122 Cox Avenue
Raleigh, NC, USA

National Register of Historic Places - Harwell Hamilton and Jean Bangs Harris House and Office (Early Modern Architecture Associated with NCSU School of Design Faculty MPS )

Statement of Significance:

The Harwell Hamilton and Jean Bangs Harris House and Office is an outstanding expression of the work of internationally-known Modernist architect Harwell Hamilton Harris. Throughout his long career, Harris's work was intimately connected to the individualities of client needs and site conditions. His use of modular design contributed to well-integrated works that expressed a unified rhythm among their components. The Harris House and Office, designed for himself and his wife for their final working years and as their retirement home, beautifully exemplifies Harris's client- centered approach and stands as an excellent example of early modern residential design in Raleigh.

The architectural context for the Harris House and Office has been documented in the 1994 Multiple Property Documentation Form (MPDF) "Early Modern Architecture in Raleigh Associated with the Faculty of the North Carolina State University School of Design in Raleigh, North Carolina, 1948-1972" prepared by David R. Black. The dual-purpose building falls under the property types Residential (pages F1-7) and Commercial (pages F8-12). Additional information about Harris's life and work is contained in this nomination.

The building meets the registration requirements established in Section F of the MPDF for both Residential and Commercial property types (pages F1 and F8, respectively). It is locally significant and meets National Register of Historic Places Criterion C in the area of Architecture. The building also meets requirements for Criteria Consideration G as one of a very few intact residential commissions by Harris that was executed in Raleigh. The period of significance for the building is 1968-1970 and 1977, the dates of original construction and the date of an addition that represented the completion of the original plan.

Of Harris's Raleigh designs, the Harris House and Office is unique in its composition and outward appearance, diverging sharply from the California regionalist modernism he established early in his career and brought to the rest of his residential work in Raleigh and surrounding cities. Stylistically, the Harris House and Office combines the architectural influences important to Harris's work-the International Style, Craftsman, and Wrightian modernism-while functionally, the building represents a startlingly elegant response to the prosaic concerns of cost, use, and geography.