Lexington Techbuilt Available! Affordable Style and Space.

Click any picture to enlarge and view in a slide show. Photos by Lara Kimmerer unless otherwise noted.

  If you’re dyed-in-the-wool, DON’T COME! If you think early Georgian or Late Cape Cod is just the berries, forget we came in. But if you and your kith enjoy plenty of room and light, believe a house should be designed to live in — not merely to exist in, like the idea of getting maximum space per buck — then let’s talk. We’d like to explain and show you our concept of a new type of lighthearted living that we deeply believe in — the Techbuilt House.

So reads the ad for the original Techbuilt House published in the local Lexington Minuteman newspaper in 1956, and we could not have said it better (though we did need to look up the word “kith” and are still not sure about it). And while the Georgian is still holding strong in these parts, we have also had a front row seat for, and in fact have played a significant part in the resurgence of the “lighthearted living” of the Mid-Century-Modern house. Here we have on offer nothing less than one of the earliest Techbuilts, a model home for the company, and a recently updated iteration at that. Enjoy all the natural light and sweeping private wooded views via walls of glass at 5 Demar Road. Designed by Techbuilt founder, Carl Koch, in the International style and guided by Frank Lloyd Wright’s Usonian House principles, the open floor plan maximizes flow while the siting takes advantage of the light and private 31,182 s.f lot.  Located in the highly desirable Turning Mill neighborhood with deeded membership in the heated Paint Rock Pool, a neighborhood gathering spot with lifeguards, swimming lessons, and social events. The new Estabrook School and Paint Mine Conservation land are a stone’s throw. The house is in turn-key condition. Three bedrooms, two full baths, including master suite.

(Under agreement). Offered at $699,000. Showing begin Friday, July 17, with public open houses Friday 4:30-6:00, Saturday 12:30-2:30 and Sunday, 1:000-3:00. Any/all offers to be reviewed 3:30 Tuesday, July 21. Contact us if you have any questions or would like to request a private showing.

Here is the full list of the current owners improvements:

5 Demar Rd Improvements/Updates Since 2007

Miscellaneous

The architecture and the neighborhood

Residents love the area due to its proximity to the highly desirable new Estabrook School (adjacent — many kids walk or bike, and in the process of having a new facility built on the grounds) and because it offers membership in the country-club-like Paint Rock swimming pool, which was updated in 2012. The area also borders the vast Paint Mine conservation area, with beautiful walking trails. The Lexpress bus runs through. And a quick zip takes you down backroads to Whole Foods, Staples, Super Stop & Shop, Marshall’s, and so on in Bedford, or back the other way into the center of Lexington. And it is not far from Route 128. Lexpress stops at the driveway of 4 Turning Mill, among other spots.

Here is the swimming pool from summer 2012:

The land for the Turning Mill neighborhood was purchased by the Techbuilt Corporation. There were three model homes.  The first one built was 4 Turning Mill. Most people in Lexington know the area as Turning Mill, but it started out being referred to as Middle Ridge. Though it is now a large area of eight or nine streets, it started around Turning Mill Road and Demar Road, with Techbuilt houses designed by Carl Koch, before growing further north and west and incorporating other modern designs, most notably, the Peacock Farm-style house plan designed by Walter Pierce, who along with Danforth Compton founded Lexington’s Peacock Farm neighborhood on the other side of town. This design was licensed out to other developers, as was the case here in Turning Mill. There have also been some Deck Houses built. The expanded part of the area is now referred to as “Upper Turning Mill.”

Research in part via Lexington Historic Survey, which notes:

Of the 95 homes in Middle Ridge, thirty-five are prefabricated “Techbuilt” homes.

Middle Ridge was originally conceived and designed in 1955 by architect Carl Koch as a neighborhood of “Techbuilt” homes. After receiving his architectural training at Harvard under Bauhaus founder, Walter Gropius, Koch taught architecture at MIT and created the first planned community of modern houses in the region at Snake Hill Road in Belmont in 1941. Prior to building in Lexington, he also designed and constructed Conantum, Concord’s first residential housing development (1951) and Kendal Common in Weston (1950). First introduced in 1953, the Techbuilt house was a low-cost, semi-factory-built modern style house which used modular construction.

Source: Carl Koch, At Home with Tomorrow, 1958