Why Do Homes by Modern Masters Keep Getting Torn Down?

The future looks bleak for modernist homes—some of the best ones are being demolished at a steady clip to make room for newer and arguably much worse things. Last year, the neighbors of the Geller house on Long Island, designed by famed architect Marcel Breuer, bought it, bulldozed it, and put in a tennis court.

Now, the summer home Breuer designed for his family in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, is in danger of disappearing, too. Built in 1948 in Cape Cod, it’s one of the more significant modernist residences built after the war, and still contains much of its original ephemera and effects. Breuer’s elderly son, Tomas, has agreed to sell the residence to the Cape Cod Modern House Trust for $2 million, as long as the organization can raise enough cash for a downpayment, which it plans to do through a fundraising campaign. If the home were to fall out of contract (the deadline is May of next year), it’d leave the door open for a number of possibilities, a likely one being demolition by a private buyer.

Peter McMahon, an architect and the founding director of the trust, classifies the house as Breuer’s home base. "He moved all around the world—Paris and New York—but that was the one consistent place in his life," he says.