The influential Northwest Modernist 1937 house, hidden in the Southwest hills of Portland, has made it to the ranks of National Historic Landmark.
Oregon is known for a lot of things, but being a hotbed of influential 20th century modernist architecture is not one of them. Our claims to fame tend to be more humble, homegrown, and of the earth: Mt. Hood, the unspoiled coast, hazelnuts and hoppy beers, the wonky-sounding and invisible Urban Growth Boundary.
So perhaps it is appropriate that the latest Oregon building to be granted National Historic Landmark status by the U.S. Department of the Interior is a woodframe house quietly hidden behind dense trees off SW Skyline Boulevard: architect (and environmental preservationist) John Yeon’s 1937 Watzek House. It is hidden, but well worth being discovered.
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Since 1996 the Watzek House has been owned by the University of Oregon as part of the John Yeon Center for Architectural Studies founded with the gift of the house and an endowment from Richard Brown, Yeon’s longtime companion who worked with Yeon and lived in for decades). The university plans to offer periodic tours and has inked a deal with prominent historian Marc Treib to write a monograph on Yeon’s work.