$699K home features striking midcentury design, mystery architect
2025 SE Brown’s Woods Ln., West Des Moines
A key instance of mid-century modern-day architecture is for sale in West Des Moines, developed in 1964 for a previous director of the Des Moines Artwork Centre
Situated throughout from the 486-acre Brown’s Woods, Iowa’s biggest city forest, the a few-bed room, a few-toilet, 1,939-sq.-foot ranch residence is concealed from check out on its possess .76-acre, tree-loaded lot.
Restored around the previous two several years, previous Des Moines Art Heart director Thomas Stansbury Tibbs at first laid declare to the hanging structure. But despite ongoing endeavours looking archives, city information and local architectural data, no paperwork to again up his assertion has however been observed.
“It’s a quite unfamiliar mystery,” mentioned Rhiannon Barbour, who is representing the vendor.
Admitting the home’s type appeals to an special sector of the sector, Barbour is assured the proper homebuyer will at some point be located.
“I adore the simplicity, how understated it is, but it is attractive,” she reported.
Tibbs was the Artwork Center’s director from 1960-68 and was instrumental in choosing New York Metropolis architect I.M. Pei to build a $1.6 million addition to the Art Middle. Pei’s 18,000-square-foot wing debuted in Oct 1968, that includes an uncovered concrete exterior that provided an immediate distinction to architect Eliel Saarinen’s 20-calendar year old creating.
Tibbs’ home on Brown’s Woods Lane has undergone a collection of updates considering the fact that he left in 1968 and now characteristics a sunroom, laundry space, a porch with views of the close by pool and woodlands, a mud space and an attached two-auto garage.
The existing proprietors have included a detached 1,800-square-foot mixture garage and art studio, geared up with a hydraulic motor vehicle lift, and LED lighting to superior aid car painting and restoration.
Inside of the major home, the master bedroom contains an en-suite toilet and the kitchen area has been reworked with new appliances and counter tops. The wood floors and beamed ceilings have been refinished and the big home windows make certain an abundance of natural mild.
The open system house “is not truly set up to have a family members with two or three young ones,” Barbour claimed. But the available layout was a immediate consequence of Tibbs facilitating his wife Ruth’s recovery adhering to a stroke.
Partner and wife team Denika and Brad Almburg of Mod Household Assortment and Almburg Homes had been previous proprietors of the property when it was still covered in vines and overgrowth. The couple started the home’s early conservation and restoration.
“He truly developed that home to accommodate her immediately after her stroke, and her caretaker,” Denika Almburg explained.
In the course of the pandemic, Almburg’s discussions with nearby architects “confirmed our beliefs that it was anyone experienced in architecture that designed it,” she claimed.
No files have been found to indicate Tibbs been given any education to transition from a museum director into a complex novice architect.
Even with that anomaly, Almburg remains a fantastic admirer of the property and also Tibbs’ profession at the Art Heart. “My get on him is that he was just a ahead thinker, a imaginative dude who pushed the envelope listed here in Des Moines, and Des Moines was also conservative to appreciate some of what he was executing,” she said.
The property is detailed at $699,000 by Rhiannon Barbour of Realty A person Group and DSM Fashionable Actual Estate. Contact (515) 446-7524 to tour this home or similar attributes.
Richard Lane is the true estate reporter for the Des Moines Sign up. He can be attained at [email protected].