STAMFORD, CONN.- Historic New England announces that the Graham House in Stamford, Connecticut, is the eighty-fourth privately-owned historic property and the fourth mid-century modern property, protected through Historic New England’s Stewardship Easement Program.

This unique house was designed by the prominent architect Eliot Noyes (1910-1977) in 1966 and is recognized as one of his most dramatic and sculptural houses. Noyes was a member of the Harvard Five, a group of modern architects who practiced in nearby New Canaan, Connecticut. He began his career working for Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer and was a strong advocate of functional Modernism.

Completed in 1969, the Graham House is an imposing structure that consists of two fieldstone-and-concrete walls that create a central hallway with rooms cantilevered outside the walls, floating over the landscape with views defined by carefully placed windows. The exterior appears to rise from the natural rock outcropping of the site and incorporates stones taken from pre-existing stone walls on the property, large panes of glass, and wood vertical board siding stained brown.

The Graham House was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2011 in recognition of its importance as an intact example of Noyes’ work, and as the culmination of a series of related house designs by Noyes known as “wall-houses,” where two large walls create a center corridor, like a street, and form adjacent living spaces and a courtyard.

The preservation easement was donated by the home’s owner, Robert C. Graham Jr., who commissioned its design and construction and who has remained committed to its ongoing preservation. The easement permanently protects the home’s exterior, its important interior features, and nearly ten acres of its impressive and dramatic natural setting.