Five Fields Gem

SOLD: 464 Concord Ave. Five Fields, Lexington. Offered at $899,000. Photos by Lara Kimmerer unless otherwise noted. Click any photo to enlarge and view as a slide show. 

Great opportunity to own in the highly sought-after Five Fields neighborhood for under $1 million. Sited back from the road on a private wooded backyard abutting conservation, the International Style modern house has approximately 2,907 s.f. of living area, plus additional storage, and a two-car garage. A classic mid-century-modern breezeway foyer with walls of glass sliders leads to a very large family room addition to the right, set in its own wing for those who want a bit of separation. There is basement storage underneath. Turning back toward the main house, you’ll find the type of light-filled open floor plan that fans of the style love. Up a few steps to the main floor, there’s a living room that forms an open “T” with the dining room and kitchen, which has direct entry to a screened-in porch. The dining room has also been extended with a solarium window set, allowing abundant natural light. The living room has a band of windows overlooking the private back yard and conservation land beyond. A wing with three bedrooms and two full baths forms the other side of the house.

On the first level, there is a master suite with its own full bath, and the original family room/playroom with a stone fireplace. The fourth full bath and a laundry are also on this walk-out level.

All of this space is ready to be made your own.

Concord Ave has brand new sidewalks so it’s a breeze to get to the neighborhood pool and common land, and if you if you like to stroll to shopping or public transportation.

446 Concord Ave — More Details

• Four bedrooms
• Four full baths
• 2,907 s.f. of living area
• .87 acre lot
• Oil fired forced-hot water and radiant heating
• 200 amp electric
• Two fireplaces

The Neighborhood

The below is taken from our history of Five Fields, which is included in an overview of the modernist communities found in Lexington, here at this page (includes a video tour of Five Fields, Moon Hill, and Peacock Farm).

While the houses of Six Moon Hill in Lexington were mainly built as a community to house the highly collaborative The Architects Collaborative (TAC) partners and associates themselves (Bauhaus and TAC founder, Walter Gropius, built his own famous house out in the nearby town of Lincoln), the architects also conceived of their next such development of spec houses to sell to other home buyers and chose a farm on the southwestern part of town. The old Cutler Farm was purchased by the TAC and the young firm moved forward on their conception of a development that they would control from beginning to end. This became the neighborhood known as Five Fields.

One of the original eight TAC partners, Dick Morehouse, who was a resident of Moon Hill, oversaw the project and even acted as a salesman, showing the new homes to interested buyers.

The project was conceptualized as 68 house sites, though the initial phase consisted of 20 houses built in 1951, 1952, and 1953, the sales of which would finance the rest of the project. The original price points of these homes—some of which now fetch close to $2 million– ranged from about $18,000-35,000.

“For twenty years after the establishment of the neighborhood, TAC approval had to be obtained for additions. The restriction expired in the early 1970s. Today, almost all of the houses have been modified or added onto over the years, obscuring what was originally a neighborhood of houses built as variations on a few standard plans.” (See link to source, below).

As one of the other original partners, Chip Harkness, explained to the Boston Globe a number of years ago, describing the goals of the TAC when they set out to build Moon Hill, “An initial goal was low-income housing. We were shooting to build homes for under $15,000. That’s quite a bit less than the $1 million one of the houses recently went for.” Like Moon Hill, form followed function in the design of the Five Fields houses, the homes were sited sympathetically into their surroundings and the existing contours of the land, and there was common land set aside and a swimming pool, a playground with playing fields, and a skating pond, for the community. This community spirit carries on today in both Moon Hill and Five Fields.

A boy jumps into the Five Fields swimming pool, from the commemorative book, Five Fields — Five Decades: A Community in Progress.

More can be read here, at the page for Five Fields on the town of Lexington’s Historic Survey site.