Set Among the Pines in Turning Mill — Pending Sale

Imagine watching all of the seasons from the expansive walls of glass in this remarkable midcentury-modern home designed by pioneering architect Carl Koch. Set off the road among the pines on a woodsy level lot, this post-and-beam home welcomes you warmly, from its cork floors to its cathedral ceilings. You’ll feel like you’re vacationing at home in this retreat, part of the Turning Mill neighborhood with bonded membership in the beloved Paint Rock Swimming Pool. Almost surrounded by conservation lands and trails: the Landlocked Forest, Paint Mine & Hennessy Meadow. Neighborhood kids walk to the highly-rated Estabrook Elementary. The one-level efficient floor plan features four good-sized bedrooms, two full baths, and laundry down a ship-lapped hallway, while the living area is open plan, kitchen, dining area, and the dramatic living room, where indoors and outdoors blend almost seamlessly. A three-year-old Buderus boiler heats the home. Gaggenau kitchen appliances. This should go fast!

Showings begin Friday, September 29 at 4:30-6:00 open house. Offers will be reviewed at noon, on Tuesday, October 3

Located in the Turning Mill Neighborhood Conservation District.

The Turning Mill Neighborhood

Residents love the area due to its proximity to the highly desirable 2015-built Estabrook School (adjacent — many kids walk or bike) and because it offers membership in the country-club-like Paint Rock swimming pool, which was improved and updated in 2012. It 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, 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.

Below 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 and custom homes built. The expanded part of the area is now referred to as “Upper Turning Mill.” There are now Facebook and neighborhood web pages for 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.

About Carl Koch

There is an understandable reluctance on the part of everyman to
build his counsel of nuts, bolts, and chromium. The industrial
revolution will help us realize our dreams if we can handle it, but we
haven’t handled it too well so far. Although it is pathetic to think
we can escape the pressure of competitive business, the battle of
home-office transportation, and a compulsion to drive ourselves too
far, too fast, too much, by escaping into fantasy in the shape of an
eighteenth-century farmhouse, it is understandable that we try.

— Carl Koch, preface to At Home With Tomorrow, 1958.

Read all about Carl Koch at our page about him, here.