Riverview Home Designed By Noted Architect Neutra Recently Razed

For years the mid-century modern home at 1718 Minnekahda Road home sat inconspicuously among the larger nearby Riverview residences, despite being the only home in Tennessee designed by noted architect Richard Neutra.
 
Its demise was evidently little noticed as well. Early last fall, the home was razed after being sold by the daughter of Dr. Philip and Jean Livingston, who had built the structure in the mid-1950s.
 
George Bock III, who bought the home with his wife, Jamy, last July from Ann Livingston Raines, for $609,000, said he was very aware of the home’s significance and connection to the architect. However, its condition had deteriorated to where it was hard to restore, he said.
 
“It was beyond totaled,” he said. “It was actually a liability. If the homeless people had known about it, they would have been living in it. It was in disrepair and was un-repairable.”
 
Mr. Bock – who owns Bock Construction Inc. and is the son of the late former Baylor School teacher George “Doc” Bock – added that he would have restored it if he could. In fact, because of its connection to the late Mr. Neutra, he believes he could have sold a restored home for four times its value at the time he bought it and then built another home somewhere else without hardly denting into his profit. But the home’s condition prevented that.
 
The home’s razing actually came after some behind-the-scenes preservation efforts as meticulous as Mr. Neutra’s original plans for the home. UTC art and architecture professor Dr. Gavin Townsend, a devoted historic preservationist, said he and Dion Neutra, the son and former partner of the late Mr. Neutra, had worked -- with the encouragement of Ms. Raines -- to find a buyer or try to see if it could be restored.
 
“Dion and I tried to find a contractor who understood how to restore a period house,” Dr. Townsend said. “But the only ones who looked at the property could only think about how to bring the building up to current code, a financial impossibility. One contractor insisted on the need to replace all the original windows in the house, though only one was actually broken.”
 
Dr. Townsend added that at one point the younger Mr. Neutra thought he had a buyer who could rent the house while it could be placed into some sort of conservancy, but that deal fell through.
 
Other problems also developed. “I just don't think the money was there to do enough restoration to make it worthwhile to keep the house intact -- at least to any buyer other than a Neutra devotee,” Dr. Townsend said.
 
The offer by the Bocks – who plan to build a mountain lodge-style home with more contemporary lines on the lot -- was better than the others Ms. Raines received, Dr. Townsend said. She had still hoped it could be restored and was disappointed when it was torn down, he added.
 
Mr. Bock said he and some architects and friends took out some of the mid-century furniture and furnishings in the home before its demolition.
 
Dr. Townsend, in turn, was earlier able to preserve at least the home’s memory in more detail with the support of Ms. Raines, who moved out in 2013. He documented in detail the layout of the home, catalogued some historic information and old photographs, and wrote a detailed paper on the home for the annual conference of the Southeast Society of Architectural Historians in October 2014.
 
The 4½-bedroom home had such features as numerous glass windows, a mostly flat roof, custom cabinetry, a long desk in the master bedroom, a planter in the dining room, and unique cabinets for music and television.
 
It also had a nice view of the nearby Tennessee River before the area became overgrown in later years.
 
Mr. Neutra (pronounced NOY-tra) had visited the Chattanooga site and had asked the family – including sons Dean and Richard as well as daughter Ann -- for detailed information about what they wanted in their home.
 
As an example, the residence also had a dark room for Dr. Livingston’s hobby of photography. Dr. Livingston, who grew up in Columbus, Ga., and practiced internal medicine and cardiology in Chattanooga, had lived in the home until suffering a tragic fall from the upper deck of the residence in January 2002 at the age of 96.
 
Mr. Neutra, a native of Austria who died in 1970, was considered one of the premier architects who designed buildings in the mid-century modern style. He graced the cover of Time magazine in 1949.
 
Most of his structures are located in California and out West. Dr. Townsend said only three homes designed by him were built in the Southeast, and that makes the inability to save the Riverview home extra hard to take.
 
“This loss to the history of American architecture is huge,” he said.
 
Jcshearer2@comcast.net