Alan Goldberg Variations

There are certain houses in New Canaan that we refer to as “move-in-tomorrow” houses – places where, when we visit, we look at each other and agree that it’s so right we could move in tomorrow. One of them is the house on Laurel Road that Alan Goldberg lives in. We were there for a cocktail party that preceded the New Canaan Historical Society’s 2004 Modern House Day and immediately felt as if it enveloped us in warmth and elegance (the picture on the far right of the second row, here, shows the interior of the house).

Goldberg worked for Eliot Noyes (whose own house, on Country Club Road, is also a move-in-tomorrow house), heading Noyes’s firm’s architecture division, where he was noted for designing Mobil gas stations (among many other things – check out this story, from New Canaan-Darien magazine to get an idea of the range of his interests).

This came to mind this morning when I came across an ad for a house on Frogtown Road that Goldberg designed. It’s big by modern standards – 4,300 square feet – and was built in 1982, which makes it a late-century modern, if there is such a thing. I’m not sure I’d call it a move-in-tomorrow house but it’s worth looking at, here. --TA