th-century architecture, Kahn is known mainly for institutions like the Yale University Art Gallery and Yale Center for British Art (see Yale Center for British Art Will Close for Renovations and Get Outta Town! 30 Art Day Trips); the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas; the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, in La Jolla, California (see Getty Foundation Will Rescue Modern Architecture Gems); and the National Assembly Building in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The most recently constructed Kahn project is the Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park, on New York City’s Roosevelt Island.
If you want to catch up on Kahn’s work before making an offer on the house, we recommend My Architect, a 2003 documentary by his son Nathaniel Kahn, who barely knew his father—Kahn had several families—and set out to understand him by touring the world to see his buildings and interviewing his other wives, lovers and children. Showing up to sing Kahn’s praises in interviews are architects I.M. Pei, Frank Gehry, Philip Johnson, Moshe Safdie, and Robert Stern. You can check out a Spanish-subtitled version on Vimeo. Be warned: there’s a surprising number of tears shed over the architect.
